Oh, Karen! - The Big Lie That Wouldn’t Fly Is Try, Trying Again

 

“Tell the truth, or someone will tell it for you.”

~ Stephanie Klein, Straight Up and Dirty

In the sphere of ideals and ethics, there is one perennial truth—Truth with a capital T— that somehow always emerges when society is plagued by gaslighting and disinformation, no matter how pervasive or convincing said untruths may be.

I believe this. I've seen this happen many times in my lifetime. The arc of justice always bends toward truth, as they say. One can't serve both truth and political aspirations based on lies.

 

What is happening now in the USA in regard to political truths and untruths is no different. The notion that former President Donald J. Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election because of some hazy, nefarious election fraud that has been disproven dozens of times in courts of law and through legitimate, professional audits is one untruth that should never have been given any credence by national or state legislators.

 

Started by Donald Trump’s desperate gaslighting to avoid prosecution of his many civil and criminal indiscretions, the notion of a stolen 2020 election is now supported by conspiracy theory-driven citizens and by elected “leadership” who cynically promote the lie in a vicious cycle of unending disinformation and contentious political discourse.

 

Politicians promote Trump’s untruth, primarily because it keeps corporate and individual donations flowing into their PACs and furthers their political careers. Some politicians in leadership roles, such as Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, appear to play the issue both ways. She claims she’s only responding to the people’s concerns and that it’s only fair to investigate despite Arizona’s three official investigations yielding little to no evidence of election fraud. That’s actually just a notch or two above the politicos who wholeheartedly embrace the former president and support the big lie shamelessly, hoping to whip up voters and gain a majority of Congressional seats for the Republican Party (for the GQP faction, at any rate) during the 2022 midterm and the 2024 general elections.

 

The “big lie” is a highly toxic, cynical notion that poisons the atmosphere and the wells of democracy. Here in Arizona, we know a lot about clear skies and groundwater because the human presence in our delicate high and low desert environments depend upon safeguarding the Earth and managing what substances are allowed to circulate in the air and penetrate the soil. Poisoning our atmosphere and our drinking water is an apt analogy for what the questionable Cyber Ninja audit is provoking here in Arizona.

 

We can easily extrapolate that without attention to the truth of the matter, that we can’t stabilize crucial environmental issues in Arizona. Neither can we have viable state governments if our entire federal system is at risk. Arizona faces a critical juncture in our shared national history. There really is no other option but to embrace the proven truth of the matter, otherwise our reputation as a credible state in a credible democratic republic is tarnished.  

 

Karen Fann and several other Arizona Republican legislators have chosen to metaphorically poison our political sphere rather than gracefully concede to the indisputable fact that Joe Biden won the presidential race in Arizona (as Governor Ducey and a few mainstream Republican politicians surprisingly did).

 

I won’t review all the names and details regarding the Cyber Ninja audit. There are many fine local and national political journalists and pundits who write for and / or appear on national and local news venues, and many, if not all, have social media accounts. These esteemed investigative reporters, associated with both mainstream and alternative news venues, have covered the AZ audit in detail and continue to dig out salient facts about this travesty almost daily. If you’ve not already followed the Arizona audit story in the news or researched it online, please do so.

 

I have not followed Karen Fann’s entire political career and so cannot speak to every facet of it. I presume she may have brought some good things to the table for Arizona citizens along her path from city council member to mayor to state representative to Arizona Senate President. (One can hope, since that’s what government is supposed to be doing, right?) 

 

But I have been present and observant during a couple of prominent decisions she has made, one local and one with national implications, and I note the conflict and the political maneuvering, then and now.

 

Karen Fann served as councilman and mayor of Chino Valley between 2002-2009. I lived in Yavapai County near the town – county boundary of Chino Valley from 1993-2009. While not a town resident, I did pay attention to the actions and decisions of the mayor and town council because their actions often affected county residents too. And so, in 2003 when Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott proposed to build a “stop-and-go” airstrip for takeoff and landing practice for their students on the Perkins Ranch in Chino Valley, specifically on parcels of land near the Garchen Buddhist Institute, a world-class Tibetan Buddhist retreat center and near other dissenting neighbors—ranchers and other homeowners— I sat up and took notice.

 

The crux of the matter is that there’s a full-service airport in Prescott, just eight miles or so as the crow flies from the proposed site on the Perkins Ranch. The question of placing an airstrip so close to an operational airport was significant. And the flights would likely have affected people near town living under the flight paths and not just those living ten miles out of town around the proposed airstrip site. By any stretch of the imagination, the proposed project was a matter needing extensive research and public debate. Let it also be noted that Mr. Perkins had other more appropriate locations on his ranch for the project but oddly insisted on a location that upset his neighbors, rather like the narcissistic person now stirring up the nation with his “big lie.”

 

While town government under Mayor Karen Fann seemed bent on keeping the issue quiet at the time, an issue she disputes, there was the small matter that landowners in the vicinity of the proposed airstrip had to be notified, and so word of the project quickly went around, as happens in small communities. After the initial kerfuffle in 2003 had died down because of staunch community opposition to the touch-and-go airstrip, the issue popped up again like a bad penny in 2007 as a proposed plan for a full-scale airpark in the same location, sponsored again by the Perkins Ranch, Inc. One major environmental concern was that the headwaters of the Verde River lay near the Perkins Ranch, and it was unknown if the groundwater would support any major level of industrial use in the area. The possibility that industrial contaminants might pollute the groundwater was a realistic concern too.

 

I’m not a journalist, but I am a creative writer, blogger, book reviewer, and a political and environmental activist when the need arises. In 2007 I accidentally became one of several public faces of the resistance to the proposed airport. It didn’t take much for that to happen in a small community. I was just a concerned citizen but my visibility increased beyond some activists, simply because I called in to a KYCA radio show on July 6, 2007 to question Prescott politician Steve Blair, a personal friend of the Perkins family who supported the airstrip and airpark plans. I also submitted a letter to the editor of the Chino Valley Review (opposing the airpark) that was published as an op-ed that summer. It gained the attention of many people, including the Perkins family, and was mentioned by Mrs. Perkins at a contentious town council meeting about the proposed airpark. I stayed in the loop and communicated with various groups who opposed the project. Later I helped circulate petitions to town and county residents opposed to the airpark (as did many other people).  

 

During the summer and fall of 2007 I sometimes emailed information to local news venues to help keep them apprised of new developments. One in particular, Art Merrill, owner / managing editor of Read It Here / ReadItNews.com, an alternative news venue with both a print and online presence in 2007, invited me to write an article. It ultimately appeared as: “The airstrip that wouldn’t fly is try, trying again,” ReadItHere / ReadItNews, September 2007.  (And I thank him profusely once again for his astute editing and moral support.) While the article doesn’t appear online now, even in archived pages via the “wayback machine,” I do have a hard copy of the print issue on file: 

 

Four years ago Chino Valley citizens decided they didn’t want “progress” in the form of a private airstrip on a nearby 1,100-acre parcel owned by Perkins Ranch, Inc. And especially not if Embry-Riddle University flight students used the airstrip for incessant “touch-and-go” landings. Though deterred by public opposition, the airstrip hasn’t gone away; instead, like those eager flight students in their blue and white airplanes, the airstrip has come around again for yet another approach.

     ERAU withdrew its interest after the private airstrip plan failed to fly with Chino Valley residents in 2003, when the Town of Chino Valley formally denied the Perkins Ranch request to rezone 3,840 acres of the 8,300-acre ranch because of Perkins’ failure to provide a list of non-conforming uses and a development plan. But they said the rancher-cum-developer, Tom Perkins, Sr., could reapply if he corrected his paperwork deficiencies.

 

What airstrip?

 

Perkins Ranch soon tried to land the airstrip again, but from a different approach. In August 2005, apparently believing that a 2001 pre-annexation agreement with the Town “grandfathered” his right to construct an airstrip, Perkins hired a contractor to compact, grade and blade an airstrip on Sections 13 and 14 without approved rezoning or a conditional use permit. Within a month, the Town filed for a restraining order and an injunction against Perkins Ranch in Yavapai County Superior Court, which held hearings in October.

The Perkins Ranch entitlement to airstrip construction appeared to rest on a claim that the ranch was merely “improving” an already existent airstrip. The hearing examined Perkins’ airport application to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA); Perkins had checked the box labeled “Establishment of activation” of an airport, and left “Alteration” unchecked. The application also lists “zero” as the monthly number of landings as of July 5, 2005. The FAA application is apparently inconsistent with claims of a preexisting airstrip. Aerial photos of the area show no trace of any preexisting airstrip construction, and Kelly Levine, the Perkins’ widowed daughter-in-law and major shareholder of Perkins Ranch, Inc., testified there was no airstrip and no planes landing on Sections 13 and 14.

Perkins Ranch neighbor Betty Wells, who’s lived on Perkinsville Road since 1952, later supported Kelly Levine’s 2005 testimony. Wells said she traveled the Chino backcountry with her father, who worked as a trail guard and pumped water for a sheep association.

“A livestock trail wound through area ranches and [national] forest land toward town,” she said, sweeping her hand across the peaceful landscape. “There just wasn’t any airstrip.”

But, Wells said, a few aircraft have landed in the area.

“My husband’s cousin landed on the road a couple of times to bring us supplies when Granite Creek flooded,” she recalled. “Two men landed on Narrow Gauge Road and drove into Chino and robbed the old Valley National Bank once.”

The hearing documented the unpopularity of the airstrip proposal with Chino Valley residents. Mayor Fann’s testimony included public dismay about the project and her conflicting personal belief that “the future of Chino Valley will have some sort of municipal airport . . .”

Fann testified that she suggested to the Perkins that Sections 23, 24, and 25 might be a more appropriate location for an airstrip. She also cautioned the Perkins about forging ahead with the project, warning that “even if [the airstrip] received a 7-0 in-favor vote from the [P&Z] commission and a 7-0 in -favor vote from the [town] council . . . I guarantee you every one of us would get recalled and there would be a referendum that would be filed the next day rejecting our vote . . .”

 

Airpark plus

 

Perkins Ranch and the Town of Chino Valley reached a resolution, resulting in the ranch setting up a third approach and hoping for a smooth landing. Perkins Ranch applied for rezoning for development by January 2007, but word was slow in reaching a public already disapproving of Perkins’ past touch & go’s.

Perkins Ranch attorney David Ward followed to a “T” Chino Valley P&Z Ordinance #45 requiring landowners within 300 feet of the Perkins’ property be notified: no one lives that close, so there was no notification necessary. In May 2007, the ranch notified landowners within 1,000 feet of Perkins’ property. Word of the new proposal finally filtered around Chino Valley four months after the initial zoning request and the issue inevitably took flight again. Mayor Fann was mum on the new proposal—later blaming P&Z processes that precede publicizing zoning requests—until she fielded airpark questions on her July 12, 2007 radio program. [Note: July 12, 2007 KYCA 1490. Two days before the broadcast Fann said she resented being made to “look devious” by resident outcry about lack of publicity on the Perkins’ zoning request. Sounds similar to Fann’s waffling about the controversial Cyber Ninjas audit, eh?]

No longer calling for a private airstrip, the proposal now is for a “private airpark with public usage.” Perkins Ranch attorneys say the ambitious three-phase, 20-year plan “fulfills the stated purpose of the Chino Valley Special Development Area (SDA),” although the SDA doesn’t specify an airport. “SDA” is a Chino Valley 2003 General Plan land-use designation for low-density residential housing coupled with commercial development. “General areas allocated along Perkinsville Road, along the eastern boundary of the Town and to the East of the Granite Creek floodplain have been designated as Special Development Areas for future job centers,” the General Plan reads.

Opponents expect the airpark to draw around itself more commercial and light industrial businesses like those seen at the Prescott airport. But they also fear an influx of heavy manufacturing plants, feed lots, automobile salvage yards, quarries, mines and associated batch plants, concrete plants, slaughterhouses, refineries, outdoor storage yards and junkyards and vehicle motor sports facilities.

 

A wing and a prayer

 

Today, this scenic SDA has only scattered residential occupants, one of he last pronghorn herds in the area and natural aviators—a population of threatened bald eagles that nest along the Verde River.

Garchen Buddhist Institute, an exquisitely quiet 75-acre retreat facility sits on a ridge overlooking the unfinished dirt airstrip. When I recently spoke with the Institute’s spiritual leader, Garchen Rinpoche, a Tibetan lama known internationally for his gentle humor and compassion, he seemed to have little worldly concern as he sat cross-legged on the floor of the facility’s stupa, a shrine symbolizing the Buddha’s enlightened mind.

Garchen Rinpoche emphasized community dialog, cooperation and a spiritual outlook.

“When I face an issue, I pray and recite mantra,” he said, whirling his ever-present Tibetan prayer wheel. “I encourage people to use prayer before making decisions.”

 

Kate Robinson is a substitute teacher living [near] Chino Valley, a student at Garchen Institute, and a member of the Professional Writers of Prescott.

 

~*~

 

My article simply gathered up a variety of already published info from news sources and new info in the form of interviews with people the proposed project affected. I wanted to tell a longer tale but my word count needed to be edited by half, so some interesting points were lost. Kept in the final publication was a portion of my interview with Garchen Rinpoche, the spiritual director of Garchen Institute, and a portion of my interview with Betty Wells, a long-time neighbor – rancher living near the Institute. Some interesting quotations from interviews with other notable citizens went by the editing wayside.

The article didn’t please Chino Valley Mayor Karen Fann, whose alleged backroom pre-annexation deal with rancher Perkins circa 2003 revealed by local journalists may not have been widely known or possibly was mostly forgotten by 2007. It was never entirely clear what had transpired between Perkins and Fann in the first place anyway, as I recall, except there was some lapse in making the transaction of the town annexing Perkins ranch property along Perkinsville Road known to the public. She denies that it was a secret backroom deal and that the lapse of public knowledge had to do with P&Z procedural issues.

 

Fann managed somehow to call my unlisted landline number a day or two after publication of the 2007 article (to be fair, I did work for the local school district as a sub teacher at the time). I was surprised, especially since the edited and published version of my article is fairly bland and non-controversial. Fann related her extreme displeasure at my not having notified her about the article before publication, probably the venue’s responsibility, not the freelance contributor’s. I recall her saying I should have called her, but she used the word “ask” often, as though she had wanted me to interview her rather than report on what was already in the public record. She chided me as if I were at her beck and call rather than presenting herself as a public servant, though toward the end of the brief call she did try to sound diplomatic though clearly still exasperated.

 

What eventually arose from the situation in Chino Valley fourteen years ago, through the concerted efforts of many people, was the truth of the matter. The airpark, said to be a potential financial pot of gold for the community was shown, realistically, to potentially create a few temporary jobs during construction, a very few permanent positions afterward, and would benefit mostly the Perkins Ranch, Inc., during the first twenty years of its potential existence. The FAA never fully approved the project because of the inconsistencies in the application and because the proposed site is near the Prescott Airport. The Perkinses eventually left their Arizona ranch to their surviving children and moved to their property in New Mexico. The Prescott Regional Airport – Ernest A. Love Field has expanded since 2007 and a new terminal is currently under construction in 2021. Fann Contracting is one of the construction companies involved in that project (founders were Karen’s parents and her brother Mike now heads that company). I understand that the Verde River is currently low and sluggish in some areas as drought conditions persist throughout Arizona and the Southwest in the summer of 2021. [edit September 2021 - there has been a rather decent summer monsoon season, rain measurement-wise, but the drought has not ended and the river is still in peril on many levels.] 

Once again, Karen Fann has embraced political waffling rather than being fully honest about her role of allowing the Cyber Ninjas audit. She skims around at the edge of the cult and enables it even while making distance from it. Perhaps a fourth authorized forensic audit might have been warranted to calm the misinformed segment of the public, but allowing a company with questionable or no qualifications to do an audit tainted with conspiracy theory antics is astonishing. The buck stops at Fann's desk, so ultimately, she’s responsible for the millions of taxpayer dollars that must be spent on new election computers and devices because it can’t be established that the auditors haven’t tampered with the electronics or unintentionally compromised them. Ultimately, she is a co-conspirator in Donald Trump’s big lie and will be responsible for any future violence by rightwing extremists when they finally realize he ain't returning to the White House.

 

If Arizona finally manages to straighten up and fly right after this audit debacle, it will again be due to the concerted effort of many people dedicated to upholding the Truth. Your vote in upcoming local, state, and national elections (and speaking out now) will be crucial in bringing Trump’s big lie back from the stratosphere to be permanently buried in the landfill of the past where it belongs. You decide!