Political boondoggles never die — they just get sold off for pennies on the dollar, at taxpayer expense.
Howard Fischer, indomitable state government reporter for Capitol Media Services, reported the ugly details of one such piece of political theater last week.
Last July, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it had authorized Customs and Border Protection to seal off some of the openings in the unfinished border wall commissioned during the Trump Administration.
But former Gov. Doug Ducey wasn’t content to let the federal government solve the problem — not when there was political hay to be made.
Later in the summer, Ducey issued an executive order directed at some of those gaps, including one of 3,820 feet near Yuma and, ultimately, another 10-mile gap south of Sierra Vista in the Coronado National Forest.
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Acting on Ducey’s order, the state first spent $13.8 million to buy rusty, battered shipping containers. Then, using a no-bid contract, the state spent $100 million in taxpayer funds to erect wall sections consisting of containers stacked two high.
The federal government promptly sued the state for trespassing on federal property.
Shortly before he left office, Ducey agreed to remove the containers and paid the same vendor, in another no-bid contract, $76 million to disassemble the barrier sections and haul the containers away.
Now, the state is trying to sell them for far less than it paid for them last year. At most, the state will recoup a paltry $4.2 million.
“A political stunt and a waste of money,” says Ducey’s successor, Katie Hobbs.
Did the nearly $200 million spent by the state on this harebrained scheme keep even one undocumented person from crossing the border? We sincerely doubt it.
Like the stunts other states have pulled, shipping undocumented immigrants to Democratic strongholds, Ducey’s wall was a money-wasting grandstand play.
“This effort was never meant to be a permanent solution,” said Daniel Scarpinato, Ducey’s former chief of staff. “But it did result in getting the (Biden) Administration’s attention.”
Well, not in a good way. Taking such ill-considered action on federal land backfired, big time. Could the feds have been more collaborative? Probably. But the state’s efforts to score political points in extralegal fashion were not exactly designed to make this a team effort.
Drawing political lines in the sand is popular in these polarized times. Drawing that line with stacks of old containers is just silly.
We need to control our borders. We need to forge lasting relationships between state and federal officials to accomplish that mission — not play political games that end with the taxpayers footing the bill for a big fat nothing.
