Arizona Morning Briefing, 8-28: Mayes Targets Flock, Clean Elections Gains Subpoena Power in Lombardo Case, and Gilbert Must Elect a School Board Member

We all survived another week. Well, not all of us, RIP beloved celebrity icons. But most of us did. Here’s the Arizona news we’re following as we transition into the last slow-news days of summer.

•Following this week’s spate of statewide municipal cancellations of Flock camera contracts, Attorney General Kris Mayes announced on Thursday that her office will examine Flock and other surveillance systems statewide, including who has database access, whether federal or out-of-state agencies can query Arizona data, and whether particular uses violate the Fourth Amendment. As her re-election approaches, Mayes has the benefit of being on the side of this issue that’s both politically popular across party lines, and also extremely necessary to prevent total tech dystopia.

“Technology can and does play an important role in helping law enforcement solve and prevent crime, but its use must be balanced against the Constitution and Arizonans’ privacy rights,” Attorney General Mayes said in a statement. “Arizonans are rightfully concerned about the documented examples of the misuse of this technology as well as how it affects their privacy rights. I share those concerns. We need a statewide approach to this issue.”

•Arizona Clean Elections commissioners have authorized subpoenas in the investigation of Green Party gubernatorial candidate Risa Lombardo (and two other candidates) into whether they deliberately group-falsified campaign donation forms. More than 2,600 voter donation statements appear on all three candidate records. ACE commissioners unanimously authorized executive director Thomas Collins to seek candidate records and bank statements, call witnesses and compel testimony. He must return with a repayment recommendation as soon as Sept. 24 and no later than Oct. 29. The hearing also produced a remarkable admission from Lombardo attorney Tim La Sota: he indicated Lombardo had signed more than 4,000 contribution forms herself because she supposedly believed the law required her to sign them. Who among us hasn’t done that?

•In what was either provincial political news that the Republic reported or a B-story in an episode of Abbott Elementary, a court ruled that Maricopa County School Superintendent Shelli Boggs couldn’t appoint a school-board member to a suddenly vacated seat Gilbert’s Higley Unified School District. Board member Scott Glover abruptly resigned with two years left on his term, announcing that he and his wife were moving to Portugal. As so many have before him, he chose the Algarve over the East Valley. Three power-hungry Gilbertians, desperate to spend the next two years at school-board meetings rushed to get their paperwork by the deadline.

Boggs called the timing of this “extraordinary” and made it clear she wanted to control who got the seat. But she agrees  to comply with the law. “The court’s ruling does not rewrite the timeline. It does not change when the resignation was delivered. It does not change when individuals arrived to file,” she said in a statement.