Supervisor Snider brings county issues to Congress

Just back from a whirlwind trip to Washington to attend the National Association of Counties (NACo) conference and meet with Congress, Pinal County Board of Supervisors Chairman David Snider reported on his meetings with Arizona senators and members of Congress.

“Washington moves at an entirely different speed. With this new administration and the economic crunch, getting ‘face time’ with Congress proved difficult amidst all of their meetings,” Chairman Snider said. “I am pleased to report that I was able to meet one-on-one with our entire Congressional delegation on issues pertaining to Pinal County.”

Those issues included:

§ Hunt Highway widening and improvement project as well as chip sealing of dirt roads in the county to help improve air quality in Pinal County. These two projects had been submitted previously for American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (Stimulus) funding; however, they were not selected by Central Arizona Association of Governments or Arizona Department of Transportation for inclusion on the Arizona list. Pinal County is, therefore, urging Congress to submit these projects as candidates for direct or special appropriations.

§ Snider also urged a special appropriation for construction of I-802 from the Pinal-Maricopa County line to the North-South Freeway corridor.

§ Snider requested assistance and support for the federal land exchange legislation that would allow the multi-billion dollar mining operation by Resolution Copper to proceed. Mining this very large copper ore body would result in $46.4 billion in economic activity and more than 1,200 jobs for skilled workers.

§ He urged the delegation to intercede on behalf of Pinal County with the Bureau of Land Management in the matter of a crossing of the San Pedro River near Dudleyville.

§ Snider requested special appropriations for the completion of a county-wide drainage study and creation of a county-wide Master Flood Control Plan as well as funding for a special flood plain mapping project to mitigate recent FEMA errors in designations of parts of the county as ‘Flood Plain A’ properties.

§ Lastly, he encouraged support for the continuation of the intergovernmental agreement between Pinal County and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security/U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE). Since 2006, Pinal County has had a contract with ICE to house up to 625 of its inmates at the Pinal County Detention Center in Florence.

“Like all government agencies in the state, we are charged with the responsibility to perform certain tasks in the face of declining revenues,” Snider explained. “We spent a lot of time discussing and trying to understand how the various stimulus funds might help achieve our objectives. Federal money will flow to the states and then to the county. It is my goal to see that those funds are spent wisely and efficiently on efforts that benefit our entire region.”

“Green energy and energy efficiency are hot topics with the new administration. We are hoping to engage our delegation on some of the efforts Pinal County has taken to ‘go green’ and opportunities to do more in the future,” Snider added.

“The pace of the trip was swift, the meetings were successful, and I was pleased with the amount of time I had with our delegation,” Chairman Snider said.

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