When we were notified by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office that Arizona Sen. Judy Burges [R-District 22], who represents the Glendale, Peoria and Surprise suburbs of Phoenix, had filed a Senate Bill 1487 complaint against the city of Sedona, we were, of course, interested in why a legislator with no ties to Sedona would file a highly technical complaint against a city outside her district.

Burges does not represent District 6, and given the history of her proposed and passed legislation — a handful of redefinitions of terms in existing state laws and proclamations honoring deceased Arizonans for contributions to the state — she’s not really the type to peruse random city contracts from around the state on her weekends looking for legal errors, so we surmised correctly that someone in Sedona forwarded her the complaint they wanted her to file.

To her credit, Burges responded promptly to our formal public records request, providing us with email correspondence between herself, a legislative aide and Sedona’s legislator Arizona Rep. Bob Thorpe [R-District 6].

We duly sent a formal public records request to Thorpe and included the entirety of the email, including the date it was sent, to Thorpe asking for all his emails that referenced Sedona between a wide window — May 4 to July 20 — the day the SB 1487 complaint was made public. For good measure, we also sent public records requests to Arizona Rep. Brenda Barton [R-District 6] and Arizona Sen. Sylvia Allen [R-District 6].

Thorpe’s cellphone number (928) 310-8811 was included in Burges’ public record, so we called him for comment.

Listen to the full audio of the phone call by clicking here.

Thorpe was evasive on the call, and never actually answered why he did not file the SB 1487 complaint against a city he represents, repeatedly stating that Burges “volunteered.”

Thorpe did not state why he asked her to volunteer. Burges also didn’t go out of her way to collect any documentation on her own, nor call the city for clarification of certain legal questions. She filed the request exactly as Thorpe emailed it to her apparently without even reformatting the text to fix some of Thorpe’s typographical errors that stand out like thumbprints.

Seeing an escape hatch to our conversation, Thorpe stated he would not comment on an ongoing investigation.

We weren’t asking about the merits of the complaint — neither we nor Thorpe are legal experts — that’s why the Attorney General’s Office exists to investigate things. We were only asking about the route to the filing and why Thorpe handed off the complaint to someone not beholden to District 6 voters.

Thorpe then claimed he had no emails in the window we had requested. That was surprising to us considering he is up for re-election this year and needs Sedona voters. It’s also shocking, considering we were reading to him an email he himself had written and sent in that window, and we had included that exact email in our public records request.

Thorpe has a long history of trying to evade public records laws. His Twitter feed is private, even though he is a public official, and he has attempted to hide his public communication by using a private cellphone.

Despite this, in early January, a three-judge appellate court ruled that public officials using their personal cellphones to conduct public business subject their devices to Arizona’s public records law. Thorpe introduced legislation on Jan. 24 to overturn that ruling, which is dying a slow death on the house floor, as it has not been heard since its second floor reading on Jan. 25.

We also noticed that several pages were missing from the contract Burges cited. When we contacted her to ask if she understood pages were missing, if she knew what was in them and whether she would have filed a complaint if she knew content of those pages invalidated a good portion of her complaint, she declined to answer our questions, regurgitating Thorpe’s statement: “Withholding comment until AG finishes their investigation.”

It appears no one is defending Burges’ complaint, not even Burges, and no Sedona resident has come forward to claim sending the complaint to her. And all the parties involved in the upcoming election have been vocal in claiming they had nothing to do with contacting Burges nor Thorpe.

The question is, when did those key pages disappear?

Omitted by the Sedona resident who sent them to Thorpe?

Lost between Thorpe and Burges?

Or cut out when Burges filed them with the Attorney General?

Fortunately, the House and Senate public records council at the Arizona State Legislature are working to fulfill our public records request for all three of our legislators’ emails, and we should know soon.

Christopher Fox Graham

Managing Editor