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An influential business group plans to move into the 31-story U.S. Bank Center at 101 N. First Avenue.

In November, the Downtown Phoenix Partnership will leave the Mercado complex at 541 E. Van Buren and will take over two suites in the First Avenue high-rise, an official from the group said. 

The partnership inked a seven-year lease, according to Pacific Office Properties Trust, Inc., which owns the U.S. Bank Center. 

The move will give the partnership's ambassador program a higher public profile, said Dan Klocke the partnership's economic development director.

The ambassador program stations orange-clad guides throughout downtown Phoenix. Among other things, the 24 ambassadors help downtown visitors with directions, city information and local events.

Under the current set up, the guides are tucked inside the partnership's office, Klocke said. At the U.S. Bank Center, they will have a bigger space that looks like a visitors center.   

"We wanted a great first floor space for our ambassadors and for people to walk in, get directions or even grab an umbrella," Klocke said.

The partnership's administrative office will move to the 14th floor of the building. The group plans to lease 6,425 square feet. 

The partnership has been in the Mercado for at least eight years, Klocke said.

The Downtown Phoenix Partnership is a nonprofit primarily funded by an assessment on property owners within a 90 block area bound by Fillmore Street, Jackson Street, Seventh Street and Third Avenue.   

The mini-recovery in Limelight Networks Inc.'s stock has reversed.

The Tempe-based technology firm's shares closed down 9.2 percent at $3.97 today, a day the company reported a net loss of $15.3 million, or 18 cents per share, for the second quarter. A year ago the company's loss was $10.6 million, or 23 cents per share.

Limelight, which went public last June and has watched its stock price fall from about $24 per share to around $3 per share, is operating in the competitive "content-delivery network" industry. The firm and a handful of competitors store multimedia content on data servers and rush the content to consumers who access it online.

It's biggest competitor is Akamai Technologies Inc. That company is suing Limelight for patent infringement. Some analysts speculate that Akamai may end up buying Limelight, but for the time being both company's are duking it out through post-trial motions.

The good news for limelight is that its revenue is continuing to increase. The company's management said yesterday that it increased its customer base in the second-quarter to about 1,300 from about 1,200.

The company is currently handling its biggest contract to date: the streaming of video content for the NBCOlympics.com Web site.

Phoenix's housing market has set a new record, though its one that will only make bargain house hunters happy. The Valley's home prices have dropped 21 percent in the past year, according to Arizona State University's Repeat Sales Index.

The relatively new index shows this is the biggest drop for metro Phoenix home prices in a year.  

According to the index Valley home prices fell 21 percent between May 2007 and May 2008. That compares to an 18 percent drop between April 2007 to April 2008, and the first-ever double-digit decline of 13 percent from March 2007 to March 2008.

But Valley homes are selling, which could keep the decline from getting much worst.

“Karl Guntermann of the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University said there's enough demand to keep things from getting worse.

Phoenix metro area has seen home prices decline for 15 straight months now. That’s almost as long as the record 17-month index drop experienced during the last serious real estate recession in Arizona in the early 1990s.

The people behind the Scottsdale Area Chamber of Commerce really really really want to
see Mary Manross re-elected. And they really really really want Betty Drake, Ron McCullagh and Suzanne Klapp sitting beside her.

Together, these four wouldn't need a single extra vote in order to set the city's future course.

So it'd be nice to know precisely who it is that really really really wants to see them elected, so much so that they would put up money to make a video and a four-page mailer touting the foursome.

Just don't hold your breath waiting to find out.

It appears that the chamber may have dodged having to register and disclose who the four candidates are beholden to for the free ads.

This, because the ads don't include seven little letters. V-O-T-E F-O-R.

Wading through campaign finance laws is a lot like wading through one of those giant pits the
city digs every year for Mighty Mud Mania. It's a slow, tedious process and about as clear as the stuff that oozes between your toes.

The central theme of those laws, though, is (or should be) transparency. Generally, the law requires groups that want to spend money campaigning for a candidate to register and disclose who is putting up the cash for the cause.

According to state law, groups that spend money to “expressly advocate” the election or defeat of a candidate must disclose such info.

Rick Kidder, head of the chamber, says the ad campaign isn't expressly advocating for a candidate.

“Although this particular mailer highlights candidates who believe in economic growth, it does not say anywhere within it, ‘vote for', ‘elect', ‘support' or any of those things,” he said.

The chamber mailer is entitled: “A Report From the Scottsdale Area Chamber of Commerce on Candidates Who Support Scottsdale's Quality Of Life.” Below that are glossy color pictures of Manross, McCullagh, Drake and Klapp. In fact, their pictures are i n the mailer three times.

Oh, the chamber isn't saying vote for them. It's just saying, you know, vote for them.

Jim Lane, who is challenging Manross for mayor, says the pieces are clearly advocating for the four and as such violate laws which forbid the use of corporate money in a campaign. He said a complaint will be filed with the city.

City Clerk Carolyn Jagger says she plans to ask the city attorney for a legal opinion on whether the chamber materials violate the law.

“This one is in a grey area because they don't expressly advocate so I would probably need a legal opinion on that,” she told me. “You raise good questions and I have these same questions.”

As should every voter in Scottsdale. This is an election that will decide what the city looks like in the future – literally. The big issue looming: whether to lift the ceiling on Scottsdale and allow taller buildings downtown and in the Airpark.

The chamber is pushing the idea, as is every developer in town.

Apparently, they really really really believe that Manross et al represent their best shot at going up up up. Which is fine. They should advocate for the candidates they believe will
operate in their best interests.

But shouldn't voters know whose interests we're talking about?

Kidder says the chamber is funding the campaign. But who provided the funds to the chamber to send us this message?

“Scottsdale Campaign for Economic Development 2008-2009,” their ad says. “Our quality of life matters.”

Wouldn't it be nice to know whose quality of life they're talking about?

(Column published Aug. 14, 2008, Scottsdale Republic)

I was surprised (but not really) to see the Senate Ethics Committee exonerate Jack Harper for his conduct while presiding over a debate on the same-sex marriage ban.

It was the last day of the legislative session and Harper was in charge when he suddenly cut off a filibuster by Democrats and turned on the mike of a Republican, who quickly called for a vote. This, over the objections of Dems who were calling for a point of order and should have been recognized. The Republicans then went on to narrowly approve putting the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage on the November ballot.

On a 3-2 vote Tuesday, the Senate Ethics Committee threw out the ethics complaint against Harper for breaking the rules. Sen. Jay Tibshraeny, R-Chandler, who cast the deciding vote, reasoned that Harper already apologized. "As I looked at it, I could not say that violating a rule -- which could happen to somebody -- was an ethics violation," he said.

Deliberately breaking the rules in order to stifle debate among duly-elected representatives -- people who are sent to the Capitol to be our voice -- is not an ethics violation?

Please.

Voters aren't usually offered policy choices in Corporation Commission elections. Instead, commission races usually constitute a choice among largely unknown candidates as to who would be best at dealing with the abstruse legal, finance and accounting issues that are the substance of regulatory ratemaking.

This election is different. This time, voters are being given policy choices, most definitely in the Republican primary and probably in the general election as well. This is meaningful, since voters will be electing three of the five members of the commission, without an incumbent in the race.

The clearest choice in the Republican primary involves the commission mandate that regulated electric utilities get at least 15 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2025. The requirement begins small but ratchets up every year.

However, even with all the federal and state subsidies that already exist, renewable energy still isn't cost competitive. So, the commission has imposed a surcharge on electricity rates to subsidize it even further.

In other words, captive ratepayers are being forced to pay more for their electricity today so that they can pay more for it in the future. It's a heck of a deal.

The Goldwater Institute has sued, claiming that the commission overstepped its regulatory authority in adopting the mandate and consumer surcharge. A libertarian-minded group of candidates running as a team for the Republican nominations to the commission – Rick Fowlkes, Joseph Hobbs and Keith Swapp – vow to repeal the mandate if elected. Former state Rep. John Allen, running solo, also takes that position.

There's a slate of current state legislators also running as a team – Marian McClure, Bob Robson and Bob Stump. They are committed to keeping the renewable mandate, although you perceive with varying degrees of enthusiasm. McClure seems strongly committed to it and tried to pass a state law extending the mandate to utilities not regulated by the commission. Robson and Stump support the mandate, but you sense with greater reservations.

Former state legislator and commissioner Barry Wong is also running solo. He ranks with McClure in commitment to the renewable mandate. He voted for it when he was on the commission.

The next issue on which there is a policy choice, although less distinct, is deregulation of the electricity market. This was a national movement that got derailed by the California experience, although what happened in California is widely misunderstood.

What was set up in California wasn't deregulation. Instead, it was government-structured competition. All retail utilities had to buy their power in a government-mandated auction.

In any event, after the meltdown in California's electricity market, Arizona joined other states in abandoning nascent deregulation programs. It is, however, worth pointing out that when the incumbent utilities thought they were going to face competition, they were asking for a series of rate decreases. Since that threat has been lifted, they have returned to asking for incessant rate increases.

Fowlkes proposes that utility service areas overlap and that retail rates be deregulated wherever there are three or more providers offering service, subject to a maximum cap.

Fowlkes is on to something. Previous deregulation efforts concentrated on government-forced competition at the wholesale level. Retail competition, however, is the ultimate prize and for it to happen incumbents have to be permitted to make pricing mistakes.

Fowlkes' running mates are also committed to electricity deregulation. The other candidates don't seem opposed (although McClure comes close), but they don't have specific ideas and don't seem to regard it as a priority.

Regretfully, the election isn't strictly about the policy choices proffered by the candidates. There is a considerable competency gap to be considered as well. At the end of the day, the job does require sorting through abstruse legal, finance and accounting issues and managing a public decision-making process.

The former state legislators (Allen, McClure, Robson, Stump and Wong) have all demonstrated the ability to work through complicated public policy stuff. Wong, by background, experience and temperament, is probably the best qualified of the lot.

Fowlkes, who has run for commission three times before as a Libertarian, knows his stuff. His two running mates, however, seem out of their element.

So, Republican voters have a fairly broad range of policy preferences and qualifications for the commission to sort through. The choices aren't wholly satisfying. But they are certainly more substantive than usual.

(column for 8.15.08)

I suppose it was inevitable that it would come to this: The Center for Immigration Studies says immigration contributes to global warming.

The center, ordinarily a responsible advocate of reducing immigration, says that American immigrants contribute as much carbon dioxide as Britain and Sweden combined. That's, of course, because their labor is more productively used here than in their home countries. As the rest of the world develops, that will change.

But get this: illegal immigration results in less carbon dioxide than legal immigration.

For populist conservatives, who tend to believe that global warming is hooey to begin with, the cognitive dissonance in all this is incalculable.

There's no definite word yet on the severity of the ankle injury suffered by cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie midway through Tuesday afternoon's practice.

DRC rolled the ankle and was carted off the field. We don't know the results of the X-rays. The Cardinals are hoping that it's not the dreaded high ankle sprain, which can keep a player out for a few weeks. That's what happened to last year's first-round pick, tackle Levi Brown, and it delayed his development.

In other news, the club will have to make a roster move this morning if linebacker Brandon Moore passes his physical, as expected.

The club is looking at Moore as an inside linebacker, although he also played the outside for the 49ers, who cut him on Monday. That makes the two inside positions even more crowded.

Before Moore was added, there were four players vying for two spots: Matt Stewart, Monty Beisel, Ali Highsmith and David Holloway. Back surgery has prevented Beisel from practicing yet, but he is said to be close to returning. He played well last year in a backup role. The Cardinals picked up Stewart, a veteran, to help their depth. Holloway, a second-year player, and Highsmith, a rookie, are intriguing prospects.

It seems likely the Cardinals will release one of the inside linebackers to make room for Moore. It's going to be hard to find enough snaps for five backups, especially as starters Gerald Hayes and Karlos Dansby play more in the next two preseason games.

The Cardinals could decide to let a player at another spot go, but that's a risky proposition given recent injuries. Take cornerback, for instance. Starter Rod Hood is bothered by a sore foot, and DRC suffered a sprained ankle in Tuesday afternoon's practice.