By Tony Davis and Murphy Woodhouse | Arizona Daily Star
Pima County officials gave a Phoenix-based, free-market oriented think tank public records about potential tax incentives for Monsanto even as they refused to release similar records to the Arizona Daily Star.
The county gave the conservative Goldwater Institute two batches of Monsanto-related records in late September and late October, after refusing to provide similar records to the Star in late August. The Star only got those records last week, after learning that the institute had them and complaining to county officials about unequal treatment under the state public-records law.
A county spokesman, Mark Evans, said Thursday that the release to Goldwater was a “grievous error,” based on differences in how the institute and the Star filed their respective requests.