It’s been called the Capitol HOA
By Katie Campbell | Arizona Capitol Times
The Legislative Governmental Mall Commission was given a name bureaucracies dream of and a death Sen. Lela Alston described as “snakey” even by political standards.
The commission once tasked with maintaining a general plan for the development of the Capitol Mall was unceremoniously dissolved at the conclusion of the 2018 legislative session. One of the budget bills bore red slashes through any mention of the commission, repealing it and transferring its duties to the state Department of Administration.
Alston, a Phoenix Democrat who served on the commission as the House’s representative, said she never got a real explanation as to why it was done away with, but she’d always heard it had something to do with someone in the Senate and a grudge.
A year after its termination, the wound was reopened after political consultant Chuck Coughlin suggested the formation of something along the lines of a “Joint Capitol Mall Commission.” His proposal was not to revive the original Mall Commission, but rather to create the new face of what the state currently knows as the State Board on Geographic and Historic Names.
Nonetheless, Coughlin’s casual title suggestion stirred memories of the “backroom” deal that ended the Mall Commission.
Kevin DeMenna never really forgot.
