By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
PHOENIX -- Arizona taxpayers are going to spend another $76 million to take down the shipping containers along the border including in Yuma County that Gov. Doug Ducey used state dollars to put there in the first place.
Copies of new contracts show the Department of Administration has agreed to pay AshBritt Management & Logistics $57.2 million to tear down the containers in Cochise County and transport them to Tucson. That is on top of the $95 million allocated to the company to put them there in the first place.
Another addition to the contract gives the firm more than $9.3 million to deconstruct the 3,820-foot ersatz wall of double high containers it put up near Yuma at a cost of $6 million.
And then there's $9.8 million to transport the containers that were awaiting planned use in the barrier from their current location near Sierra Vista up to Tucson.
The move comes after Ducey, sued by the Department of Justice for trespassing and damaging federal land, agreed earlier this month to take the containers down. And that is despite his continued insistence that the land where they were placed does not belong to the federal government.
In fact, the governor's private attorney -- hired at state expense -- filed legal papers in federal court less than a week ago to keep alive a separate lawsuit he filed asking a judge to declare there is no federal ownership of the land.
And even that court filing may be a waste of tax dollars.
Incoming Gov. Katie Hobbs has told Capitol Media Services she believes Ducey's claim is not on solid legal ground.
"It's not our land to put things on,'' she said. And Murphy Hebert, press aide to the incoming governor, called the Ducey-ordered barriers "a political stunt that backfired at the taxpayers' expense.''
But gubernatorial press aide C.J. Karamargin, while acknowledging the additional cost of taking down a barrier that was just erected -- and, in the case of Cochise County, still under construction -- insisted this whole project was not a waste of taxpayer funds.
"We don't know what we stopped,'' he acknowledged. "We know that local law enforcement officials, like the sheriffs in Cochise and Yuma county, were both appreciative of the effort because it made their job to protect their communities a little bit easier.''
And Karamargin said that it was not until the containers started to go up that the Biden administration actually contracted to have the federal government fill some of the gaps left in the wall that was started under President Trump. As such, he said, they served a valid purpose, regardless of the cost.
There is no question but that Biden, on his first day in office, called an immediate halt to further construction. That left several open areas that had been part of the original plan.
But in July the Department of Homeland Security announced it had authorized Customs and Border Protection to seal openings near the Morelos Dam.
Yet just a month later Ducey issued an executive order directing that gaps near Yuma be filled with a line of double-high trailers.
Karamargin brushed aside questions about the timing, calling the federal announcement "all talk and no action.''
And in October, Ducey announced the contract to fill a 10-mile gap along the border south of Sierra Vista, in the Coronado National Forest.
Karamargin deflected questions of whether the money was wasted.
"Why don't you ask a farmer whose celery field or asparagus field or lettuce field was contaminated because people were defecating in it if the effort to stem the flow of migrants into Yuma was worth it,'' he said.
Where Ducey is getting the money to give to AshBritt to undo its own work is unclear.
Construction costs came out of a $335 million Arizona Border Security Fund approved by lawmakers earlier this year as part of a new state budget. But there are strings on those dollars, including requirements they be spent solely to erect a barrier.
Karamargin said he does not know from where the new dollars needed to tear down the makeshift wall will be taken.
As to that choice of AshBritt, a spokeswoman from the state Department of Administration said Ducey's emergency order allowed the state to bypass the normal process of seeking bids.
Megan Rose said the company was chosen because it has "demonstrated turnkey rapid reponse solutions since 1992.''
And she said no other firm was considered "based on the time constraints.''
Once the containers are gone, that still leaves the other ongoing expense of taxpayer dollars.
Ducey retained private counsel to file a lawsuit earlier this year so he could argue that the 1907 directive by President Theodore Roosevelt declaring a 60-foot strip along the border to be exclusive federal property was not legal. And that, his attorney said -- and continues to argue -- means the state was not trespassing.
The Biden administration responded with its own lawsuit earlier this month asking a federal judge to require Arizona to remove the containers or an order allowing the feds to do it and bill the state.
It took Ducey only a week to agree -- and a few more days for the state to sign that $76 million in new contracts to take out what AshBritt had built and was still building.
But Ducey's lawsuit is ongoing.
Come Jan. 2, when Hobbs is sworn in as governor, that will become her lawsuit against the feds. But Murphy said she can't comment on whether her boss will continue the fight or dismiss the case as the new administration is "reviewing all litigation.''