Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Gallardo is asking Attorney General Kris Mayes to investigate county Recorder Justin Heap over allegations Heap violated state law as he fights with the Board of Supervisors over control of the county’s elections.
Gallardo sent a letter asking Mayes to conduct a public corruption investigation into Heap and look at whether the county recorder violated the state’s Open Meeting Law, which requires policy decisions to be made in public.
The request comes after Votebeat obtained text messages showing Heap tried to pressure Republican Supervisors Debbie Lesko and Mark Stewart to support his version of an agreement that details how the supervisors and recorder split election-related duties.
State law gives county boards of supervisors and recorder’s offices control of different election-related duties and it is common for the two sides to sign a shared services agreement, or SSA, to assign duties that can be handled by either office.
The five-member board and Heap have quarreled for months after a new SSA signed by former Recorder Stephen Richer last year shifted some responsibilities and resources to the board.
Heap has sought a new agreement that shifts those powers back to his office, along with additional duties that critics say are not the recorder’s purview under state law.
“From day one, Recorder Heap has been making promises that the law doesn’t allow him to keep,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Thomas Galvin said in a statement after Heap sued the board over the SSA in June. “Arizona election statutes delineate election administration between county boards of supervisors and recorders to ensure there are checks and balances, and Recorder Heap clearly doesn’t understand the responsibilities of his position.”
As contentious negotiations took place between the offices, Heap sent text messages to Lesko and Stewart in an attempt to pressure them into supporting his version of the SSA, Votebeat reported.
In those texts, Heap said Gallardo, the board’s lone Democrat, would vote in favor of Heap’s SSA. If Stewart and Lesko joined Gallardo, that would give them the three votes needed to adopt the SSA.
“Don’t ask me the kind of backchanneling and arm twisting I had to do to get the democrat on the Board, but he will vote for the SSA I proposed with you and Debbie,” Heap texted Stewart in March.
Gallardo denied the allegations, saying he only met Heap once in January and hasn’t spoken to him since.
“Justin Heap is lying about me, and going forward, he better keep my name out of his lying mouth,” Gallardo said in a statement last week.
He followed that up with a letter to Mayes on Tuesday, asking her to investigate Heap.
“If in fact Mr. Heap discussed the SSA matter with three of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, this is a violation of Arizona’s Open Meeting Law,” Gallardo wrote. “In truth, Mr. Heap solicited the other supervisors to break the law by trying to arrange a Board vote in a secret plot instead of an open meeting in public as required.”
A spokesman for Mayes confirmed the attorney general is reviewing Gallardo’s request but declined to comment further.
