New Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap is threatening to sue the county Board of Supervisors to force them to return certain election management responsibilities former Recorder Stephen Richer ceded to the board last year before leaving office.
In October, Richer and the board agreed to a new elections services agreement, which lays out shared election administration responsibilities held by the board and the Recorder’s Office. As part of the deal, the supervisors will now oversee early ballot processing, which includes overseeing and verifying those ballots before they are counted.
The responsibilities removed from the Recorder’s Office under the new agreement, such as early ballot processing, can be overseen by the board or recorder under state law. Meanwhile, Heap retained duties assigned to county recorders by state law and the state’s election procedures manual, such as verifying the signatures on early mail-in ballots.
The agreement also consolidated the recorder’s information technology staff under the supervision of the board, which operates the Elections Department that administers most Election Day voting and administration.
The change received little attention when it was adopted by Richer and the past Board of Supervisors in the weeks before the 2024 general election.
But more recently, Heap, who defeated Richer in the 2024 Republican primary, canceled the agreement and has attempted to pressure the board into renegotiating it.
“This backroom, eleventh-hour power grab represents a reckless overreach by unpopular, lame duck officials attempting to knee-cap incoming elected officials — effectively consolidating all elections duties under the board,” according to the statement from Heap’s office.
The issue came to a head at a meeting over the county’s budget on Jan. 29.
At the meeting, Board Chair Thomas Galvin said the decision to consolidate IT staff was part of a countywide effort to improve efficiency and avoid duplicating efforts, pointing out both offices deal with different parts of election administration.
“For me, I want to minimize the overlap as much as possible, because for that’s saving taxpayer money,” said Galvin, one of two current board members who was on the board last year when it adopted the new agreement
Heap requested over $5 million to return IT staff and resources to his office at the meeting.
“This has created difficulties for our office in maintaining the legacy systems that we have and improving the voter registration system, in particular,” said Sam Stone, Heap’s chief of staff.
Heap canceled the agreement shortly after entering office, noting in a statement that “a voluntary agreement signed by the previous recorder and the previous board is not binding or enforceable on the current recorder and board without their consent.”
Stone said that legal advice came from Thomas Liddy and Joseph LaRue from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office during a meeting on Jan. 7.
Heap said, with that guidance, he chose to cancel the agreement and asked the board to come back to the table to negotiate a new contract that reinstates the old election agreement and gives more IT and early ballot processing staff to the recorder in order to avoid “costly legal battles.”
A spokeswoman for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office declined to comment on any guidance given to the recorder, citing attorney-client privilege, only pointing out that both the Recorder’s Office and Board of Supervisors are working with outside counsel on the election agreement issue.
Stone said outside counsel was assigned to the handle matter on Feb. 11.
Galvin disagreed with Heap’s characterization of the situation.
“Conversations between the board and its staff, and the recorder and his staff, have been happening for weeks,” Galvin said in a statement. “Despite the factual errors in Recorder Heap's statement, I don't view this as a ‘battle.’”
Specifically, Galvin said Heap overstated the significance of the changes made by the new agreement, especially when suggesting it “transferred nearly all the recorder's election duties to the board.”
Instead, Galvin said, the agreement only transferred early ballot processing and oversight of IT staff to the board of supervisors.
