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Originally Posted by combusean
I've never understood nor really delved into Brnovich's Don Quixote quest but it sounds like he might actually be right here with the implicit property tax abatement. It looks like ASU did overstep their bounds here. Arizona has complicated business property tax laws last I checked.
If ASU just allowed them to sidestep that, that could be problematic. From what I recall, ASU did give the Omni owner/operators a sweet deal to build the thing,
The bigger question is why he went after them to begin with. State-level agencies paying lawyers to sue each other is an enormous sign of bad governance.
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Pretty much agree with this, although it will be interesting to see if the AG's office can find the right legal theory to make whatever their point is. The Supreme Court confirmed the straightforward case in favor of ABOR: that the Omni land is not subject to state property taxes, and therefore the AG lacks a "tax" to be enforcing through this lawsuit.
The remaining claims are that either this lease here was invalid because it was not made to "benefit the state," or that the lease violated the state constitution gift clause. My guess is they have a hard time showing it was not to "benefit the state" generally. But the gift clause issue could be thorny after the Peoria/Huntington University case from last year. That case gave some real teeth to the gift clause, requiring the public entity to show equivalence between the public and private benefits exchanged. Could be tough for ABOR to show they got equivalent value.
Taking on "crony capitalism" has been a big part of Brnovich's pitch in his election campaigns. So who knows where the lawsuit goes if Brnovich is elected to the Senate.