Laurie Roberts: The Arizona Republic's "go-to newsgal"
Yesterday PHXated noted that the Arizona Republic, in keeping with its feeling that its terrestrial readers don’t want to be bothered with uncomfortable news about Little Benny Quayle, did not include, in its printed edition, a report of a fairly notable poll on the Quayle-Hulburd race.
It said that Quayle was actually trailing Hulburd, 46 to 44, and that his unfavorables were at 52 percent.
While it’s possible the poll was what the big-time analysts call an “outlier,” some of its other findings—support for John McCain and such—were in keeping with the distric’s conservative makeup.
Anyway, the Republic was in a quandary: Having played down as much as possible the previous bad news for Quayle—mostly stemming from his unsavory association with a skanky web site when he could have, you know, been involved in any sort of public service that might make him qualified to go to Congress—it was even more difficult for the paper to write about a poll that showed a big chunk of the electorate was turning up it nose at the candidate, plainly based on the information the paper hadn’t wanted to get out.
Fortunately, Laurie Roberts, a columnist in the local news section, comes through again. It was she who, after the Republican primary was over, told people about Quayle and DirtyScottsdale.com.
Now she’s again columnizing about news that the paper itself has never vouchsafed to readers:
The poll, by Democratic pollster Public Policy Polling, surveyed 655 likely voters and had a margin of error of 3.8 percent. It showed Hulburd and Quayle in a dead heat with 10 percent undecided.
While both men were viewed favorably by a third of those polled, Quayle was disliked by 52 percent, including half of the independents surveyed. Hulburd, meanwhile, was disliked by 20 percent all voters surveyed, with 47 percent unsure what to think.
Interestingly, Roberts cites some evidence of a contention by New Times' James King … basically, not only that Quayle never lied about his involvement in Dirty Scottsdale, but that Politico, the online political magazine, is backing away from its initial contention that he did:
In a recent profile, Politico wrote that Quayle “has always admitted to writing some posts under a pseudonym”. That’s a far cry from its August story, headlined “Ben Quayle changes story about Dirty Scottsdale website”.
[Quayle campaign manager] Heiler says Quayle was responding to questions about whether he was involved in founding the website. The reporter, he said, never directly asked whether he had written for the site.
PHXated’s not buying it, for reasons delineated in the James King post but will look into the question of whether Politico itself is now downplaying what it once trumpeted.
7:46 AM
The Republic blasts the county probate court
Laurie Roberts' long-running jihad against the court gets vindicated today with a front-page investigation by Robert Anglen and Pat Kossan.
In a series of columns Roberts has contended that the court essentially colludes with private law firms assigned to oversee assets, and allows the firms to drain the funds with excessive legal fees.
She’s been doing individual cases. The report today is a massive overview, and worth reading.
Here’s the beginning of the main story](http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/09/24/20100924maricopa-county-probate-court-main-0926.html):
Outside of being imprisoned, no action in the American justice system deprives a person of so many rights as being declared incapacitated in Probate Court.
First, a judge rules that you can’t care for yourself. Then strangers can be given control of every aspect of your life. All that you’ve worked for and love – your savings, property, even your ability to contact your family – can be taken away and given to professionals to manage, at enormous expense to you.
Wills, trusts and powers of attorney may not matter.
Probate Court is meant to be a safe harbor for people in crisis because of advanced age or illness, a place where a judge helps protect their assets and well-being.
But an Arizona Republic investigation has found that Maricopa County Probate Court allows the assets of some vulnerable adults to become a cash machine for attorneys and for fiduciary companies, which manage their affairs.
The fees charged can drain the savings of even wealthy individuals in less than a year.
Full report here.
More about Laurie Roberts, on whom PHXated has a big ol' journalistic crush, here and here.
Of course, this being the Republic, the presentation online is seriously flawed. The layout in the paper makes visual and narrative sense; online, it simply lists a bunch of stories. When you get the the end of one, there’s no indication there’s another to be read in the series.
Sigh.
8:31 AM
1Laurie Roberts lays out the Ben Quayle/Brock Landers story in all its porny glory
Yesterday, the Arizona Republic finally vouchsafed to its print clientele an overview of Ben Quayle’s sordid past associations with the ultraskanky web site Dirty Scottsdale.
This came after the election he was running in, but whatever.
Today Laurie Roberts, on whom we have a journalistic crush, finally limns the story the way the paper should have from the start:
So, to recap:.
He denied writing for the website, then he admitted writing for the website, saying he posted a handful of “fictional satirical comments.”
He denied that he is Brock Landers but he hasn’t denied writing under the name Brock Landers.
And he couldn’t recall whether he introduced Karamian to a lawyer for purposes of incorporating the website, but then later admitted that he hooked them up.
Now he says he’s “been consistent from the very beginning on this issue.”
7:47 AM
One of the more dispiriting things about the immigration bill...
…comes from this Laurie Roberts blog post yesterday:
A new Rasmussen Poll reports that 70 percent of likely voters in Arizona approve of the illegal immigration bill now on Gov. Jan Brewer’s desk.
Contrary to the national uproar, just 23 percent of likely Arizona voters oppose Senate Bill 1070, with six percent unsure. The poll of 500 people was conducted last week and has a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.
7:17 AM
Laurie Roberts continues her campaign against the county probate court
Roberts, the Republic columnist, has been exposing what seems to be a deep and systemic problem in how the local courts handle guardianship cases.
She’s detailed some odd stories (see “PHXated hearts Laurie Roberts”). What seems to be happening is that certain adults for whatever reason come under the guardianship of the courts. The court appoints a network of lawyers and caregivers to watch the person—but it’s all paid for out of the person’s assets. At a certain point, the assets are gone. The lawyers and caregivers melt away, and the subject ends up under taxpayer care.
Today she goes after judge Lindsay Ellis, who studied one such case Roberts had been reporting on — but delivered a blistering defense of the status quo:
In a take-no-prisoners 21-page ruling issued Monday, Ellis described the fees that put Marie Long into the poorhouse as “reasonable, necessary and for the benefit of the ward.” She blamed Marie’s court-appointed attorney Jon Kitchel along with Dan Raynak and Pat Gitre, attorneys for Marie’s sisters, for driving up costs, saying their “venomous” and “hateful” attacks on the trustee, the guardian and their attorneys forced the other side to defend themselves.
With Marie’s money, of course.
The opinion was lauded by Sun Valley Group, which withdrew as Marie’s guardian when her money ran out in November. Says Sun Valley’s CEO, Peter Frenette: “I am grateful for the court’s decision as it finds ‘there is no legitimate dispute about SVG or its performance of its duties as guardian for Long.’ The court confirmed that this has been an unfair attack not just on SVG but also the guardianship process.”
Roberts continues:
I, too, am grateful for the court’s decision as it proves my point all along which is simply this: the court that is supposed to be protecting people like Marie Long is doing no such thing. Instead, the court is allowing a cozy group of lawyers and fiduciaries who are appointed to help vulnerable people help themselves to a nice pile of cash — until the money is gone, at which time the “ward” is dumped onto the taxpayers.
Then the court approves the spending, in this case in a ruling I like to call “Ellis in Wonderland.”
11:20 AM
PHXated hearts Laurie Roberts
… and we don’t care who knows it.
Roberts, the Republic columnist, has been all over an ongoing scandal out of Maricopa County probate court; certain people who have the bad luck to come under the supposed protection of the court have apparently would up with their estates drained of money by what seems to be high legal and care fees.
As you can imagine, what the certain people have in common is sizable chunks of money, or did until they were put under government protection.
The poster child of this has been Marie Long, who had a stroke in 2005. At the time she was worth $1.3 million. Now she’s broke and about to be evicted from her nursing home.
One of Roberts’ several columns on Long is here.
Today, Roberts had details on another probate court case, about a 49-year-old guy, Edward Ravenscroft, whose drug addictions got him in big legal trouble. Now, Ravenscroft is lucky; a lot of folks arrested for possession three times would be in prison. Fortunately for him, he’s a pharmaceuticals heir supposedly worth $5 million.
According to Roberts, felicitous circumstances like this — rich folks coming under the care of the probate court — triggers certain arrangemens:
In January 2009, attorney Paul Theut was named Ravenscroft’s guardian-ad-litem and within a month Theut asked that Sun Valley Group be brought in to oversee the millionaire’s estate. Ravenscroft, he wrote, cannot manage his affairs due to drug and mental-health issues and “has property that will be wasted or dissipated unless proper management is provided.”
So they proceeded to manage it for him.
According to court records, Theut collected $62,000 of Ravenscroft’s money in his first 3½ months as GAL. Larry Scaringelli was appointed his attorney after Commissioner Michael Hintze rejected Ravenscroft’s own choice of a lawyer. (Being the one to foot the bill, Ravenscroft thought he ought to have some say in the matter.) Scaringelli collected nearly $33,000 in his first five months. Sun Valley and the Maricopa County public fiduciary, which is Ravenscroft’s guardian, haven’t disclosed their take.
Neither Scaringelli nor Theut returned calls to explain their bills.
Ravenscroft is now locked out of his own house and is living on a friends couch. He tells Roberts that the charges now exceed a half-million dollars.
Roberts’ blog is one of the better ones in town. Here she is on some recent antics in the state legislature:
Apparently, all the state’s problems have been solved because Senate Appropriations Chairman Russell Pearce, one of the Legislature’s key members, has introduced a bill mandating that the state hang a copy of the Ten Commandments at the entrance to the state Capitol.
This is, of course, fantastic news for tens of thousands of Arizona’s children, who I’m guessing now won’t be summarily tossed out of the state’s health-care plan for the poor. And it must mean that our leaders have found a way to fully fund Child Protective Services so that the little children — the ones we could save if we fully funded the agency — won’t have to suffer.
1:40 AM