Giffords starts new year by pushing border security, solar energy

Thursday, January 10, 2008
Green Valley News & Sun
By Jim Lamb

Freshman U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords will be back in Green Valley tomorrow for another “Congress on Your Corner € meeting with constituents, as she starts her second year representing Arizona’s 8th Congressional District.

And among the things she’s most pleased about in her first year are the Border Patrol’s decision to scale back plans for its Interstate 19 checkpoint and helping bring attention to developing solar power in the American Southwest.

In a wide ranging year-end interview at her Tucson office Wednesday, she talked about how involved constituents here are in their government and how “people want to be challenged, € her selection as a fiscally conservative “Blue Dog Democrat € and the planned Government Accountability Office study of the effectiveness of checkpoints.

Giffords will meet constituents from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday in front of the Safeway store in Continental Shopping Plaza.

She brings staff members who can copy down complaints and requests so they can get to work on them right away, said the congresswoman.

For this part of her district, probably the most visible issue of her first year was the Border Patrol checkpoint.

There’s a temporary one now located at the Agua Linda Exit, about 15 miles south of Green Valley.

Some people want a bigger one with more sophisticated equipment and others complain that the checkpoints are really not effective because smugglers can go around them and consequently infiltrate surrounding neighborhoods.

The Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, this area of Southern Arizona, is the only sector on the U.S. – Mexico border that doesn’t have a permanent checkpoint.

Possibly because of that, there’s more human and drug-smuggling activity here than any other Border Patrol sector.

The Border Patrol reports that 48 percent of the nation’s drug traffic and 44 percent of all illegal humans entering the United States come through Southern Arizona.

There were 19 public meetings over the checkpoint issue, culminating with a large open house at Sahuarita High School that drew scores speaking for and against a permanent site.

Giffords shared the podium that night with Tucson Border Patrol Chief Robert Gilbert. As a result of the meetings, Giffords said, the permanent checkpoint will be locted closer to the border and the planned 10-acre site “is off the table € for a smaller site.

On the GAO study about checkpoints’ effectiveness, she said she senses that Southern Arizonans “want additional security, but they want to know that it works. €

Arizona Republican senators, Jon Kyl and John McCain, joined the petition to the GAO to get the study of checkpoint effectiveness.

Blue Dog Democrats are fiscally conservative Democrat senators and representatives. Giffords said she was honored to be invited into the group and said she gets some of her feelings for it because she feels people want to receive good value for the money they pay in taxes.

She managed her family’s business for a while and said, “I had to know how we paid every penny. I knew the tax impact on our business. I knew how to make money, € she said and that “it’s too important to squander. €

A basic principle, she said, is “to respect the taxpayers’ money. €

She’s spending lots of energy pushing the potential of developing solar energy. She helped arrange three workshops on it in Tucson last year, and a planned conference at the Biosphere II north of Tucson next Spring. World-class scientists are expected for it.

U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn. plans a House Science Committee hearing on solar energy in Tucson Feb. 19.

Her Solar Energy Research and Advancement Act, H.R. 2774, has been passed and signed into law.
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