Pima County may have a brand new treasurer in 2025 for the primary time in practically a quarter-century.

Republican Beth Ford, a CPA who has held the workplace since she was first elected in 2000, is not going to search reelection subsequent yr.

“I am outdated,” Ford stated. “It is time. I am gathering Social Safety.”

Over the course of her tenure, Ford has modernized many points of the workplace. She remembered that when she began the job, her predecessor, Jim Kirk, had been utilizing outdated mainframe computer systems with applications from the Nineteen Eighties to trace tax funds and different incoming funds and disburse cash to varied jurisdictions.

“We really had a Y2K bug,” Ford recalled. “The delinquent tax system was calculating 100 years curiosity.… They hadn’t been in a position to reconcile the books in eternally. It took us 5 years to get that executed. However we lastly did it.”

The Treasurer’s Workplace primarily serves as a financial institution for county authorities and lots of different Pima County jurisdictions, together with college districts and hearth districts. The workplace takes in property tax funds and divides them based on the tax charges of assorted jurisdictions. Different state and federal {dollars} additionally movement by means of the workplace, which generally handles between $1.5 billion to $2 billion in belongings at any given time.

Ford stated her workers was in a position to develop new software program to trace the workplace’s incoming and outgoing funds.

Placing collectively the system, she stated, “was essentially the most enjoyable factor I ever did. … ​​We have now an information warehouse now. So any of our depositors in any jurisdictions which have cash with us can entry their information and get any of the knowledge that they want, anytime they need.”

Regardless that the variety of parcels which have property tax payments has elevated from round 320,000 to almost a half-million during the last 23 years, modernizing the pc system has improved the effectivity of the workplace and allowed Ford to cut back the variety of her workers.

“I have been in a position to really lower my workers down from 46,” she stated. “We normally have 25 individuals working right here.”

Ford’s chief deputy, former GOP state lawmaker Chris Ackerley, plans to run for the workplace.

Ford stated she recruited Ackerley away from his educating profession to affix her workplace a few yr in the past within the hope that she may guarantee her hoped-for successor can be aware of the job.

“I used to be a recovering politician,” Ackerley stated. “And Beth got here and requested and stated, ‘Would you take into account approaching as my deputy treasurer and operating for the place?’ And I gave it a variety of thought. I imply, clearly, I’ve an curiosity in public coverage and public service.”

As she prepares to depart workplace, Ford is now overseeing a brand new replace of the system, putting in an enterprise useful resource program that may permit the county to trace all the things from grants and payroll to accounts payable and stuck belongings.

As soon as that work is completed, Ford stated she might resign earlier than her time period is down in January 2025 within the hope that the Pima County Board of Supervisors will appoint Ackerley to her job and place him for fulfillment on the poll field in November 2024.

If Ford steps down in the course of her time period, the supervisors — 4 Democrats and a single Republican — can be sure by state regulation to nominate a Republican to interchange her.

Ford is the final Republican serving in countywide workplace. Within the 2020 election, voters elected Democrats to the entire different places of work, together with sheriff, county legal professional, assessor and recorder. Democrat Gary Harrison gained the clerk of the Superior Court docket workplace in 2018.

The longtime incumbent ran a low-key marketing campaign in her final election, eschewing the controversy on the very high of the ticket — though she did fly a Trump flag outdoors her dwelling. Democratic activist Brian Bickel ran in opposition to her, however got here up quick in an in depth election, dropping 50.5-49.4 % with a margin of simply 5,870 votes out of practically 500,000 within the down-ballot race.

Democrats maintain a major voter registration benefit in Pima County, with roughly 243,800 registered Democrats, 175,700 registered Republicans and 214,400 voters not registered with both occasion. That is 38 % registered with the Democrats, 34 % non-party “unbiased” voters, and 28 % signed up with the Republicans.

As a registered Republican, Ackerley was in a position to win a seat in 2014, in a Democratic-leaning district that stretched alongside the Santa Cruz River from Tucson by means of Sahuarita and into components of Santa Cruz County, together with Nogales. He misplaced reelection to one of many district’s two Home seats to Democrats Rosanna Galbadon and Daniel Hernandez in 2016 and a comeback bid in 2018 fell quick.

Ackerley, the one candidate to have already filed a press release of curiosity within the job, stated there have been loads of partisan politics on the Capitol however the position of the treasurer is basically nonpartisan.

Ackerley stated Ford has been “a superb mentor and has taught me lots.”

“Beth is available in every single day and does work that’s integral to the operation of the workplace,” Ackerley stated. “(The treasurer) is not only a figurehead. It’s a job. And if the one that is occupying that job falls down, properly, doubtlessly the entire county may fall down. And so that could be a large quantity of duty. I do not suppose there is a common appreciation, maybe, for the steadiness that Beth has lent this workplace.”