Jack Hastings, Vice Mayor of the City of Surprise, has expressed concerns over federal mandates that he says divert $30 million annually from local priorities such as public safety. Hastings made this statement during an interview on the Grand Canyon Times Podcast.
“I think one of the struggles…is the fact that they’re paying about $30 million a year on federal oversight, which essentially is dead money,” said Hastings. “It doesn’t, doesn’t get them necessarily anything. Like $30 million. I don’t know how many sheriff’s deputies you could get with $30 million or how many…that’s an ongoing expense, right?”
Arizona’s local governments have faced increasing costs due to federal oversight in recent years. This is particularly evident following high-profile consent decrees like the one imposed on the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office after a 2013 court ruling on racial profiling. According to AP News, these federally mandated compliance measures are projected to cost local taxpayers $352 million by mid-2026. This situation has prompted ongoing debates over whether such oversight diverts funds from essential municipal services and highlights tensions between federal requirements and local budget priorities in Arizona.
According to USAFacts, Arizona municipalities collectively manage significant federal oversight expenditures. Maricopa County alone anticipates $352 million in federally mandated compliance costs for the Sheriff’s Office by 2026. These expenses represent a notable portion of the $32.4 billion Arizona received in federal transfers in fiscal year 2022, underscoring the fiscal impact of federal oversight at the local level.
Tucson Police Department data indicates that the average salary for a police officer in Arizona ranges from $61,000 to $75,000 per year. This means that $30 million could fund the salaries of about 400 to 490 officers statewide. This comparative figure illustrates how funds currently allocated to federal oversight could alternatively support significant increases in public safety staffing or related municipal services.
According to the official Surprise, Arizona city website, Jack Hastings serves as Vice Mayor and represents District 5 on the Surprise City Council. He was first elected in August 2020 and previously worked as a civics teacher, focusing his council tenure on municipal budgeting, education, and public safety issues.
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FULL, UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT
Leyla Gulen: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Grand Canyon Times podcast. I’m your host, Layla Golan. In this episode, we welcome our guest, Jack Hastings. Jack is the Vice Mayor and District five Council member for the City of Surprise, Arizona, a 20 year resident of the area. He’s a former government teacher and city lifeguard. Who brings to the role a passion for public service and civic engagement.
He’s an advocate for cutting taxes, expanding public safety, and enhancing citizen participation, and we’re looking forward to getting to know him even better. Jack, welcome to the program.
Jack Hastings: Thanks for having me.
Leyla Gulen: So, as I had mentioned, you’ve advocated to cut taxes. I wanna get into that. But you, before we got started, you were mentioning that as a resident of Surprise, Arizona, you, you lifeguard at the pool used to swim.
You taught at the school you attended. So surprise, Arizona has a lot of meaning [00:01:00] for you.
Jack Hastings: Yeah, absolutely right. We moved here back in 2004. My, we actually moved from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We followed my grandparents out here, so we have my grandma, my parents, and myself. So three generations out here. My dad worked and now he works again for the airlines.
And after nine 11, there was a lot of furloughs going on, and so he took the time to take a voluntary furlough, go back to school. We kind of moved out here and yeah, I went to school here. I went to school, went to high school. Met my wife over the, in the summers lifeguarding. It’s a great job as a high schooler, and went to college at a SU and then came back and, and taught, had a passion for teaching and had a passion for teaching government.
I don’t know if I had a passion for the government, but, yeah. And so, um, important distinction. Absolutely. Yeah. And so I, I eventually decided why not me, and, and ran for public office, which is. Quite a interesting process going through it yourself, especially at the local level. But it was a great experience and I’m very blessed to be here.
So, yeah. Yeah.
Leyla Gulen: You, you [00:02:00] wasted no time in starting your career as a teacher and then entering public service. You were. Only 26 when you were elected as Vice Mayor. Yeah. So tell us about that election. That was, that was during the height of COVID.
Jack Hastings: Yeah. Yeah. So I actually started, I didn’t mention this to you before, but I started on the, a city commission.
I applied for a, uh, a city commission. I had, I worked at the pool and I, one of the interns at the pool was the daughter of a planning and zoning commissioner, and I’d really never heard of commissions anyway, so. I was like, well, I wanna get involved. I applied for, I think there was four commissions available, and I got an interview for the Arts Commission, which is ironic because I have a passion for public service, but I didn’t know a whole ton about art.
But I did end up getting onto the commission serving for a few years, and then what happened was our District five. My predecessor, skip Hall became, he was appointed mayor, and the mayor resigned, and so that opened up a process. I didn’t get the nomination for the seat, but I ran against the person who [00:03:00] did, and yeah, I was 26.
It was the summer during COVID, and I just pounded pavement. Someone told me early on when these local elections, you can. You can almost meet either all or the majority of people in, in the district. And so at the end of the day, right, I think if you’re filling out a ballot and one person came to your door when it was 120 outside, ’cause our election was in August and and one you just had never heard of or didn’t meet, I think you, there might be a.
You might have an advantage. Right? So God was good and yeah, I got elected almost 60% of the vote and yeah, ran again in 2022, unopposed. And yeah, so I have an election if I choose to run, which I plan to next, next summer. And they’re not a Parson, but I, I’m conservative and I’m pretty vocal about that. So.
Yeah.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah. And let’s, let’s get into that a little bit because among some of your passions is cutting taxes, and you say that taxpayers are footing the bill for federal micromanagement. So you say that this ties the hands of local officials, [00:04:00] particularly Sheriff Jerry Sheridan and County Attorney Rachel Mitchell.
So tell us a little bit more about what’s happening
Jack Hastings: there in your community. Yeah, absolutely. And I wanna clarify that I’m not with the county. I don’t speak for the county. I don’t even speak for the, for the city of surprise, but I do have a little bit of experience in local government and we obviously oversee the budget similar to the county supervisors.
And it’s, I mean, obviously you’re, it’s part cutting taxes. I, we’ve, we’ve cut the property tax several times now, including a, a pretty sizable cut last year. But it’s also about spending the tax dollars. Do you spend responsibly? And so I think one of the struggles, and I watched Thomas, gal Chairman Galvin’s interview with, I think it was 12 news yesterday, is the fact that they’re paying about $30 million a year on federal oversight, which essentially is, is dead money.
It doesn’t, doesn’t get them necessarily anything. Right? Like $30 million. I don’t know how many sheriff’s deputies you could get with $30. $30 million or how many. That’s, that’s an ongoing expense, right? So in, in local governments, we have capital expenses, and then we [00:05:00] have kind of general, general fund, right?
So you have your capital budgets kind of for one time things like buildings and stuff. But then your general fund pays for ongoing expenses. Like, so if you, if you build a police station with capital funds, and I don’t wanna get too in the weeds, but obviously the, the police officers. That you had put in that police station obviously have to be funded from the general fund.
So it’s, it’s a back and forth, but I think they had spent, they’ve spent three $50 million and I think Chairman Galvan was saying since the George W. Bush administration, which was a lot. I I didn’t realize it was going on that long. I thought it kind of started in, in 2013. I can’t remember specifically, but right around that time.
Yeah, so I mean that’s, that’s a lot of money and it’s really dead money. It’s almost like, it’s like a debt interest payment. And ironically, Maricopa is, is one of the only larger counties without any, any debt, no general obligation debt. And so that money could get them a lot of other stuff that could really service county residents.
And they’ve done a good job at, I think, cutting taxes each of the last five years. But yeah, it’s kinda like, it’s kind of dead weight [00:06:00] and yeah. And obviously we can go on and talk about I, I am. As I’m a little biased as a local government official, but you know, I do think that law enforcement is best handled on the local level.
And obviously there was some lawsuits, two sheriffs that go under Sheriff Gipa and stuff, but from my understanding, it was one of the reasons why the past sheriff, who, who was a Democrat but was elected twice, Paul Penn’s zone steps down just because he wasn’t able to make any major changes in his, in his Sheriff’s office without this.
Independent federal court monitor judge, who doesn’t really have anybody over him that he’s, you know what I mean? He doesn’t have elections, which just judges really don’t. But there’s no really reason for this judge to release Maricopa County and I. It also seems like the goalposts keep moving as far as like what’s required, so.
Mm-hmm. I don’t wanna talk too much ’cause we have nothing else to talk about, but,
Leyla Gulen: so, so when you say that this money is dead money, so what is it actually being used for?
Jack Hastings: And that, that’s a good question. I don’t know [00:07:00] exactly. Again, I, I don’t wanna give you guy wrong information and I, I definitely would reach out to the county as far as like what it’s for, but it’s, it, it’s not.
It doesn’t, from what I understand, it doesn’t provide county residents any services. Right. My guess is that it could be legal fees, and these are just some ideas to make sure they’re complying. But that, that’s a good question. Right. If, if I don’t know, then the typical, and I’m not saying I, I know more than the average county resident, but it’s, it’s.
It’s, it’s not being used for something. It definitely, that could be beneficial to the county residents. Now, if you ask the federal government, the federal government’s gonna say, Hey, Maricopa County broke the law however many years ago, 12, 13, how many years ago? And they have to use that money to make sure they’re complying with that.
Court order, but I don’t know, does it, does it pay people? I mean, what is it really doing? And I, I feel like the money could be better spent, period. And so I apologize. I don’t know exactly what that, that’s, that’s better, right? 30 [00:08:00] million. Yeah. It does sound like it’s been, it’s nearing 400 million, right?
Three 50 million. 30, $30 million this year. So, yeah.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah. And, and what are some of the things where you think that money could do good in the community?
Jack Hastings: Well, I think if you, if you just apply it to. Law enforcement, county sheriff deputies, I mean, we, we had a a saying too, like we had talked about a million dollars in the city.
That’s, that’s 10 police officers, at least for us. And so sheriff deputies are compensated a little bit differently. And so I don’t wanna speculate how many, but it’s a significant amount of, of sheriff deputies that could be hired that could actually contribute to law enforcement, whether that’s traffic or if they specialize here in the city.
We have, we have SWAT and detectives and, and different like that. So as far as expanding. Law enforcement to keep citizens safer, but then maybe you wanna look at infrastructure. What does that do as far as roads? And obviously roads are expensive. I don’t wanna say $30 million can create a new highway each year.
Right. But I mean, right. It starts to add up. It can [00:09:00] improve roads, it can widen roads, and it can do a lot of things and, and maybe you don’t like, I mean. I know there’s some people out there who, who aren’t huge fans of maybe expanding public safety. I, I love the idea of continuously expanding it, but I mean, if you’re on the other side, right?
Like, I don’t know, like, trying to think of something else, like transit or, there’s just, there’s, there’s so many opportunities within the county. There are departments, and it’s interesting, in the city, we have departments as far as like. Department heads, police chief, fire chief and stuff. And, and those are, those are staffed positions kind of hired by the city manager and the county government.
Right. Your so-called, I guess department heads are also elected officials. So you have a county attorney of a county sheriff. County superintendent. Right. So there’s all these different areas and Yeah. One thing that the county. Kinda has a little more jurisdiction over than the city is, is education, which is my background.
You know, so funding, again, that’s on the other side of that funding education. Where, where could that money go and, and really putting it to work for anything, or obviously if, if that 30 million is a, a surplus, also [00:10:00] taking a look and returning some of that, uh, to the taxpayer too. And the, the frustrating part is if I’m a county supervisor, which I’m not, um, it, it’s a dream of mine, I’ll be honest, one day day because I love local government, but is.
Just being able to. Have that. I don’t know, like that money is just not being spent responsibly to benefit citizens and I And they don’t have, they don’t have say over, right? I mean, like, yeah, they can, they can choose to, I’m sure they could like choose to, I don’t know if it’s break the law or whatever, defy the court order and stuff.
But obviously they’re not gonna do that because there’d be other repercussions. So it’s money that they have to spend kind of unwillingly. Right. It’s not, it’s not a choice where most of their budget, they get to choose where to spend it. The, the county, I guess you’d call ’em department heads or. Proposed budgets and it’s approved.
And so I dunno what budget that comes out of it. I, my guess is that I was talking to, I don’t name drop ’em, but someone in Rachel Mitchell, county attorney’s office. And so is that money for legal fees is it for? So I, a lot of the time [00:11:00] I know our legal department will hire different lawyers and kinda like contract work out depending on different types of cases we’re going through and stuff.
But yeah. So
Leyla Gulen: Well, and you, you kind of alluded to it before, saying that law enforcement should be in any decisions made on behalf of law enforcement, should be the department, not the general government. So my question to you is, what, what would your vision of a city government that empowers rather than controls departments and citizens look like?
Jack Hastings: Yeah. Well, I would say, look, the, the Maricopa County voters elected the Board of supervisors right, to supervise literally the county, and they elected Jerry Sheridan, sheriff Sheridan as the sheriff, just like they elected Sheriff Penzone. And regardless of who the sheriff and the county board of supervisors are, I mean, the sheriff should be allowed to run his department and, and make changes.
And the board of supervisors should be able to empower him, obviously, with the purse strings to, to do that within, within the reason they feel like is. Acceptable. [00:12:00] And yeah, I mean, nobody, I mean, I don’t know. And obviously we’re seeing, we’re seeing a lot of probably judicial activism right now, and I think the Supreme Court actually handed down an argument too, because there had been, and again, I don’t wanna get too into federal politics, but there had been a lot of nationwide injunctions put into place by federal judges who represented like a fraction of a state in some cases.
And so I don’t wanna turn into like my old teacher self, but. It’s, it’s, it’s tricky because in the Constitution, to my understanding, it talks about the Supreme Court, right? And now obviously. We’ve expanded courts as appellate courts, and we have a bigger country than we did back in the day. But yeah, so I, I think that courts play an important role, right?
They have to, especially if you have a legislative as far as like federal and like a president, the same, the same party, right? They’re gonna hold them accountable, but at the same time. There should also be, there should be a limit on all the branches. Right? And so I can’t remember this judge’s name [00:13:00] and I was talking to, again, my contact from County Attorney’s Rachel Mitchell’s office.
I. And he was saying really to address it, to, sorry, attorney General Pam Bondy. But that, it sounds like she too has kind of been away and aware of it, but that in this particular case, she doesn’t have direct oversight over this judge like this. This judge just answers to no one, and I don’t know if he, it sounds like, is he getting the money?
Does it go somewhere else? I didn’t look. That deep into it, but it doesn’t sound like there’s a lot of motivation for him to stop this, and so I don’t wanna speculate to his intentions, but I think oversight to a certain extent is important. As elected officials, we make a poor choice. Like we can get kicked out of office, right?
Sure. We can get recalled. We can not get reelected. And so. That’s, that’s, I believe it’s a federal judge and I, I have the name for it. I can’t remember the federal judge’s name, but there’s not a ton of oversight over him. I’m sure you can like piece judges, but that’s a, that’s a very lengthy, and I don’t know, it’s, it doesn’t happen a lot, obviously.
[00:14:00] So
Leyla Gulen: you’re pending a letter to, to Pam Bondy regarding this?
Jack Hastings: Yeah, I, I think it’s, it’s important that we as elected officials support. Good policy and oppose bad policy. And I believe in my opinion that maybe at the beginning you could argue this is warranted. Again, I, I don’t, I don’t wanna speculate, but the longer it goes on, now you’re two sheriffs in the past and I’m confident saying, I don’t believe this is.
This is fair to the taxpayers and I don’t think it’s a responsible use of tax dollar money. And it’s not the county, it’s not the board of supervisor’s fault. Like they don’t have control. They have to do it like their hands are tied. And so it does, doesn’t seem, I, I feel like there’s a better mechanism for this and we’ve seen recently.
The Department of Justice, and this is a little different, but they dropped the investigation to the Phoenix Police Department and whatever you could, you could argue with that. You could not agree with it, [00:15:00] but they did. And so that’s kind of my why I thought was if, if they’re gonna drop the investigation into Phoenix, you know?
Mm-hmm. Then we need to have a broader conversation about Maricopa County. ’cause as far as. I don’t wanna get too controversial here, but I, I would, I would argue that the county is, is a lot better run than the city of Phoenix, in my opinion. Mm-hmm. Uh, as far as like fiscal responsibility, I mean, you could look at a lot of factors as far as like how much P-S-P-R-S debt Phoenix has and just the political atmosphere of there.
And obviously they have a job to do and they’re elected as well. But if you’re going to take a look at Phoenix, take a look at the, the larger picture Phoenix was set to maybe go under something like. Maricopa has been under it for over 10 years. Right. $300 million. It’s a lot of money, so,
Leyla Gulen: yeah. Well, you, and you had mentioned a different mechanism, so what would that mechanism look like if you had it your own perfect world?
Jack Hastings: I, I don’t know. I, I don’t wanna speculate a lot of that has, I don’t wanna propose something that’s, that’s not legal or I, I’m not a expert on this [00:16:00] process, frankly, because Surprise has never gone through it. But I do remember when Phoenix was going through it and you had. People, even, I think the mayor, Kate Gallego, I can’t remember if she took a position, but I, I’m pretty sure the position of the Phoenix City Council, along with the mayor was, was that they wanted to make, for better or for worse, they wanted to make their own reforms.
Like they got the message and they wanted to make their reforms inside their police department. But they didn’t want that federal oversight because then you’re just giving the federal government a blank check. And from my understanding, every decision, like any like major decision made, has to be run through that court monitor.
And that’s just, that’s just not efficient, right? Like it’s almost like hiring a CEO. And we’re hiring our city manager, for instance, right? We’re a council manager form of government, so we hire the city manager as the city council, but we have to let him make his decisions. If we handicap him at every term, you know, he, he’s not gonna stay.
And so you, you’ve gotta be able to let people run their departments and look, if something. [00:17:00] Does happen, then you address it then. So again, I don’t wanna speculate with the mechanisms, but it’s just it, I just know it can’t be the best way. And I bet if you talk to anybody on the board of supervisors, or if you talk to the sheriff too, and I don’t wanna speak for any of them, but we, we’ve gotta do a better job.
We’ve gotta let our elected officials and our, I. Elected sheriff who is, who’s just elected for a four year term, do his job. So yeah, that’s just how I first do. So where, where do you draw the
Leyla Gulen: line? So where do you draw the line between accountability and overreach and, and how do you ensure that departments still operate effectively without top down micromanagement?
Jack Hastings: I, I kind of look at it from my perspective. I, I was a teacher for seven years. I’ve been a dean for the last two and actually be an assistant principal next year, which, or this year, which I’m, I’m super excited about. But I, I think in every profession there are some, you should say, bad apples and I, I think that most people are, and most professionals are good.
And sadly, every once in a while you see articles about teachers [00:18:00] making some, some really terrible decisions. And I. It doesn’t seem like when it happens, we don’t define all teachers based off of that one teacher’s horrible mistake. But it seems like in law enforcement that whenever, first off, it seems like there’s it.
It seems like I. Great law enforcement doesn’t seem to generate as much media coverage as much as it does when someone makes a mistake. And then when, when an officer makes a mistake, and obviously we could look back to 2020, right? There was a horrible situation. Again, I don’t wanna get involved too involved in that, but you had this whole movement to, hey, this one police officer, this group, police officers did this thing and.
You have this, this whole movement to defund the police. I mean, like, so I just feel like there’s, there’s no middle ground, right? I think their accountability is important, but I think the accountability needs to be provided at the local levels for us. I. If we [00:19:00] have any time and surprise a police officer pulls the trigger and fires something, there is an investigation done, from my understanding, at the county attorney’s office.
Right. And so that is supervision, right? The county compared to the city, but it’s still at the local level. And I mean, we have an amazing county attorney, Rachel Mitchell. I mean, she’s, she’s phenomenal. I, I don’t have, I can’t say enough good things about her as far as she’s just common sense conservative, puts her head down, gets to work.
Doesn’t get involved in the, in the politics side of it. I, I think the county attorney is actually one of the most important positions you elect. Maybe you don’t really think about it when you’re voting down that huge ballot, but again, there is that accountability and obviously the county has to answer to people too.
But again, I. The federal government, I mean, to put in perspective, like it would be weird to get pulled over for a speeding ticket by an FBI agent, right? It just, I don’t, that would kind of throw me off. Right? Like who, who are you? You know what I’m saying? So I dunno. I think that local governments, and actually it’s a fact that local governance has the highest [00:20:00] approval ratings of any type of government entity.
It’s definitely higher. Not that it’s really a competition, ’cause Federal probably has the lowest and, and state, I don’t know, it doesn’t seem as low as federal, but your local governments, I mean, as far as like approval ratings tend to be the highest. Now of course it’s gonna depend by city, but you’re also talking about people who know you, right?
Like I know my school board members, people know me, they know the mayor, right? So they want people making decisions for them that are, that are close, that live in this city, right? And if you go back to, yeah. The whole reason, and again, you’re a little history teacher here, but the whole reason the Revolutionary War started started was because we had people across a, a government or king across an ocean, making decisions for us, taxing us without representation.
Right? There’s a whole thing. And so, um, I know, I don’t think that’s as bad as Washington DC making decisions, but we’re on the West coast over here, Washington DC is, is not, they’re not as familiar with how Arizona is. Obviously we have. Representation. It’s a little different, but I do think that [00:21:00] local governments should retain control of certain things.
And obviously there’s a divide and we obviously have to comply with the US Constitution, et cetera. I think that’s a good thing. But again, I’m obviously biased towards local governments. You could ask someone else, they might say something different. So
Leyla Gulen: I’m just curious, have you experienced any pushback from colleagues or other city leadership on, on the issue?
And how would, how do you respond?
Jack Hastings: Not this, I mean not, not really. I mean, to be honest, I’m. I’m a, I’m a, I’m the vice mayor now, but I was elected as a, as a councilman and so I, I’m a, I’m a councilman of a, it’s actually a pretty big city, but Surprise doesn’t seem to be as well known as other cities. We have about 170,000, but I represent one district of a West Valley city, and so, I don’t know, I don’t feel like my platform’s that big, but at the same time, I feel like we’re, we’re still, we’re still obligated to do what’s right.
And if I can just contribute 0.1% of moving this and towards the right direction and get maybe other people, maybe our state legislators,
Leyla Gulen: so. So you [00:22:00] haven’t had any pushback?
Jack Hastings: No. To answer your question, I really haven’t. It doesn’t seem like I. Anybody really supports this. Now, maybe at the time they did and they remember how things were, two sheriffs to go.
But yeah, it seems like most people agree that if you’re either you shouldn’t do this or if you are gonna do it, there’s gotta be a better way. And again, I don’t wanna speculate what that is, but I just, this cannot be the best way because obviously it doesn’t work. It’s extremely expensive and. There’s, there’s no oversight to the oversight, if that makes sense.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah, right, right. Okay. All right. Well, I wanna switch gears for a moment here. Mm-hmm. You have supported long-term transportation planning. I’m curious what infrastructure projects that are most urgent right now for surprise and, and how do you balance development with preserving quality of life and surprise?
Jack Hastings: That’s a challenge. I’m generally a conservative and although. It’s ironic because some people consider them conservative and then don’t believe in private [00:23:00] property rights. There’s a, there’s a whole spiel I could go into where cities control zoning, but if private property, if they meet the zoning requirements, they wanna build, they get to build, it doesn’t come to us for a vote.
And so I generally believe in private property rights that people should be able to build. I think that smart growth is a good thing, but also brings challenges though. And in North Surprise. Absolutely. And Northwest Surprise is, is district one. It’s a very large. District on a land map because again, our districts are based by population.
But you know, we have councilman, former Vice Mayor and Councilman Nick Haney. Hard at work up there. Really. He’s a Glendale firefighter. He’s married, he has a, he had a kid, a daughter last year and so he, he’s really in touch with kind of what’s going on. The previous representative, again, I don’t wanna speak, ill, and he since passed away, but was not as in touch kind of with Oh, he was not as in touch with kind of what.
The area’s called Asante needed. And so fortunately Nick got on the council about two years in and he told us, and [00:24:00] he told me in a very nice way, like, Hey, like there are some, some concerns, right? And city council, we all kind of trust each other to handle our own district, at least on the district level.
Not every city has districts. Goodyear doesn’t ne next door El Mirage. Our city doesn’t. But we had never heard anything from the previous, previous representative. And so we had been approving Rezones and homes up there. And then when, when councilman hanging out there, he kinda said, Hey, like, we gotta pump the brakes a little bit.
We gotta catch up on roads. And so we ended up doing a bond. Again, I’m not a huge fan of bonds, but you know, we, we, we did one I. That didn’t raise the tax, which is, which is great. And it is a balance. It’s something we’re always trying to get out in front of. We try to make developers, for instance, we don’t have a develop, we have impact fees.
We don’t have a roads impact fee, but we do require developers to build their half street along their development. And what that does is it, I ensure the road is there when the development is done versus just giving us the money to do it later because. Yeah, as far as, so it, it’s absolutely a, it’s a balance.
Unfortunately we can’t, [00:25:00] some people I think just want us to close up shop when they get here and they want to, and I don’t wanna speak for, I mean, it’s very few, but they say, I’m here, we know building moratorium. And unfortunately that’s just not, I mean, not even unfortunately, but that’s just not legal.
Right? People have the rights to develop their own land within the context and the confines of local government within zoning and such. And that, and that is very similar on the county level. Too, so.
Leyla Gulen: Right, right. Okay. Okay. Well, and as, as an educator, how do you think local government can better engage young people and make them feel invested in their community?
Obviously you, you are living proof of that. How do you impart that onto younger generations?
Jack Hastings: I think, and I will say that. And, and I’m a Republican. I call myself a common sense conservative, but I think within the Republican Party, one of the things that we could do better and, and it’s changed. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s changing.
So we might see some improvement here, but [00:26:00] it doesn’t feel like there’s as many young Republican candidates as far as like ready kind of in the. I don’t know what the term would be. There’s, there’s actually a group I used to be a part of, it’s called The Stables, and it was kinda like the stables, like it’s where you train, right?
The horses for the, for the racetrack. There’s not a lot of people in the wings ready to go. And so I think that, I’ll just say when I ran for city council, the first time I ran on, I picked three priorities, public safety, jobs, and education. And so many people, well, a lot of people talk down to me because I was young and told me, yeah, you need to get in line, you need to wait your turn, all this sorts of stuff.
And. And, and I, and I en listened to ’em. That’s okay. They can say that. But they also said that you can’t focus on education. The city has nothing to do with education. You don’t know anything because the education’s handled at the state legislative level. And obviously funding is, but there’s things we’ve done at the local level.
Partner with school boards, created scholarship funds for students getting into college. Like I think that there needs to be a bigger push to get, you know, [00:27:00] young people involved. Um. Mm-hmm. And I think it starts with, with education, I think it, it’s, it’s a challenge, right? I mean, the education system is kind of a whole different topic.
I am a public school, or I was a public school teacher, but I, I do believe in, my wife teaches at a charter. I went to a charter school until high school growing up and stuff. And so we need to make a bigger push, I think, to get. Young people involved. They don’t all have to run for office, right. If they don’t want to.
But I think if you look at voting turnout, and I can’t remember like when I first started teaching it though. I mean the turnout among senior citizens versus senior or just senior. Understanding how it works. Yeah, exactly. Right. And I think part of it too is the older you get, like when you’re 18, you’re out.
What you’re thinking about healthcare, right. You can dealing your parents’ healthcare until 26 and then you turn 26. Oh healthcare. Exactly. Yeah. So I think under like whatever the rule is, I dunno, but the older you get more things affect you. And so, you know, helping young people understand what changes.
Sometimes there’s an [00:28:00] election and then life just kind of carries on and you don’t really notice the differences. And people watch the same news channel over and over again and get the same message over and over again, but. I think including young people in the conversation, creating policies that benefit people of all ages too, so,
Leyla Gulen: yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That is true. Alright, well, what are your plans for the future gonna be running for reelection? You mentioned about being on a county council, so that sounds like a goal of yours.
Jack Hastings: Yeah. Debbie Lesko is, is my. County supervisor and, uh, she’s, she’s very well known and I think she’s, she’s been on there, I think six months.
Obviously used to work in Congress and, and stuff, and I think she’s doing a good job. So she’ll probably be there as long as she wants. It’s kind of a pipe dream of mind as far as local government goes. It would be, it would be amazing to, to one day. It’s like you have aspirations, but county supervisor would be amazing.
But again, like, I think for now, like, yeah, I plan to run for reelection next summer. But, and I’m, and I’m kind of focused on and surprised as, as long as I’m here, that’s kind of where I’ve grown up in. [00:29:00] And, and yeah, you always think about different things, but then, then it’s like, I, I always grew up and I was like, oh man, these, all these career politicians and, and stuff, and I don’t wanna Sounds it sounds like it’s getting
Leyla Gulen: started.
Jack Hastings: Yeah. Well, and see, we’ll, we’ll see what God has planned. Um, I think I, I, growing up, I. Planned every single, single aspect of my life out. I think I was gonna have kids before 30 and that it’s funny. So we, we planned things out and God has a plan and I mean, I, I have a great deal of respect for the board supervisors as a whole.
I met Mark Stewart actually when he was on the Chandler City Council. He was in surprise for a spring training game, and I just, I just met him and we exchanged numbers and obviously now he was elected in district one and. I think we got a great conservative majority on the board of supervisors and obviously wanna continue that with kind of that common sense conservative stuff.
And there’s some stuff going on, right? They got the, I think they’re, they’re having, there’s the stuff going on with the recorder now, and it’s a balance. It’s, it is a challenge. Sure. For sure. Yeah. But I’m, I’m very blessed to even be, I was thinking of the day [00:30:00] as this is, this is as far as I go, it’s, it’s been a blessing to even make it this far on.
So whether it’s education or politics, we need. We need good people. I don’t think I’m perfect, but we need decent people on all levels and all levels in elected office, in the business world, in education, and it’s gonna be great to see where God takes me and my life. Yeah. So we’ll see.
Leyla Gulen: Well, and I was, I was gonna say, man makes plans and God laughs.
So,
Jack Hastings: exactly. Exactly.
Leyla Gulen: You never know. What, what tomorrow’s going to bring. But all you can do is follow your heart and absolutely do your very best. I think that’s great. Well, tell us where can people follow you? How do they find out more information about the work that you’re doing?
Jack Hastings: Yeah, so I mean, I’m on Facebook.
My ex is just Jack Hastings AZ and I, I’m not probably controversial enough to get a ton of traction on x formally Twitter, but I, I try to, that’s. I dunno, I, there’s a lot of legislators on there and you get to see a lot of I like that platform a lot. Yeah. But obviously Facebook is where a [00:31:00] lot of my constituents are and you know, I’m on Nextdoor and Instagram and I’m not on TikTok my, I guess, former students.
It’s funny, I’m, I’m the young one here in politics, but in the education world, all the kids, I’m, I’m this old grandpa who still uses Facebook and sometimes I joke about using MySpace as a kid, but I, I have since. Right?
Leyla Gulen: Like my what?
Jack Hastings: But yeah, I just try to be. Transparent and do the best job I can and if I can make surprise 1% better while I’m here, then you know, mission accomplished.
But obviously we’re not gonna stop at 1%. We wanna keep it going. So.
Leyla Gulen: Okay. I think that’s a good note to end on. Jack, I wanna thank you so much for joining us.
Jack Hastings: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.
