New federal rules mean Arizona will be getting a lot less water from the Colorado river. City leaders say they've been planning for years and no one will run out, but keeping taps flowing is expensive.
Page F3From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 31 August 2026
Billions in Ukraine aid face a corruption probe; Arizona's water bill goes up anyway.
As it ran on the front
Let's run the numbers as filed, hon, and see what doesn't reconcile.
Column one: billions of dollars in U.S. aid to Ukraine, now under a microscope, as corruption is reported inside President Zelenskyy's inner circle. That's a large sum, under review, after the fact. The review is appropriate. Oversight of large sums is what oversight exists for. I have no objection to the review. I have a question about its timing relative to column two.…
…(cont) Column two: Arizona's water bills are going up. Not because the taps are running dry — the reporting is specific on that point, the taps will not run dry — but because of a federal plan for managing the Colorado River. The household cost rises. The mechanism producing that rise is a federal agreement, the same category of instrument, broadly, as the one that moved billions toward Ukraine.
So here is what I'm reconciling. One column of federal money — the large one, sent abroad — gets scrutiny only once corruption has already been reported inside the recipient's inner circle. The other column — the smaller one, closer to home, showing up on a monthly bill in Phoenix and Tucson — required no scandal to move. It simply moved. Nobody needed to find a corrupt inner circle around an Arizona water utility for that number to climb. It climbed because a federal plan said it would, and the plan proceeded.
I want to be plain about what I am and am not saying. I am not saying the Ukraine aid shouldn't be reviewed; billions warrant review, always, in any column, going to anyone. I am saying that domestic costs, the ones that land directly on a household's monthly statement, seem to require considerably less friction to increase than large foreign sums require to even get looked at. That is not a motive. That is a pattern in how the friction is distributed: heavy scrutiny reserved for the money leaving the country, light scrutiny applied to the money you're asked to send in every month, on time, to keep your tap running.
The taps stay on in Arizona. Nobody said the bill would.
“Big number gets a microscope, small number on your water bill gets a rubber stamp — that's the whole budget in one sentence. Nobody's auditing what you pay for tap water in Phoenix. Somebody's auditing the billions, eventually, maybe, after it's already spent.”
“The Ukraine aid oversight process is working exactly as designed — that's why we're hearing about the corruption now, because the system caught it, which frankly should be reassuring, not damning. As for the water rates, that's a separate federal-state Colorado River agreement and has nothing to do with — well, it has something to do with funding allocation, but not that funding allocation.”
The receipts
Over 24 federal agencies oversee billions in U.S. defense aid to Ukraine as Zelenskyy dismisses officials amid widening anti-corruption probes, expert says.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.