In Depth · September 17, 2026

A new section: Who They Are

Tucson Daily Brief now publishes six org charts: one for each of the four governments it covers, Pima County, Tucson, Oro Valley and Marana, plus the area's members of Congress and the seven Arizona Legislature districts that take in Pima County. Every elected seat, the appointed officials under it, how long each person has held the job, when they next face voters, and every report of ours that names them. From today, when an official's name appears in one of our meeting reports, it links to their page.

Where the idea comes from

Two sources. Years ago the tech news site The Information began publishing org charts of the companies it covered, so a reader could see at a glance who reported to whom and put a name to a title. It made the reporting easier to follow, and it built a record that outlasted any single story. More recently, CivLab built an interactive graph of the federal government, documenting agencies, positions and the people in them, with a running log of what changed.

Local government needs the same thing more than either of those. A county supervisor or a town council member decides how your street is paved, what gets built next door and what your water costs, and most residents could not name them. Our two main sections, What to Watch and What They Decided, have always told you what the agenda holds and what the board did. This one answers the question in both names: who "they" are.

What is on the pages

Who They Are opens with the six charts and a running list of what is changing across them. Each chart is drawn as a tree. Voters sit at the top. Below them are the people voters elect: the Board of Supervisors and the seven countywide officers in Pima County, the mayor and council in each of the three municipalities, Arizona's two senators and the two House members whose districts cover the county, and the senator and two representatives for each of the seven legislative districts. Below the local elected bodies sit the administrators and managers they hire, and the department directors under those. Elected seats carry a terracotta edge; appointed ones, sage.

Click any person for their card: portrait, seat, how they hold it, since when, when the term ends and when the next election is, and a list of every Tucson Daily Brief report that names them. Each person also has a page of their own; there are 98 today. A search box filters the chart as you type, and each chart can be collapsed to its bodies or opened out in full.

The charts already show November. The July 21 primaries settled the fall elections in both towns, so Oro Valley's page shows Mayor Joe Winfield and two council members leaving on Nov. 4, Vice Mayor Melanie Barrett moving to the mayor's seat, and three new council members taking office, with the vote counts from the town's own canvass. Marana's shows Jackie McGuire taking Patti Comerford's seat and Mayor Jon Post confirmed through 2028 after the special election for the remainder of Ed Honea's term. Pima County's shows Jan Lesher retiring as county administrator in January and a new treasurer appointed in July. Both House seats and all 21 legislative seats are on the Nov. 3 ballot, and the Legislature chart records who is retiring, who is termed out and switching chambers, and who lost a primary.

How the charts are used

Two ways, both automatic. First, names in our reports now link to these pages. The first time a report's body names an official, that name is a link, so a reader who does not know who Karl Shaddock is can find out in one click and come back. We have applied that to the archive: 220 links across 35 published reports, and every new report gets them as it is published. Second, each person's page lists the reports that name them, drawn from the same match, so the chart and the reporting keep each other current without anyone maintaining a list by hand.

The pages also feed ChatTDB, so a question like "who runs Marana's water department" gets an answer with a source.

Where the facts come from

Seats, terms and dates come from the governments' own pages, council biographies and election canvasses, and each card links to its source where one exists. Portraits are the governments' official ones, credited on each card. Where we could not verify a date, the field is blank rather than guessed. No language model writes any of it; the charts are built from a file we maintain by hand, and the links between reports and people are made by matching names, not by a model's judgment.

We expect to be wrong somewhere. Titles change, people are appointed between elections, and the towns do not always announce it. If you see an error or a gap, write to nicholas@tucsondailybrief.com, and the correction will be made on the page.

What comes next

School boards for the nine metro districts, the Rio Nuevo board, and a change log that records every seat that turns over, starting with Nov. 4.

Reported and written by Nicholas De Leon, with research and drafting assistance from Claude Fable 5.1; published at 9:34 AM MST on September 17, 2026. Read more about how this is made.