Life Coach in Maricopa, AZ

Richard McHattie, the new chief information officer of Maricopa County, Arizona, started his career putting RFID chips in pets.

By Keely Quinlan

June 29, 2023

It’s now been just over a month since Richard McHattie became the chief information officer of Maricopa County, Arizona, and he has had quite the unique path to becoming the top tech official in the nation’s fourth-largest county.

Before becoming the top tech official of Maricopa County, which contains Phoenix, McHattie served for five years as chief technology and innovation officer at the Maricopa County Clerk of the Superior Court. In that role, McHattie managed the systems for processing paper and electronic court records, which he estimated was the largest document-management system in the state.

He said his team implemented new processes by using artificial intelligence and robotic process automation. Such emerging technologies, he said, were his main focus in transforming how the court did business.

“We can talk about all the cool technology that’s out there, but the only thing that really matters in the end is that we’ve delivered some new capability for our business to help them improve their service delivery or improve their impact to their customers,” McHattie told StateScoop.

Before spending 17 years with the county, though, McHattie started his career as an entrepreneur while attending college at Moravian University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

He said his parents — who traveled around showing dogs — came across a then-new technology that involved implanting RFID chips in dogs instead of tattooing their ears. McHattie’s family turned it into a business.

“We built that into a true identification and recovery system across the United States and Canada,” he told StateScoop. “It was really meaningful work, trying to recover lost pets and get them home safely. So we worked a lot with veterinarians and Animal Care and Control and humane society to really do everything we could to identify all these animals and bring them home safely.”

He said the experience instilled in him an ethos of being passionate about his work, a characteristic McHattie said he still carries with him.

“And I think to this day, that still sort of sits with me that the most compelling thing you can do is really have a purpose and a passion for what you’re doing,” he said.

McHattie’s appointment as CIO is a return to the county’s Office of Enterprise Technology, the department that provides technology support across more than 50 departments. Before joining the Superior Court, McHattie served as the county’s deputy and interim CIO.

Though technology has changed since then, he said the main focus for his team of more than 200 employees will still be on creating and enhancing a modern and responsive government.

“I have an incredible executive team here, who are very talented technologists who get why we exist,” he said. “And we exist to provide new and improving capabilities for our our departments so they can improve their service delivery, they can shrink costs, where appropriate to meet the county’s goal for fiscal accountability.”

For passion projects, McHattie said that there are a number of initiatives he’s excited to tackle. One is the launch of an online citizen self-service portal, a “one-stop shop” for government services. Another is continuing to automate processes to save time for employees and improve the ease-of-access to all county services.

“Anything we can do to transform in a digital perspective to enhance access to the county and enhance access to services is pretty exciting for us,” McHattie said. “And that’s kind of the journey we’re on right now.”

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Developers who already own more than 7,000 acres between Maricopa and Casa Grande have just purchased another 1,773 acres with plans to develop a master-planned community on much of the former John Wayne Red River Ranch.

But this won't be like any other master-planned community being developed today, said Carson Brown, managing general partner of Arizona RR Ranches LLC, which plans to develop a unique master-planned community.

Arizona RR Ranches LLC paid $44.65 million for the 1,773.07-acre parcel to Tousa Recovery Acquisition LLC, which traces to a hedge fund led by Paulson & Co., according to Tempe-based Vizzda LLC real estate database.

Greg Vogel, founder and CEO of Scottsdale-based Land Advisors Organization, and his team Bret Rinehart, Ryan Semro and Ben Heglie represented the seller in the transaction.

"This will be the next hot spot," said Vogel. "It's literally 15 minutes to a large and growing job base — and not just low-paying jobs. Lucid and the Taiwan chip plant suppliers have land within that same area — we did most of those deals."

Case Grande is attracting more industrial developments and other projects in that area.

With such a huge swath of land near these employment opportunities, Brown's group is poised for success, Vogel said.

"I just think they could really do a quality project that will attract folks to live, work and play," Vogel said. "It's a very easy commute to jobs that are right there. A lot more is happening in Casa Grande."

A nondisclosure agreement is prohibiting Brown from releasing any details about the new master-planned community. But he said it will take a large area of land for this type of forward thinking master-planned community.

"We want to develop this into a really unique master plan," Brown said. "We want to be on the cutting edge of the new way of thinking with these master-planned communities."

The property is located four miles south of Harrah's Ak Chin Hotel and Casino in the city of Maricopa — which is about 32 miles south of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport — and is bisected by State Route 347. Brown's group owns two sections that includes the 1,773 acres on the east side of SR 347, also is known as John Wayne Parkway. On the west side of SR 347 is another 5,500 acres.

The proposed Interstate 11 is scheduled to go through the middle of the existing property, Brown said.

Brown said he doesn't yet have a timeline for development for the property. "We've got investors that are good with farming it for now," he said. "We've got a long-term approach with it."

Alfalfa is currently growing on the land, he said.

This year, the city of Maricopa will celebrate its 20th anniversary of incorporation. It was the second-fastest growing city in Arizona, by percentage, between 2021 and 2022, with a gain of 3,844 people to reach 66,290, a 6.2% gain, according to new data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. It ranks No. 12 in the nation in terms of fastest-growing cities.

"Maricopa is ahead of the game," Brown said. "They are forward-thinking."

As for providing water to this huge development, Brown said Phoenix-based Global Water Resources Inc. (Nasdaq: GWRS) and other water providers serve that area. The Harquahala Groundwater Basin in the West Valley also is an option, he said.

"We feel like this is the next Gilbert," Brown said. "Gilbert went from 2,000 people to almost 300,000 people today. Maricopa will do the same thing. You're well over 600,000 people if Maricopa expands and annexes this land."

While Brown's property is not currently within Maricopa's city limits, it is within its planning area, said Rick Horst, city manager for Maricopa.

"We anticipate a pre-annexation agreement in the near future," Horst said.

More people moved to Maricopa County than any other county in the nation last year, per a new U.S. Census Bureau report.

Context: We've held the title of "fastest growing county by numeric growth" for most of the past decade.

By the numbers: Maricopa County added 56,831 residents last year, a gain of 1.3% from 2021.

State of play: The tens of thousands of people who moved here during the remote-work era of the pandemic have chosen to stay. And with high-paying employers like the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. coming to the Valley, even more people are choosing to live here, Greater Phoenix Economic Council president and CEO Chris Camacho tells Axios Phoenix.

Reality check: Though many leaders celebrate the Valley's growth, more people can lead to more complex problems.

What they're saying: "Our challenge is to balance the benefits of new people, new ideas and new business with policies that ensure development is sustainable, water is available to all, and our growth does not diminish our quality of life," Maricopa County Board chair Clint Hickman said in a statement.

Many of the country's largest counties saw their population growth numbers rebound in 2022 as overall migration patterns begin to return to pre-pandemic levels, according to numbers released by the United States Census Bureau.

"Patterns of domestic migration in 2022 were notably different than 2021. During the height of the pandemic, many small counties experienced higher levels of domestic migration, while many large counties saw lower levels of domestic migration," the Bureau said in a news release.

That trend has now flipped, with large counties — notably in the southern and western parts of the nation — seeing higher levels of domestic migration and smaller ones seeing slowing migration. Domestic migration is people moving within the United States, excluding Puerto Rico, from one area to another.

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For Maricopa County, that trend remains ever noticeable.

According to the data, Maricopa County remained the nation's largest-growing county, adding 56,831 new residents in 2022, a 1.3% increase from 2021 when the county saw 46,866 new residents.

"Domestic migration was the component of population change (i.e., births, deaths and migration), which made the largest contribution to Maricopa County’s growth," the Bureau said in the statement.

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Maricopa County also led in net domestic migration in 2022 adding 33,305 new faces as a consequence. Second place went to Collin County, Texas, which gained 29,696 residents due to net domestic migration.

Net domestic migration is the total number of population growth, calculated by in-migration and out-migration, over a period of time as a proportion of an area's population.

Notable numbers across the country

Some counties nationwide also showed drastic change. For example, Whitman County in Washington state had a population decline of 9.6% between 2020 and 2021 but recouped the following year, growing around 10.1%.

This change, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, is due to the return of college students following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whitman County is home to Washington State University.

"Many counties with large universities saw their populations fully rebound this year as students returned," Dr. Christine Hartley, assistant division chief for estimates and projections in the Census Bureau’s population division, said in the statement.

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"This is similar to the pattern observed by many metropolitan counties in the South and West, where many impacts experienced during the pandemic are either reverting to near pre-pandemic levels or making a full recovery," the Bureau said.

Counties in Texas carried much of the load in terms of fastest-growing counties, with half of the top 10 being located in the Lone Star state.

The biggest loser, however, took place in the country's most populous county, Los Angeles County, which scaled down by around 90,704 residents. According to the Census Bureau, the loss highlights a continuous downward trend in California as in 2021, they lost nearly double that — 180,394.

A caveat to this is that even though Los Angeles County saw a big loss, the changes in domestic migration patterns produced a loss of fewer people than the year prior. Net domestic migration numbers show that between 2021 and 2022, LAC lost 142,953 people, whereas in 2021, they lost 194,804.

Other large counties, such as San Francisco County and King County (Seattle) mirrored this trend, with New York County (Manhattan) actually gaining residents.

More information on the 2022 census data can be found on the United States Census Bureau website at https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/population-estimates-counties.html.

On Monday the results of November's midterm election were unanimously certified by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.

MARICOPA COUNTY, Ariz. — More than four hours after a meeting began on Monday, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors unanimously certified the 2022 election results.

The hearing included a public comment period. Speakers stepped up to the microphone claiming massive disenfranchisement and fraud, while other speakers called members of the board traitors and liars.

Members of the public alleged voter disenfranchisement and election issues that they said should cause the election to be redone.

After the public comment period ended, most of the speakers left. Refusing to listen to the county presentation, which went over some of the claims.

WERE 1,000's OF VOTERS DISENFRANCHISED?

The common refrain from speakers was that thousands of voters were disenfranchised on Election Day. They point to issues with printers at some voting centers that caused tabulation machines to have problems counting the results.

The county said the data does not support that. Turnout did not see an unusual drop-off in Maricopa County. In fact, turnout was proportionally higher in Maricopa than in other counties.

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While printer issues did cause some tabulation machines trouble, the issues were fixed on election day. That morning, election officials said people could drop their ballot in "door 3." Door 3 would allow the ballots to be counted later at the main tabulation center.

“Every voter had that opportunity to put their vote in that ballot box.” Scott Jarrett, Co-Director of elections, said.

The county said 16,724 ballots were put in "door 3." According to Maricopa county, every single one of those ballots was counted.

Door 3, is essentially the same process most other Arizona counties use to count their votes, as they do not have onsite tabulators at voting centers.

"Because Maricopa county recognizes there can be issues with printers, there can be issues with tabulation machines. That is commonplace in elections throughout the country, and we need the redundancy to offer to voters.”

The county said while some voting centers did see long lines leading to hour-long waits, 85% of centers never saw a wait of more than 45 minutes.

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