A move to declare the Pima County Sheriff’s Office vacant and start replacing Sheriff Chris Nanos immediately failed at a Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday night. The board instead voted 4-0 to send perjury allegations against Nanos to the Arizona attorney general’s office, with Republican Steve Christy abstaining.
Christy had moved to declare the office vacant, but no one seconded him. Democrat Rex Scott then offered the narrower step of referring the perjury claims to the state, and the board approved that motion. Matt Heinz called the action “accountability for a guy who has evaded accountability for decades” and said Nanos posed a “public safety threat.”
The dispute centers on accusations that Nanos misled officials about disciplinary action from his days as a Texas police officer in the 1970s and 1980s. In a deposition in a lawsuit, Nanos said under oath that he had never been suspended as a law enforcement officer. Records from El Paso later showed that he was suspended multiple times and resigned in lieu of termination.
That history has become more than a biography problem for the sheriff. Pima County supervisors have pointed to a rarely used Arizona law dating back to the 1800s as a possible route to remove him, but because the sheriff is elected, any effort to force him out is legally complicated and likely to face more scrutiny before it goes anywhere.
The latest votes came after weeks of pressure from within county leadership, where Christy and Heinz have pushed for formal action against Nanos. The sheriff’s past record and his handling of the Nancy Guthrie case have both drawn heavy scrutiny, adding fuel to a fight that is now headed to state investigators rather than ending at the county level.
For now, Nanos remains in office, and the board’s decision means the immediate removal effort is over. The next test is whether the attorney general acts on the referral — and whether the allegations rise to the level that could revive the legal push to oust an elected sheriff in Arizona.
