The Pima County Board of Supervisors is like the weather: Everybody talks about it but very few do anything about it.

For years, business people from both major parties have complained about Ramón Valadez, Sharon Bronson and Richard Elías, the Democratic majority on the five-member board. Some have also griped about Republicans Ann Day and Ray Carroll.

But Elías and Carroll are unopposed in both the Sept. 2 primary election and the Nov. 4 general election. Barring a personal catastrophe, they’ll be in office for four more years.

Day and Valadez are favored to survive challenges from businessmen Joe Higgins and Robert Robuck, respectively. The primary winners will be unopposed in the general.

Bronson faces primary opposition from Donna Branch-Gilby, a former state and county Democratic party official, with the winner meeting Republican businessman Barney Brenner in the general election.

A small story in the July 1 Arizona Daily Star may have foretold the results. Based on mandatory candidate finance reports for the period ending May 31, it said:

"Fueled by huge contributions from developers and other business interests, the three Pima County supervisors facing primary challenges out-raised their opponents by nearly 10 to 1."

In other words, despite hard work, criticisms of the incumbents and groups of loyal volunteers, the challengers may have been so far behind when they announced their candidacies they could not catch up.

In District 3, Bronson had money left over from previous elections and formed her re-election committee in May 2007. She reported more than $126,000 available. Branch-Gilby had less than $23,000, as did Brenner, the Republican challenger.

District 1 Supervisor Day, who also had money from 2004, boasted a total of $65,000. Higgins, who announced late, had $1,800.

In District 2, Valadez began fund-raising last year and had $35,000 on hand May 31. Robuck had $1,100.

For years, business owners and others have complained about county regulations barring owners from developing 75 to 80 percent of their land, sewage treatment plants that still smell bad, and a city-county courts building that’s now on hold because it will cost far more than the bonds voters approved for it.

We’ve learned many county streets haven’t been repaved in 25 years, and the County Development Services Department spent $1 million to hire new employees when almost everyone else realized we were in a building slump.

We apparently won’t have the Chicago White Sox as a spring training team next year or the Tucson Sidewinders’ Pacific Coast League team.

Quarter-horse racing at Rillito Racetrack is on the way out, and the county will spend millions to operate the northwest side Sports Park, at Interstate 10 and Ina Road, because its tenants fell $25,000 behind in the rent.

Board Democrats fought their own party’s attempts to ensure our votes are being counted accurately, then had to pay a big sum to the plaintiffs’ attorneys when a judge said the county’s stance was wrong.

I’ll stop there, but I’m not even half-way through my "2007-08 County Goofs" file of news stories showing why business people might have considered looking for — and funding — challengers to incumbent supervisors this year.

Maybe a few folks weren’t aware of the problems. Others could have been busy keeping their companies afloat or handling family problems.

But many business people apparently rushed to donate to the incumbents’ campaigns a year or more before this year’s elections.

Did they hope to get some favors? Or did they fear retaliation if they didn’t donate early?

Editorial writers for the two large daily newspapers have only endorsed incumbents in the primary election. Have they forgotten their reporters’ stories on county mismanagement — or even some of their own editorials?

It’s not that the five incumbents are evil or criminal. They’re not. I don’t even dislike them. Collectively, however, they’re not the best quintet to oversee a $1.5 billion government serving a million-plus people for the next four years.

As a result of apathy and other factors, I fear we’re about to get what we have earned.

But we won’t like the results.

Contact Steve Emerine or e-mail comments for publication to editor@azbiz.com. Emerine, a Tucson resident since 1960, has run Steve Emerine Strategic Public Relations since 1994. He is a former local newspaper reporter, editor and columnist and served as Pima County Assessor from 1973 to 1980. He is a regular Monday guest on the John C. Scott radio talk show, which airs from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. and from 11 a.m. to noon weekdays on The Voice KVOI 690-AM. This column appears weekly in Inside Tucson Business.