STATE CAPITOL, PHOENIX – Assistant House Minority Leader Steve Farley has been selected to receive the 2011 Distinguished Elected Official Award from the Arizona chapter of the American Planning Association.

“Steve is a tireless advocate for transportation planning and transit,” said Leslie Dornfield, Arizona chapter secretary. “One of his strengths is his ability to work with all sides of an issue to bring forth solutions to the many problems in Arizona today.”

Farley is the ranking Democrat on the state legislature’s Government and Ways & Means committees, as well as member of the Transportation committee. He was a key member of Tucson’s Citizen Advisory Committee that created the multimodal Tucson Regional Transportation Authority plan in 2006. That initiative passed and was the first transportation plan to pass in Tucson history, after four previous tries.

Farley has been Vice-Chair of the Pima Association of Governments Regional Transportation Plan Task Force, a member of the Regional Transportation Authority Citizens Advisory Committee, and a member of the City of Tucson Major Transit Investment Study Citizen Advisory Group.

“There are a lot of things our state government is lacking these days and planning is one of them,” Farley said. “Good planning, especially when it comes to creating better places for us to live and work and better ways to move about, is the key to creating good jobs and a better future for all of us.”