RE: TURNSTILE

Speaking of the stronger-mayor proposal, former City Councilman Bob Stimson stopped by the office just now to give us his thoughts on why the proposal is not a very good one. Stimson is a self-identified “recovering accountant,” so his viewpoint is informed mostly by looking at the budgets. With the budget comes the power, he says. He argues that in the proposed system, the city manager becomes the alter ego of the mayor. The two of them can run the whole show, he says. Yes, but can’t the council just keep firing managers until the mayor picks one the council likes? Nope, says Stimson. The language in the proposal states that the mayor determines the manager’s “compensation,” which could theoretically include such a huge golden parachute that it would be financially unpleasant for the city to do so. Also, as near as Stimson can tell, no other city in the country has a hybird system of government similar to the one currently being proposed.

Note: not one of Stimson’s arguments included any sort of turnstile imagery.

RE: TURNSTILE

A city-government-watching FrontBurnervian takes me to task:

I disagree. Sherry is a voice of reason. If a majority of the council want to do the deal with Mr. Hunt and the Mayor doesn’t (the case right now) and both can fire the city manager how is a city manager supposed to function or back her staff. Remember the Mayor was yelling at the same assistant city manager a few months ago for letting another deal slip away. The current proposal doesn’t make sense to anyone who has covered city government.

To be clear, I wasn’t arguing one way or the other on the stronger-mayor proposal. I was only pointing out that Jacobson’s argument wasn’t a very good one. As I told this FrontBurnervian, I think the problem for both campaigns (those fer and those agin) is separating the people (i.e. Mayor Miller) from the policy.