An observation on city government

BY FRED MARKUS

The questionable behavior by various Council Members (CM), allegedly leaning on developers, allegedly pushing city departments into overzealous exercise of their authority, allegedly horse-trading amongst themselves behind closed doors, going flat out in an attempt to seize control of the independent boards and hence supremacy without restraint while the teflon mayor signals a vanishing act that would put the incumbent president of the City Council in office as acting mayor—This is hubris on a grand scale.

Not all CMs can be presumed guilty by association, but it is clear to me that the de facto leadership of the Council has been playing with fire. This reflects poorly on the entire membership of the Council whatever the niceties of definition and potential judgments about wrongdoing.

I’ve known Gary Schiff since he was an undergraduate at the university and admire his fierce zeal, his total commitment to making a difference as a gay man in public office. I believe he has great potential yet to be realized, but cavalier behavior when conducting the public’s business is just as
unacceptable now as it was when CMs Herron, Biernat and Zimmermann ended their political careers behind bars.

Dean Z may have been set up. Brian succumbed to temptation. Joe caught the heat when a cozy arrangement about his plumbing came to light. Imprudent, naive, careless behavior. But now we have a leadership cadre who tinker with the very fundamentals of our municipal government, that allegedly act as if there were no restraints on their official behavior and seek carte blanche from the electorate in the name of efficiency.

Righto. And our heavily armed police glory in their impudent behavior while the civilian leadership concentrates on reinventing the concept of oligarchy.
In reading about the history of municipal budgeting and looking over various case studies presented by an expert source in these matters, I come away seriously alarmed at the ease with which a handful of individuals are tearing down the entire fabric of citizen participation that came to prosper in Minneapolis in the past three decades. Acting without restraint can be a fatal attraction for ambitious elected representatives. Residing in an assumption of superior knowledge in the
professional staff can lead to remarkably foolish decisions and contempt for the public in the decision-making processes. Trumpeting parochial concerns to the world at large doesn’t always work out so well for grassroots activists. These are the three major components of municipal governance in the United States and when any one of them gets out of hand it takes a very long time to clean up the mess.

We voters are in a zone of indifference to the questionable antics
of our municipal leadership, but that gets dissipated when sufficiently painful events occur. How about a bit of preventive maintenance on the part of city government and the electorate before we are faced with punitive financial judgments, the loss of our bonding capacity, deeply chagrined and angry municipal retirees, taxpayer outrage, and the equivalent of torches and pitchforks in the streets of our fair city?

Originally written for the Minneapolis Issues List.