As long ago as the 19th century, late summer was known as the "silly season", when government and business go on vacation and the news media are desperate for how to fill newsprint or, more recently, air time. Animal attacks are a perennial favorite (Sharks!). So, too, are movie star scandals or crime stories. Better still if you can combine the two (Jacko Dead! Doctor Questioned!). But this summer, government is not relinquishing the stage. We've had everything from a governor adding "hiking the Appalachian Trail" to our endless list of euphemisms for having sex to nutty "birthers" and "deathers" trying to derail President Obama.
Richardson is not immune to silly season outbreaks. One current hot topic is whether the city manager is crossing the line of good governance by, a) getting a car allowance, or b) driving a land-yacht Ford Expedition, or c) letting his family use his city-leased car, or d) occasionally driving a city pool car when his family is using his city-leased car, or e) all of the above and, besides, he's friends with Gary Slagel, blech!
The story began when a citizen voiced a heartfelt complaint at a city council meeting. It gained momentum by showing up on YouTube (where else?) and being covered in the local "Conserve & Protect" blog. That led Ian McCann to be all over the story for The Dallas Morning News. McCann found that "most other cities provide auto benefits for employees" (d'oh). He also found that city manager Bill Keffler did occasionally drive a pool car when his family was using his city-leased car, but quit the practice a year ago after being asked to by then-mayor Steve Mitchell (that's right, this summer's big controversy is over something Keffler says he quit doing a year ago). Keffler now plans to quit driving a pool car altogether, even when his city-leased car is in the shop. (No word on how he will get to business meetings those days. Maybe he'll walk. Wearing sackcloth.)
Will this appease the critics? Probably not. The critics have already escalated, targeting car allowances in general, high salaries, uniform allowances, and "perks" of any kind. Further, we have charges that the city is lying to the DMN about its car allowances and that the DMN is serving the city as Pravda once served the USSR. After all, it is silly season.
17 comments:
Lets put this in simple words so silly people of silly season can understand.
City manager.
Employee.
Hired by City Council.
Doing what's in his contract.
Legal.
Blame City manager?
Blaming wrong person.
Probably too many words for the silly people to understand.
Silly! woo hoo!
Ed, you don't know how right you are. Right now, there are roughly 8-15 people absolutely dogging the City trying to find some sort of scandal they can crow about. Some of them are failed candidates, some are their friends, and some are just plain nuts.
Here's a bit of ironic fun. File an open records request, asking for the number of open records requests made in the past year or two. Request the name of the person making the request too. Then ask: "How much did fulfilling these requests cost Richardson taxpayers?"
The amount *will* blow your mind. Even worse, perhaps three people blew all that money on fishing expeditions, which produced nothing.
Those same three people, are among those making all the noise in the blogs.
Ed, the car thing is not that big a deal itself. It does illustrate that the whole "distributed cost, targeted benefit" thing is a powerful temptation, and pols reward each other richly with our money. People at the top of the government/corporate food pyramid enrich themselves at the cost of the people below them. This is what happens, at least until sunlight makes that kind of thing less comfortable. Think a city employee will want to be caught doing personal errands on our dime now? I wouldn't.
Anon #2; perhaps if the city wanted to save money on (legal and appropriate) open records requests they could publish more information on the web in the first place? I would imagine the "doggers" would be very happy to have their thunder stolen.
bloggermouse, if pols are rewarding each other richly, then it ought to be a simple matter of bringing to light a real abuse, instead of this silly season complaint. This wasn't a case of city employees doing personal errands on our dime. But you are right that this case will probably put a chill in how city employees see their jobs. I suspect it may tempt city employees to just close their doors and draw their blinds, not because they are breaking any law, rule or regulation, but out of fear that they will be the next person targeted by some silly season citizen complaint over who knows what.
Keffler has worked for this city for 32 years or something crazy like that and his compensation reflects that commitment. In the world we live in, the big players in every industry are paid to reflect that status. Keffler is one of the most respected city managers in the state. The TCMA (texas city managers association) has elected him to be president for this upcoming year after previously serving as vice president. I would think that if the association of all city managers in the state look at him as a good leader, then maybe we should use our brains and not our own lagging checkbooks (mine included) when evaluating keffler's worth. Lets be honest we are lucky to have him but hey ignorance is bliss right?
Hahaha! Well said, Ed! ;-)
Bloggermouse, I believe (without having any inside knowledge) that one of the functions of the proposed Director of Communications position will be to do exactly what you ask: to review all the City's content and place as much as is reasonably possible and appropriate online in an accessible manner.
Sadly, I don't think the "doggers" will be happy to have their thunder stolen - they'll just move on to complain about something else...in fact, you've already seen the beginnings of it, because several people (including 2 former Council candidates) have complained publicly not that the information isn't available, but that the $175 million municipal budget is too difficult for them to understand...
Bill
Anonymous at 8/21/2009 12:17 PM, your same comment was posted in the comments section of a related blog item on the DMN. That one was signed by someone named "Nathan Morgan."
Has anyone considered that most of the city employees have been with the Richardson for so long that they've hit the top of their pay grade and the only way to keep them from going off to a bigger city and a larger paycheck are things like car allowances? Just a thought.
There are a lot of crack pots throwing around wild accusations in this city. There may be some legitimate complaints, but it's impossible to see them with all this other flak out there.
It makes me sad.
I wish people would leave this kind of stuff alone so the city can get on with more important stuff like road maintenance and sewer repair and redevelopment/renovation of the southern parts of the city.
Sherri, there may be some of that going on. Note that employees have to pay for gas, maintenance, insurance, and depreciation on their cars out of those allowances, so I doubt the money amounts to much of an incentive. Tell the employees the city is going to quit reimbursing them and you'll have a *disincentive.* Switch to a mileage reimbursement system where the employees have to keep logs and receipts and someone has to file them and someone has to audit them and you'll end up with a system that will not save the city as much money as you'd think and will probably increase the irritation level all around, including among the outside critics who'll think there is rampant fraud and abuse going on with those logs. The reason each city thinks their way is best is because there are pros and cons to all ways of handling this situation, with no clearcut superior method.
P.S. I, too, would rather talk about redevelopment, which is going to be the issue that defines Richardson's prosperity over the next decade and beyond.
Sherri, you have a valid question, one which I asked myself earlier today. If 50% of the employees in some areas are at the top of their pay grade, is it possible that City management felt it necessary to add to their (the employees') compensation via a non-salaried mechanism in the short run in order to avoid redoing the pay grades? You know, in the short run (one budget), this might have been an OK alternative, but in the long run, it would probably be better to limit the car allowance to those who actually drive a car most of the time for the City, and simply increase the salaries for the others.
You are correct in your observation about "wild accusations". Here are some bons mots from the comments by various "people" at the DMN blog:
"...all the high-paid czars who hi-jacked the public resources..."
"...Keffler lied to you Ian..."
"The Slagel/Keffler administration has no accountability..."
"...they even lie to reporters from the DMN..."
"If a man goes to the trouble to lie about this, what other lies have we been told about things much more important?"
Well, if someone has decided in advance that the City staff and City Council are all liars and criminals, it sort of makes it difficult to have a civil discussion, doesn't it? Mind you, they never prove it - just look at the DMN blog where DMN Editor Erik Rodriguez pointed out why the accusations related to different information from two different FOI requests are probably baseless...but that won't stop the invective, I'm afraid...
Bill
"I wish people would leave this kind of stuff alone so the city can get on with more important stuff like road maintenance and sewer repair and redevelopment/renovation of the southern parts of the city."
Hey lady! I can't be distracted by all that sewer and road and redevelopment stuff because I have to have every piece of data from city hall! It's important I tell you! So forget those holes in the road where small dogs get lost and just wear nose plugs when that sewer breaks. I have to have a mileage report on every vehicle! Its important!
Bill -
Thanks for the clarification about the DC position.
Ed - I was surprised to see someone who values anonymity* start the "I know who is who" game. Doesn't seem like there is an upside in it for you, though perhaps I am overthinking it.
Re: chill. City Govt positions are funded by citizens and as such are high visibility, whether city hall, dogcatcher, FD, PD, whatever. The quote about Caesar's Wife comes to mind.
Re: silly season. Tired of this meme already. I don't think it's up to normal Ed standards of useful clarity in writing (<-- not being snarky; I mean it).
Sherri, et al: is there a downside associated with having so many govt employees on staff long enough to max out their pay? I don't know, just thinking aloud.
*"The name itself is a nom de plume because, frankly, there are a lot of nuts out there."
bloggermouse, I mentioned the comment on the DMN Web site signed "Nathan Morgan" because I suspected there was spoofing going on there. The comment does not sound like something Nathan Morgan would write, but who knows?. I have a big issue with spoofing, not anonymous comments. If you were referring to something else, please clarify.
As a follow up to the comment about crack pots (which I quite agree with), please let me share with you two recent appearances by citizens at the Visitor’s Section at City Hall.
The first example was that of a woman who spoke at the Visitor's Section at the City Council meeting on Aug 17th. She has, admittedly, been critical of the Council in the past, but when she came to the podium, she matter-of-factly asked the Council a series of questions which occurred to her after a close read of the City’s proposed budget.
One question that I noted in particular was on the reason for the existence of a 501(c)(3) (a charitable foundation) for the Eisemann Center whose only activity appeared to be to raise money and give it all to the City. Why, she wondered, even have the foundation at all?
This is not a silly question. What most people don’t know (but she probably does) is that you can deduct contributions made to "Federal, state, and local governments if the gifts are solely for public purposes" (from the IRS instructions for Schedule A for the 1040). I would imagine that contributions made to support the Eisemann Center would qualify under this rule. So why have a separate 501(c)(3) whose purpose would normally be to enable contributions to be clearly deductible, when these contributions already are deductible?
I can think of a couple of reasons, but only because I have been the CEO of a 501(c)(6), on the board of a 501(c)(3), and I used to write tax software for a living. To me, this is a reasonable question for most people, one that the City should be able to quickly answer.
Now, the second example was that of a man who asked at the City Council meeting on July 27th about a consent agenda item. Note that this man has a website which he routinely uses to call the City staff and City Council liars and criminals, and to even engage from time to time in personal slander.
At the July 27th meeting, he noted that the City Charter states that "[n]o contract shall be entered into by the city council until after an appropriation has been made", and, therefore, the City Council had no right to vote on item 5.b, as it would be a violation of the Charter. Well, he was right that the Charter does indeed contain this quote, but he failed to note that the agenda item in question (5.b) stated "CONSIDER ADVERTISEMENT OF COMPETITIVE SEALED PROPOSAL #902-09". In no school of business does an advertisement for bids equal a "contract", particularly since the City’s RFP (the advertisement for bids) almost certainly contained the phrase "The City reserves the right to reject any and all proposals". This phrase, commonly found in many municipal RFPs (including Richardson's) is placed there to ensure that the bidders understand that the request for bids does not in any way imply a contract.
The Deputy City Manager vainly explained that the Charter did not forbid advertising for bids, just the actual signing of a contract before the budget is passed (which would happen in the next few weeks), but the visitor would have none of it. After all, since the visitor had already repeatedly and publicly damned the City staff and City Council for cheats, he knew they were lying to him, even as they read the actual agenda item word-for-word to him.
In the first case, we have a person asking a sensible question of the City's leadership in a calm and civil manner; in the second case, we have someone who has built a career on trying to smear people's good names asking a question that a 4-year-old would find ludicrous.
If we are to have civil discourse in this City, we need to have a lot more of the former and a lot less of the latter…
Bill
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, thanks for the anecdotes of Visitor’s Section at City Council meetings. It seems to me that this is an inefficient way to get questions answered. If a question requires any amount of research at all, the answer is going to have to come later. There should be a Web form or email address that such questions can be submitted to. Answers can be posted on the Web, too.
What Visitor’s Section at City Council meetings does seem particularly good at is getting publicity for a complaint. Sometimes, that's good and necessary. Other times, it's an exercise in ego-boosting for the questioner.
Ed, thanks for the gentle correction about the purpose of the anon/DMN post. I was sideways on that one but understand now.
"It seems to me that this is an inefficient way to get questions answered. "
I agree 100% - if I ever have a question, I just (1) call someone in City government as listed on the website, (2) send an email to someone as listed on the website, (3) email or call one of the 7 Councilpersons, or (4) just ask someone when I am at City Hall on Monday evenings. These avenues for answers are open to every resident in Richardson.
I would agree that in many cases, questions are posed at the workshops or Council meetings either because the resident has no idea how the City functions, or (more likely perhaps) the resident doesn't expect an answer so much as the opportunity to try to embarrass the City staff and City Council.
However, some questions as I pointed out are reasonable, and it would be worthwhile to build a channel of communication so that some residents, at least, who are initially suspicious of what goes on at City Hall can be brought to better understand how and why the City does what it does. As for the others, well, no channel of communication is even desired by the questioner...
Bill
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