Why Does Jim Strickland Not Like Democracy

I'm sick and tired of hearing about residency of city employees. There was a charter amendment vote in 2008 asking if city employees should live in the city. That question wasn't too complicated for the voters to wrap their heads around. 72% of the voters thought city workers should live in the city. The Council got an exemption to get public safety related employees to have residence within 20 miles of the Shelby County border. Fine, we get so many cops arrested I guess we need to get as large a pool of people to make up for indictment attrition. Yet, I see no justification for changing regular city employee residency. What I can't seem to understand who is advocating for this change to the council members? Where is this ground swell coming from? Damn, there are most likely going to be hundreds of city employees laid off this year, but somehow we can only find qualified folks for future job openings in the county?

Councilman Strickland, not sure what the public's opinion is on one amendment with 72% approval, decided to go after another 72% approved amendment, staggered terms. What happened to the hue and cry about such a large turnover on the council a few years ago. Now some of the council members are facing an early re-election, one of them being Strickland. All I have to say about that is tough shit. In a few years, if staggered terms are eliminated, will not almost all of the council be removed because of term limits, or will we have another BS charter amendment vote to get rid of term limits? Was Strickland's giant (almost obscene) political warchest from his last campaign against a political unknown not enough to cover his early re-election against another nobody? Why don't we just have a couple charter amendments for Councilman Strickland, like letting him represent his district while living in Collierville (John Ford style) and only have an election for his seat when it is convenient to his schedule.

Undermining a Brand- Hiregate

Over the past few days I have been stunned by the handling of the Wharton administration's hiring/appointment situation. (Has it reached scandal stage or warranted a "gate" yet?) I generally have contempt for marketing (especially after seeing the documentary "Century of the Self"), mostly because PR/spin has almost replaced governance. But however much I begrudge it branding is important for a politician. Wharton ran as a competent administrator, a unifier of the city, and basically the anti-Herenton, or at least that was narrative of the race.

The first few months has been a bit rough. While being quick to the microphone and public statements on the animal shelter, it took a while to get it moving in the right direction. Seems to be doing better now with the new director but no body has heard about it because Hiregate is sucking all the air out of the room. That dinged Wharton's competent administrator reputation a bit.

Next up was the homeless sweep. Wharton was relatively quick getting out in front of that situation, which appeared as though the MPD and CCC were running their own show in regards to the homeless. Wharton's administration seemed very responsive to any negative stories. This responsiveness carried on through the whole "Miserable City" conniption and the shot dog vet bills. Those were short lived though, the homeless issue stayed in the news for the almost 3 months.

We are now into week two of Hiregate. It is a story that has legs. The Commercial Appeal has been on it in here and an editorial. Like the CA said, Collins was correct to start questioning these hirings and firings. Then late this afternoon, this story came out from the CA. Now the talking points of the administration aren't straight, which is just going to keep the story going. More importantly, the comments to the CA stories are almost universally negative and people are saying Wharton is a just a continuation of Herenton. That is brand shattering. The weird thing is, it was completely self-inflicted. Nobody made him hire and fire these folks. Wharton seems to have forgotten that he benefited for years by standing next to Herenton. Endless Herenton scandal or drama made Wharton look very good. Yet this hiring stuff went on before. Check out this article from a couple years ago and related to Tennessee Waltz. Wharton doesn't have Herenton anymore. The spotlight is all on him. The administration can't get away with this kind of stuff without paying a political price and that price is getting higher everyday.

Wharton is going to need all the political capital he can get because the rest of the year looks bumpy. The city budget and tax increases this spring, consolidation vote late this summer, and Cohen vs Herenton, which will have its own gravitational force pulling Wharton in different directions. By September, a sledgehammer could have been taken to the Wharton brand and coalition. Right now it is a claw hammer pounding at them.

Miserable-Who'd Have Thunk It?

The big news this week was Memphis discovered it was "miserable". While part of the matrix for determining our misery was utter crap (pro sports team's record), just about any combination of social, political, or economic indicators would have gotten us to #3. I didn't really pay too much attention to this ranking, but after a couple days of our collective political class going berserk, a friend of mine asked the question "why the freak out?" If you are a politician in this city and you don't know Memphis ranks at or near the bottom for about everything, except honest mechanics, either you are clueless or you just didn't care until someone pointed it out. This is what my friend got. Our politicians understand how polarized and dysfunctional our city is. Rather than address those fundamental issues causing this, they generally just perpetuate the political culture. That political culture is marketing/PR not actually governance. The marketing/PR facade got called and exposed failed governance. It took a big magazine from out of town to do it and that's why everyone freaked out. (Note this is not an endorsement of consolidation.)

The last few years I have used this blog to try to show people the problems plaguing our city making us "miserable". Well, I guess chickens have come home to roost. Before I go though, take a moment to weigh the usage of terms like "misery" and "happiness". The "happiest" country in the world last year was Nigeria.