Day 15 and counting: How Jim Adams really feels

Councilor Morten speaks of this collaborative decision making process that these men have imposed on the citizens of St. Helens as if it were a thing of beauty and effectiveness, and a hallmark of forward progress in municipal government. I don’t think so, Doug. History … and statistical reality … clearly demonstrate that the commission form of government was an experiment that was tried, and failed, nearly 100 years ago! There were never more than about 500 cities in the nation that tried to adopt it, and since the council-manager system was proposed, and its advantages began to be understood by civic leaders (about 1915), the prevailing trend among municipal governments has been overwhelmingly away from the commission form and toward the council-manager form.

According to the Municipal Year Book for 2008, there are currently 143 cities in this country (a whopping 2%) that still try to make this antiquated form of government work. Portland is the only large city in the nation that still clings to it. And the only city – of any size – in the state of Oregon. It doesn’t work! You have only to look at what is happening in Portland at the present time to see a graphic demonstration of the fundamental flaw in collaborative leadership. They are about to lose the best Police Chief that city has had in many years because of an irresolvable conflict of managerial styles between an appointed department head who is highly skilled and successful, and an elected amateur commissioner who insists on imposing his will in the direction of micromanaging her every move.

The Junto Society (http://www.juntosociety.com/government/municipal.htm), which is sort of a “wiki” forum on American philosophy, has this to say about the down side of “collaborative leadership” in the commission form of government.

“To a significant extent the commission plan served as a precursor to the popular council-manager form of city government. Richard S. Childs, often called the father of the city manager plan, worked through the Short Ballot Organization and the National Municipal League to make the manager plan rather than the commission plan the progressive idea of choice for business-minded reformers. Childs and others pointed out that the specific departmental interests of commissioners often caused internal squabbling and that the absence of a chief executive could result in a lack of leadership. Manager charters, many argued, could retain the beneficial aspects of the Galveston-Des Moines system, such as the short ballot, at-large voting, nonpartisanship, the merit system, and direct democracy, but could replace leaderless bickering with businesslike management in the corporate model.”

But the real fundamental flaw of the commission form of government is that it does away with the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of city government. That should mean something to you. It is the very heart of the genius of our nation’s Constitution. The Legislative branch (congress) and the Executive branch (president) serve as checks on each other’s abuse of authority, and the Judicial branch acts as a watchdog over that necessary tension and conflict. In city government, the legislative branch is the Council. The executive branch can be either the Mayor or the Manager or Administrator, depending on how those roles are defined. Whoever has the authority for administering the daily activities of the city. Where the commission form of government fails is that it lets both the legislative and the executive powers fall into the hands of the same body of men, and it lends itself far too easily to the very abuse of power that we see taking place in our own City Hall at the present time.

The only protection against that danger is a strongly-defined charter! Does it bother you just a little bit that two freshman councilors at the very beginning of their term would be able to come in and put a stop to this needed reform, which was well underway, without so much as a by-your-leave from the voting public? And then, in the same breath, to redefine the very nature of your existing government into a form that is so conveniently susceptible to the concentration of power into their own hands! Will you please do one thing for me? (For yourselves, really!) Go to the city’s web site (http://www.ci.st-helens.or.us/), click on agendas and minutes, find the minutes for the Joint Meeting between the Council and the Charter Review Committee on October 11, 2007. Just click on the link shown as 10-11-07 JM in the 2007 column. That was the last meeting between the Council and the Charter Review Committee, where the Council received their recommendation … and promptly tabled the issue. Two glaring facts will become evident as you read down through those notes.

First, the weakness of the present charter was clearly understood by everyone gathered in the room as that discussion unfolded.

Daley: “I’m confused. If the Council wants to change the commissioner style of government,
doesn’t it have to be changed in the charter.”

Barlow: “No. We have every right to appoint any officer. We could say, ‘Skip, you’re in charge of everything today.’ We have every right to do that. We have a right as a majority to say we are going to be a commission form of government. We have that right under that charter.”

Peterson: “The old charter is vague enough that it gives the Council power to decide how they are going to do it.”

Second was Barlow’s insistence that it really wasn’t necessary to bother the voters and go to the expense of updating the present charter, since the proposed changes were so trifling??

I love Skip Baker’s response to that mindset.

Baker: “The reason for the Charter change is to mortalize, to create something the Council can’t
change on their whims, every time it changes its power structure. That’s the reason for it.”

If the charter is so broken that someone can come in and restructure the city government in any direction that serves their narrow purpose, shouldn’t a conscientious Council be concerned with fixing it, and in letting the electorate of the city have input into that process? Shouldn’t you have the right to decide whether you are governed by dedicated public servants or self-serving, willful politicians?

Is it not pretty clear that these men do not want to fix a problem that is an incredible windfall to their own political platforms? They want to -- and fully intend to -- exploit it for all it’s worth, and they’re doing a very good job of it, thank you very much. I can’t help but feel like I’m watching a bad “B” western, where the town boss gathers enough hired guns to intimidate the people into accepting his unwelcome authority … simply because they are afraid of the consequences of challenging him. I believe the people of this community are smarter than that. And I believe you are better than that. But I would remind you that there isn’t going to be an Audie Murphy, or a Jimmy Stewart, or a John Wayne riding into town to challenge the authority of this band that has taken your city government out of your hands … so far without much of a protest from the population at large. The lesson of every “town boss” western I can remember seeing is that it requires the combined courage of the common people of the community to break the hold of those who by arrogance and intimidation have put themselves forward as being in charge … just because they can. The truth still remains … they can’t … unless you let them!

Getting back to the movie analogy, a handful of hired guns may be more than a match for a similar handful of properly appointed leaders if they are inexperienced “gunfighters.” But if the whole community is willing to stand up … if it is only with pitchforks and broomsticks … they can win this kind of a fight! For those of you who fear for your jobs, I hope you know they can’t fire you all! But what they can do – if you let them – is make the job you are trying to protect so unpleasant and burdensome that you’re not going to want to work there anyway a year or two down the line.

Frankly, we’re running out of time here. I really believe if we were able to get these recall measures on the ballot, they would have a good chance of passing. People are beginning to get wise to the fact that we have a serious leadership crisis in all four city council posts right now. Of course, we get to vote on Locke and Grant this year anyway, without a recall. And I hope you understand they are just as much a part of this problem as Morten and Barlow … and in my opinion all four have forfeited their public trust beyond remedy. But unless significant numbers of you come forward very soon – not only to sign the petitions, but to actively circulate petitions yourselves among your friends and neighbors – we likely will not have the full privilege of saying an emphatic NO to the nightmare of this unauthorized experiment in “collaborative leadership” come November.