Partisanship and Maplewood
Some time back, I noticed that East St Paul blogger Ken Martin had comments about "partisanship" in relation to Maplewood and the Maplewood Citizen's League. Martin describes the league as "a reaction to the new conservative majority leadership."
The term "partisan" conflates a few different meanings. In common political usage, it will refer to opposing political parties (Republican versus Democrat). In another connotation, it can simply talk about opposing factions in a political landscape.
But let's make a few things clear about the situation in Maplewood.
To start with, in the first sense of the term, Maplewood's city council is a non-partisan body. Unlike some larger cities, Maplewood does not have municipal candidates endorsed by the established political parties. The races appear in the "Non-Partisan" section of the ballot.
If the races were partisan, I expect we would see different election results, because Maplewood clearly is weighted toward the Democratic party -- just look over the recent partisan election results if you have any doubts, and see the margins by which Maplewood's state legislators (Slawik, Wiger, and Lillie -- all Democrats) won this past November, particularly in the Maplewood precincts (since Senate District 55 extends into North St Paul and Oakdale).
While I'm not happy with the current council majority, I do think that local races are better off without endorsements from the major parties. Party-line voting could turn local elections into stale ratification of the endorsements of party activists, which I don't think is a good political process. Moreover, the agendas of the major parties, on the state-wide and national levels, often don't align with the concerns of operating a specific local government, and if anything I think local government can do its job better if it is not aligned with one partisan camp or the other (to avoid political favoritism or payback based on party affiliations).
I think there may be room for parties or party-like organizations on a local level built around local concerns, endorsing candidates, but I would think such groups should cross the traditional party boundaries and should actively avoid identification with state and national parties.
On the question of a "new conservative majority leadership," I must confess, I don't think things stand like that.
New? The previous Mayor, Bob Cardinal, was an active Republican (by party affiliation, not endorsement for this office). So we had conservative leadership directing the council already, at least as much as the current leadership can be labeled "conservative."
Indeed, is it fair to call the current majority "conservative"? I suppose, if you think that "firing and driving away experienced and committed city employees, in the name of saving money while pursuing personal vendettas" and "adding an expensive new layer of mangerial bureaucracy to city government just out of spite, in order to effectively demote city managers who had formed a bargaining unit" are longstanding conservative ideals, this may have some grounding in fact. Personally, I don't see conservatism that way.
They talk about wanting to save money and lower taxes, which are ostensibly conservative goals (I'm personally all in favor of saving money and holding down or lowering taxes -- I just don't see them as goals to be held above all others). However, they keep going about it in ways that will cost us more in the long run -- adding layers of bureaucracy to City Hall (demonstrating that their love of vendetta ranks a lot higher than their love of fiscal responsibility in their hierarchy of values), paying a big severance package to a terminated employee in order to hire an unqualified person at a lower salary, firing someone in a way that was sure to get big lawsuits (which will cost the city a ton in legal fees, regardless of the outcome), etc.
Erik Hjelle does occasionally suggest some things that seem a bit beyond conservative. He appears to think that 100% of road repair bills should be paid by assessments of residents on those roads. (He complained at one meeting that he lived on a private road that he'd already paid for, so he doesn't see why he should have to pay, through city funds, for anyone else's road.) He thinks that Xcel should have to pay for fire trucks that are on hand any time a gas leak is being repaired. He seems to wish that we had no full-time public fire department at all, but rather the old system of private contractors serving different parts of the city (and maybe that would give him clearer title to claiming his own fire station as personal property). So he perhaps falls into the radical libertarian camp, which holds that ultimately government should be as close to nonexistent as possible, with all revenues raised by user fees and the like (hence his wish to cut back property taxes and instead raise that money with per-meter flat fees on utility customers).
I'm pretty sure that within the conservative ranks, these views would run into some resistance, especially from citizens who would be told that they have to cough up $15,000+ for their share of repairs on their road next summer, rather than the much smaller assesments seen today (where the city now pays 70% or something of the costs through bonding).
On other traditional conservative concerns, such as issues of eminent domain, development subsidies, property rights, and supporting business, we often find that the trio vote against conservative principles.
In the case of eminent domain, the council is forcing one mobile home owner to sell his property for demolition at a price they set, in order to serve the interests of a big developer. (Hjelle dismisses this concern because the land itself is not the evicted tenant's, so I think he doesn't see this as really being a property rights issue. Maybe he has a grudge against renters, since he was also eager to stick them with higher taxes via Xcel. You know, in the old days, if you didn't own land you didn't even have the right to vote! What kind of conservative is Hjelle if he pines for those good old days? What next, legally binding tenants to their land as serfs?)
Speaking of that developer, Erik Hjelle reversed course and now seems interested in offering tax-increment financing to him, after making a big deal about how Maplewood didn't need to provide tax relieve to lure development for lakefront property in the heart of the metro. (So much for fiscal restraint there.) The need to be seen as doing something about Gladstone outweighs whatever principles he might have imagined he had.
In terms of other property rights, we have the city enacting new codes about the cutting of trees on private property, and enacting a moratorium on development, preventing private landowners in south Maplewood from doing anything on the property they already have bought. (This of course is bringing more lawsuits to the city.)
In many of these cases, I think the voice on the council that seems most consistently to fit the pro-business profile of what you would normally expect of a conservative is actually Will Rossbach.
Let's be honest. Even in the reactionary gruntings of Chumpelopithecus hjelle, this council is not truly conservative, merely selfish. (I know, the two are often hard to distinguish.) They are pro-business if it's their friends; anti-business if the business risks bringing higher-density (lower-income) housing into their neighborhood. Pro-property rights when it's easy; but they throw those concerns aside if they can land a development deal that allows them to claim that Gladstone redevelopment is on track (never mind that the parcel in question was not part of the Gladstone redevelopment plan to begin with). They claim to be in favor of saving the city money, but are demonstrably much more in favor of pursuing their personal/family grudges and hiring their personal friends, regardless of the cost to the rest of us taxpayers. Longrie's idea of fiscal conservatism is like a caricature sometimes, when she suggests that the city buy used furniture and used sewer monitoring equipment. And in any case, their longing for jackbooted authoritarianism (whether the Stalinesque purges of city hall, breaking into the city clerk's office to read the e-mail of city councillors without the pesky privacy-protecting process mandated by law, or Hjelle's grandiose delusions that criticism of him is nigh treasonous) is not what I honestly associate with the healthy tradition of American conservatism.
Above all, this council majority has rejected the rule of law. Even before they were elected, they flouted city and campaign laws as they were running for office. Since coming into office, their ignoring of legal advice has been so bad that it led the city attorneys to resign. When they hired an outside analyst to study the functioning of the new council, he came back with a scathing report about how unprofessional they were and how far they were straying from the processes of good governance. As I quoted at the time, Prof. Schultz wrote, "The meaning of being a professional is placing personal animosities off to the side and learning how to work for a collective good." This is a lesson the council majority has utterly rejected; all year we have seen them follow personal animosity as their guiding star. Whatever they may claim their political compass is aiming at, the magnet of grudge and payback inexorably draws them, and their decisions are distinctly lacking in reasoning, ideological or otherwise.
Consider the CoPar lawsuit. Longrie's formal denial of CoPar's application for their development states, "The applicant has not proven the use would meet all of the standards required." When the Review asked for some specifics (what are some of the required standards that they're failing to meet?), Longrie replied, "I don't know what you mean by specific examples." While going through a few formal motions of deliberative and reasoned governance (the "required standards" line in a written document), behind it so often is simply the arbitrary exercise of power.
In what world is the arbitrary exercise of power to block the business plans of a private business entity on land that it owns to be held up as the work of a "new conservative majority"?
We see similarly arbitrariness followed by obfuscation in documents on the city website, which originally were blunt in describing the major city reorganization as a retaliation against city managers forming a collective bargaining unit. After numerous observers pointed out (such as in comments in our own blog) that such retaliation is illegal on the face of it, they changed their description of the rationale to some mish-mash about increasing efficiency and accountability.
Even a local conservative cable access TV personality (and close friend, I hear, to the Mayor and her husband), Bob Zick, has taken the council to task for their assaults on the role of process -- in one meeting criticizing their dead-of-night decision to cut off the hiring process and make Copeland permanent, in another criticizing their proposed rules to ban parties engaged in legal action against the city from speaking at council meeting visitor presentations. (Zick and the mayor's husband, after all, had legal disputes with the previous councils about first amendment issues. Under the proposed rule, they would have been required to only submit written testimony if they had wanted to address the council and assembled public on any topic while they were engaged in freedom-of-the-press litigation with the city.) The latter proposal failed, but it speaks volumes that the council brought it forward and Copeland recommended passing it in the first place.
As we question the purported conservatism of this council majority, it is fitting that our Republican former Mayor, Mr. Cardinal, is the one requesting that legal authorities investigate the council for their flagrant violations of the law, specifically the open meeting law. The council trio, of course, are dismissing his complaints as "sour grapes" (Longrie) and "a lie" (Cave). Similar sour-grapes liars include the former city manager, who was fired in part for warning the new councillors about open meeting law violations; and Prof. Schultz, who also raised concerns about this in his report. Hjelle dismisses Cardinal's concerns, saying "He's a politician" (which distinguishes him from Hjelle, I suppose, for whom "politician" would be a definite upgrade from "vindictive buffoon").
At this point, I'd happily settle for an actual "new conservative majority" on the city council, since that would mean leaving behind the current majority that is not just failing to do the people's business, but digging a deep hole that future councils will be saddled with getting us out of, at considerable expense and inconvenience to the citizens of Maplewood.
The struggle in Maplewood today is not conservative versus liberal -- it's the demand for good, inclusive governance and the rule of law versus incompetence, petulance, cronyism, self-serving agendas and personal vendetta.
The term "partisan" conflates a few different meanings. In common political usage, it will refer to opposing political parties (Republican versus Democrat). In another connotation, it can simply talk about opposing factions in a political landscape.
But let's make a few things clear about the situation in Maplewood.
To start with, in the first sense of the term, Maplewood's city council is a non-partisan body. Unlike some larger cities, Maplewood does not have municipal candidates endorsed by the established political parties. The races appear in the "Non-Partisan" section of the ballot.
If the races were partisan, I expect we would see different election results, because Maplewood clearly is weighted toward the Democratic party -- just look over the recent partisan election results if you have any doubts, and see the margins by which Maplewood's state legislators (Slawik, Wiger, and Lillie -- all Democrats) won this past November, particularly in the Maplewood precincts (since Senate District 55 extends into North St Paul and Oakdale).
While I'm not happy with the current council majority, I do think that local races are better off without endorsements from the major parties. Party-line voting could turn local elections into stale ratification of the endorsements of party activists, which I don't think is a good political process. Moreover, the agendas of the major parties, on the state-wide and national levels, often don't align with the concerns of operating a specific local government, and if anything I think local government can do its job better if it is not aligned with one partisan camp or the other (to avoid political favoritism or payback based on party affiliations).
I think there may be room for parties or party-like organizations on a local level built around local concerns, endorsing candidates, but I would think such groups should cross the traditional party boundaries and should actively avoid identification with state and national parties.
On the question of a "new conservative majority leadership," I must confess, I don't think things stand like that.
New? The previous Mayor, Bob Cardinal, was an active Republican (by party affiliation, not endorsement for this office). So we had conservative leadership directing the council already, at least as much as the current leadership can be labeled "conservative."
Indeed, is it fair to call the current majority "conservative"? I suppose, if you think that "firing and driving away experienced and committed city employees, in the name of saving money while pursuing personal vendettas" and "adding an expensive new layer of mangerial bureaucracy to city government just out of spite, in order to effectively demote city managers who had formed a bargaining unit" are longstanding conservative ideals, this may have some grounding in fact. Personally, I don't see conservatism that way.
They talk about wanting to save money and lower taxes, which are ostensibly conservative goals (I'm personally all in favor of saving money and holding down or lowering taxes -- I just don't see them as goals to be held above all others). However, they keep going about it in ways that will cost us more in the long run -- adding layers of bureaucracy to City Hall (demonstrating that their love of vendetta ranks a lot higher than their love of fiscal responsibility in their hierarchy of values), paying a big severance package to a terminated employee in order to hire an unqualified person at a lower salary, firing someone in a way that was sure to get big lawsuits (which will cost the city a ton in legal fees, regardless of the outcome), etc.
Erik Hjelle does occasionally suggest some things that seem a bit beyond conservative. He appears to think that 100% of road repair bills should be paid by assessments of residents on those roads. (He complained at one meeting that he lived on a private road that he'd already paid for, so he doesn't see why he should have to pay, through city funds, for anyone else's road.) He thinks that Xcel should have to pay for fire trucks that are on hand any time a gas leak is being repaired. He seems to wish that we had no full-time public fire department at all, but rather the old system of private contractors serving different parts of the city (and maybe that would give him clearer title to claiming his own fire station as personal property). So he perhaps falls into the radical libertarian camp, which holds that ultimately government should be as close to nonexistent as possible, with all revenues raised by user fees and the like (hence his wish to cut back property taxes and instead raise that money with per-meter flat fees on utility customers).
I'm pretty sure that within the conservative ranks, these views would run into some resistance, especially from citizens who would be told that they have to cough up $15,000+ for their share of repairs on their road next summer, rather than the much smaller assesments seen today (where the city now pays 70% or something of the costs through bonding).
On other traditional conservative concerns, such as issues of eminent domain, development subsidies, property rights, and supporting business, we often find that the trio vote against conservative principles.
In the case of eminent domain, the council is forcing one mobile home owner to sell his property for demolition at a price they set, in order to serve the interests of a big developer. (Hjelle dismisses this concern because the land itself is not the evicted tenant's, so I think he doesn't see this as really being a property rights issue. Maybe he has a grudge against renters, since he was also eager to stick them with higher taxes via Xcel. You know, in the old days, if you didn't own land you didn't even have the right to vote! What kind of conservative is Hjelle if he pines for those good old days? What next, legally binding tenants to their land as serfs?)
Speaking of that developer, Erik Hjelle reversed course and now seems interested in offering tax-increment financing to him, after making a big deal about how Maplewood didn't need to provide tax relieve to lure development for lakefront property in the heart of the metro. (So much for fiscal restraint there.) The need to be seen as doing something about Gladstone outweighs whatever principles he might have imagined he had.
In terms of other property rights, we have the city enacting new codes about the cutting of trees on private property, and enacting a moratorium on development, preventing private landowners in south Maplewood from doing anything on the property they already have bought. (This of course is bringing more lawsuits to the city.)
In many of these cases, I think the voice on the council that seems most consistently to fit the pro-business profile of what you would normally expect of a conservative is actually Will Rossbach.
Let's be honest. Even in the reactionary gruntings of Chumpelopithecus hjelle, this council is not truly conservative, merely selfish. (I know, the two are often hard to distinguish.) They are pro-business if it's their friends; anti-business if the business risks bringing higher-density (lower-income) housing into their neighborhood. Pro-property rights when it's easy; but they throw those concerns aside if they can land a development deal that allows them to claim that Gladstone redevelopment is on track (never mind that the parcel in question was not part of the Gladstone redevelopment plan to begin with). They claim to be in favor of saving the city money, but are demonstrably much more in favor of pursuing their personal/family grudges and hiring their personal friends, regardless of the cost to the rest of us taxpayers. Longrie's idea of fiscal conservatism is like a caricature sometimes, when she suggests that the city buy used furniture and used sewer monitoring equipment. And in any case, their longing for jackbooted authoritarianism (whether the Stalinesque purges of city hall, breaking into the city clerk's office to read the e-mail of city councillors without the pesky privacy-protecting process mandated by law, or Hjelle's grandiose delusions that criticism of him is nigh treasonous) is not what I honestly associate with the healthy tradition of American conservatism.
Above all, this council majority has rejected the rule of law. Even before they were elected, they flouted city and campaign laws as they were running for office. Since coming into office, their ignoring of legal advice has been so bad that it led the city attorneys to resign. When they hired an outside analyst to study the functioning of the new council, he came back with a scathing report about how unprofessional they were and how far they were straying from the processes of good governance. As I quoted at the time, Prof. Schultz wrote, "The meaning of being a professional is placing personal animosities off to the side and learning how to work for a collective good." This is a lesson the council majority has utterly rejected; all year we have seen them follow personal animosity as their guiding star. Whatever they may claim their political compass is aiming at, the magnet of grudge and payback inexorably draws them, and their decisions are distinctly lacking in reasoning, ideological or otherwise.
Consider the CoPar lawsuit. Longrie's formal denial of CoPar's application for their development states, "The applicant has not proven the use would meet all of the standards required." When the Review asked for some specifics (what are some of the required standards that they're failing to meet?), Longrie replied, "I don't know what you mean by specific examples." While going through a few formal motions of deliberative and reasoned governance (the "required standards" line in a written document), behind it so often is simply the arbitrary exercise of power.
In what world is the arbitrary exercise of power to block the business plans of a private business entity on land that it owns to be held up as the work of a "new conservative majority"?
We see similarly arbitrariness followed by obfuscation in documents on the city website, which originally were blunt in describing the major city reorganization as a retaliation against city managers forming a collective bargaining unit. After numerous observers pointed out (such as in comments in our own blog) that such retaliation is illegal on the face of it, they changed their description of the rationale to some mish-mash about increasing efficiency and accountability.
Even a local conservative cable access TV personality (and close friend, I hear, to the Mayor and her husband), Bob Zick, has taken the council to task for their assaults on the role of process -- in one meeting criticizing their dead-of-night decision to cut off the hiring process and make Copeland permanent, in another criticizing their proposed rules to ban parties engaged in legal action against the city from speaking at council meeting visitor presentations. (Zick and the mayor's husband, after all, had legal disputes with the previous councils about first amendment issues. Under the proposed rule, they would have been required to only submit written testimony if they had wanted to address the council and assembled public on any topic while they were engaged in freedom-of-the-press litigation with the city.) The latter proposal failed, but it speaks volumes that the council brought it forward and Copeland recommended passing it in the first place.
As we question the purported conservatism of this council majority, it is fitting that our Republican former Mayor, Mr. Cardinal, is the one requesting that legal authorities investigate the council for their flagrant violations of the law, specifically the open meeting law. The council trio, of course, are dismissing his complaints as "sour grapes" (Longrie) and "a lie" (Cave). Similar sour-grapes liars include the former city manager, who was fired in part for warning the new councillors about open meeting law violations; and Prof. Schultz, who also raised concerns about this in his report. Hjelle dismisses Cardinal's concerns, saying "He's a politician" (which distinguishes him from Hjelle, I suppose, for whom "politician" would be a definite upgrade from "vindictive buffoon").
At this point, I'd happily settle for an actual "new conservative majority" on the city council, since that would mean leaving behind the current majority that is not just failing to do the people's business, but digging a deep hole that future councils will be saddled with getting us out of, at considerable expense and inconvenience to the citizens of Maplewood.
The struggle in Maplewood today is not conservative versus liberal -- it's the demand for good, inclusive governance and the rule of law versus incompetence, petulance, cronyism, self-serving agendas and personal vendetta.
posted by Frostbrand @ 1:06 AM
9 Comments:
At 7:54 PM,
drawnLeftward said…
Must be on everyone's mind, here is Digby this evening:
The Aristocrats
At 9:55 PM,
Frostbrand said…
That's a very interesting essay. I haven't been keeping up enough on reading Digby.
On the other hand, wasn't it Andrew Carnegie -- not exactly a flaming liberal -- who advocated a 100% estate tax? Digby makes a provocative point, but I'm not ready to ascribe a love of aristocracy (conscious or unconscious) to all conservatives.
At 12:19 AM,
Anonymous said…
Frostbrand has it all wrong when it comes to his comments about partisanship.
The Maplewood city council is listed on the non-partisan section of the ballot. This has nothing to do with whether they are actually partisan endorsed or not.
In Minnesota, all local offices, like county commissioner, city council, township board, etc. are on the non-partisan section of the ballot. In fact, the State Legislature was on the non-partisan section of the ballot from about the 1920's to about 1972.
Let me give you some examples to show my point. First, Tony Bennet of the Ramsey County board is a Republican, and has that elephant on his campaign signs. A county commissioner in Anoka is Republican endorsed. Many of the council members in Bloomington are party endorsed. There is even one or two Libertarian endorsed council members if memory serves correct, and this is not in the big cities. Even Shoreview and Eagan councils have had party endorsed candidates.
Look back in history at our state legislature. The reason some wanted to return to partisan designation in about 1972 was so voters would know who to vote for. Prior to this time, they had what was called a conservative caucus and a liberal caucus in the legislature and members often switched to which ever group was the largest so they would always be in the majority. With partisan designation, this switching parties is much more obvious.
As Frostband said, if there were partisan endorsements in Maplewood, the results might be different. Agreed. That's probably why some people are not getting endorsed. Common sense says that you only get endorsed if you have to because the office requires it, or if you know the majority in your district would approve of your endorsement when it is optional.
Also keep in mind that the state Republican party changed their platform years ago to allow for local office endorsements. The DFL just recently modified their state platform to do the same.
Is there a new conservative majority in Maplewood? Good question that can be answered only by examining issues. Since cities don't deal with the hot button issues of abortion or marriage, it makes these statements much harder to make for a fact.
The comments about firing and driving away employees is just foolishness. When the DFL takes over the state house this January, does anybody really think that they are going to keep around all the Republican employees? Hogwash. If Maplewood makes a few personnel changes due to the arrival of a new group of elected officials, I highly doubt it can be compared anything to the mass firings that is going to occur at the MN House this January. Elected officials at all levels of government have the right to bring in their own management people. This is why we have what is called civil service career employees and management employees. The management employees change with the elected officials. Whether you are a city or the executive branch, it doesn't matter because the philosophy stays the same.
This fixation on the belief that cutting taxes means you are a conservative is hogwash also. Who can say for certain that Maplewood's tax rate is appropriate? Are other cities getting more for their dollar? Does the city have a lot of people on fixed incomes which are more affected by the regressive property tax? These are issues that conservatives and liberals can find consensus on.
Erik Hjelle's comments on 100% road assessments is nothing new. It is the policy right now in Lino Lakes. In fact it is in their city charter so it can only be changed by the voters. Note that attempts to change it at the ballot box have failed.
If the characterization of Erik's position on fire departments and preference for user fees is accurate, that is nothing new. Look at Roseville. A city with low taxes but some of the highest user fees, and a part-time fire department to boot.
While some citizens might complain about higher street assessments, clearly these are people that don't get it that they are paying for it anyways. Money doesn't grow on trees. Many times if you make homeowners pay the full bill, maybe they might not be so willing to ask the city for decorative sidewalks, special brick crosswalks, and other expensive add-ons. When the cost is spread across other taxpayers, it is much easier to claim that it isn't really your money, it is someone elses.
Frostband also needs to do some research on eminent domain. It is the condemnation commissioners appointed by the court (if memory serves correct) that set the value of the land, not the city council. Mobile home park land is not owned by the residents in most cases. This is just a simple fact. If you want to own the land, then buy a single family home.
The rest of the accusations of Frostband hardly deserve a reply. Let me just point out one of his short sighted comments. He has a problem with the city buying used equipment. If this is wrong, then tell me why the League of Minnesota Cities has a for sale message board where cities buy used items from other cities?
At 1:22 AM,
Frostbrand said…
Thanks for your comments, Anonymous.
On the topic of partisanship: While the parties could endorse, and if they did the offices might still appear in the "Non-Partisan" ballot section, they have not in fact endorsed in Maplewood so far as I know. Please let me know if you have information to the contrary.
As for the personnel changes, I don't think your argument holds up. Are you really saying that the assistant manager of the community center is a political appointment that should be expected to change every two years when control of the city council shifts?
The triumvirate is clearly trying to change the "non-political appointments" status quo, and are willing to break the rules in order to drive out long-time career civil servants and replace them with individuals with personal loyalty to these council members.
If we can expect massive staff turnover whenever new people are elected to the city council, I think that's a very bad thing for our city's future.
On the topic of street assessments: Yes, we are paying for it anyways, even if we don't live on city-owned roads. However, the system that is in place, and has been explained at length at numerous council meetings by the director of public works whenever street improvements are before the council, is designed to spread the burden fairly evenly with a view across decades. If the system changed, then all the people who paid 30% or 40% of their road cost last year would be in the clear for the next 40 years or what have you, while the people who have been waiting for their repairs would suddenly be given the entire bill.
On the topic of the mobile home park: This has come up at numerous council meetings, and the council, their counsel, and the developer clearly believe that state law gives the city council the power to force a buyout price in a mobile home closing situation like this. If you didn't watch the council meetings where this is discussed, you can easily find it in the minutes and agendas, or on the videotapes of the meetings available from city hall.
Strictly speaking this may not be eminent domain, but it is a case of government forcing one private party to sell their private property for the benefit of another private party. Perhaps this council only is concerned about property rights when the rights are those of landholders or those of a certain threshold of wealth.
Finally, on the matter of used equipment. Sure, used equipment can be a good thing in some cases. Reduce, reuse, recycle, and all that. However, what this illustrates about Longrie is her inclination to be penny wise and pound foolish. While trying to micromanage the purchase of office furniture, she's passed a budget that is a mess, increasing the taxes of Maplewood property owners by more than 11% next year.
Rather than saving a few hundred bucks on chairs and couches, she might think about her decision to bloat the administrative budget with three new managers as intermediaries between Copeland and the department heads. How much will their salaries and benefits be costing us over the coming year, if not the coming decade?
I agree that there are a lot of issues that liberals, conservatives, and moderates can come together on when it comes to good municipal governance. And, as you point out, a lot of the rallying issues of today's conservatives (such as opposition to gay marriage or abortion) are just not relevant on this political level. That's all the more reason for Maplewood conservatives to question whether this council is looking out for their interests, and not reflexively support them just because they mouth a few platitudes about social issues or attended a Republican caucus.
At 1:11 PM,
Anonymous said…
Thanks for the followup Frostbrand.
On the issue of partisanship, party endorsement has no effect as to your location on the ballot. For most if not all offices, the placement on the ballot, the non-partisan section versus the partisan section, is based upon a state law. This state law only looks at the title of the office to determine placement on the ballot. Whether you are endorsed is not a factor.
I have no knowledge that anyone on the Maplewood council has been endorsed by a political party at this point. But many times political parties give what is called a silent endorsement. This happened in Anoka County this last election. Those on the party list got a mailing indicating endorsement, but the rest of the people got mailings that said nothing about endorsement. Silent endorsements are pretty common.
Party endorsement is completely separate from the discussion of being on the partisan or non-partisan section of the ballot. I should note for the record that this partisan identification on the ballot issue is a state issue and changes from state to state. In many states out east, even the dog catcher is partisan endorsed. :)
Concerning the personnel changes, we have to keep in mind that there are two separate categories of changes being made here. The first set of changes, which is the replacement of the senior management employees, is what I was primarily referring to when I said that there was nothing wrong with these positions changing when new elected officials come in. This is what my MN House DFL discussion applies to.
Your statement about the community center employees comes under the other category which is reorganization. I do not see one employee being fired and another employee being brought in to replace them. What I see is two positions being eliminated, and different positions with different job descriptions being created to replace them. Now make all the claims you want, but the fact is that you don't have a simple replacement of people. Elected officials under a Plan B government do have the authority to organize the management structure through several different means.
This concern about the council wanting to appoint "loyal" people is baffling. This is common sense. Like I said, does anyone think that the new DFL speaker of the Minnesota House is going to use the employees who worked for the Republican speaker? Heck no! You bring in people you trust. Even when speakers of the MN House changed, like when it went from DFL'er to DFL'er, staff changed. Elected officials have the right and I would argue the obligation to bring in their own people who they trust. If they keep working with people they either don't trust, or don't think are doing their jobs in their opinions, then those elected officials are idiots. When I vote for a candidate and their platform, I expect that they will do whatever possible to follow through on that platform. Some of my favorites get elected and others do not. That's the way the cookie crumbles. Keep in mind that elected officials on average serve 4 years. This isn't like the old days when we had kings who served for life.
Let's be realistic when we make claims about massive turnover. How many employees does Maplewood have? 250? 300? We are talking about the elected officials changing 5 positions, maybe 10 at the most? Let's do the math. That's about 3%? Using terms like "massive turnover" is simply scare tactics designed to fool the uninformed.
When Maplewood sees the turnover of 100 employees (due to decisions made by elected officials, not due to people getting old and filing for retirement) then we can introduce the catch phrase "massive turnover".
On the street assessment issue, what you are dealing with are two different philosophies. There is the one that has existed in Maplewood, and there is what I will call the Lino Lakes method of pay your own way 100%. Both systems have plusses and minuses. Your point about people being caught in the middle if a change is made is valid. That is something that will have to be discussed. Lino Lakes has had the discussion of changing their policy several times over the last 5 years. Falcon Heights has discussed their policy, and Roseville changed their policy several times in the last 10-15 years. But I always remind people that just because you are doing something one way doesn't mean that change cannot occur. We now drive cars, not horses. Someone had to make the decision to change and I have read at the time that many elected officials had to make tough decisions back in the 1920s on this issue.
This moblie home park situation gets complicated. The council forcing a buyout of the moblie home owners is different from the council forcing the owner of the land to sell. There is a law on the books where the council can pass an ordinance mandating a buyout price or compensation if a park closes. The last community to discuss this was Oakdale. One of the last city to enact one of these ordinances was Roseville. A group called APAC All Parks Alliance for Change is a good information resource on this issue. I presume that this issue probably will get litigated in the end.
Government taking private property for their own use, or for turnover to a developer are both called eminent domain. The Supreme Court said that government taking of property to spur economic development was ok. The state of MN passed a law to restrict eminent domain for economic development purposes. Regardless, in any case of eminent domain, the city does not set the price. The only time this happens is when the property owner and city come to an agreement, and eminent domain paperwork is only filed so the property owner gets tax benefits, primarily the right to have a longer period to reinvest the money without having to pay capitol gains. Typically the reinvestment time is something like a year, but under eminent domain, it is 3 or 5 years.
You can't make a blanket criticism of the purchased of used over new items. You can only look at this on a case by case basis. If no one has a good example for discussion, this is a moot issue.
Let's be clear that in a Plan B city, state law says that the council controls all spending. Yes all spending down to the penny. The word micromangement does not apply. The council cannot micromanage the budget when state law gives them sole and unquestioned authority to set the budget. You can argue if it is a good idea to spend time talking about how many paperclips to purchase, (which is not happening) but let's knock off this overused term "micromanagement". I see it again as a scare tactic word used to fool the uninformed.
On the issue of passing a Maplewood budget with an 11% tax increase, I think there is a little bit of personal politics in play with trying to pin the blame on Longrie. If memory serves correct, Maplewood has had 10%+ property tax increases for most of the last 5 years. Some people better expand their blame to a lot more members than just Longrie.
On the issue of adding three new managers, isn't there a responsibility to inform the public how many people these three are going to replace? I don't recall them adding three new managers. What I recall is that they eliminated something like 5 management positions and replaced them with three? If that is the case, then I know where they are going to get the money to pay for them. They are going to get the money from the salaries and benefits of the 5 they let go. Sounds like they will have money left over too. No complaints here. Anytime you have an overall reduction in management employees, that is usually good in my opinion.
Don't rap the idea of saving a few hundred bucks on chairs and couches. For some of us, a few hundred bucks means something. That money does add up. A few hundred bucks here an there turns into a few hundred thousand dollars from year to year. I would rather see that money invested in our parks than on brand spankin new office furnature.
I have no idea in a broad sense whether conservatives are having their interests looked out for. It probably can only be measured on a case by case basis. It seems like conservatives and liberals probably can point to wins on certain issues. Strengthing the alcohol laws seems like a win in the liberal column. Cutting management positions seems like a win in the conservative column.
What troubles me, and should trouble conservatives and liberals alike, is that there are efforts being made by people to try to prevent the elected officials from carrying out the functions of their positions set out in law and the constitution. Trying to prevent the council or manager from making management decisions, organizational changes, or spending decisions is just plain wrong. The scare tactics that some are using are undemocratic. Saying that you disagree with a decision is fine, but what I hear are claims that they don't have the right. This is where the problem comes in.
If citizens want to play a greater role in their government, quit complaining and start gathering signatures to form a charter commission and become a charter city like Lino Lakes. It only takes 10% of those who voted in the last city election. That can't be many. Then you can set your street assessment policy in the charter so the elected officials can't change it without a vote of the people. The people can organize the government anyway they so choose.
Knock off this garbage about how they don't have the right.
What also burns me up is this claim that the employees of the city answer to the people. Bull! The employees answer to the manager, who answers to a majority of the elected officials, who then answer to the people. That's the system of government this country has had for over 200 years. If you don't like it, then move to another country.
Where this word "micromanagement" may apply is when citizens shoot off their mouths about how they only want a specific city employee doing a service. All the people should be concerned about is whether they are getting the service itself. The name of the employee providing the service is none of their business. That is the job of the manager and the council.
Some people think that this organization called the City of Maplewood is a social club. They think that "who" is doing a specific job is their business. But I don't want my city operated like a social club, I want is run more in the manner that a business operates. To put this in the form of an example, I could care less about who works on my car at Boyer Ford (a very large dealership) just as long as my truck is fixed right the first time. I don't even dream that I can demand that only a certain person work on my car. I judge Boyer Ford on their quality of work. I judge Maplewood on the quality of work output i.e. the final product.
At 2:06 PM,
Frostbrand said…
Anonymous writes:
"This concern about the council wanting to appoint "loyal" people is baffling. This is common sense. Like I said, does anyone think that the new DFL speaker of the Minnesota House is going to use the employees who worked for the Republican speaker?"
I guess I see a world of difference between the legislature (which is one branch of the tripartite division of state government) and city government, so I think your analogy is fundmentally flawed.
A better comparison would be to the executive branch, which actually contains various agencies and career civil servants. And there, do we see middle managers in MnDOT fired or reorganized away with paper changes in job descriptions, just to replace them with people who have unquestioned loyalty to a new administration? Do we see new faces overseeing work crews on the roads whenever the governor's mansion changes parties?
Or, will the new speaker in the house result in the legislature authoring a bill to restructure the MNPCA, tweak a few job titles and descriptions, and send a bunch of middle managers to the unemployment line?
I know there are some people who want government to run like this. In the grand tradition of the Democratic machine in some places, I suppose this is how you run a patronage operation to stay in power and reward your followers. And in the grand Republican tradition of recent years, this is how you silence or drive away professionals and scientists in the FDA or EPA who provide unwanted scientific facts on issues of politically sensitive drugs, or global warming, or pollution.
It looks to me like the one political appointment in Maplewood is the city manager. He can be let go without cause. The council were within their rights to let Fursman go, however people may disagree with that decision. Arguably, the citizen committees/commissions are also political appointments, though they have set term lengths. (Even there, to remove a thorn from their side, the council majority renamed one committee to a commission, so that they could make all the members reapply and thus get rid of the citizens they don't like.)
In the case of other people, lacking just cause, they are trying every trick in the book to remove employees they don't personally like. I fear that what is being set up is a situation ripe for corruption, now and in the future.
As for the comparison to business: If I have a lot of dealings with a business, you can bet that I pay attention to their personnel issues. If you worked with a brokerage and your trusted, experienced broker was fired and replaced with some wet-behind-the-ears kid fresh out of college, would you not consider taking your business elsewhere? Maybe the kid would do as well as your old broker -- but how do you know until you've risked your portfolio in his hands? And wouldn't you be a little nervous? Especially if you found out that the kid was hired because he's friends with the CEO's son and needed a job; or if he was hired because he promised loyally to put the brokerage firm's interests first (such as pushing some securities over others), ahead of the customer's?
At 8:49 PM,
Anonymous said…
Comparing the replacement of republican staff with democratic once an election swings to the left with what is happening in Maplewood is ridiculous. While the first example is correct, in that such activity does occur, it has little to do with what happens at the city level. For that analogy to fit, one has to suppose that those city staff members were put into place by the outgoing elected officials, and in most instances in Maplewood, that is not the case.
Certainly the council was within its right to remove Fursman, although it might have been at least reasonable to see if he would be a good soldier and perform as requested first. However, to presuppose that the staff members under him somehow were his or the outgoing council’s lackeys is just wrongheaded.
For instance, as much as one of the anonymous writers wishes to claim that several positions were removed purely as a part of reorganization, logic would say otherwise. In Deputy Police Chief Banick’s case, everyone is aware that he was detailed to conduct a background investigation on the city manager. Additionally, he was involved in an arrest of the mayor’s now-husband several years ago. Is any reasonable person to believe that his removal was just part of a grand reorganization? Banick has been with the city’s police department for more than 20 years, so it can’t be claimed that he was a loyal appointment of any of the previous several city councils or even city managers. Simply for doing his job, he and his family are being punished. Unlike the new manager, most people actually have careers, and they rely on those to pay the bills. For those that signed up with a political party and jumped aboard IT might be fine to come and go with the new elections, but for those who are just going to work, performing a job, and paying the bills, that plan doesn’t make much sense. That kind of example is why employees need to be protected from arbitrary political decisions.
While political appointments might come and go, most of those city staffers being removed or pressured into leaving are not political positions. Really, only the city manager should be viewed as such. The department heads, and others below them, are professional employees who are performing a job; they were not hired on to bow to any particular group, only to perform a function. If they are not performing their jobs satisfactorily, remove them, but to do so as a way to stack the deck one way or the other is just plain wrong.
Even if it were entirely within the city manager’s or council’s right to remove any employees they wished to bring in those loyal to some particular ideology, if any of those in control exhibited a shred of leadership or management ability, or even decency for that matter, they would at least provide the opportunity for employees to succeed or fail once the new direction is set. I don’t really expect the new council members to consider that, as we all know that running and winning elected office often has nothing to do with actual knowledge or abilities, however, any person appointed to the position of city manager should. Our city manager’s obvious inability to actually lead others is quite apparent; only someone so weak would feel the need to rid the building of all those who’ve come before.
At 5:06 PM,
Anonymous said…
The reason it is legitimate to compare the replacement of party staff at the MN House to what is happening in Maplewood, is because all government acts the same. Why is that? Because the Maplewood government and our state government is run by the same people with the same values and the same ideals.
It defies common sense and logic to believe that the same citizens would say "oh we are a city so we don't act that way" or "oh we are a state legislature so we can act that way."
I have no idea what elected officials were serving when certain employees were hired, and I don't think it matters. Sometimes these senior manager types last through more than one administration. Look at Matt Smith over in Saint Paul. Hired by Kelley and now working for Coleman. When the next mayor comes in there, who knows what will happen.
If we want to say that Maplewood is a little different, I will give you a little bit of leway. You could make the argument that every time a new city manager is hired (it doesn't matter why or how) then this manager has the right to bring in his own management team.
I will say for certain that yes, those senior management employees were Fursman. Some he may have hired and some he may have adopted. Regardless, the next manager has no obligation to adopt them also. In the Saint Paul scenario, some new people were brought in and others adopted. I didn't hear anybody crying in Saint Paul calling for the burning of city hall when Andy Dawkins lost his job due to an election change over. Maybe that's because Andy acted like a professional and took it like a man, which is sure a far cry from some I have seen in Maplewood.
To focus on Banick, if this guy is as good as some claim, then why doesn't he get a job as a police chief in a neighboring city. I recognize that he has a career, but here is where we differ. Banick has a career in law enforcement, not a career as a Maplewood employee. I see Banick's elimination as a change in structure and nothing else.
One question that hasn't been answered for me on this Banick issue is whether he can take another position in the department. Anyone know? Or is it that he doesn't want to take another position.
Concerning Banick's actions with Diana's husband and with Copeland, let me just say that if I was in his shoes, the Diana husband thing would have never happened. Secondly, I still to this day cannot figure out what anyone was thinking in that PD by having the Maplewood police department do a background search on the guy who was going to be their boss. It doesn't take much of any brains to figure out that you farm this stuff out to a neighboring department. I'm sure that some chief around here owes a favor to Maplewood and would have just done it. What I have heard is typically done is that these searches are actually farmed out to private companies who specialize in this stuff. What was the Maplewood PD thinking? Were they thinking at all?
The next question is whether department heads should be considered political appointees. There is not a solid yes or no answer to this. In some cities, the council appoints them. In other cities, the council confirms manager appointments. In cities like Oakdale, the council retains all hiring and firing powers. Actually in most Minnesota cities, the council retains all hiring and firing powers over all employees from the manager to the janitor.
Personally I see the management team to be directly responsible to the elected official. Therefore I have no problem seeing department heads and managers replaced whenever new elected officials come into office. As I have implied earlier, the elected officials have a duty to have a team that will carry out their goals. They have a right to select that team. The manager has a right to select his team also.
This idea that these senior level employees can only be removed because they are doing a bad job is more hogwash. People at this level are replaced for numerous reasons. Maybe they are looking for different job skills. Maybe they simply want a new perspective. Loyality is also a legitimate concern. Who wants senior management people working to undermine you at every turn in the road.
There is no obligation for the new manager or council to give these senior management people "a chance". It isn't about giving anyone a chance. It isn't about whether they have won 10 awards doing their job. What is is about is the elected officials and/or the manager assembling their team to accomplish whatever they set out to do.
If these positions were solely about who is doing the job the best, well of course the person holding the job wins. After all, the person doing the job always knows more about it than any new person. If that was the case, then lets change the system and appoint these jobs for life. You keep the job until you die. But that's not how it works in life.
Copeland's leadership is showing strong in my opinion by his hiring/firing actions. He is taking the steps to assemble a team, rather than simply just sailing along until the next job opportunity comes along. That is what most of these city manager types do. They come into a city and just sail along, knowing that the next job promotion and raise is 5 years away.
Let me just lay out this scenario for some thinking. Most people consider that Ronald Reagan was a great leader. Some think that FDR was a great leader. Which ever one is to your political liking, go examine how many people they replaced when they came into office. If replacing more people is a sign of poor leadership, then both of these men would be consider deadbeats by this supposed Maplewood city manager leadership standard.
In this day and age a lot of government employees have this entitlement mentality that they own their jobs. Of course, the rest of us who have to work in the real world laugh at this. Therefore, I find anyone willing to put their foot down to replace a few of these entitlement mentality government employess is a true leader and should be given a badge of honor.
And as a side note, if any of these employees were the ones that were clapping and jeering at the coucnil meeting Fursman was fired at (which I was also in attendance at), they should all recieve their pink slips. What an embarassment to themselves and their professions. Maybe a topic for another thread...
At 10:38 PM,
Frostbrand said…
> One question that hasn't been
> answered for me on this Banick issue
> is whether he can take another
> position in the department. Anyone
> know?
If I recall the conversation on this topic at the truth in taxation meeting, it went something like this (paraphrase):
Q: Are we eliminating this position, or the person who occupies it?
Copeland: Both.
From follow-up discussions at meetings (I believe Rossbach brought up the issue of keeping him in the department in another position), I have the sense that Banick is explicitly not welcome to stay in the department. But perhaps I'm getting the wrong impression, or will be told so when the matter comes before a judge.
> Secondly, I still to this day
> cannot figure out what anyone was
> thinking in that PD by having the
> Maplewood police department do a
> background search on the guy who
> was going to be their boss.
Good question.
Not surprisingly, there are conflicting answers. Accoring to the chief of police, the former HR director, and the former city attorney, they strongly recommended hiring an outside firm. Mayor Longrie insisted that they just do it in house.
When this came up in a council meeting when the report was being discussed, Diana said "Oh, I never said that!" She then asked which meeting, what date? And as it happened the city attorney and police chief had the specific date when she gave them explicit instructions to do the check within the police department, against their counsel. Diana's response was something along the lines of "well, I don't remember exactly what we talked about that day."
So if you're a fan of Diana, the police department inexplicably decided to investigate their own new boss themselves, in spite of the possibility of just such a situation as we now have (where the person who dug up the dirt gets canned in retribution); and then they colluded with the city attorney and HR director to lie about it.
On the other hand, if you've come to realize that Diana lies, makes crap up whenever it suits her, and isn't any kind of intellectual heavyweight, it's a lot easier to believe that the professionals are telling the truth and Diana is either lying or made the original decision in a casual manner and then simply forgot about it.
If you look at the pattern over time, Diana clearly has a tendency to drop big, blatant falsehoods out there, in order to give her supporters something to cling to. In the last council meeting, for example, she made up a whopper about how the city staff who formed a bargaining unit had actually been planning to do that for years, so it has nothing to do with this council in specific. Laughably false -- but if you follow her blindly, it's enough to hang on to.
Why else do I believe Diana insisted it be done in house? Besides penny-pinching, she'd been burned by independent investigations -- first the one that inspired this blog in the first place, which tore into Erik Hjelle (and Longrie, and Cave, who shared the same illegal envelope-stuffing party on city property); and then the Schultz report, which again failed to serve Diana's purposes. Whenever independent investigators look at Maplewood, they find something rotten. So I'll bet she figured that someone who would have Copeland as a boss would choose self-interest over the truth, and downplay the muck in his past.
Heh. For all we know, they did, and the damning report we know about only tells a fraction of his sordid story.
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