Be nice. Play nice. A public interest message

Maybe you missed the story in the NYT a couple of months ago that characterized certain San Diegans as “aggressively bland…scrubbed of their character… command(ing) so little attention…”

Yes, the description is a dead ringer for our current mayor Kevin Faulconer.  But no, the story wasn't about him.

It was about a new No.1 starter for our  hometown baseball team– left in the lurch three years ago by a wily real estate developer who amassed mega-millions through canny downtown redevelopment deals with obliging city officials and then headed off to Texas with his publicly-subsidized loot.  For former Padres owner John Moores, the public good was hardly the point of his business plan.   

Turns out that the public good was not in the business plan of that other wily profiteer, the one with an equally-practiced eye for lucrative real estate investments.  Doug Manchester gobbled up the city’s sole daily newspaper and macerated it into a silly small-town rag, decimating the stock of local and regional professional reporters in cynical contempt of the public interest.  In the process he'll personally come off many $millions in the black.

How is it that the city of San Diego routinely gets fleeced by real estate developers, by hotelier/ tourism/ hospitality entrepreneurs, by Chamber of Commerce hacks, by well-heeled businessmen and sports team owners and self-promoting downtown partnerships and upwardly-mobile politicians?   

How is it that over the past couple of decades the civic notion of the public good has been trounced and buried in the pileup of downtown money, unsmart growth, and vacuous leadership?  Instead of community benefits we get bland, scrubbed clichés about civility: Be nice.  Play nice.  Don't rock the boat.

Now here's the latest civil warning: The free-for-all massacre of our previous mayor was A-OK but don't mess with our current mayor Kevin Faulconer – the evasive, ever-so-nice guy who's being powdered and groomed as a potential candidate for higher office, maybe even (gulp) California governor.   Haven't you noticed how our public-minded reformers, intelligent thinkers, and anyone else uncivil enough to challenge the status quo get harassed, discredited, and hounded out of town?

So who will risk challenging the policies of civil-tongued mayor Faulconer, one of the most airbrushed, remote-controlled, public relations-created marshmallow fellows our city has yet produced?  San Diego is definitely at a political low point.

Which brings us full circle to an important public-interest message about the San Diego City Charter: There are meetings underway at City Hall to modify our City Charter.  

While it's true that our City Charter is in bad need of cleanup and reorganization,  much of that work can be taken care of by the City Attorney's office.  But if major and substantive changes to the Charter are in the works, we will need an appointed or elected Citizens Charter Commission to do the job, not just a Council Charter Committee.  It may be expensive and time consuming, but to avoid the mischief that's inevitable without open and informed public participation, there's no way around it.

Our City Charter is akin to a government constitution.  It's the fundamental law of the city.  To address the fact that hardly anyone knows why the Charter exists, I recently sent a suggestion to the City Council Charter Review Committee to add a preamble to the Charter.  A preamble?  What's that?  

A preamble is simply a public interest message spelling out the purpose and intent of our city government / City Charter.  It enumerates the guiding principles that underlie San Diego city government and clarifies for people living and doing business in the city what the public good entails.  A preamble could help our city identify its better self and dig itself out from under.

Here’s my stab at what the San Diego City Charter preamble could and should say:

City government is the steward of the public good.  The purpose and intent of the San Diego City Charter is to provide for government effectiveness, efficiency, and fiscal responsibility; ensure government responsiveness to local needs; enable equitable development and environmental justice in our communities; foster transparency, ethics, and accountability in government functions; assure fair citizen participation in the affairs of the City; improve the safety, quality of life, and standard of living of all San Diegans; engage in long-term conservation and sustainable management of our natural resources; protect the integrity of government decision-making; and promote public confidence in city government.

We, the people of the City of San Diego, have established this City Charter under the home-rule provision of the Constitution of the State of California and ordain it as the fundamental law of the City.

(FYI: The next City Council Charter Review Committee is scheduled for Thursday, April 16, 2015 at 2pm in the City Council Committee Room, 12th Floor, City Administration Building (aka City Hall).   The Committee Consultant is Steve Hadley (619) 533-5906 or charterreview@sandiego.gov)

City government: why can't we run it like a business?

Last time we met we figured out how San Diego was begotten.  Now it’s time to unravel the purpose of city government and discover what’s it all about when you sort it out…

We’ll start the sorting process with a couple of facts.  Then we’ll go for the jackpot question: why can’t city government be run like a business? 

First fact: city government deserves a lot more attention from you and me than it usually gets.  Why? because our elected officials have substantial influence on our everyday lives – more than we give them credit for. 

The political decisions of our mayor and council members penetrate our neighborhoods and reach straight into our private homes, directly impacting how we navigate our personal lives.  Sometimes it's for better.  Other times it's for worse.  

Second fact: did you know that San Diego is legally defined as a municipal corporation?  No, it’s not a business in the ordinary sense.  Our city is classified as a self-governing public entity endowed with the “right and power to make and enforce all laws and regulations in respect to municipal affairs.”

And exactly what are municipal affairs?  Probably not what you're thinking.  Municipal affairs are the city's raison d'être.  The city is created to deliver public public safety and essential infrastructure.  Core services invariably include police and fire protection (in a coastal town, throw in lifeguards), water and power, garbage collection/ sewers/ sanitation (public restrooms get short shrift), parks, streets and roads, libraries, and schools.

Can you think of any other items that qualify as a municipal affair worthy of government intervention? How about public funding for sports teams? public funding for after-school programs? hiking the value of land via discretionary zoning changes to enhance developer profits? reinvesting in the Housing Trust Fund to build low-income housing? city-sponsored WiFi? underwriting costs for the 3^rd expansion of our Convention Center? mandates to reduce energy and water consumption? legislating the size of worker wages?

Making and enforcing laws in respect to municipal affairs seems benign but surprise! you’ve just entered the twilight zone of city politics, where competing political philosophies and interests go mano a mano in bloody battle for dominance, favor, and financial support. 

Which leads us to the jackpot question: why can't city government be run like a

business? 

Asking it another way, can the goals and values inherent in governmental responsibilities to the public (municipal affairs) line up with the goals and values associated with commercial business (making a profit)?  Can the practices of the public sector and private sector co-mingle in City Hall without producing corrupt mutant offspring?

Here's one way to think about it: in the existential quest for survival, we humans rely on a couple of different systems to satisfy our needs.  Both systems are valid and necessary.  One involves trade/commerce/ business.  The other involves government.  (For a detailed presentation of this concept pick up a copy of Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics by Jane Jacobs.)  

These two systems are complimentary but fundamentally antagonistic since each operates under a discrete set of goals, objectives, values, and attitudes. 

The ideals of business incorporate values like the freedom to seek one’s own self interest, competition with other interests, efficiency, innovation, and measureable output.  The bottom line is profit.  While business is often a force for good, the greater good is not the foremost goal of business.  

Government, on the other hand, operates under a set of values geared to serving and protecting society.  Some may view it as the guardian of the vulnerable and defender of the common good.  By its nature, government focuses on the greater good and is antithetical to profit-making and competition.  

Both systems have perilous limitations.  Fraud, greed, and public theft are generally the outcome of unrestrained or poorly regulated business practices.  And when public watchdogs are muzzled or marginalized, government can run roughshod over personal liberties and individual rights.

But at its best, local government provides a stable, lawful, structured environment for the business sector.  Commerce can thrive where government provides good infrastructure, education, health, transportation, and stability. 

And at its best, business provides the public sector with strong economic engines and technologic advances.  Local government can thrive when economic opportunities, options, and benefits are enhanced for city residents and workers.

It's called symbiosis – wholesome cooperation between government and business.  It's not only desirable, it's necessary since neither one does well in the absence of the other.

But symbiosis is different from inter-breeding.   Interbred hybrids create unhealthy mutants.  Think of organized crime.  Think of our nation’s investment bankers and corporate raiders. 

Closer to home, think about our termed-out politicians who have reincarnated as high-cost lobbyists. 

Think about former mayor Jerry Sanders, who laid aside the public good and joined the dark side as chief hatchet man for San Diego’s overweening and morally challenged Chamber of Commerce.   

Think about congressman Juan Vargas’s remunerative meanderings between political office and the insurance industry. 

Think about master-schnorrer John Moores, hovering once again over the heart of downtown to rake in new fortunes through the beneficence of city subsidies and land deals.

Think about the latest corporate welfare bribe from mayor Kevin Falconer making nice to the Illumina Corporation.  It might go a long way to keeping him comfortably afloat once his stint as mayor comes to an end.

It takes strong ethical leadership to curb the creation of municipal mutants like these.  It takes sturdy ethical moorings to prevent business interests from dominating city government.  It takes political integrity to synthesize the responsibilities of government with private business objectives while keeping them at arms length from one another.

Where does that leave us?  Will we stay silent as City Hall become a marketplace for monied business interests who walk away with the spoils?  Will we be passive as our elected council members abdicate their rightful role at City Hall?  Will we roll over for a mayor who is just following orders as he ignores his responsibility to the public and willfully conflates government's business with business's business?  

Or will we rally friends and neighbors and learn how to get ourselves heard now that we know what it’s all about when you sort it out…(don't miss the musical rendition)