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)

Parable of the little buggers

Confession: I get a daily dose of viruses, bacteria, parasites, protozoa, ticks... little buggers that like to lurk in raw milk, sexual escapades, other people’s sneezes.... Okay, I don’t get these infections, I get to talk about them (mostly with my infectious disease-expert husband).

But even he was stumped when I described a mysterious epidemic sweeping through San Diego.  I said it was targeting unsuspecting voters.  Very unusual...he said.

To me the diagnosis is clear: San Diegans have been exposed to a politically-motivated disease, spread along the campaign trail by a pair of genetically-modified-look-alike-mosquito-bots.  They're zeroing in for the big bite come the June 5 mayoral primary.

Who are these twin buggers? none other than candidates Nathan Fletcher and Carl DeMaio. They're the active agents transmitting perilous pathology, namely intimidation… manipulation… political sociopathy…

If you're concerned about the health and well-being of your loved ones, here’s what you need to watch out for:

The Peril of Intimidation

* Nathan Fletcher's bullying threats to city workers: "I interrogated al-Qaeda…I can negotiate a labor deal" are overkill.  His contempt for ordinary civilians who live what he calls a "climate-controlled life" is way out of line.

Skills in the martial arts have little to do with the qualities and qualifications citizens deserve in their elected officials.  You might remember that Fletcher’s former employer Duke Cunningham also used his military record as a weapon to win election -- then the Duke engaged in bribery and fraud and ended up in prison for abusing the public trust.

* Carl DeMaio is no novice when it comes to bullying and aggressive behavior but here’s the difference: DeMaio doesn't glad hand.  He's not a chameleon.  What you see is what you get...whatever that's worth.  

  

The Peril of Manipulation

* Nathan Fletcher is no shirker when it comes to manipulating the public.  He delivers feel-good declarations of political independence but marches in lockstep with conservative mentors like Newt Gingrich, Pete Wilson, and Karl Rove.  

To advance his political career he maneuvers behind the backs of the public at the behest of downtown redevelopers.  He aggrandizes himself in public appearances as a lion in combat.  He capitalizes on the brutal deaths of two north county girls -- a callous exploitation of the grief and misfortune of others.

* Carl DeMaio has a knack for turning ordinary words inside-out.  He zeroes in on commonplace democratic (as in small d democracy) snags and hitches and attributes them to “out of control government bureaucracy.”  He twists the word reform to try to crush city unions and eliminate living wage protections.

Out of his mouth, reform means outsourcing government services to private monopolies.  His mission is to “shrink government to the size where we can drown  it in the bathtub,” in lockstep with the ideals of his guru, Grover Norquist.

The Peril of Political Sociopathy

* Nathan Fletcher and Carl DeMaio are running neck and neck in this category.  The two of them share a common history.  Both, at a young age, were scooped up, tutored, and polished by powerful upper-echelon masters in the conservative wing of the Republican Party.


Both have a knack for manipulating public discontent to promote ideological, political, and personal agendas. They exemplify a brave new world of millennial confidence men masquerading as populists.

Both candidates exhibit strikingly similar idiosyncracies: repetitive, tightly-drilled speech patterns...oddly-robotic responses…unblinking, vacant eye contact.... It's possible that San Diego will go down in history as the first American city where not one but two manchurian candidates ran against one another for the office of mayor.

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The moral of this parable? Physician, heal thyself.  It means that the cure must come from our own actions.  It's as simple as that.  Don't forget to vote on June 5.  

Let's talk trash

Last year the Mayor went whole hog in his efforts to sell off the city's landfill operations at Miramar Marine Air Corps Station.  His rationale was that our cash-strapped city could save money by transferring municipal landfill operations to a  profit-making private trash company.

The Mayor decided to privatize the landfill operation despite the fact that our landfill at Miramar has been a recognized success story, thanks to exemplary practices of the city's environmental services division to protect air and groundwater quality at the site.

Oddly, in an apparent attempt to lure in the private sector, our Mayor quietly snuffed out the city's high-level standards and spent half a million dollars on consultant fees for a landfill report to expedite the sale.  But privatization attempts fizzled when no acceptable buyer stepped up to the plate.

Why has last year's news become new news?  Because the pressure to privatize city services appears so irresistible to the Mayor that he's resurrected last year's failed push for a private takeover of Miramar landfill through an invention called "managed competition."

Managed what?  How many of you remember the political battle in 2006 over the "managed competition" ballot measure?  This cynical and somewhat cock-eyed concept was sold to and swallowed by San Diego voters as a panacea for our destitute city, a way to institute (according to the Mayor) a "smaller, more responsive and more cost-efficient city government."

Here's how "managed competition" works: the Mayor determines which and when a city service should be put out for bid.  This could include big-deal municipal services like our water, sewer, trash collection, planning, library, and parks and recreation departments.  Or smaller-deal city services like building and vehicle maintenance, printing/publishing, and street sweeping.  Once a department is targeted for "managed competition" the city circulates a public solicitation notice to private contractors to start the bidding process. 

The rationale for calling it "managed competition" and not outright privatization is that city employees in targeted departments would be offered the opportunity to submit a "competitive restructuring plan" demonstrating their ability to get the job done more cost-effectively and efficiently than private bidders.  In other words, they could compete with private contractors for their jobs.

Who thinks up these things?  In this case it's the brainchild of the Reason Foundation, a well-funded libertarian think tank dedicated, for the past three decades, to goals like shrinking government, reducing/eliminating taxes, and transferring government functions into private hands.  The Reason people are more than happy to come to your home town, create policy reports with local think tanks, support and "educate" politicians, and do whatever else it takes to dismantle the public face of government. 

For better insight into the marching orders San Diego has been responding to during the past few years, you need look no further than this partial list of Reason's How To Guides gleaned from their website:

• How to Navigate the Politics of Privatization (How-to Guide #15)
• A Guide for Divesting Government Owned Enterprises (#21)
• Solid Waste Management: A Guide for Competitive Contracting for Collection (#16)
• Privatizing Emergency Medical Service (#14)
• Guidelines for Airport Privatization (#13)
• Techniques for Mining the Public Balance Sheet -- a systematic process of identifying and divesting government assets through sale, lease, or other techniques (#10)
• Long-term Contracting for Water and Wastewater Services (#19)
• Designing a Comprehensive Privatization Program for Cities (#2)

Kind of takes your breath away, doesn't it? 

Self-centered, short-sighted, and greedy inclinations have never been strangers in our town, but San Diegans have traditionally drawn the line at hardball political ideology, fringe politics, and mean-spirited decision-making.  Now is not the time to redraw that line.  We ought to take a long, hard look at where our city has been drifting (or pushed) and choose a more productive option -- like identifying what’s broken and focusing our efforts on fixing it.

We have no right to dismantle city government to fulfill some group's ideology.  Our sitting politicians (Democratic, Republican, whatever...), labor leaders, bureaucrats, and moneyed-special interests have no right to create an emaciated city to hand down to future San Diegans.  Our Mayor and Council have no right to deliver piecemeal and deceptive responses to the city's financial crisis that only serve to deepen the city's decline.

What to do? Let's put "managed competition" to its highest and best use by circulating a public solicitation notice that initiates a competitive bidding process for a restructuring plan (aka Chapter 9 of the federal Bankruptcy Code) to fix what's broken in our city, while keeping all hands on top of the table, out of the city's till, and far removed from any more attempts to sell off and dismantle city government.

A musical interlude

The times they are a-changin.  It’s true that San Diego has always been a business-oriented town, dominated by special-interest players with a pragmatic and easy-to-recognize objective -- maximizing private profits (often at public expense).

But new ingredients have been introduced into San Diego’s political stew, making it more opaque and slimy in texture.  The objective is no longer just a matter of private moneymaking.  Lately, opportunism and political ideology have become equal partners.

This political ideology is called shrink government.  It's not about reducing public costs or risks.  It's about severing the democratic contract between people and their government.  That's the dogma behind recent pressure to hand over Balboa Park to a private corporation, sell off our library system, privatize city functions, outsource our water department, and eliminate good benefits for city workers.

It’s bad enough that three generations of city officials are responsible for creating, maintaining, and defending a chaotic pension system in San Diego.  And it’s bad enough that this chaotic system is wreaking havoc on city finances and the public well-being.

But bad enough doesn’t seem to be bad enough for some of San Diego’s top officials and business operatives, who are holding  press conferences promoting bogus “solutions” they claim will take care of the city’s pension problems and financial black hole.

Mayor Sanders/Councilmember Faulconer/Councilmember deMaio/SD Taxpayers Association/Lincoln Club are promoting yet another shrink government ploy, a pension proposal for the 2012 ballot to wipe out reliable retirements for incoming city employees (excluding police).

Their proposal does pretty much nothing, nada, to remedy the $2B pension deficit that hangs like an albatross around the city’s drooping neck.  In fact, it's a double negative for the city.  But they seem willing to scoop the San Diego public out of the frying pan and plop us directly into the fire

Who let the dogs out?  What's being unleashed in our city is rooted in a  shrink government ideology and has little to do with what’s good for the public.  The sorry state of city finances and the city's history of reprehensible pension-related decisions are false justifications, smokescreens, for the shakedown taking place in San Diego.

It sheds new light on the boasts coming out of City Hall about San Diego becoming a “national battleground,” a test case for new strategies to get government out of the business of taking care of public needs.  Is that what we want to do in our city, transfer control over public business out of public hands and into the hands of private enterprise? 

It's worth a try to work it on out.  It still may be possible to fix the existing pension system if we launch the job now.  No need for a million-dollar campaign to sell inferior pension options to voters.  No need for a year's worth of paid signature-gatherers hawking a misleading petition outside Vons and Target.

Just an infusion of new energy, political backbone, and some financial restructuring tools (municipal bankruptcy -- that unspeakable term again) could deliver meaningful relief from the overwhelming financial burden of a decade of poorly-regulated pension practices AND create a reformed, controlled, and respectful public retirement system -- a double positive for the city.

We can choose a positive future for our city...as long as we keep a wary eye on political missionaries with ambitions to turn San Diego into a battleground to advance their ideological causes.