Wednesday, December 31

Political Appointments, Qualifications, and the American Dream
Part I: Blagojevich and Kennedy

The novelist, Richard Ford, once wrote, “Luck is infatuated with efficiency.” Against all odds, luck gets things done. (That’s, after all, what makes it luck.) Political appointments are a lot like luck. They, too, are efficient. They, too, get things done. As if by magic, shoulders get tapped, appointments are made, positions are filled, and life goes on.  


Over and against luck and political power is the American Dream, essentially, an ideology which couples the work ethic and equal opportunity. Work hard, play by the rules, pay your dues, build up your qualifications, and, when an opportunity arises, your time will come. Are political appointments compatible with the American Dream? What do politicians mean when they say an aspiring appointee is qualified for a particular position? Where does loyalty fall in democratic theory? Appointments are the talk of the day in politics. We are devoting two posts, one looking at the national scene, and a second, at the local situation.  

Nationally, we’ve seen Governor Blagojevich of Illinois arrested, in part, for the way he is allegedly handling the appointment of Barack Obama’s replacement in the U.S. Senate. As president-elect, Obama resigned his Senate seat in order to be inaugurated President, January 20, 2009. F.B.I. reports suggest what Blagojevich has in mind is for the seat to go to the highest bidder. The one most qualified would be the one who could do the most good for Blagojevich, whether that be campaign fund raising, appointments to positions, even possibly outright cash payments to the Governor, it has been suggested.  

Facing criminal prosecution, and even impeachment, Blagojevich might well resign. Party leaders in the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois have hoped for that, and Obama has even called for it. However, in a surprise move, the Governor now says that he is hunkering down, that he is not resigning, and that he will fight the charges. He wants to subpoena Rahm Emanuel, a product of the Chicago machine now headed to the White House as Chief of Staff for the new president. Having had the whistle blown on him, perhaps Blagojevich is now the one blowing the whistle. Let the public hear what insiders have to say, under oath, about how all this works. What exactly was said about Obama’s personal preference for the post, Valerie Jarrett, or Jesse Jackson, Jr., son of civil rights icon Jess Jackson? Does any Chicago Land politician really want a trial with the whole world tuned in to the inner workings of the machine, even if Blagojevich is a renegade? If Blagojevich is guilty, then shame on him, but to the extent that he just carried ‘machine politics’ too far, then shame on the other cogs as well.


In another surprise move, Blagojevich, yesterday, announced the appointment of Roland Burris, former Illinois attorney general, to the seat. If the appointment holds, Burris would be the one and only African-American in the U.S. Senate. Disingenuous or not, this move, severely complicates the matter as critics of Blagojevich must now weigh the merits of the appointment, against the process tainted by various accusations of wrong doing on the part of the governor.

Back in New York State, with New York’s junior U.S. Senate seat likely to be vacated with the presumed confirmation of Hillary Clinton as U.S. Secretary of State, Governor Paterson is now pondering her successor. He, too, pundits advise, is weighing the personal and political benefits of the various prospects. Paterson, who was Lieutenant Governor, assumed the governorship upon the resignation of Eliot Spitzer earlier this year, has declared himself a candidate for re-election in 2011. He is looking for someone who can help his interests, including campaign fund raising and vote getting, for whoever he picks for the Senate seat would likely be on the ballot with him. We are in a strange moment: A governor not elected to that office would select a U.S. Senator who would not be elected to that office (at least temporarily, until November, when a special election to complete the remainder of the Clinton’s term would be held) and together the two incumbents would seek a proper election to his/her respective office. Paterson is also looking for a strong advocate for New York in Washington, D.C., who could help steer bailout funding our way.  

Caroline Kennedy, 51, daughter of the late President John Kennedy, has made her interest in the post known, and has been actively seeking the appointment. She’s been the frontrunner for the non-election, but once she came out of seclusion and under the scrutiny of the press, her candidacy has lost some luster. She’s been questioned about her qualifications, and doubts about her have emerged.  

In a series of media interviews over the past few days Kennedy answered questions, essentially for the first time. Turns out she doesn’t have much to say about herself and the great issues of the day. She has also been ridiculed for her frequent pauses in her speech. Public speaking experts say that her speech pattern is distracting and hurts her credibility, as if she needs time to search for what she wants to say. Overall, it’s as if she’s been not in a Kennedy spotlight, but a Kennedy fog all these years. It’s almost as if she is trying to portray herself as the sympathetic figure. “…I come into this thinking I have to work twice as hard as anyone else. Nobody’s entitled to anything, certainly not me. There are many qualified people in this. And so, I am an unconventional choice. I understand that I haven’t pursued the traditional path. But I think that in our public life today, we’re starting to see there are many ways into public life and public service. All our institutions are less hierarchical than they used to be.”

When asked about her qualifications, she lists her accomplishments as a writer, mother, and fundraiser. Now that her qualifications are better known, she appears less qualified. Kennedy has contributed heavily to various Democratic candidates. She gave $4,600 to Obama’s campaign; $1,000 to Christopher Dodd; $5,000 to Hillary’s Senate race, and $2,300 to Hillary’s presidential run. The Kennedy name is not about name recognition, as much as it is about a family network formed over a half century of political life at every level.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines qualification as “a quality, an ability, or an accomplishment that makes a person suitable for a particular position or task.” Suitable means “appropriate to a purpose or an occasion.” And appropriate means “suitable.” In an equal opportunity situation, qualifications for a post would be stated in advance, interested parties would come forward with credentials verifying their qualifications, and then the most qualified would be selected.
In the political realm, though, things are different. Qualifications for a position are usually not articulated, and when they are, hardly ever in advance. And no one ever argues that this particular person under consideration is most qualified. Merely qualified, which begs the question of how qualified, is good enough. And in the political realm, political qualifications count a great deal. Political weight can tip the scale in favor of an otherwise weak, but plausible candidate.

Presidential candidate John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, offered a sensational demonstration of these points. As governor of Alaska for a brief period and mayor and city councilor of a small Alaskan town for some years, political supporters said she was qualified, while her detractors said no, even though she had more years in office and more executive experience than Obama, and far more years in office than Hillary Clinton. Problem was, when she opened her mouth, it was clear that whatever experience she had had, it did not translate to knowledge, perspective, insight and understanding. Much the same is happening with Caroline Kennedy. On the other hand, whatever their experience, Obama and Hillary become more impressive when they speak; Clinton with her knowledge and Obama with his inspiration.

Blagojevich may survive as governor and Kennedy may well fail in her brief, shining moment of a run for the U.S. Senate. The scenarios may be on opposite ends of a continuum of how political appointments work, but both situations give us pause as we reflect on the meaning of qualifications in democracy, because they are not all that far apart in what they reveal about our political lives

Monday, December 29

Steps In The Right Direction: A Look Back at 2008 and Suggestions for 'Moving Forward' in 2009

NoStringsGeneva launched 2008 with a series of New Year’s resolutions for the new Council. We called for improvement in five areas:

  1. That ‘executive session’ as the norm for Council meetings would be stopped, reserving such sessions for when the narrow conditions set for them by the Open Meetings Law were met.
  2. That Council should conduct itself with professionalism and decorum, focusing statements on public actions and the public record, rather than personalities and personal attacks.
  3. That financial disclosure forms would be filed by Councilors and management staff disclosing any real or perceived interests in organizations or private firms that have, or may be seeking, support from or business with the City.
  4. That Council operates as a body of the whole, meaning that public business should not be conducted by subgroups of Council (along with staff) unless there is a specifically designated and publicly announced committee to do so.
  5. That the Mayor and Councilors recognize their status as role models in the community and do not seek to exempt themselves from the law.

While Council did make progress in each area, there is still room for improvement. Executive sessions have been curtailed, but controversy around the Bergmann Plan and other issues show the need for more transparency in government. There were still some raucus Council meetings, with the demeanor of of individual Councilors still questionable, and personal attacks were still too frequent, even if confined to non-televised worksessions. The new Mayor is far less tolerant of Councilors being roughed up in public so that has brought some much needed protection and professionalism to the table. An enhanced Code of Ethics, which includes provisions for full financial disclosures, passed a first reading and will be back on Council's agenda in early 2009, so we are hopeful that the Code will be implemented. But, one councilor was front-page news with his chronic failure to comply with City codes in his role as landlord while a community agency saw its properties shut down for similar violations. The key moving forward will be equity and fairness in both policy-making and enforcement.

With the former Mayor, City Manager, and City Attorney now absent from the scene, most of the year was spent in searches, for new City staff and for coherence in the Council. So, a lot of the new Council’s time was dedicated to ‘cleaning house’, even if much of it was involuntary. Then, of course, there was the lakefront. We’ve made our opinion on that matter quite clear, including our recent post that garnered comments from both the Mayor and community-based participants in the decision making process.

A few additional details on some of these points:
First, we would note that, with the exception of the meetings to discuss and interview the applicants for the City Manager’s position, Council did not engage in many executive sessions. From the time the new City Manager came on board (July 1st) through the end of 2008, City Council convened eight (8) executive sessions out of nineteen (19) meetings. Several of those sessions were for reviewing resumes and interviewing candidates for the City Attorney position, others were to discuss the Town of Geneva’s lawsuit against the City regarding sewer rates.   Not only have there been fewer executive sessions, Council has been better about indicating the purpose of the session, again, as called for in Open Meetings Law. These are positive developments to be sure!

The enhanced code of ethics for Council and all City employees, if implemented and complied with, should go a long way towards addressing several issues. A financial disclosure form will be on Council’s table at the January meeting when the code of ethics is slated to become law and the City Manager also created a rubric of specific behavioral guidelines to give Council, staff, and the public a better understanding of the expectations of the conduct of public business.

What will 2009 bring? Well, we have a few suggestions:

  1. As our upcoming post on trust will discuss, the Mayor and Council have a responsibility to engage the public in a meaningful way, and that includes interacting with the public. The two keys here are being responsive and being respectful. In order to achieve those two objectives, Council has to create and maintain an environment that fosters respectful dialogue. We believe this is an area where improvement can occur in 2009 if Councilors are prepared to not only let the public speak their mind, but to be responsive, in dialogue, to what the public is saying. Responsiveness can take many forms, and it is as important in between meetings as it is during the open sessions themselves.
  2. The City Charter indicates that the Mayor shall act as the head of Council and chair Council meetings. On at least three occasions, the Mayor has turned that responsibility over to the City Manager, who freely participates in Council meetings, as if he were an elected representative of the people, which he is not. This is not to say that the City Manager's contributions are ill-conceived, in fact, quite the opposite. But we believe Mayor Einstein is perfectly capable of running meetings, no matter the format, and he ought to be alert to the dangerous precedent of the turning the legislative body over to the executive. It not only sets up an inversion of power that leaves the public confused, but it lets Councilors off the hook for carrying their own weight in the legislative agenda-setting that they were elected to do. This will mean that Mayor Einstein should be more assertive in his leadership of discussions and in moving the agenda along in a productive way. On that note, while the new agenda format is a great tool in bringing focus to various parts of the meeting and clarifying, for all involved, the purpose of particular items, additional attention is needed under the unfinished business section and Council reports to ensure that Councilors are not simply using ‘TV time’ to give an appearance of Council activity, where it is either otherwise absent or not appropriately placed.
  3. There were several early announcements from the Mayor about new committees and initiatives. We are concerned about the Green committee. As we stated before, it appears the Ethics committee is about to get up and running, but the status of the Green committee is not as clear. Current economic conditions, combined with the ongoing necessity of attentiveness to environmental issues, makes this an issue that should get going sooner rather than later. The Mayor has the ability to bring together representatives from a variety of key organizations and charge them with developing innovative solutions that will both improve overall environmental practices within the City and also save money in the long term on operational costs. We are also hoping that the Youth Council, an effort to engage teenagers in the civic process, will be taken seriously by Councilors. 
  4. This year’s budget development was a great process and yielded the first true zero-tax-increase budget in years (neither an increase in the tax rate nor across the board increases in property assessments). The ongoing monitoring of the budget’s objectiveswill be essential.  Most important, in our view, is tracking the property owner’s return on investment. The first priority area of the budget was ‘value for the tax dollar.’ As we discussed in a previous post  this is a function of both tax dollars paid into the system and city services rendered to the residents. Keeping an eye on this, and balancing effectiveness with efficiency will be key in 2009.

Tuesday, December 23

What Will the Lakefront Look Like in 10 Years? Ted Baker Asks the Bloggers

Our most recent interview on Finger Lakes Morning News focused on--what else?--lakefront development. Host Ted Baker led off with a discussion of a post that highlighted a new argument offered in support of Building 12. The argument was, in short, that lakefront condos were key to bringing college graduates back home to Geneva. Augustine repeated the theme of the post, that it is not a lack of housing--at least, not lakefront condos.--keeping people from returning, but rather a lack of jobs.

Capraro rightly pointed out that Geneva has a strong service industry, including education and tourism, that provides a core set of jobs for graduates. People taking those jobs shouldn’t be looking for a suburban enclave, and if the right housing were available, they’d likely prefer downtown. To that end, repopulating the downtown core and improving conditions in Geneva’s existing neighborhoods must take precedence over new construction on one of our best assets.

Ted then asked us to respond to resident Cynthia Hsu’s appearance on the show earlier in the week. He characterized Hsu as the voice of “the opposition,” but Capraro was quick to point out that she is a vocal advocate for public participation, and while the public may not agree on every point, there is consistent agreement amongst the public that their voices should be heard and taken into consideration. This, Capraro said, is indicative of a renewed sense of civic engagement locally, regionally, and even on the national level.

Augustine stated that, from Council’s perspective, public participation is both necessary but sometimes hard to take. When the public agrees with the direction things are going, everything’s wonderful. But in reality, people are more likely to speak up when they disagree with things. At that point, she said, it’s the responsibility of the Council to consider the ideas and arguments being presented without getting their hackles up about the way in which the ideas or arguments are being presented. A forthcoming post on trust and public participation will shed some more light on those ideas.

As he closed the interview, Ted asked us what we thought the lakefront would look like in 2015 or 2020, about 10 years down the road. Augustine responded that she hoped that a focus on downtown would have paid dividends by then, and Capraro emphasized that enhanced programming on the lakefront would mean seeing more people on the lakefront and coming from there into downtown (and vice versa). Some exciting prospects, and definitely possible so long as Geneva’s government and her people are moving in tandem towards that shared vision.

We are truly grateful for Ted Baker, WGVA (1240AM), and all the staff at the Finger Lakes Radio Group for continuing to allow us a forum to discuss these pressing issues. We know that Ted is doing his best to bring a fact-based point of view on a variety of public issues, and that he takes his role as a member of the press seriously as it relates to good governing. This interview is available for your listening pleasure in the NoStrings Radio Archive. We look forward to continuing the tradition in 2009!

Wednesday, December 17

If You Build It, They Will Come...Back?

The first of two public hearings for any amendments to the Master Plan was held earlier this month at the Geneva Middle/High School Auditorium. Due to an equipment malfunction on FLTV’s sound board, their recording turned out to be video-only, and therefore won’t be shown on Channel 12.

We continue to be impressed with the “public intelligence” displayed at these meetings where the comments from community members are often far more insightful than anything we hear from Council. But, just when we thought there was no one left who supported Building 12, a group has come forward asking Council to adopt the plan ‘as is’ (with Building 12 included) for the sake of Geneva’s children.

David Linger, a non-resident who lives in Liverpool, outside of Syracuse, but owns property in Geneva, highlighted his partner, Wendy Marsh, and her high school classmates as the kind of people that need to come back to live in Geneva.

He said something to the effect that no one on Council was taking into consideration the needs and interests of younger people, people who grew up in the area and would like to make it their home(s) permanently. Really? No one?

Actually, having grown up in Geneva and looking out for the interest of multi-generational locals, including family, seems to be the key to success on this Council and in this City. If anything it is 'outsiders', folks who weren’t born here, that aren't always considered. Virtually the entire Council was born and raised in Geneva and attended school here: D’Amico, Valentino, Cosentino, Greco, Alcock, and O'Malley. Hagerman and Augustine went to neighboring high schools, leaving only the Mayor as a true 'outsider.' We'd say the 'local perspective' is well-represented (in quantity).

Linger went on to say that condominiums on the lakefront were the kind of thing that would “draw people back” for more than just a short stay for a class reunion. A few more speakers joined Linger’s call to “think of the children” and build condos. that would “bring our kids back to live here.” Again, we ask, “Really?”

Could it really be the case that Geneva’s children, who go off to college and earn advanced degrees and settle in other areas would return in droves to repopulate the area--if only there were condos on the lakefront to accommodate them? We think not, and we’ll offer a few reasons of our own for our readers to consider and comment on.

Let’s just put the obvious out there: Geneva’s children aren’t leaving the area to chase condos., they’re leaving to chase down good jobs. Augustine’s no spring chicken (she’s already 31 for Heaven’s sake!) but it wasn’t that long ago that she was talking with her college friends about what they were all going to do after graduation. And Capraro is currently helping his two boys through this same decision-making process. There are basically two options: continue on with school for a Masters or Doctorate, or go to work. Many graduates take off from their college towns to bigger cities like Boston, Washington, Raleigh, Denver, or somewhere on the west coast. They are driven, not by the pursuit of a great condo., but by the search for a great job.

At some point, those college graduates will reach a point where they are thinking about ‘settling down’ and it is then that we believe Geneva--as it currently exists--is best poised to “bring them home.” Geneva is a great place to raise a family, to re-establish or to create some roots. Which brings us to our second point, people returning to Geneva with their families aren’t coming back to live in lakefront condos., they’re coming back to live in neighborhoods (see our previous post on that). Even the Bergmann representative, who made the initial unveiling of “Building #12” at the Ramada this summer, described the lakefront condo. market as ‘empty nesters.’

So, while it was interesting to hear this new take on the need to build lakefront condos., we don’t find it to be a very compelling argument. We appreciate David Linger and Wendy Marsh’s efforts to improve the downtown by purchasing and renovating key properties. We think those efforts will do a lot towards attracting new businesses and new residents to the area. But in the big picture, people who are concerned with creating a City that our children will either stay in, or return to, should follow our lead in calling for more progressive and dynamic economic development strategies and improved neighborhood conditions.

Monday, December 15

Bloggers to Discuss Reactions to Lakefront Post

Capraro and Augustine will be making their regularly scheduled radio appearance on Ted Baker's morning show this Friday, December 19th. While Ted doesn't give out the questions ahead of time, he's sure to take up the issues raised on an old lakefront post that has garnered the recent attention of community activists and the Mayor. Click here to read the post and their comments, and tune in to WGVA (1240AM) Friday morning.