Appalling

This makes me SO angry! We haven’t had the public hearing, yet our Mayor is announcing a done deal on all but one element of the issue on the agenda. If you like this amount of power for a Mayor, be sure and lobby for even more, in the Strong Mayor proposal, which according to this report is the only element not quite a done deal yet. And remember to picture your least-favorite politician as the next Strong Mayor. It could happen.

Sending flawed, incomplete Charter changes to voters in May makes no sense. Mayor Potter claims to care about public process and community input. I don’t see much evidence of that. An appointed committee, whose own members admit few citizens took advantage of opportunities to give input to them, is not the same as a hearing before elected officials. It’s hard for citizens to understand the Charter, without a proposal for discussion on the table. And while the hearing today is allegedly on the process (Hah! Some process! Private lobbying, as usual), the Charter changes being proposed would allow future appointed committees to send important amendments directly to voters, with no opportunity for testimony before elected officials. If the Council doesn’t send the “Strong Mayor” proposal to the ballot today, the changes they ARE apparently going to send to voters would allow the next Charter Commission to send a Strong Mayor revision next time, with no input by the Council.

And it’s obvious from the slant of the article in TheO today, that the corporate media is going to tell voters the Charter changes are in their best interest, no big deal, vote Yes or stay home. BAH!

The Public Hearing at City Council is at 2 p.m. today. If you can’t get there (gee, how unfortunate, it’s during the day when most people have jobs to put food on their family’s table – and yet right there on the agenda for yesterday, it says: “6 p.m. Due to lack of an agenda, there will be no meeting”), please call or send e-mails to Council offices.

This process sucks. And when the process sucks, the product often stinks, too.