Can anyone see any level on which the failure of the city-government-structure committee to do anything, after years of limbo, is anything other than pathetic?
All the majority was trying to do was pass a watered-down proposal to have the mayor act a little bit like a mayor — not to have the kinds of powers that would justify holding him/her accountable for the city’s executive functions — and it couldn’t even do that.
Sure, the committee was stacked against change from the start — particularly with the three-quarters requirement — but think about it: In the world of committees, why do you delay a day, a week or a month (much less over two years) before having a vote? You do it to get your votes lined up, and make sure your votes can make the meeting.
But they couldn’t even do that. Worse, they couldn’t even pass a compromise to justify the committee’s hyperextended existence.
This is SO Columbia, so South Carolina. I love my state, but it’s the truth.
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> This is SO Columbia, so South Carolina
This is SO government… Welcome to my world.
… which makes precisely as much sense as saying, “this is SO items-starting-with-the-letter C.”
All systems, including private ones, are resistant to fundamental change that threatens the power of the people making decisions.
But my point about South Carolina speaks to something that is particular to our state. As I’ve written over and over for 16 years, this state made the decision very early in its history to have a form of government that was almost impossible to change, because power was far too fragmented to focus on change. It was a system geared to a landed (slaveholding, originally) gentry with shared interests. The power was all in the legislature, and there was no external force with sufficient authority or constituency to make any change that a consensus of the General Assembly did not heartily endorse.
This was not the only state so constructed, but other states changed. As long ago as 1949, the eminent southern political scientist V.O. Key wrote about the unique power that the S.C. general assembly accorded itself.
This is, and long has been, something SPECIFIC to South Carolina, and that is something we all must understand if we are ever to demand change with any chance of success.
Anyone who succumbs to the notion that it’s like this everywhere might as well give up — the way Doug has done.
It is unbelievable how City Council doesn’t want change. When you stack a committee with just enough people (oh… 2-3) to counter the super-majority requirement… and then not press them for findings and recommendations…ever… and then leave it up to people like us to demand it…
Well… that just tells us one thing: THEY DON’T WANT TO FIX THE PROBLEM.
As Nay-Sayer Crawford Clarkson put it in yesterday’s meeting, the problem is not with the system, but the people who are elected.
If those seven people wanted to really fix the problem, they don’t need some outside group to tell them what to do. They just need to look at themselves honestly and say, “We aren’t getting it done. We need to change.” But they don’t want to accept the fact that responsibility ultimately falls on them.
By the way, here’s what they had to say on the anonymous blog that apparently exists solely to address this issue.
The mayor has a lot more power than he claims to have. That is just their way of shirking responsibility for failure, which is pretty often in Columbia. In reality, all the mayors have been able to ram through all kinds of pork projects.
Back when we had a stronger mayor, it was even worse. We had even more corruption. Now, half the city council is able to get their faces in the trough, while a few honest members look on in horror, but don’t protest enough in public, because they know they would be totally shut out of every legitimate decision-making process.
We had a stronger mayor when? Maybe a more selfish more vicious one, but one that had more empowerment? When, Lee? Brad, when you have one of the strongest men in state government who is also a dyed in the wool, pre-70’s politician who speaks in code and drains our tax revenue for his pet projects, and others who may have fewer virtues, do you really expect anyone in this state to give up any power, or let anyone else have power. Not only is the city council really iffy on this, the powers-that-be in state government surely do not want any other powers around. Yes? No? Maybe?
Ms McLeod,
The current organization of city government is relatively new, since the early 1970s. Prior to that, the mayor had more direct control. A major factor which the newspaper neglects is that the mayor’s power is RELATIVELY less because the council has expanded the size and scope of government and put much of the expansion under their control. When government was smaller, it was easier for the mayor to know everything that was going on.
Supposedly “weak” mayors like Findlay, Coble, and Adams have pushed through lots of expensive spending projects that had no popular support –
(AT&T tower, Vista, Innovista, new train station, annexation of Harbison, Mental Health land grab, Riverwalk, Whitewater Center, Green Diamond, Farmers Market, etc ad nauseum).
This points up the real problem: the mayor and council answer to the real estate developers and others special interests, not the public at large.