“Change is good,” says Kevin Fisher, and he says it consistently. It was the theme of his run for mayor four years ago, and he says it with greater enthusiasm now that Columbia is on the verge of historic turnover on city council. With the incumbent mayor leaving after 20 years, the forced retirement of E.W. Cromartie, and Kirkman Finley III quitting his seat to run for mayor, change is ensured in three of the seven slots. And with Belinda Gergel only having represented the 3rd District for two years, that’s a majority that will be new or almost new.

“I think that is a wonderful thing,” says Mr. Fisher. He’s really pumped about it. And he very much wants to be part of it.

Kevin and I met Friday morning at the Gervais St. Starbucks, the one in Hal Stevenson‘s building. It’s a great place to meet people, intentionally and un-. There’s another plug I’m not getting paid for — take note, Starbucks: there are now paid ads on this blog!

But that’s not what this post is about. It’s about Kevin’s candidacy for the 4th District Columbia city council seat being vacated by Mr. Finley. Others seeking the seat include Tony Mizzell, Leona Plaugh, Mary Baskin Waters and Walter Powell Jr.

Kevin Fisher has a lot to say about the mistakes he sees Columbia as having made during the Bob Coble years. From failed real estate deals such as the CCI property (“Only the city of Columbia could buy riverfront property for $10 million, hold it for 10 years and sell it for $6 million.”) to allowing SCANA to get out of its obligation to run the local bus system (“a disaster,” he calls it — “We got a pittance back, and the pittance is now gone.”), he comes down hard on them.

He points proudly to the Five C’s that he ran on four years ago (see the photo below), not only noting that they remain relevant, but that they were in some ways prophetic, some of them more pertinent now than then:

1. Service Consolidation — The need for “one police force” is greater than ever.
   
2. Ending Cronyism — From the abandoned plan to build a city-owned hotel to E.W. Cromartie, he sees this as a bane of the city.
3. Financial Control — This is the problem that collapsed around the city’s ears the last couple of years, with the administration unable to close the books, and some bills being paid multiple times.
4. Planning Coordination — He maintains that the city has blundered from one long-term project commitment to another, without any guiding plan.
5. Marketing Communications — This is his professional field, and he sees Columbia as badly in need of his services. Four years ago, he was talking about the failed $50,000 city slogan that most of us have mercifully forgotten — “The Big Friendly.” (He’s far more pleased with the “Famously Hot” marketing strategy that — ahem — the agency with which I am affiliated, ADCO, devised for the Midlands Authority for Conventions, Sports & Tourism.)

Buy he’s not just about harping on the past. For instance, he has a really good, creative idea for paying for the bus system going forward. He says just asking voters to approve another penny sales tax isn’t likely to fly in this economy, and would be wrongheaded — it would bring the cumulative sales tax in Columbia up to 10 cents on the dollar. That’s as high as Memphis, and Tennessee is that high because it doesn’t have an income tax (and still doesn’t, in spite of Don Sundquist falling on his sword over the issue).

But here’s Kevin’s solution: He’d put a penny on the ballot, but voters who said “yes” would at the same time be voting to eliminate the two-cent hospitality tax. The nifty thing about this is that an overall penny sales tax would bring in “six or seven times” as much revenue as the hospitality tax does, without having the same chilling effect on people eating out and staying in our hotels. The bus system would need less than half that amount, which leads to the clever part: The remaining revenue would not only help with needed road projects, but would fully fund the arts groups that would be the ones likely to howl at having their hospitality money taken from them.  And they would be funded by a firmer, repeating source.

A slight digression — I found myself on the defensive a good bit during this interview. Kevin spent a certain amount of time letting me know that he’s disappointed in me, and not just because I failed to agree with him that Tony Mizzell’s ethics fine was a big deal. After all, I’m the guy who wrote a column in 2006 urging him to run against Mayor Bob Coble, then ended up endorsing Mayor Bob again — which even surprised Bob. (How did that happen? Simple, if you’re me. I thought Bob needed some serious opposition so that various important issues would get a full airing, and I knew Kevin would do that. But after watching that campaign I decided Bob would still be a better mayor.) Kevin is never forgetting that, and who would? He brings it up, then tells me it’s water off a duck’s back, then mentioned it again. Still, he wrote a column about me that I thoroughly enjoyed as I read it over beer at Goatfeathers the night Robert and I left The State for the last time.

Kevin, by the way, writes excellent columns. His “City Watch” column in the Free Times just won First Place for Column Opinion Writing at the 2010 South Carolina Press Association Awards, an honor that’s well-deserved. He’s taken the city to task in his columns for lack of transparency, and that is another of his top issues. He would insist that city council not go into executive session except when necessary — such as to consult with its attorney.

The skills that make him a good columnist also make him a highly articulate critic, whether the offending party is Bob Coble or me. It also means he can express himself graciously. Take, for instance, what he wrote in his column about “Famously Hot:” “Hats off to my industry colleagues at ADCO for coming up with it, to the Greater Columbia Convention and Visitors Bureau for adopting it and to City Council for not killing it when more than five people objected, their usual standard for folding on any given issue.”

And as critical as he is of Mayor Bob, when I asked him to come up with what he thought was Mr. Coble’s greatest accomplishment, he didn’t hesitate: It was his positive, “Mayor Bob” persona, the “pleasant face” he put on the governor’s office. “In many ways, it was uniting.” But he saw that strength as also the mayor’s greatest weakness, in that he has valued collegiality over productive confrontation, failing to say “no” when warranted.

His sharp skills as a critic suggest he is the closest match for the kind of councilman that incumbent Kirkman Finlay has been. Mr. Finlay has played the role — very constructively, at times — of the council’s budget scold, warning of the troubles that eventually came, and helping lead the way back to responsibility. But Kevin would branch out a bit. While agreeing with the Finlay approach so far as to say, “Finance is the root of everything,” his interests and understanding range far more widely.

Kevin Fisher reminds me of his platform when he ran for mayor four years ago, which he says was in some ways prophetic.

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