Category Archives: Midlands

Second prize is TWO trips

My colleague Mike Fitts (whose checkered past includes having once been The State‘s national editor) and I sometimes express our envy of Pulitzer Prize-winner Nicholas Kristof‘s constant world travel. You see, it’s been years since our department has had any travel budget at all. Mike and I only got to go to the national political conventions in 2004 (he went to Boston; I went to New York) because I caught the publisher in a very weak moment, after a very good month in the paper’s advertising revenue.

Well, now there’s an opportunity to engage in something you might call a sort of journalists’ Fantasy Camp. The New York Times is giving away a free trip to Africa with Mr. Kristof. It sounds really worth entering. Trouble is, it came a few decades too late. Turns out only journalism students are eligible.

But it gives me an idea. I think we should hold a contest, too. In fact, I’m just going to go ahead and do it. Here are the rules: Write an essay of no more than 700 words spelling out your game plan for how the Unparty can break the two-party stranglehold on South Carolina and the nation.

The lucky winner will get:

A free trip to Irmo with Brad Warthen!

Imagine prowling the teeming streets of that local trouble spot with a three-time winner of the S.C. Press Association’s coveted E. A. Ramsaur Award. With Mr. Kristof, you could meet the heads of nations engaged in genocide. With me, you could meet my cousin TEC Dowling (if it’s OK with him), who presides over the take-no-prisoners madness
of District Five. You and Mr. Kristof could search for the source of the Nile. You and I could search for Irmo’s elusive downtown.

Insert your entries as comments on this post. And good luck.

The ad for the Kristof contest quotes a letter from him saying, "I’m looking for a masochist."

So am I. Do you have what it takes?

Anybody know the story behind this?

In a comment on a previous post, a reader says:

Maybe this would be a more entertaining topic

Bill allows foreign prisons to house S.C. inmates

Sure, we can discuss it. Or rather, you can discuss it. I can’t tell what the bill is all about. Here’s a link to it. Apparently, all that’s happened is it was introduced today and sent to Judiciary Committee.

So, what’s it about? Anybody know?

Speaking of legislative updates, personally, I’m more interested in this absurdity, in which one of our major local institutions is pulling a fast one on two others. Remember when hospitals just took care of folks, rather than having all these high-stakes political battles?

Mayor Bob controls himself

One of my colleagues who attended the Columbia city candidates’ debate last week told me that Mayor Bob Coble got pretty passionate about the issues.

In fact, on one occasion, he said he "violently" disagreed with the idea that part of the old CCI should have been preserved as a tourist attraction. When I heard that, my eyebrows went up at the idea of our studiously self-effacing Mayor Bob losing control of his emotions to such an extent.

Perhaps the mayor saw eyebrows also go up in the live audience, because he quickly added:

"… not physically, but violently…"

I’m sure all eyebrows went back down at that. The world was still in its proper shape, and everyone felt safe.

Right or effective?

Which will it be, Columbia
voters: ‘right’ or ‘effective’?

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
CHALLENGER Kevin Fisher talks a lot about Columbia Mayor Bob Coble. He criticizes, in great detail, a long litany of actions and inactions by the mayor. He talks about how he would have done things differently.
    The ad and PR man says that rather than lead, “Mayor Bob” sits around waiting for consensus to emerge. “He is a very nice man who makes no decision, or who makes the wrong decision, which amounts to the same thing.”
    “His main concern is, never offend anyone.” By contrast, says Mr. Fisher, “I will be looking to set the agenda and the tone.”
    “With or without a strong-mayor system,” he asserts, “I would be a strong mayor.”
    That, boiled down, is Kevin Fisher’s position as candidate for mayor in the April 4 election.
    For his part, Mayor Coble agrees that he values diplomacy. That’s because you don’t get much done “if you tell people what you think about them every single time.”
   I was once told that someday I would have to decide whether I wanted to be right or effective. There is no doubt which paths these two have chosen. Mr. Fisher is a passionate and articulate advocate of what he believes is right. He seems to have given much less thought as to how, going forward, to get things done.
    Mayor Coble is far less concerned about getting everyone to see things his way. He claims to be effective.
    The mayor has his own litanies. There is his list of “strategic accomplishments.” He says that during his 16-year tenure, the city reversed a long decline in home ownership, population and property values; became “far safer”; experienced a “renaissance” from the Vista to a transformed stretch of Two Notch Road, and much more; embraced the “knowledge economy,” building on a much-improved relationship with the University of South Carolina; and did it all with only two property tax increases, of two mils each, both for more police.
    His main goals for the future:

  • Build upon existing economic pillars, such as Fort Jackson.
  • Follow through on the “innovation economy.”
  • Keep improving “livability,” so “people will want to stay here and come here.”
  • Change the city’s form of government to make it more effective and accountable.

    In an interview last week, Mr. Fisher did not present a list of specific proposals for the future, beyond saying he would not repeat such past mistakes as:

  • An “attempted waste of 41 million tax dollars” on a city-owned hotel. It would take “unmitigated gall” to seek re-election “if I had presided over that,” he said.
  • The plan to block the view of the river with a development at the corner of Gervais and Huger. “If you put a nine-story building on Huger, you don’t have a Vista.”
  • Deciding to back Marvin Chernoff’s vision for an arts festival. “Where is that money going to come from? And what else could it have gone to pay for?”

    “Of course, the mayor is for it,” he says of one thing after another he criticizes. “Being for everything is not leadership, and the mayor is absolutely for everything.”
    Mr. Coble, in the context of talking about candidates for City Council, said, “At the debates, they at least have said what they would do if elected. I don’t think Kevin has done that…. It’s one thing to say, ‘I wouldn’t do Air South,’ et cetera. What would you do? I think that’s essential to govern.”
    (The third candidate on the ballot, Five Points businessman Joe Azar, agrees with the mayor on that, if on nothing else.)
    Indeed, Mr. Fisher’s eloquence tends to falter if you ask, “What would you do now?” An example:
He says a “compliant mayor” gave SCE&G a cheap way out of its century-old promise to provide public transit in exchange for rights to the Columbia market.
    “We let them out of that deal for what — for a few million dollars, which is already gone,” he complains. “They still have the monopoly, but we don’t have the mass transit.”
    He says the utility fobbed old equipment and a “brownfield” bus barn onto the city. Since then, “Routes have been cut back; fares have been raised. We’re getting less service for more money, and it’s still going out of business.” And how is the mayor proposing to keep it going? A new tax.
    After Mr. Fisher had gone on a while about that “horrendous deal,” Associate Editor Warren Bolton asked what, given the current situation, he would do. He seemed less certain about that. He said he would “allocate funds better,” and pursue federal money. “Finally, I would go back to SCE&G and try to cajole them, shame them, whatever word you want to use, into making an annual contribution.”
    If the utility declined such a do-over, Mr. Fisher says, he would turn to a dedicated tax source. But “that would be the legacy of Mayor Coble and the council.”
    Mayor Coble seems to accept that ultimately, the public will have to pay to have a public transit system, just like in every other city in the country. His own ruminations on the subject center around strategies for passing the necessary referendum to do that.
    Another example: Regarding the former state prison property that has stood vacant for more than a decade, the mayor is pleased that — thanks in part to the Vista and riverfront having become so much more desirable — the private sector was finally willing to take it off the city’s hands. He sees that as best.
    For his part, Mr. Fisher says it was a “tremendous missed opportunity” not to have left part of the prison standing. “Cellblock One was our Alcatraz,” a potentially huge attraction for tourists from all over who would come to be regaled with “the legends of Pee Wee Gaskins and the rest.”
    The mayor just marvels at an idea “so far out of left field. A Pee Wee Gaskins museum would never have made it.”
    So, Mr., Mrs. and Ms. Columbia Voter, which will it be — the guy who says he’s right, or the guy who says he’s effective? You’ve got 16 days to decide.

Anybody care about the mayor’s race?

Hello? Hello?

I’m perplexed as to why, after over 24 hours, there are NO comments on my last post. Is it me? Was it badly written? Or is it the topic? It’s me, isn’t it? I knew it. I’m ugly and my mother dresses me funny. Boo-hoo.

Seriously, I’m not just whining that no one is paying attention to me here. There’s a serious point. I’m still figuring out this blog thing, and trying to understand why some posts will get over 60 comments, and others none. I thought this one, with just a few days left to filing, would be a talker. Lord knows I get plenty of mail and phone calls from people who complain about poor ol’ Mayor Bob. Thing is, no one with a chance ever runs against him. You’d think people would be interested if someone with even a slight chance (and I’ll admit, he doesn’t have much of one) stepped forward, or was thinking about stepping forward.

Maybe lots of people read it, had nothing to say yet, and are waiting to see whether Mr. Fisher actually runs. Or maybe they’re not interested.

So please respond to this one, and tell me, so that I might serve you better: What sorts of topics interest you most? What would be more likely, in your opinion, to get a good debate going among a wide variety of people? I’ve pored over the posts that get the most comments and the ones that get the least, and I have yet to discern reliable patterns that I can put to practical use.

Of course, there are some topics that need to be discussed whether they have high market value or not. So here’s a corollary question: How might I approach local politics in a way that would engage more people?

Thanking you in advance for your advice…

Will Fisher run?

Businessman ought to run
against Coble to ‘raise issues’

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
THE DEADLINE to file to run against Mayor Bob Coble is a week from today, and so far the only challenger is perennial candidate Joe Azar.
    This could change.
    I asked Columbia ad man Kevin Fisher, president of Fisher Communications, about rumors that he may step in to provide an alternative to another lopsided Coble-Azar match-up.
    He didn’t say “yes,” but he hadn’t decided against it, either. If he goes for it, we could have the Fisherk_1first competitive contest since Mr. Coble toppled
incumbent Patton Adams in 1990. We could see, for the first time in 16 years, a lively debate about critical issues facing the city — and at a pivotal moment in its history. As a result, more than a few voters might actually turn out to participate for a change. (A record 14,035 voted in the 1990 election; in 2002, only 8,680 bothered.)
    That, said Mr. Fisher, would be his motivation if he does decide to go for it. “I would like to see a hot mayor’s race,” he said — one that engaged the community constructively.
    He said he doubts that he could win on April 4, saying he would likely be a “sacrificial lamb” against an incumbent with far more political experience and name recognition than he. He’s likely right about this.
    As he said, a lot of people in Columbia really like Mayor Bob. In fact, Mr. Fisher likes him: “He’s a really nice guy, and much nicer than me.”
    He thinks that’s part of the problem. He sees Mr. Coble as the sort of “nice guy” who “can’t say no” to bad ideas, and can’t get good ideas implemented.
    “Bob waits for consensus to build” rather than leading, Mr. Fisher said. Under the current weak-mayor, or council-manager, form of government, the citizens of Columbia “really do have seven little mayors,” he said.
    While he advocates changing to a strong-mayor form of government — a possibility that has been under study by a special commission that appears to be going nowhere — he said that even under the current system, the city “would have a stronger mayor” if he succeeded in replacing the current officeholder.
    He says he might have a chance to make a respectable showing against the incumbent if, as he suspects, voters’ liking for Mr. Coble is “mile-wide, inch-deep.”
    But in any case, he would see the race as worthwhile if he managed to “raise the issues” in a wayCoble_2 that engaged the community.
    And what are those issues? In our conversation Wednesday, Mr. Fisher cited a litany of bad decisions and missed opportunities, from AirSouth to the Three Rivers Festival to the city-owned convention hotel idea; from the deal to take over the bus system from SCANA (which he thinks could have been negotiated on terms much more favorable to the taxpayers) to the 10-year failure to get the Canalside project under way (which Mr. Fisher says ended with the city selling the prime property to a developer for less than taxpayers had invested in it).
    As a frequent contributor to our op-ed page, Mr. Fisher has aired his views on a number of other local issues. While I don’t necessarily agree with all his points, he usually presents them emphatically and persuasively — suggesting that he might do the same in a political campaign. Some of the views expressed in these columns:

  • The city shouldn’t
    have given $375,000 to Trelys, a venture capital firm started by entrepreneur Larry Wilson and other wealthy investors.
  • A new arts festival proposed by long-time ad executive Marvin Chernoff is a "boondoggle"
    that should not receive the $218,000 it is seeking from the city.
  • The commission charged with studying the city’s structure
    should dismiss the mayor’s “silly” proposal for a “hybrid” system that would call for a full-time mayor while keeping the city manager.
  • “The building of EdVenture in the State Museum parking lot represents the perfect storm
    of no vision, no leadership and no sense of aesthetics.”

    Mr. Fisher says he doesn’t understand why, “with a week to go,” he is the only viable challenger being mentioned. He thinks there are plenty of other strong potential candidates. In particular, “I… think it’s a great opportunity — but nobody’s doing it — for a minority.” (Mr. Fisher, by the way, is white.)
    So with only a week to go, what is keeping him from making up his mind whether to file? He says there’s only one factor in the way: He’s not sure he could run effectively for the part-time job — and if successful, do the job as well as he would want — and still make a living. He said his business makes it hard to delegate: “So much of it is about me…. I sell myself.”
    He said he has no big-time backers, although he has gained the impression that some might step forward if he filed and demonstrated that he was serious.
    But he won’t know unless he tries.
    Does my writing this column indicate that I would prefer Mr. Fisher to Mayor Coble? Nope. I really don’t know at this point. But I do know I’d like to see a lively, relevant and competitive campaign that fully engages the electorate. With everything happening and on the verge of happening right now, our capital city can’t afford another yawner.
    That’s why I hope Mr. Fisher goes for it.

Another shaky start for Green Diamond

What was the biggest mistake that the backers of Green Diamond made last time around, in terms of their ability to win over the people of the Midlands to their cause?

It was being mysterious.

They came in and announced that they were going to build something really exciting — a billion-dollar "city within a city" on undeveloped land within minutes of downtown — and then clammed up, for months and months on end. They spent that time trying to line up everyone of influence in the community that they could get on their side before telling the rest of us the particulars of their plan.

This created suspicion, and gave those inclined to oppose plenty of time to get organized before the unveiling. And by the time of the big presentation, the promoters had lost much of the community already.

So some folks are going to try again. This time, Greenville developer Bob Hughes is taking the lead, at the behest of…

Well, he’s not saying at whose behest.

This is not an auspicious beginning.

 

Attention, District 5 voters!

Opponents of Tuesday’s referendum on whether to let Lexington-Richland School
District 5 borrow $131 million needed to build new schools think they smell a
rat: They shrug off the district’s insistence that the bond issue will not
increase the taxes they pay for capital debt service, saying their taxes for
operating these new schools will go up.

Typical of this point of view is Don Carlson of
Chapin, who was quoted in today’s lead news story as saying:

"Unless these new buildings plan on heating, cooling, feeding,
supplying and teaching these students all by themselves, you can bet … your
tax bill is going to see an increase."

For Mr. Carlson and
like-minded voters in the district, I have the following three points to
make:

  1. Your taxes for
    that were going up anyway.
  2. Your taxes for
    that were going up anyway.
  3. Your taxes for
    that were going up anyway.

OK, so I’m being a
little facetious. Actually I only have two serious points to
make:

  1. Your taxes for
    that were going up anyway, because the school-aged population of the
    district is growing at a rate of 500 to 600 kids a year, and the district has to
    pay to educate them somewhere, somehow.

  2. The real issue in
    this referendum is whether you’d rather those taxes be spent entirely on paying
    teachers and operating the classrooms in new schools that will be assets to the
    community for generations to come, or spend a large chunk of that operating
    money — which would otherwise have gone into the classroom — on mobile
    classrooms that depreciate the moment they are placed on the grounds of
    increasingly overcrowded, less-excellent schools.

That’s the choice
before you: Whether to spend your increased taxes for operations wisely or
foolishly. A "yes" vote is for the wise option.

In the interest of
full disclosure, there are two ways that your property taxes might not go up to
pay for school operations. One is that you just let one of the best districts in
the state go to pot, and watch your property values fall like a rock along with
the quality of the schools. The second is that legislators come up with a better
way to pay
for school operations. That could happen, but there are a lot of
variables between the talk going on at this moment and an actual new school
financing system.

Talk amongst yourselves

I see I didn’t get around to posting anything yesterday, and that’s a shame because I had meant to post this editorial from Wednesday’s paper, which was based on this news story in Tuesday’s. I wrote it (and I don’t write all that many actual editorials these days, spending most of my writing energy on columns and this forum), because I knew it would come more easily to me than to anyone else on the staff. No one else was as ticked off about it.

Anyway, in lieu of an actual posting this morning, I thought I would throw this topic out and see what your reaction is. I know what Shell Suber, Richland County Republican Party chairman, thinks about it (more or less), because we discussed an op-ed he’s sending me in response. It was an amicable discussion, as always. Even though he and I are bound to disagree about the local party’s outrageous intrusion into nonpartisan preserves, he is in other matters a reasonable man.

So until I can get back to my keyboard, in the immortal words of Linda Richman, talk amongst yourselves. Later, we’ll have some cawfee, and we’ll awl tawk. No big whoop.

Cleaning up the nation

A remarkable thing happened at precisely 7:47 p.m. yesterday, as I was driving home from work and "tuning in the shine on the light night dial."

A local radio station played Elvis Costello‘s indictment of the sterile radio industry, "Radio Radio." You may have noted previously that I have a certain affinity for this song, as I do for the work of Declan MacManus in general.

Anyway, it was a bit of a milestone. The new WXRY, 99.3 — first recommended to me by one of my children — is doing a very creditable job of living up to its stated mission as an "independent alternative station," to "make radio special again." The management says it believes that the following principles "are essential for a great radio station:"

  • Intelligent presentation, passion and respect for the music
  • No limits on the number of songs we play
  • Support local music
  • Treat listeners with respect
  • Intense community involvement
  • The courage to be different
  • Avoid the trap of playing the same songs 7 or 8 times a day

That’s from the Web site. On the air, it also promotes itself as a station that doesn’t run "adult entertainment" ads that send you lunging for the dial when you have your kids in the car with you.

I like that. I don’t like the fact that sometimes it’s a little hard to get the station without static, and I can’t say I like everything they play, but it’s worth checking out — you know, for when you’re driving in the car and it’s not safe to be reading the newspaper.

Three questions, three answers

To respond to three questions raised by Lee in connection with a previous post:

1. What good does it do if the council members are puppets of special interests? I’d rather have a crooked mayor — which would be easy to see and do something about — than a corrupt, fragmented system with no clear lines of accountability. You know, when I was on the radio show last night, folks kept making ominous, but nonspecific, assertions about powerful business interests supposedly pushing for strong mayor. Well first, I haven’t seen any real pushing going on from any quarter, except from the adamant defenders of the status quo, such as E.W. Cromartie. And second, our editorial board is probably the most vocal advocate for strong-mayor, and I’ll tell you right up front what our vested interest is: We want to be able to tell clearly who is accountable — when bad things happen, when good things happen, and when (the most common situation) nothing happens, or at least things take too long to happen.

2. Well, there are a number of examples I could cite — for instance the way a series of confused signals from local leadership lost us minor-league baseball. But I’ve written enough about that one lately. Let’s talk instead about Canalside. Yeah, a private entity is now poised to start developing that unbelievably choice piece of real estate — 12 years after CCI closed. During those 12 years, development of the riverfront was supposedly a huge priority for the city, yet practically nothing happened. On CCI, we got false starts and indecision. Then there was all that moaning about how hard it was to negotiate with the Guignard family regarding their stretch of riverfront property — until USC (an institution with a clear leader) steps in and makes working with the Guignards look easy. (Whether it was easy or not, I don’t know, but based on the family members I know, I never believed it could have been as hard as the city let on). The president of the university, by the way, is the one most clearly empowered public-sector executive in Columbia. He certainly has more leeway to set forth a vision and implement it than either the governor or the mayor.

3. That’s easy. The same way they can be stopped now — by city council. The point of having a strong mayor isn’t to have a sovereign with supreme power. The city council would still be voting on major projects (certainly those requiring large expenditures), ordinances and overall policy and direction for the city. The value in the strong-mayor position is that it would attract the kind of individual who could make sure that once a decision is made, it is acted upon in a timely and efficient manner.

Radio Radio

Some of my friends sit around every evening
And they worry about the times ahead,
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference
And the promise of an early bed…

                        — "Radio Radio," by Elvis Costello

I’ll be joining some of my friends this evening to talk about the times ahead and how to get there — on the radio.

Specifically, we’ll be on Cynthia Hardy’s "On Point" show on WWDM (101.3) from 6 to 7 p.m. Last I heard, J.T. McLawhorn and Howard Duvall will be the other guests.

We’ll be talking about the subject of my column today. Listen in, and then leave your comments on this posting. Don’t be overwhelmed with indifference; join in.

No juice, no Joe

There’s no either/or:
Without the system,
you don’t get the man

“Charleston will not put up with inefficiency. We’ve been efficient too long.”
                 — Charleston District 7
                     City Councilman
                     Louis L. Waring

“I go to bed thinking about something that needs to get done for the city, and I start my day with it.”
                  — Charleston Mayor
                      Joseph P. Riley Jr.

THE PROBLEM with Joe Riley is that he’s too good at his job. This gives defenders of the status quo in Columbia an excuse to say Charleston’s success is because of the man, not the system. Therefore, they say, there’s no point in ditching Columbia’s useless council-manager form of government for the strong-mayor system that Mr. Riley embodies.
    So Mayor Riley came up from Charleston Wednesday, along with two city council members, to explain to a commission studying reform in Columbia why it’s the form of government that makes the Holy City work.
    As usual, he did a good job.
    Even to raise the question of whether it is the shape of the job or the quality of the individual whoTestify_011 fills it is to miss the point. Charleston’s is the only form of city government that could attract a Joe Riley. A person with the abilities to lead a city forward will only run for a job in which he can make full use of those abilities.
    “I certainly wouldn’t have,” said Mr. Riley when asked by panelist Dalhi Myers whether he would have been interested in the job had it been weaker. “What gets me up in the morning,” he said, “is not a ribbon I cut, but that I accomplish something of importance for my city.”
    “The achievement of getting elected ends pretty soon after the election,” he said. “After that, it’s getting things done.”
    There are, of course, people for whom the honor of being elected to a nothing job — such as lieutenant governor, or Columbia mayor — is more than enough. But it takes a job like Charleston’s to attract an actual leader: “Make it a job that has the capacity and authority,” said Mr. Riley, and “you make it more appealing” to qualified people.
    “Good point,” Columbia attorney Benton Williamson said under his breath. He was sitting next to me at the back of the hearing room. “It’s the point,” I muttered.
    None of the other common objections to strong-mayor stood up to scrutiny:

  • The “professionalism” issue. There is an antidemocratic school of thought that a city is best run by an unelected professional administrator. Mr. Riley provided the obvious answer to that: “How it works is, you hire good people.” Why do advocates of this objection assume voters wouldn’t demand that the mayor they elect hire just the kind of “professionals” that those advocates say they want? Whom do you hold accountable if a city manager hired by seven council members is a dud? Mayor Riley chooses his department heads, and they are ratified by the council. “Many of my department heads have the ability to be city managers,” he said.
  • The “bossism” worry. The city manager system was created as a reform long ago in response to mayors who had too much unchecked power. But with Freedom of Information laws and aggressive media, “Government is very transparent now,” Mr. Riley noted. Besides, the Charleston council is empowered to rein in the mayor if necessary.
  • Cronyism. If you rely on democracy to identify your city leader, how do you keep that person from staffing the city’s departments with unqualified pals and political backers? First, Mr. Riley said, “I don’t discuss politics with my department heads.” When he goes to hire them, “Everybody is going to know their backgrounds, and city council approves them.”
  • Neighborhoods will be neglected. This arises from the fear that if the person running the city is not an employee of council members representing districts, those areas will lose out. Councilmen Waring and Paul Tinkler said it doesn’t work that way in Charleston. If they have a problem, they go straight to city staff and get a quick response (a practice we’ve had to ban in Columbia, because it undermined the politically powerless manager). As a last resort, they go to the mayor. Mr. Waring described a problem he had with a traffic light that changed too quickly: “Within three days, there were more seconds on that light,” and it was fully synchronized with the one on the next block.

    Also, the mayor regularly meets with neighborhood groups, and makes it a point to “get back to them by letter within a week, telling them what we’re going to do, or why we can’t — in writing.” Why? Because like the council members, he needs those votes.
    In Charleston, there is no either/or. Neighborhoods and the city center are both well-served. The mayor appreciates the importance of meeting neighborhood needs, and the district representatives appreciate how a vital city center benefits them all. Everyone has had input into the master plans that guide the city. Yes, in Charleston, such things exist (see above editorial).
    At the end of the hearing, it was evident that some commission members were still dubious. Others were not: Responding to the “it only works in Charleston because they have Joe Riley” argument, Kirkman Finlay III said he doesn’t want to believe “there’s a higher quality of people in Charleston.” Seriously, do we really have such an inferiority complex in Columbia that we believe none of us can do this?
    One person did confess to an epiphany, but it was not a member of the commission: Councilman Tinkler, who had initially said he was there as neither an advocate nor an opponent of the idea that the strong-mayor system made a difference, made this statement at the end: “As I’ve sat here, it’s occurred to me that if it were not for the strong mayor form of government, we would not have” the success his city has enjoyed. He realized that was why the biggest challenge he had faced as a councilman was how to deal with “people beating down the doors to get in” to the city.
    Bottom line on strong-mayor:
    It is a system that works. What Columbia has is one that doesn’t.

Thank Blank

Has anyone noticed, and been bothered (or at least perplexed) by the message on the electronic sign at the state fairgrounds the last few days?

(Safety consideration: This is best studied while stuck at the Rosewood red light when heading south on Assembly.)

The message is as follows:

First, the entire sign is filled with the word "Thank"

Then the word dissolves into a picture of the upper part of a clown’s face, and as you watch (waiting for the next word), the clown gives you an animated wink with his right eye.

That is followed by the words, "For a wonderful"

and the message ends with the words, "2005 State Fair"

So, to put it all together, the message is:

Thank (winking clown) for a wonderful 2005 State Fair.

What is that supposed to mean? Did someone forget the word "you," or is the first word supposed to be "Thanks?" If so, whoever made the error has had all week to fix it. I have to wonder whether there’s something I’m not getting about the message. Is the winking clown a reference to Conklin Shows, which used to run the midway (it has been merged into North American Midway Entertainment, the new vendor)? I believe its logo is, or was, a stylized clown face. Would the State Fair folks put up a sign facing the public to thank the (former) private provider in this manner? Seems unlikely. Is the fact that the winking clown is winking at you, the passerby, meant to imply the word "you?" If so, that is one really cryptic use of body language.

Can anyone decode this? As one who went to the fair, I’m assuming this is a message aimed at me, but I’m just not getting it.

Brad’s Baseball Post-Game Show

This is a follow-up posting to address some of the comments (particularly some of those in the latter half of the string) on my baseball column Sunday.

Lee, Brent, Nathan — calm those itchy, libertarian trigger-fingers. There’s no target here to shoot at.

Read the column again. The only governmental entity involved is USC. USC is going to build a ballpark one way or the other, no matter what I say or what anyone else does. And before your hands start twitching toward your anti-tax guns, remember that the USC athletics department supports itself financially.

The issue here is whether the Gamecocks will get to play in a better ballpark in a better location. That can only happen, as I clearly stated in the column, if a private partner comes along — one that sees a way to put together a deal that benefits both USC and the investors.

Will the city need to be involved at some point? Sure. It is the source for key infrastructure, not to mention zoning and other issues. And if the city kicks in a little something — land, or a break on infrastructure costs — fine.

But — whoa, I see you going for your guns again. Hold on, pardners! I need to make two quick points that ought to settle you down a bit.

  • The first is that any material involvement by the city should be minimal. You’re probably forgetting that this editorial board rejected a plan for a dual-use ballpark put forward by the city because it had too much financial involvement on the part of the city — and therefore too much exposure of city taxpayers to cost and risk. (The mayor is still ticked because we complain about not having minor-league baseball, yet we didn’t go for his deal.) What we liked was the later deal that was offered by private investors, which had minimal city involvement. We tend to be guided by what we call the "Publix Standard." We believe it appropriate for the city to put forth the kind of incentive it did to get a supermarket downtown, as that was key to so many other goals for the city — goals that should eventually dramatically expand the tax base within the city, and more than pay today’s taxpayers back. The kind of deal we oppose is on such as the city’s awful plan to own and run a hotel. And we don’t want them essentially owning a baseball team, either.
  • Second point — The City Council’s politics being what they are, it may or may not be possible to get so much as a dime out of it. The mayor has been burned enough he seems to have little appetite for making a proposal. The council, which seems to be generally ticked at the mayor lately (perhaps over the city government restructuring panel that he convinced it to appoint?), seems inclined to say no to anything he does suggest. The city right now is a huge question mark, and whether it could participate at all will depend upon just how attractive a deal is presented to it.

The University and private partners will drive whatever happens, if anything does happen. And I surely hope it does.

Baseball column, with links

It’s time to step up
to the plate, and swing away

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
    THIS IS A SPECIAL time in the world of baseball. We are approaching a critical cusp of opportunity, a point in the cosmic space-time continuum at which anything can happen, when one bounce of the ball can either fulfill our fondest dreams or crush them altogether.
    No, I’m not talking about the Major League playoffs or the upcoming World Series. I’m talking about something more important: the future of professional baseball in Columbia.
    You say you didn’t know it had a future? You say you thought it all went bye-bye when the Bombers (curse their names and spit) deserted us for Greenville?
    Well, it didn’t. We can still have a joint-use ballpark — in the perfect location, down by the Congaree River — for both the University of South Carolina Gamecocks and a minor-league team.
    But anyone in a position to make this happen needs to move quickly, because this window may only be open for the next few days and weeks.
    Consider the following:

  • USC is looking for an alternative to the crowded Vista site that has been frowned upon by Columbia City Council. This was the site that, until a few weeks ago, the Gamecocks were absolutely, positively going to build on (which caused all my colleagues to tell me to give up my dream). Expect that new site to be identified soon, because the university wants to show coach Ray Tanner and all the fans that a replacement for Sarge Frye Field will happen sooner rather than later. Of course, with a private partner chipping in, that new stadium could be a lot nicer than anything the university would build on its own.
  • Contrary to conventional wisdom, USC President Andrew Sorensen would be open to said ballpark being shared with a minor-league team. Actually, “open” is too weak: “I’m completely supportive of that and wide-open to that,” he told me Friday. In fact, he said he was contacted by a team in the last few months, and while that didn’t lead to anything, he remains “wide-open” to a favorable overture from a pro team. “I’m a big minor-league baseball fan myself,” he said, adding that he goes to see the Jamestown Jammers in Upstate New York when he visits there in the summer. One caveat: “I’m not going to subsidize” a private partner. Any deal with a pro team must be advantageous to USC. When I said I saw no reason why a deal couldn’t be structured to benefit both parties, he agreed.
  • The university recently reached an understanding with the Guignard family
    that could lead to the new research campus extending down to the river. Consultants are working on giving shape to the new possibilities that this opens up. This would be an excellent time for someone — say, a minor-league team in search of a new home, and there are plenty of those out there — to step forward and say, “Why not make baseball a part of that vision, and let us help you?”
  • Developer Alan Kahn is on the verge of presenting Richland County Council with a detailed plan for a ballpark at his Village at Sandhill. He anticipates laying this proposal before the county by the end of this month. He’s been talking with the Columbus Catfish, and has secured from the South Atlantic League exclusive rights to this market for the Catfish. What that means is that for the next few months, no other SAL team can talk to Columbia. Mr. Kahn says he has nothing against a downtown ballpark, and nothing against a joint-use deal with the university — but Columbus is only interested in the suburbs.

    This, sports fans, is where the ball could take a really bad hop. I continue to wish Mr. Kahn all the best in his development out there, but if a minor league team locates way out in the Northeast, what should happen won’t ever happen. Mr. Kahn is just trying to meet a demand. He says the team wants to go where people live. Well, I responded, that’s not where I live. That’s the trouble with baseball in the suburbs — it becomes one neighborhood’s team, rather than bringing the whole community together. It does Columbia, and the Midlands in general, no good at all. And no minor-league team or university can build as fine a park by its lonesome as the two entities can build together.
    You might say that the fact that Columbus — which doesn’t want to build a park where Columbia needs one — has exclusive SAL rights precludes any other team from coming in and rescuing us from a fate worse than sprawl.
    But not all minor-league teams belong to the Sally League. Consider, for instance, the West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx, a Southern League Class AA franchise (as opposed to those fickle deserters, the Class A Bombers) that is in a hurry to leave Jackson, Tenn.
    Dan Morris, longtime sports guru of The Jackson Sun (and my former colleague, since I worked there from 1975 to 1985) tells me the Diamond Jaxx plan to be there for one more season, but “I don’t anticipate them staying after that.” In fact, Dan said, they’d rather leave sooner. “They just don’t have a facility to move to, or they’d move right now.” (Anybody hear opportunity knocking?)
    Yes, the team has been in a dispute with the city of Jackson over its lease, but Dan seems to believe the Jaxx are pretty much free to leave. The team can get out of the lease if it draws fewer than 180,000 fans two years in a row. Last year, only 150,000 attended. This year, he said, it may have been fewer than 100,000.
    Here’s the bottom line for this community: We could take a giant leap forward in our efforts to develop our riverfront — and further the university’s exciting expansion — with the kind of ballpark that two strong partners working together could build. This could be a jewel for people throughout the Midlands to enjoy, in an unsurpassable setting.
    This can happen. Given all of the above factors, I refuse to believe that it can’t.
    And the time for someone to step forward and make it happen is right now.

Sunday, Oct. 2 column

Issues, and people, are too
complex to describe with labels

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
    IF YOU GO to my blog — the address is at the bottom of this column — and click on the “comments” link for any given posting, you’ll find a whole lot of opining going on, but the quality of dialogue often leaves something to be desired. Not always (in fact, many of my electronic correspondents are thoughtful enough to make me regret my own superficiality), but often.
    The Internet has done much to facilitate the creation of “communities” of narrow interest, from Monty Python fanatics to shoe fetishists. But it has militated against community in the broader sense. Because you can spend all day talking with people just like you, you tend to be less motivated to understand those who view the world differently. And the more that happens, the more facile our world views become.
    It’s not just the Internet. You don’t even want to get me started (again) on the 24-hour cable news channels, with their shouting matches between opposing partisans substituting for meaningful commentary.
    Nor are newspapers blameless. We have tended to cover politics as spectacle, as a sport with only two sides to each game — winner and loser, left and right, black and white. That makes issues easy to write about on deadline. But it doesn’t help citizens solve problems.
    When issues, and people, are presented as caricatures — that dumb Bush, that flip-flopping Kerry, that skirt-chasing Clinton, that crook Nixon (this is not an entirely new phenomenon) — we can’t truly understand them.
    I try to avoid this by interacting personally with newsmakers as much as possible, whether I need something for publication from them at a given moment or not.
    But “as much as possible” isn’t always enough. Consequently, I still sometimes make facile assumptions.
    Case in point — Perry Bumgarner. Before last week, here’s what I knew about Mr. Bumgarner: He was a founder of We the People of Lexington County, the antitax group. He was running for County Council as a Democrat, after having failed to get elected as a Republican. It seemed highly unlikely that we would be interested in endorsing a person whose only previous interaction with local government was to complain about taxes — especially when he was up against Republican Jim Kinard, a man with practical experience dealing with the day-to-day realities of governing on the Lexington 4 school board.
    We had interviewed Mr. Kinard at length back during the Republican primary process (which had led to not one, but two runoffs), so when he came in to see us last week, we had few questions. Besides, he was up against a two-time loser who apparently was only running as a Democrat to avoid having primary competition. This one was going to be easy.
    But then Mr. Bumgarner came in, and I had to learn for the thousandth time that you can’t assume such things. There was, as always, more to him than the two-dimensional picture in my mind.
    At first, he seemed to fit the caricature. A retired homebuilder, he was dodgy on the subject of impact fees. Asked why he had switched parties, he was startlingly frank: “Because they had three Republicans running, and I didn’t want to get mixed up in that thing.” Yep, a political opportunist who knows nothing about government beyond the fact that he doesn’t like paying for it.
    But then we kept talking, and the caricature took on three-dimensional human form. His U.S. Navy tie tack led to questions, and I found he had served with the Marines as a medical corpsman in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, earning a Silver Star and a Purple Heart. (“It was cold,” he said, at the “Frozen Chosin” Reservoir. No kidding.)
    He may not have had much to say about impact fees, but he had spent so much time observing county government in recent years that he had something knowledgeable to say about almost everything else. Some of his positions were surprising, coming from an antitax activist. He said he would advocate a half-cent sales tax to support the regional bus system if it would expand into Lexington County beyond its three current routes. Rare is the local politician willing to go out on that limb while seeking office. In fact, rare is the candidate who has thought much about the buses at all. (One GOP primary candidate we spoke to last month didn’t even know there was such a thing as a regional transit authority.)
    He even favors letting the school districts retain the authority to tax — which is certainly more than I would allow. (So who’s the anti-tax activist?) But we found agreement on the need to consolidate school districts, and on the lack of accountability of the special purpose districts that run the county’s recreation facilities.
    When Mr. Bumgarner left, my colleague Warren Bolton and I looked at each other, and each knew what the other was thinking: There’s more to this guy than we thought.
    So we endorsed him, right? No. But we seriously considered it. In the end, we went with Mr. Kinard, for several reasons: his experience as a school trustee, his more specific ideas about what his district and the county needed, his broad community involvement and his relative youth and energy. I gave him points for being willing to face a crowded primary field, rather than taking the easy route. And he knows where he stands on impact fees: He’s for them, as a sensible alternative to higher p
roperty taxes.
    But it was no slam-dunk. Politics, and life, get complicated when you take the time to see past initial assumptions.
    Maybe I need to get some of those partisans who shoot at each other on my blog together in a room, face-to-face. That could be dangerous, but who knows? We all might learn something.

FEMA column, w/ links & art

Attempt to help evacuees
plagued by failure to communicate

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
    THE MAN WAS walking around with a $2,000 FEMA check in his hand, and he didn’t have any idea what to do with it.
    That caused Nola Armstrong, a volunteer at the old Naval Reserve center that houses S.C. Cares’ many services for Katrina evacuees, to realize some folks needed more help than others. The Legal Services volunteers (who work out of the office pictured at right) came up with a way to provide it.Katrina_center_017
    What happened next illustrates a quandary inherent in trying to help the helpless: When someone is dependent upon you for the necessities of life, how responsible are you for what happens to them? Where is the line between compassion and condescension, between brotherly love and paternalism?
    From what I’ve seen at the S.C. Cares center, the volunteer “shepherds” know where to draw the line. But when they tried to make sure no one with mental problems got conned out of the $2,000 FEMA was sending to the head of each evacuee household, they ran into trouble with the feds.
    S.C. Cares chief Samuel Tenenbaum said that from the beginning of Columbia’s hastily organized effort, the main operating principle has been the Golden Rule: “How would I want to be treated?”
    It was decided these were not “refugees” or “evacuees,” but guests, and would be treated as such. They would not be herded into a communal shelter, but housed in motel rooms. Shuttles would Katrina_center_016take them back and forth between their motels and the center where they get medical care, eat a free meal, get reconnected with scattered relatives, make bank transactions without fees, and on and on.
    “What we set up was a community,” said Mr. Tenenbaum, and one that ran better than most.
    When it became obvious that some members of the community might be particularly vulnerable walking around town with $2,000, the organizers approached Probate Judge Amy McCulloch for help. They worried that while the center had a setup for helping the mentally ill, the checks were going to the motels. Judge McCulloch issued an order to change that arrangement. When FEMA heard about it, U.S. Attorney Johnny Gasser got involved.
    FEMA doesn’t dictate to local relief workers how to do the job, Mr. Gasser told me. “They leave it up to the locals to determine” pretty much everything, he said, including “what is the best way to distribute these checks.”
    He said FEMA had signed off on a local plan to have checks sent to the hotels. But when I sought a copy, Mr. Tenenbaum said “there was no written plan,” merely a hasty discussion on Labor Day in the mayor’s office, with planeloads of evacuees about to descend upon Columbia.
    Did Mayor Bob Coble know of any formal agreement with FEMA? “Absolutely not,” he said.
    Mr. Gasser said FEMA had two main problems with Judge McCulloch’s order: First, it departed from “the plan.” He said “FEMA’s in the crosshairs,” and feared a backlash if people who had been promised checks at their hotels had to get them somewhere else. Second, “the civil rights implications.” FEMA thought the language in the order created “a presumption that people had to prove their lucidness prior to receiving their money.”
    But “it was never about screening everyone,” said Judge McCulloch. The idea proposed by S.C.Katrina_center_008 Cares was that if the checks came to the center, where mental health services are available, conservators could be appointed for those who might need help handling money.
    “The issue was, how do we help these people to make sure nobody takes advantage of their dollars?” said Mr. Tenenbaum.
    Mr. Gasser sympathizes. “Everybody was well-intentioned,” he said. S.C. Cares’ concerns are “absolutely legitimate.” He said he told Judge McCulloch that local folks should “just get a new plan approved.”
    “It doesn’t take much time to type up an e-mail to FEMA,” he said. That doesn’t match the experience of those who tried.
    “There were many contacts, not only by me, but by people down there (at S.C. Cares), to contact FEMA” and work out the matter, Judge McCulloch said. “I personally made three phone calls to try to climb the chain” in Washington, she said. “The third person said, ‘We don’t have the authority to do this, and I personally don’t know who would.’”
    He recommended that she call the agency’s 800 number. At that point she issued the order that S.C. Cares had requested.
    “As soon as I issued the order, FEMA called me,” she said. It was the agency’s general counsel, saying “What are you doing?” She explained, and asked for help in getting the checks distributed in a more secure location, rather than leaving the job to “hotel clerks.”
    “Discussions were had,” she said. “People were asked.”
    “The next thing I knew,” she said, “I heard that the U.S. attorney’s office was going to sue me.”
    (When I called FEMA’s general counsel I got a
public affairs guy instead. “I’m not familiar with anyKatrina_center_001 plan,” he said. But, “Our policy is to mail the check to the individual where they are staying.”)
    Mr. Tenenbaum is indignant that anyone would think folks in Columbia were trying to deny anyone their “rights.”
    “Our whole philosophy was the opposite of that,” he said. The irony is, if S.C. Cares had treated its “guests” like “refugees” and kept them in a common shelter, the problem wouldn’t have arisen.
    “FEMA is incapable of getting outside the bureaucratic response and into the people response,” Mayor Coble said, adding that his advice to the agency would be: “Quit having meetings. Help the person in front of you.”
    For Judge McCulloch, “My biggest regret is that we have not solved the problem.”

An op-op-ed from the editor

Some quick, friendly rebuttals to the Rev. Wiley Cooper’s op-ed piece today:

  • We don’t just want a "czar" for the city. We want one for the state, too. This isn’t some whim on our part, but something we’ve called for consistently on the state and local levels for years now. We see the weakness of mayors and governors in South Carolina as a key reason why we’re still last where we want to be first, and first where we want to be last.
  • "Czar?" Give us a break, Wiley! We’re talking about the basic concept of letting the executive run the executive functions of government, and letting the legislative body
    (in this case, the Council) set broad policy and pass laws (or ordinances). Call us crazy, but we see no point in electing executives if they don’t have the power to act effectively as executives. And note that last: We would have elections, you know. Unlike with czars, the position would not be hereditary.
  • The business analogy is completely off (aside from the fact that comparing government to business is one of the greatest fallacies in contemporary political rhetoric). Businesses have clearly defined, separate roles for directors and company officers. And that’s what we want here.
  • Note that none of the examples cited of cities that function well under a council-manager form are in South Carolina. One of the reasons we need a mayor empowered to run the city is because South Carolina cities face obstacles that communities in North Carolina and other states don’t face — such as weak annexation laws. The de facto city of Columbia is split into about 10 municipalities, two counties, between five and seven school districts (depending on how you define the area). Why? Because it’s hard to redraw city limits out to where the people and the development are going. And when you try, you end up with a feud between warring municipalities (note the spat between Columbia and Irmo over the shoestring annexation of Columbiana). Until we loosen annexation laws, get rid of special purpose districts, and do a number of other things we’ve been calling for for over a decade to throw off the chains that bind local government, we will particularly need strong leadership in the stunted arrondissement that is de jure Columbia. We have enough other handicaps without that one.
  • The central argument here is a complete non sequitur. I keep hearing this one over and over from defenders of the stagnant status quo: Just because someone is a good visionary leader who has the political skills to get elected doesn’t mean he or she can be an effective, day-to-day administrator. Well, who’s arguing with that? Of course a strong mayor would hire good people to work under him and do the things he can’t do in a 24-hour day — or that he (or she) lacks the skills to do. Call that assistant (or more likely, assistants) a chief of staff, or an operations officer, or even, if you like, "city manager." Just as long as that person answers only to the mayor — and not to a committee of seven — effective, accountable government will be possible.
  • Democracy is messy, and what I don’t understand is why opponents of this change fear it so. They don’t trust the people to elect a good, honest mayor who is actually empowered to run the city from day to day. They raise the spectre of corrupt political bosses. Yes, democracy demands of the voters a great responsibility to choose someone of ability and integrity. Let’s give them a chance.
  • Finally, I must note that Rev. Cooper is to be commended for his long-time, passionate dedication to his local neighborhood association. We need more citizens as civic-minded as he. But as we will discuss on Friday’s editorial page, neighborhood associations are among the main interests resisting a common vision for the city being implemented by a strong executive.

Rev. Cooper has his legitimately and sincerely held view of what’s best for the community, and we have ours. We think ours is based in a broader definition of the community, but he honestly disagrees. That’s what we have the op-ed page for.