I’ve watched two mayors come and go (yes, Taylor is going…or not) the last 8 years.  When LaFortune took office he brought with him his own agenda, applied said agenda, wrecked some long-standing processes, and then he was gone.  In come Taylor who brings her own agenda, applies said agenda, and now she will soon be gone.  Guess who is left behind to clean up the mess?  We citeewurkors who have committed ourselves to the citizens of Tulsa as a long-standing career.

For some reason, this reminds me of a science fiction book by Larry Niven.  He wrote a book called the Mote in God’s Eye.  In this book Niven describes an isolated civilization called the Moties.  The Moties have this serious problem where they will die an agonizing death if they do not give birth to offspring.  Not wishing to have an agonizing death, this results in cyclic population explosions for the Moties that always result in wars and essentially near-extermination back to their stone age days.  Then they begin again.  The Moties have tried and tried to stop these cycles of the rise and fall of their civilization.  They always try to figure out solutions toward the end of a cycle but always fail.

The city of Tulsa is like this in some ways.  We have cycles that repeat generally every four years.  For the most part, department managers are able to keep a good semblance of normalcy and can protect established civil services from meddling by the ever-changing administration in the form of the Mayor.  But sometimes the head honcho inflicts damage that is difficult to recover from.

Take for example Taylor’s policy of furloughing city employees.  While I wish these were not necessary, I understand that they are and will adjust my budget accordingly.  However, the last time this happened under LaFortune the city incurred massive expenses in the form of a lawsuit from certain citeewurkors just because of the way the furloughs were implemented.  One astute worker pointed out to the mayor when she gathered us all together with a question:  “Why are we going down this road again?”  One astute city attorney responds by saying a certain judge overturned a certain judgment.

Why risk it, Mayor?  While I hate to even say this, the solution provided for in the Charter appears to be layoffs in the affected fund area.  I’m not sure why this is so hard to understand.  Perhaps I do not fully comprehend the black and white rules that we all live by, but I’d say I’m pretty sure of what I read.  Somebody please enlighten me if I’m wrong.

Surely with all the brains we have working for the city, there is a way to come up with a solution that will not appear to violate anything.

All that said, I will have to concede one point the Mayor made.  Funding city government via sales tax has the disadvantage of being subject to a poor-performing economy.  I have no illusions of proposing solutions to this except maybe to figure out a better way to fund those areas of city government that rely upon sales tax revenue.  How that could come about is for those with bigger brains to discuss.

In any case, this brings me to the title of this post.  I submit to you that Tulsa would benefit from hiring a city manager.  This city manager would not be subjected to political whims every four years or influenced by lobbying interest groups and yes…  unions.  He or she would be concerned with one thing:  operating the various city departments in the most effective and efficient manner.  As a hired hand, it wouldn’t matter if he or she were a Donkey or an Elephant.  He or she would also have no need to hire a “cabinet” or create positions of vague description with high salaries.

Then we could just kick the mayor into a figurehead status instead of a jumping ramp to another political office.