One of the things I've always tried to do in my political career and commentary is acknowledge good ideas and promises kept, regardless of the party of the individual.
District 6 Councilwoman Lindsay Webb was not my first choice as my district representative, but when my preferred candidate did not make it through the primary, I voted for her as the better of the two candidates.
I did so because I believed her when she said she would keep her promise to not vote for an increase in the trash tax.
And despite the pressure and the criticisms, she has consistently voted against increasing the trash tax, as she did Tuesday.
She has kept that promise to her constituents and for that she should be congratulated.
Now, I know I won't always agree with Lindsay on many issues, considering our differences in political philosophy, but that's okay. Disagreements on policy issues are to be expected and I know from our prior conversations that those disagreements will continue to be respectful - on both our parts.
But when an elected official keeps a promise and is subject to criticism for doing so, we need to defend the principled stance and publicly thank them for doing so.
So thanks, Lindsay!
Thursday, April 01, 2010
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5 comments:
While Ms Webb is not my district councilperson, she deserves praise for her vote.
It is too bad that she is an exception, rather than the rule.
It seems principled stands are rare these days.
While I laud her position of holding firm against new taxes, why didn' Lindsay or any of council find any of the $20+ million in cuts in the prior 2 years that Bell's team found in a couple of months?
Chuck - that's a good question that I've asked on my blog...
Why don't you contact Lindsay and ask her? I'm sure she'd reply...
Was also concerned that $48m could reduce to $21.5 quickly and in a timely fashion. Maggie with your county experience you know it requires a forensic accountant to read the "hide the pea," practices of individual departments. The city spent a small fortune to put a new IT process in place and it's still not functioning. Only thing that surpasses that is the entire MLK renovation which still does not function properly. We can't keep spending $3 in order to save $1.
Mariner - I agree with your basic premise, but I don't believe the new financial system is in place. When the county went to an ERP, it took more than a year to set everything up, implement the system, switch all departments over to it, etc...
As for finding ways to reduce the deficit by half, I know a significant portion of that was elimination of positions that were unfilled but still on the books. The city has, for years, kept positions as 'active' even if they didn't fill them. So if you began to calculate your personnel costs, you'd fill in the wages/benefits for those positions and then claim 'savings' when you zeroed out the amounts.
But Bell actually eliminated the whole line from the budget - thus eliminating the position - rather than just not fund it.
They also cut some departments - but it'd be nice if they would provide a detailed listing so everyone could see how they came up with the $21.5 million.
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