In Defense of the Council

I find the Mayor’s comments about the Council Overture discussion absolutely offensive. I am not a big fan of this council for many reasons, but this media campaign to blame them is just unfair and dishonest. This post is a bit of a rant/opinion piece, with little time to edit, so be kind. I’m posting so that the perfect does not become the enemy of the good and so it is timely.

RESPONSE TO BLOG POST
The mayor’s blog post is here to see it in its entirety.

I’m going to directly respond to a few items:

Here are three rules of public policy: you can never know everything, you can never make everybody happy, and you should never delay action in the hope that you can do either.

The trend towards rushing to get things done in ridiculous timelines and having less and less information available to the public and the council and then saying they can’t make everyone happy and shrugging it off is a hallmark of this Mayor’s administration.

Ridiculous Timelines and True Leadership
It started for me, when we were working on Inclusionary Zoning right after the Mayor’s first election. The mayor set an unrealistic timeline for us to come up with an ordinance, because he wanted to make good on his campaign promise and do it quickly to show he was responsive. After setting that absurd deadline, he walked away and left the work to everyone else. That might be a reasonable thing for an executive to do, but . . . you have to then get reports on what is going on, help smooth things over to make it happen on the timeline you want to including providing the resources, intervene when those doing the work for you run into roadblocks and reset the deadline if it will get you a better result. And that help on these issues should not just be bullying people to get them to rush things, but actually help resolve the real issues that pop up. You need to be a leader with a can do attitude, but not just in regards to getting things done, but getting them done right. IZ was not done right. The Mayor is partially, but not entirely to blame. But, the rush to get it done at the end, and some of the stupid compromises he forced as a result, was a major issue. I remember being mad at the time, but I didn’t know it was just a sign of things to come.

If you look through items where the mayor set deadlines, he’s almost always wrong, they almost always get missed. The most recent review of the Development process is a great example, the mayor wanted the report done by labor day, giving the commission inadequate time (2 or 3 months) to learn about a process they don’t participate in, gather public input, draft recommendations, get comments on those recommendations from the commission and the public and finalize the draft. It was absurd.

Good Information
I don’t know about you, but asking questions and getting answers and making informed decisions is EXACTLY what I want my elected officials to do. I don’t want them making uniformed decisions. Because the mayor makes decisions with little information and attention to details, it is even more important for the council to do their homework. To make matters worse, much of the Overture meetings were done in closed session, information was withheld and trust really broke down. They didn’t include the community, and it is natural to then ask why and try to figure out what happened. People are going to have more questions and the more they uncover and discover due to those questions the more questions it leads to. If the mayor wants this issue resolved quickly, then full and open information up front would have been imperative. But that didn’t happen. As you can see from my blog this week, tons of information came out the day of the meeting. Overture responses, new proposals, legal memos . . . and I didn’t even see or post everything that came out. One of those pieces of information, the draft of the recent audit, came out during the council briefing from Professor Undercoffler a half hour before the meeting started. Carto was sitting in the room when he emailed the council. Why did it take so long if he had gotten the audit the day before?

Making people happy
I agree with the statement, you can’t make everyone happy. However, I don’t accept that the way to do business is to just accept that premise and then not even try. I believe a good compromise is a win-win and you should work towards that, if its practical and the result makes sense. Allowing that people will be disappointed and not listening to their concerns is not good leadership. Getting buy in, addressing concerns that can be addressed and getting people to the point where they don’t object is what we should be striving for.

Delay
The mayor is acting like the council said that they were going to wait to after the holidays to make a decision, that was NOT at all the decision. Of course, he wouldn’t know, he went home, he wasn’t there. The decision was to RECESS the meeting, the meeting isn’t over, the intent was to schedule a meeting in the next week to finish deliberations. They did that because to continue on in the middle of the night is not good government. Good decisions do not get made after working a full day, and putting in another full day of work in a council meeting, knowing you have to be back at work in 5 hours. The council delay was not only reasonable, but prudent.

They also did it because after the straw poll vote, it seemed that the most votes on the council were there for a proposal that the Overture folks (MCAD/201) said they didn’t agree to. The council could have possibly decided and come to a conclusion, but to what end if they chose and option that was going to just get rejected. That didn’t seem like a real resolution. It would be done, but to what end.

If the mayor had stayed, he would have realized that many council members were definitely pushing to get this done by December 14th. In fact, that is what the council’s motion was, to go talk to the donors and Overture folks face to face and see if the preferred resolution has any chance of prevailing. That seemed very reasonable and very prudent to do so.

The Madison City Council talked into the wee hours this morning and made no decision on the Overture Center. If they don’t act in the next four weeks, a generous offer to retire Overture’s $28 million debt without a dime of taxpayer money will evaporate. Worse, those same taxpayers could be on the hook for as much as $6 million in mortgage payments on the building. And while I’ve never pushed the argument that the building could go dark, I now think that’s a real possibility.

If you can’t win on the merits of your argument, invoke fear
This may be part of the problem. The political posturing started from the get-go with the Overture folks and the Mayor. Threatening someone to accept your one and only proposal, telling them that it is your way or the highway is not very effective if you want to reach compromise. The council was told they could only consider one model and that is what they set up a committee to do. Just two weeks ago, Alder Clear suggested another model, the Overture folks agreed to look at it and it just shows that those who were asking to consider another model from the beginning were right. And months of committee time and $25K for a study was wasted. Of course, this new option, that the Mayor praised, meant there was need for new information and it led to new proposals, that also required new legal opinions and information. And to rush, rush, rush all that good work by invoking fear is not productive. The mayor is just trying to divert our attention from the fact that the Overture folks can take their ball and go home, or they can make this work. They can pay off the debt and continue to work with the council on a resolution. There are major portions of items they all agree on, but the details need to be worked out. The donors could try to understand that and work with the community to find a community solution. Or they can be arrogant in their beliefs that only they know the solution even tho they got us into this mess in the first place and they an threaten the community, but it feel like blackmail and of course the council is going to push back on that. Will the Overture go dark? Unlikely. Paul Soglin explained why the banks won’t want to forelose on the Overture. The threat seems not even credible. And the Mayor saying that taxpayers could be responsible for $6M out of one side of his mouth and then having the city attorney argue that we aren’t responsible for that money and that is why we didn’t participate in the resolution with the banks is just dishonest. And it is just done to invoke fear. That is what the republicans and others have been doing for years, but so-called progressives shouldn’t sink to their level and their deceptive practices.

Fact checking

My office together with the City Attorney and Comptroller, and with input from the Council, negotiated an excellent agreement with the banks and the donors who have pledged to retire the debt.

What? We were part of the agreement with the banks? I’m pretty sure that the council and others were told otherwise, as late as Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. And if we were part of it, when did the council discuss what their position in that negotiation is.

That agreement would have the city buy the building for a buck and lease it out to a nonprofit to run it. The overall cost to city taxpayers would be about the same as the old Civic Center was, every union worker at Overture would be guaranteed a union job, and millions more in private donations could be raised each year to support the facility. A consultant hired by the Council itself concluded that the plan is workable in every aspect.

1. I’m not sure people agree that the overall cost to the city taxpayer would be about the same as the Civic Center was. If the mayor paid attention to the questions and discussion Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, he would know that there is broad agreement that this is a HUGE RISK. No one wants to take on the risk of owning the building, its a “hot potato” being tossed around. That is one area that there seemed to be consensus on. How he thinks that this is a no-brainer or he can state it that definitively is beyond me if he was paying any attention. Yes, there were studies done, but I don’t think the conclusions are as clear as he stated.

The other concern is that the long-term costs of taking care of the building might be high. We’ve done two studies now looking at the next 15 years, and both concluded that maintenance costs wouldn’t be more than the old Civic Center. And projections that go beyond a decade and a half are speculative at best.

2. To say that there will be a union job for every union worker at the Overture ignores many of the sticky issues around the staffing dilemma. He also says:

First, under this model, about 15 union workers would still be union workers, but they couldn’t participate in the Wisconsin Retirement System. That’s not ideal, but if the WRS is important to them, they can always move into other city employment and keep that benefit. Seems reasonable to me.

Because of bumping rights, other union folks could very well, and very likely be losing their jobs. It would create chaos if just 10 of the Overture employees bumped people out of other jobs, because then they would bump others out of their jobs (maybe), and a huge chain reaction could begin, displacing several workers throughout the city system, affecting many departments and way more than 10 or 15 jobs and eventually, 15 people could lose their jobs, it just might not be the Overture folks. That’s just the reality of what could happen.

A union job where you lose huge portions of your pension is little consolation. There are real issues with asking someone who has worked for the city for 20 years to take a job where if they don’t go back to the state retirement system in 5 years they lose their hard earned retirement benefits. It essentially forces them into the above bumping situation. It’s not reasonable.

3. I appreciate the Mayor’s faith in the economy and donor community, but to accept that millions more are going to be raised after this is resolved is also a huge leap of faith. Fundraising is down, foundations are giving out less and less and their priorities are shifting to basic needs, donors are rearranging their priorities due to the economy and generally, its looking a little bleak. To think after this huge controversy, the major trust issues and the lack of community involvement in the Overture, suddenly money is going to be coming in is a little naive. I think it might be able to be done, but it will be hard, and it is yet another risk. And if it doesn’t happen, they will be back to the taxpayer asking for more money or threatening to go dark again.

It isn’t perfect vs. Do it Right

Look, the public-private plan isn’t perfect. Nobody can guarantee its success, and sure it doesn’t make everybody happy, but in my view it’s the best option we have.

I think there was a real desire by the council to not just get to a resolution that will land them back in the same situation in a few years. That’s been done and here we are. I think they wanted to take the time to do it right. To do their due diligence. To put their best thinking into it and not just accept what is before them, but to make sure that will actually work in the future. I admire that. And I believe that is the true motive of many of them. I know there are no guarantees, but you know, they have an opportunity to improve the chances of it making succeed. I think that is worth this two weeks (or less) delay. And the mayors objections over the delay seems extreme given the discussions that the Mayor seems to have missed or dismissed.

Where were you?

I’ll join Council leadership and other alders who will sit down with the donors, consider all the options on the table and try to come to an agreement that can win the support of a majority of the Council. I will push for a resolution at the Council’s next meeting.

If this was so gosh darn important to the Mayor, why didn’t he stay and advocate with the council for what he wanted to have happen. Why did he leave the chamber for hours of the discussion? Why didn’t he participate in the discussion or at least stay chairing the meeting? If this was so important, where was he?

Progress made? Or not?
The mayor’s blog says this:

So, while I’m disappointed that the Council didn’t get it done last night, they did make some progress. I was particularly grateful for the reasonable tone and constructive ideas offered by alders Brian Solomon, Satya Rhodes-Conway and Michael Schumacher.

Channel 3000 says this:

“I don’t think much progress was made, frankly,” Cieslewicz said of the Tuesday night meeting.

At 4 a.m. Wednesday, the Common Council called it a night without voting on a plan that would allow for the city to take possession of the Overture Center, relieving nearly $30 million in debt through private donations and relief from banks.

“After last night’s discussion and the lack of progress that the council made, it is a possibility that the building could go dark. That would be the real tragedy. They have got to get this done,” said Cieslewicz.

The mayor said that after the council’s hours of debate, action is overdue.

Did he write his own blog? Why the double-speak?

Oh Really?
Also, from channel 3000:

“I’m pretty much telling them it’s enough. We’ve heard from everybody numerous times. The same questions have been asked over and over and over again. There is no new information coming out. They know what they need to know. Now they have to vote,” said Cieslewicz.

But from his blog:

I’ll join Council leadership and other alders who will sit down with the donors, consider all the options on the table and try to come to an agreement that can win the support of a majority of the Council. I will push for a resolution at the Council’s next meeting.

Some amendments to the public-private plan would be in order and acceptable to the donors. I’m also open to, but much less enamored of, other models.

I think the mayor understands what is going on here, its not about more information except for new information on some of the proposals, they are new questions on new ideas. And, its about finding out if there can be agreement on what the council is leaning towards, which is a model that the Overture folks have to said they won’t agree to. That’s why his statement on his blog are reasonable, his comments to Channel 3 however . . .

You’re “telling” the council. Um, you’re not their boss. You’re the executive branch, they are the legislative branch and they have the votes on the council and you only vote if everyone is there, everyone votes and there is a 10-10 tie. You’re not really in a position to be “telling” them, unless you are threatening them with soemthing else. If there is going to be resolution to this matter, I suggest the mayor work with the council, instead of against it. And “telling” them in the media its enough, when he knows damn well there are complex issues to be resolved and leaving the council meeting is not a good way start.