Mallory Versus Council: Reminds SWNID of Church, Reality TV

So Cincinnati Mayor and SWNIDish neighbor Mark Mallory has presented a single candidate for city manager to the Cincinnati City Council. And four council members have held a press conference to accuse Mallory of violating the city charter by not presenting multiple candidates. Hence, they pledge to vote no.

As the mayor himself has implied, the council members' objection has to do with their strained interpretation of the city charter. The charter reads:

The mayor shall appoint the city manager upon an affirmative vote of five members of the council following the mayor's recommendation for appointment. Prior to the vote, the mayor shall seek the advice of council, to include the opportunity for council to interview the candidates considered by the mayor. Should the council not approve the recommendation of the mayor, the mayor may submit another recommendation or institute a new search.

Mallory notes, with the support of the city solicitor (chief legal counsel to the city), that the charter is more naturally interpreted as implying that the council should interview as many candidates as the mayor should present for consideration, whether one or several. The plural is descriptive, not proscriptive. He notes further that after a nationwide search, he had identified two candidates, one of which removed himself from consideration. So he has one and only one candidate.

We ask the following questions, and we supply the Seldom-Wrong answers too:

• Was the previous city manager, Valerie Lemmie, chosen from multiple candidates presented by Mayor Luken to council? We recall that this was not the case.
• Are there other areas of government in which the executive presents multiple candidates to the legislative body for their pick of the best one? We believe not.
• Should we expect an outstanding candidate for city manager to submit to a beauty contest judged by a political body, or should we expect such a candidate to demand the mayor's singular support in recommending him or her to that body? We expect the latter.
• Can Cincinnati expect anything other than trivial bickering between the council and mayor as long as (a) the city charter has not completely located executive power in the city in the mayor's office; (b) council members are all elected at large and so have no responsibility except to promote themselves by making issues where none exist? We expect nothing else, and so call for yet another charter revision to eliminate the city manager, make the mayor a true "strong mayor," and elect many more members of council, all from individual districts in the city, giving those council members a real constituency to represent.
• Four votes are a minority of the five-vote council. Laketa Cole, not a member of the Gang of Four, has stated that she objects to the process so far but will judge the candidate on his merits. Will she vote for or against the candidate? We say that Cole will vote yes, as she has much more to gain politically by leveraging a yes for more power with the mayor and a positive image with the public than with a no that merges her into the obstructionist opposition.
• Who is the biggest disappointment on city council? That's easy: Leslie Ghiz. She's been on the wrong side of casinos and now the utterly wrong side of this appointment. We can't wait for the next election so that we can vote against her.
  

We've been through too many ministerial appointments in churches to miss what's going on here. A church needs a minister. Its elders (or whatever it calls its senior leaders) present a candidate to the congregation. The perpetually dissatisfied complain that they have only one candidate to consider and demand multiple candidates. Their demand has nothing to do with what's right or best for the church and everything to do with asserting personal power.

In those rare cases where the senior leaders cave to such pressure, good candidates for the position withdraw, not wanting to submit to such a process, let alone to begin serving a church as the survivor of a popularity contest. The only candidates who will submit to such nonsense are those desperate enough to take anything.

The church that turns its staff selection process into such a circus is doomed. So is the city that does it. Who wants to work for such a place? Those with a memory longer than five years will recall at least two Cincinnati city managers who left the job specifically because of mircomanagment from members of council.

The city council Gang of Four watches too much TV. They want to turn the selection of a city manager into American Idol, Survivor, or The Apprentice. But this voter doesn't want the likes of Simon Cowell or Donald Trump running Our Fair City.