Municipal Recall Effort Doomed?

    One hears that City Clerk Esther Martinez may tell the Las Cruces City Council as early as tomorrow morning [Friday] that the would-be recallers have failed to collect sufficient signatures to trigger a special recall election in any of the three districts in which they sought to boot progressive councilors out of office.
     Certainly our own calculations have indicated the recallers have fallen sufficiently short that it's unlikely they can make up the difference in the 15 additional days they get, under the City Charter, to amend the petitions.  Further, I've been amazed by how many people who signed the petitions want to withdraw their names because they were misled into signing in the first place.  I won't get into detail, but talking to some of those people was troubling, because so many everyday, non-political good citizens got gulled so cynically by the recallers.  That's not how elections -- or petition drives -- are meant to be conducted.   The recallers' conduct didn't comport with ethical constraints, state laws, or basic Christian religious principles.   The latter seem relevant because several of the recall leaders claim to be serious Christians. (Isbell says he's some kind of Christian minister, while Coppedge and others who backed the thing financially purport to be strongly Christian.)  I don't think Jesus would have approved using flat-out lies to fool people into punishing city councilors for supporting a minimum-wage hike.
    What part of that conduct do they suppose Jesus would have approved of?  We know he was pretty sympathetic to the poor and oppressed.  We know he told us it was tough for a rich man to make it to heaven.  He at least hinted that humility and compassion were better ways to get there than greed and arrogance.  We know he was a truth-teller, who gave hypocrites a rude awakening.  Certainly neither history nor the gospels  contain incidents in which he was lying, defaming people, or acting out of pure greed.  Or hatred.  He did make clear that folks who made a big show of their piety but had no time for the needy weren't likely to  meet his Father in heaven.

    So I hope some of those who call themselves Christians but lied to help this vicious recall effort along will take a moment to explain, at least to themselves, how they harmonized their conduct with their beliefs.
    I don't mean to sound preachy.  I don't mean to judge, because I agree with Jesus that judging other people isn't my right, although I also readily concede my conduct isn't always up to the mark on that one.  But I do mean to suggest, respectfully, that some folks meditate a little on some things.

    In the more political realm, what's this development mean?
    It means that the sooner the charter-authorized procedures drive a stake into the heart of the recall effort, the quicker the city can make some progress on healing the divisions that recent controversies deepened.
    It does not mean that the folks behind the recall are through, though.  As some of them have announced, they'll be running candidates for city council and county commission, trying to seize control of our local government.  They'll spend plenty of money on it.   I've heard that one failed city council candidate has reportedly threatened to seek to recall some county commissioners.
     But for the moment, people in three city council districts have rejected lies and hatred because they happen to like and respect three hard-working and honest councilors, Olga Pedroza, Gill Sorg, and Nathan Small.  Kudos to the three -- and the citizens of their districts.
                                                             -30-

Three Questions about the Minimum-Wage Hike

Monday, the Las Cruces City Council voted to delay minimum-wage hikes set by the petition-initiated ordinance. People keep asking me:

Was the City Council's action legal?

No, in my view; but it might survive a challenge.

The Council must follow the City Charter. The Charter requires the Council to put the petition-initiated ordinance to a citywide vote or pass it unchanged. Council technically did that, but with some councilors giggling about gutting it immediately – which they then did. Unfortunately, since its draftspersons likely assumed Council would follow the law, the Charter lacks a further paragraph specifying what happens in this situation.

Obviously the provision meant for Council to enact the ordinance and not tinker with it unless and until changed circumstances made that expedient.

City would argue that the Charter's omission of additional language was intentional. City lawyers would explain to a judge (ideally with a straight face) that the Charter authorized the time-consuming initiative procedure but intended it to mean no more than some note dropped in a suggestion box.

Would that argument fly? Probably not. Judges faced with absurdities or inequities frequently “imply” provisions to uphold legislative intent or the intention of parties to a contract.

Secondarily, one councilor's wife gets paid to lobby for a restaurant group that violently opposes the minimum-wage; under the Government Conduct Act, that's the same as if he voted against something he himself got paid to fight tooth and nail. (If he voted primarily for his personal financial reasons, that'd be a felony; but I prefer to assume he didn't.) He should have recused himself, probably because of the “direct financial interest” and certainly to avoid the strong appearance of impropriety.
The Council's best argument would be that there's no “direct financial interest” because (presumably) the wife's contract doesn't specify that her compensation and job longevity could be affected by success or failure – or by a wrong vote by her husband. Gotta say that if I were party to a trial and the judge's husband worked for my adversary, I'd be uncomfortable.

But lawsuits are costly and time-consuming.

Why did Nathan Small change his mind?

Only Nathan knows – if even he knows for sure. Judging from her appearance before the Council, Marcy Dickerson must hold some sort of world speed record for talking. Maybe Nathan was mesmerized.

Yes, the business community had announced a despicable effort to recall him and two others. Nathan denies that was a motivating factor. I'd like to believe him. I did believe him, listening to him one-on-one last Sunday.

He said it was important to make this compromise with some businesspeople now. He sounded sincere; but when I pointed out various reasons it would be better to “compromise” during the scheduled review in 2015, he smiled and nodded. I never heard a compelling reason to ignore a majority of citizens, and perhaps the law. He talked about certainty (which we don't have with the possibility of a lawsuit and the probability of a new initiative effort) and civil discourse (which business interests have pretty much sabotaged with the recall effort). I never did quite understand, though I like and respect Nathan. Maybe I hadn't had enough coffee.

What happens now?

Paid hacks will push the recall, trampling over our sense of community. They'll say and do whatever it takes. They'll even try to hide the obvious truth, that the recall was triggered primarily by the minimum wage hike, behind vague, misleading, or flatly false accusations of malfeasance. Business-owners backing the recall will take our money and spend it shamefully. Witness the slick billboards going up.

The real movers and shakers cringe in the shadows.
                                                     -30-

[The column above appeared in the Las Cruces Sun-News this morning, Sunday, 7 December.]

[Random observations from Monday's council meeting:
1. There were some extremely moving words spoken by people getting minimum wage, but also some strong statements by business owners and managers.  Editing a highlight reel of the evening would create a fairly interesting window into the community.  One answer to the business-owners "Sky Is Falling!" message came from a gentleman who'd been a hospital executive most of his career.  About a dozen times there'd been pay raises.  Discussing those, hospital managers and even nuns expressed concerns about the impact on the quality of care and on the hospital's ability to survive.  On none of those occasions, he said, was the effect of the pay raises more than minimal."
2. One interesting moment was the very start of the discussion, when Mayor Ken Miyagashima described the moment that he first "got it" about raising the minimum wage.  
There's a school program, or extra-curricular course, called "Personal Financial Literacy" in which kids learn some adult realities involving dollars and sense.  (pun intended)  Miyagashima complimented Stan Rounds and the school system on it, though perhaps mostly because it taught kids they should get life insurance.
One evening Miyagashima worked with his kid on a problem, looking at the possible household budget of a woman with two or three kids making minimum wage.  The wage . . . added up to about $1,000 per hour.  The best they could do on an apartment for their hypothetical family was $650 per month.  (Ouch!)  They figured a car, car insurance, and utilities would eat up another $_____, leaving about $ per month for food.  Obviously inadequate.  What to do?  Better get another job, Ken's kid suggested -- so they were looking at an 80-hour work week, barely seeing the kids, etc.  
"That's when I got it," Ken said.]


[Sorry if the paragraph about Nathan Small doesn't quite cut it.  It's difficult.  I like and respect Nathan.  Even at the council meeting Monday, although he pushed his "compromise" he resisted invitations by Ceil Levatino, Miguel Silva, and Greg Smith to water down the ordinance any further, by stretching out the deadlines further, delaying the initial phase six months, and decreasing the amounts tipped workers would get.  I also appreciate his efforts to discuss the matter with his constituents Sunday (even if he didn't take the advice he got from the vast majority of them) and to explain why he'd changed his view (even if I wasn't quite swift enough to follow the explanation).  He treats people with courtesy and what seems to be genuine respect.)]

[I wrote the above column the morning after the council meeting.  How did the rest of the week affect my answers to the three questions?
1.The Council's action was probably illegal.  I'm a little more convinced of that then ever; but I don't foresee it being tested.
2. I'm further convinced that Councilor Small's motives in changing his mind were honest, if misguided.  Wednesday I found myself wondering: if we could go back to December 2013, when 
CAFé announced this campaign, and someone had told leaders of CAFé "Hey, without all the work and uncertainty, we could agree now to a deal in which the wage goes to $8.40 in January 2015, then $9.20 in January 2017, then $10.10 in January 2019, would they have taken it?  I wasn't involved and don't know; but if someone had forged this compromise earlier, it wouldn't have been unreasonable, in my uneducated view.  I wish business leaders had been willing to participate in meaningful discussions at that time.
3. But then, I wish they they weren't on a rampage, like kids destroying their playpen, with this recall thing.   Not surprisingly, it's getting pretty silly -- particularly with calling 80-some year-old writer of letters to the editor "thugs."  Really, Jeff?  The Recallers, paid hacks and craven bosses, are beginning to perform as expected.   I have confidence that citizens will reject the effort, but we need to take it seriously, because there'll be ample money behind it.]

Can't We All Just Get Along?

We'd all like a more civil and cooperative local government. We're neighbors, members of a community, and we ought not to ape the Washington gridlock.

How?

First, we need to be able to talk with each other – and listen to each other. We should learn to make clear that in rejecting someone's argument we don't reject him or her – and to recognize that disagreeing with us doesn't make someone an implacable enemy. Few people, if any, are purely evil, and neither wanting a living wage for workers nor believing we can afford to pay a living wage sounds evil.

Randy Harris's “Great Conversations” is a helpful model. In the minimum-wage debate, councilors dragged it in so late that many perceived it as just part of a scheme to delay the initiative (which it would have done). I'd have liked to see Randy called in earlier: we could have used a face-to-face, candid, fact-based discussion by all sides on what level of raise was right and why. Candid but civil.
Maybe the City should routinely utilize some form of Great Conversation. Not a work-session, where councilors and mayor sit high above us. More human, interactive.

On the other hand, recall is a tool to use very sparingly. We generally shouldn't use it merely because we disagree with someone. I disagree strongly with many officials' votes and actions, but I'm not shouting “Recall!” (I'd reserve recall for officials like David Gutierrez, who've seriously misbehaved.)

Now, some local businessfolk, after calling lifelong resident Sarah Nolan an outside agitator, have hired a young fellow from Illinois, Jeffrey Isbell, to run a campaign to recall three councilors. Isbell, 28, lives in Illinois, where he reportedly (a) ran for Williamson County Commissioner in the 2012 Republican primary, finishing a distant 4^th with 314 votes (5.16%!), and (b) still has an outstanding court judgment against him from an unpaid $1,573 debt. He's not even a registered voter here, but has been hired to tell us how we ought to run Las Cruces.

Isbell's anonymous bosses will spend a lot of money, probably blanket the media with ludicrous attack ads, and perhaps even win. Meanwhile they'll waste a lot of public money, destroy the political fabric of Las Cruces, and divide the town. (It's no wonder that so far they're keeping their names out of it. Paying some fellow to do their dirty work.)

It's ironic that (so far as I've heard) CAFé hasn't moved toward recalling anyone, even though certain councilors are trying to violate the spirit, and arguably the substance, of the City Charter, and thwart what they've admitted is the public will. (The initiative/petition process mandated the Council enact the ordinance without change, and councilors did so while proposing substantive changes – and still propose to seriously weaken it before the ordinance ever takes effect.) Greg Smith shouldn't even be voting on the minimum-wage issue because of a pretty basic conflict of interest, but I'm not advocating recall.

Recall means a special election, which costs money. If the recall succeeds, and someone new is placed in office, the other side could soon circulate another recall petition. We could have an endless series of unproductive elections. Simmering tempers would explode. But what does some kid from Illinois care? Somebody will pay him for his labors, and then he'll go somewhere else. Maybe Maryland, to organize against marriage equality.

I applaud the Mayor's comment, that although he often disagrees with the counselors, he stands with them against recall.

If we come so close to blowing ourselves up over the minimum wage, how will we solve even more important problems we face, such as water?

                                             -30-

[The column above appeared in the Las Cruces Sun-News this morning, Sunday, 23 November.]

[This recall effort is embarrassing.  The people who are actually behind it are too ashamed to put their own names on it.

[Mayor Ken Miyagashima's comments on Facebook were blunt, correct, and perhaps courageous.  Miyagashima himself is a small businessman who has doubts about the wisdom of raising the minimum wage above $8.50 any time soon.  Since he crafted a compromise a while back (keep the ordinance as it is, except to include notice that the council will reconsider the issue next July), he has resisted a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle moves by councilors to delay the ordinance's January 1 start-date.
To the newspaper story about the recall effort, he commented on Facebook: "I don't know who this organization is, but this is wrong!  You might as well add my name to this recall because I stand with my colleagues -- Sorg, Small, and Pedroza, we may not always agree, but we work out our differences.  I will be helping raise money for them (councilors) and will openly campaign for them (councilors) to retain their seats!"
Good for him!] 
[This might be a good time to mention -- as I will often if the recall silliness persists, because recall proponents are already telling untruths about their targets -- that the three councilors are competent, honorable, caring, thoughtful, and hard-working representatives of their districts who've been elected and re-elected in those districts.  (Recall proponents will depend on a huge influx of cash to defame the three, because (a) all three have served their districts well and (b) by all accounts, the issue -- minimum-wage hike -- is popular with the people. (Other councilors said so when deciding not to let a vote of the citizens happen on this.
Nathan Small is a smart, friendly young fellow who's been incredibly active representing his district on the council and representing the City in Santa Fe and Washington.  Olga Pedroza, a lawyer, has brought legal acumen and thoughtful questioning to the council meetings.  Gill Sorg has worked well beyond the call of duty, particularly in examining critical issues such as water.  Mr. Isbell, on one of his many radio appearances this week, appeared to mock Sorg for regarding climate change as an important issue we mustn't ignore.   Fine, but a vast majority of climate scientists and a noticeable majority of voters agree generally with Sorg.  I've found all three councilors to be honest and caring -- as well as very diligent and competent.] 

[Although the column mentions that Isbell's a stranger here, I don't mean to suggest for a moment that being from elsewhere bars someone from commenting on our politics here.  As a civil rights worker down South, I never saw the point in people calling me an "outside agitator."  Some folks loved me and some folks hated me, without even knowing me; but to me the point seemed, "Am I right?"   However: (a) the folks who hired Isbell have been railing against "outsiders" for months; (b) there's a lot he doesn't know, and he got many details wrong while talking on the radio this week; and (c) when he used phrases such as "We did . . ." or "We thought . . ." in discussing events that took place months before he could spell "Las Cruces," he sounded a little false.  But let's listen to him.  Closing our ears because he's an outsider is silly.  On the other hand, if he just doesn't make much sense, . . .]

[Truly, what we're seeing is one more battle between big money (likely much of it from the outside) and local people.  One hears the recall group has funds in the six figures.   That would be an absurd amount for a local city council race in southern New Mexico.  Meanwhile the three councilors were all elected by their constituents.   Few complaints have been heard from those constituents.  The three favored lowering the minimum wage and federal approval of the new National Monument.  Polls showed the latter was very popular with the people here, and the councilors who didn't like the minimum-wage ordinance noted it was petition driven and conceded that if they let it go to a vote of the citizenry, it would win.  So other than the business community, there's been little in the way of negative views of these councilors.  There's been the usual carping from the folks who opposed them, but nothing more.  So money from the Chamber-of-Commerce and from elsewhere, plus the misleading ads it'll buy, is pitted against the decency, diligence and good records of the the three councilors.]

[The message from the people financing this, who are too craven to identify themselves, is simple: vote against us and be prepared to spend untold hours and any money you might have opposing a well-financed campaign of character assassination.  That's a steep price for trying to help improve your community!]