Fix it how?? Six ways we can fix Tampa Bay’s political mess
July 16, 2009 at 2:53 pm by Wayne Garcia
From my cover story in this week’s print edition of Creative Loafing:
I got an e-mail a few weeks back from the good people at the Greater Pinellas Democratic Club. I had agreed to speak at their monthly meeting in July and they wanted to know what my topic would be.
Without thinking, I said, “Fixing Tampa Bay Politics.”
Now I’ve been known to offer my fix-it advice to Tampa before: See CL’s Fix It Now series from 2008 for my thoughts (rants?) on growth, sprawl, transportation and diversity issues.
But fixing politics?
I might as well have opted to speak on “Getting Palestinians and Jews Together: Solving the Middle East crisis.”
But I was speaking to a Democratic Club, so an easy solution came to mind: Get rid of all the Republicans.
And yes, that line got a good cheap laugh when I gave the speech. But as I told the Democrats, “You need the Republicans. They are the yin to your yang. The salt to your sweet. The darkness to your light. Good ideas and good government cannot exist in only half the spectrum. The verbal nonviolent battle over ideas and truth is what defines our nation, and defines our ability to arrive at great solutions and great leaders.”
And that is what’s broken. The marketplace of ideas has become an unpoliced and incomplete cacophony of noise. Without vibrant daily newspapers and interested broadcast journalists who want to illuminate public affairs, and without an audience that wants to read about such things any more, the marketplace of ideas is now littered with infomercial-quality crap.
Instead of statesmen, we have the political equivalent of ShamWow.
Instead of citizens who question their leaders, we have blind anger or, worse, blind loyalty.
But I did come up with six ideas that, if the parties, candidates and voters would agree to do them would make Tampa Bay politics immeasurably better. This is what I told the Pinellas Democrats:
1. End term limits. Providing artificial limits to politicians’ terms of employment has not made government better; on the contrary, it has made it worse. Bureaucrats and lobbyists now provide the institutional knowledge in any local government, and elected officials have so little time to get up to speed they naturally kowtow to those entrenched individuals. Term limits are government for the lazy and stupid. Officials elected under term limits automatically get all eight years, because even if they are reviled, most folks would rather wait out their terms in office than challenge them. In the old days, you had to challenge such officials, because you didn’t know when or if they would ever leave office.
Term limits also allow public officials to play Musical Chairs. “I’m term limited at city council, so I will run for county commission. I’m term limited in the House, so I will run for Clerk of the Court.”
2. Define ethical behavior. One way to start is to ask all candidates to articulate a campaign code of ethics and post it on their websites so that they and their supporters can be held accountable for it. Scott Wagman, a candidate for St. Petersburg mayor, has an example on his website.
3. Demand that politicians pledge to consolidate government services. This is especially important across the 25+ different governments in Pinellas County, where taxes pay for unconscionable duplication. Support only those candidates who will consolidate HR, purchasing, fleet, janitorial services, construction permitting, etc. and then we can talk about the more politically sensitive consolidation: code enforcement and public safety (law enforcement and fire/EMS).
4. Apply what I call the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade litmus test. If you recall that movie, Harrison Ford and Sean Connery went galloping off into the desert to find the Holy Grail, discovering that it was guarded by a hundreds-year-old knight templar. Along the way, they encounter members of the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword who guard the grail and who tell Dr. Jones, “Ask yourself, why do you seek the Cup of Christ? Is it for His glory, or for yours?”
I suggest a similar test for you when you meet candidates, putting this question to them: “Ask yourself, why do you seek public office? Is it for the voters’ glory, or is it for yours?” Look them in the eyes when they answer, and if they don’t have a good answer or you don’t believe them, don’t support or vote for them.
5. Provide greater transparency. Campaigns should voluntarily post all incoming and outgoing emails to candidates on their websites, and they should post weekly, if not daily, updates to campaign financing reports instead of making voters wait months and weeks to see who is giving and how much they are giving.
While we’re at it, how about better, more user-friendly interfaces to search campaign finance reports at the local level, as well as a way to tie local contributions to those made in state races? Right now, if I give to a city council candidate and a state House candidate, a voter would have to search two different databases to find all my contributions. And some cities, most notably St. Petersburg, have terrible or nonexistent campaign finance databases, which is inexcusable given the state of campaign finance software available that can easily be dumped into a searchable online database.
6. Fact-check campaign rhetoric. You may remember the Fair Campaign Practices Committee in Pinellas County. Defunct for years now, it was a good method of giving candidates a chance to complain to a politically balanced and independent board about lies told about them. We need its 21st-century successor, a grassroots equivalent of the St. Petersburg Times’ PolitiFact.
I’d like to see both major parties in Pinellas and Hillsborough agree to establish online fair practices fact-checking operations. For each website, Democrats would appoint three members, Republicans would appoint three members, and those six would have to agree on three more Independents to join.
The committee’s work should be totally transparent; all e-mails back and forth between members would instantly be posted on the Internet. It would use volunteers to research the veracity of campaign speech, both proactively and as the result of complaints filed by campaigns, and publish the results online. When five of the nine members agree with a finding, it will be labeled as “True,” “Mostly True,” “Some Truth” or “False.”
I asked the Democratic Club to make such a website happen. Readers, call your local party and demand it.
