Tulsa City Hall Category

Remembering Jim Mautino

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Viewing for James Mautino will be 12 noon - 8 pm, Wednesday, November 1, 2023, and the service 11:30 am, Thursday, November 2, 2023, at Moore's Southlawn Funeral Home. Services will be webcast. Condolences may be left online at www.moorefuneral.com.

Mautino-20040814.jpgFormer Tulsa City Councilor Jim Mautino passed away last Thursday, October 26, 2023, at the age of 91. He is survived by his wife Bonnie, four of his children, and many grandchildren. Jim was elected District 6 City Councilor in 2004 and again in 2009, serving two two-year terms. Jim Mautino was the best representative east Tulsa ever had at City Hall; arguably, he was the only representative east Tulsa ever had at City Hall.

I first met Jim in 2000 at a real estate office in midtown, where neighborhood leaders from across the city gathered to form the Tulsa Alliance of Neighborhoods (TAN). Jim was a leader in the Tower Heights neighborhood, just west of the KVOO transmitter towers near 11th Street and 145th East Avenue. This neighborhood of homes on one-acre lots was built when the area was way out in the country. The City of Tulsa annexed this area in 1966 and promptly forgot that they had. Even after Tulsa adopted geographical representation in 1989, councilors elected from District 6 were more concerned about pleasing the Midtown Money Belt and special interest donors that put them in office than about representing the needs of the district. Jim Mautino was the lone exception.

Jim was a retiree from American Airlines, where he had worked as a maintenance instructor and quality assurance auditor, roles that gave him invaluable skills of organization, communication, and analysis that he put to work for his fellow Tulsans.

Jim Mautino was passionate about developing and improving east Tulsa, where he had made his home since 1963. He saw the hills and valleys and prairies and wondered why so little of it had been developed. He wondered why city officials allowed the eastern gateway to the city, the confluence of I-44, I-244, US 412, and OK 66, to be lined with car lots and industrial uses, rather than revenue-generating retail. He wondered why city officials allowed industrial property owners with deep pockets to violate the city's zoning and stormwater ordinances. He wondered why the city's water board seemed more intent on fueling the development of Tulsa's suburbs rather than building infrastructure within our own city limits to increase our population and expand our sales tax base.

In 2004, Jim Mautino ran for City Council and won against long-time incumbent District 6 City Councilor Art Justis. Grassroots neighborhood activists from across the city volunteered to support Mautino's bid, while his opponent was backed by big money connected with a zoning controversy.

(Jim and I had a little adventure together at the Council meeting just before the election. We showed up early for the Council pre-meeting and came across an unannounced pre-pre-meeting, which seemed to have an inhibiting effect on the councilors in attendance. Shortly thereafter, a City Council staffer screamed at me.)

Jim was just shy of 72 years old when he first took office, but he had more energy for the job than officials decades younger. Jim regularly held district "town hall" meetings at Martin East Regional Library, leading off with a PowerPoint about infrastructure projects and new development in the district, talking about city issues of general concern, and fielding questions. I can't find any of the video of those meetings online, but an archived page of links from a June 2005 Jim Mautino meeting on David Schuttler's Our Tulsa World website gives you an idea of the topics he covered: Fence lines and city limits, boards and trusts, street problems, retail growth in Owasso and its threat to Tulsa sales tax revenues, Light Industrial zoning along US 412, the sweetheart water deal the Tulsa Metropolitan Utilities Authority made with the suburbs. From my description at the time:

D. Schuttler has posted video excerpts of Mautino's June 29th town hall meeting, and you can hear the councilor speak about encouraging growth and increasing retail sales within Tulsa's boundaries, and how water lines, annexation and fence lines, and comprehensive planning all fit together to help or hinder development within the city limits. Jim Mautino is passionate about encouraging quality development in east Tulsa, and that means making undeveloped areas within the city limits a higher priority for new infrastructure than the suburbs.

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At an August 14, 2004, gathering, Tulsa City Councilors Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock jokingly flash eastside and westside "gang signs" to signify their membership in the Council's Gang of Five.

Councilor Mautino became part of a bipartisan, multiracial, grassroots, reform-oriented caucus originally known as the Gang of Five -- five councilors representing the neglected periphery of the city, seeking to encourage accountability in government, fairness in application of the zoning laws, and quality development within the city limits to grow Tulsa's tax base.

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Tulsa City Councilors Jim Mautino and Roscoe Turner at an anti-recall rally in spring 2005.

The Powers That Be (a group I dubbed the Cockroach Caucus) immediately set out to break up the council majority. One member, unemployed, was offered a job in the mayor's administration. Two more, Jim Mautino and District 2's Chris Medlock, were targeted with recall petitions. Both men prevailed in the July 12 recall -- Mautino winning with 71% of the vote.

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At a recall election victory party on July 12, 2005, at the American Legion hall in east Tulsa, Jim Mautino cracks up at the "Jim Mautino for Mayor" cake.

As an indication of the bipartisan esteem in which Jim was held, here's a bit from his 2006 re-election endorsement from attorney and Democratic activist Greg Bledsoe.

A little over a year ago I had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know your City Councilor Jim Mautino. Since that time, it has become clear to me that Jim is the most hardworking, dedicated and selfless public servant I have ever known. He is the salt of the earth. His tireless commitment to the improvement of District 6 and the whole City of Tulsa is without limitation. He has worked long hours for better sewers and streets (including a dramatic increase in funding for District 6), balanced economic development and transparent government at City Hall.

As far as I can tell, when it comes to local issues, Jim does not have a partisan bone in his body. He does not vote a party line, but always votes for what he thinks is right.

As an American Airlines employee of over 39 years, Jim was an active member of Transport Workers Union Local 514. At City Hall he has consistently voted and tried to help the non-certified employees organize a union, a position that was recently approved by the Oklahoma Supreme Court. He has held accountable the Mayor, a member of his own party. He has been a consistent advocate for neighborhoods and small businesses. He has always been willing to meet and hear the concerns of all, even those who disagree with him.

When necessary, Jim asks the tough questions that have not been asked, but should have been. When it comes to waste and corruption at City Hall, Jim has applied the finest attribute of a traditional Republican, good business sense, to look into what's been going on there.

Jim Mautino is exactly the type of City Councilor any citizen would want to represent them: fair, hardworking, and honest. I hope you will vote to RE-ELECT JIM MAUTINO. You cannot find a better person to support your district or the City of Tulsa.

But three elections in three years took a toll. Mautino survived a 2006 primary challenge but was narrowly defeated by Democrat Dennis Troyer in the general election.

In 2009, Mautino stepped up to run again, defeating Troyer with the help of new residential development in the part of east Tulsa within the Broken Arrow School District. Jim rejoined Roscoe Turner and Maria Barnes, two other neighborhood leaders who had regained council seats that year. He arrived back on the council as a fan of new Mayor Dewey Bartlett, Jr., but soon became disillusioned:

When Jim returned to City Hall in 2009, he set out to be newly elected Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr's strongest advocate on the City Council. He urged his fellow councilors to give Bartlett Jr the benefit of the doubt for at least six months as he got his new administration going. Despite their good-faith effort to work with the new mayor, Bartlett Jr managed to alienate each councilor, one by one, with broken promises, misleading information, and contemptuous treatment.

One of Mautino's signature issues in this second term was animal control. His effort to find a way to make laws against animal abuse and abandonment economically enforceable was met with passive-aggressive behavior by city bureaucrats.

Then you have the councilors who do their own research, who dig into ordinances and budgets and case law and what other cities are doing, and they persist in asking "why not?" and presenting alternatives. From a bureaucrat's point of view, such a councilor is a pain in the posterior, a threat to their comfortable, stable existence, and must be taken down. If you can use your lack of cooperation to provoke the councilor, passive-aggressively, to the point of expressing his irritation, you win.

Since this sort of inquisitive, pro-active councilor also poses a threat to other entrenched interests, the aggrieved bureaucrat can usually find a helping hand from the various organs of the Cockroach Caucus, who miss the days when all one had to do was pull on their strings to get the councilors to do their bidding. The obligatory unflattering photo, misleading headline, twisted caricature, and tut-tutting editorial follow in due course.

It's a misunderstanding of the nature of bureaucracy to think that bureaucrats will be supportive and encouraging of a councilor's ideas for new ways to solve a problem, if only the councilor will be polite and patient. (People seeking public office really should read Jim Boren's books first.) It's not that bureaucrats are bad people, but it's a profession that tends to attract the risk-averse. You don't climb in a bureaucracy by taking risks. The exceptions to the rule are there, and they're real treasures because they're rare. Too often, bureaucrats will try to wait the councilor out -- keep holding meetings, keep delaying a final plan, until the councilor gets interested in another project or gets voted out of office.

It's a pretty good indication that a city councilor is doing what he ought to be doing if he's getting shot at by the bureaucracy and the daily paper. Jim Mautino is a good councilor, and if District 6 voters want an advocate for their interests who won't be deterred by bureaucratic foot-dragging, they'll return Jim Mautino to office this fall.

Jim, along with most of the rest of the councilors, was targeted by Bartlett Jr and his establishment allies, using the memetic accusation of "bickering," with the help of gerrymandering and plenty of campaign money.

Their real problem with Jim Mautino was that he was an intelligent, diligent city councilor. He used his freedom as a retiree to devote himself full time to researching laws, investigating best practices, meeting with constituents, and proposing solutions to the problems they raised.

One of the things that seemed to annoy City Hall bureaucrats about the old council was their habit of raising new issues to be discussed, explored, and acted upon. From the bureaucrats' perspective, this meant more work and their own priorities displaced by the councilors' pet issues.

Nearly all of the outgoing councilors had certain priorities that were inconvenient or outright obnoxious to the administration, the authorities, and special interests. Jim Mautino was concerned about animal control, food truck sanitation, chloramines in water, and encouraging new, high quality development in east Tulsa....

Although the specific issues varied, in each case these councilors were willing to spend time outside the scheduled meetings to read, to talk to citizens, to commission research from the council staff (and actually read it), and then to keep pushing for action. That's pretty much a recipe for annoying city officials.

Despite his defeat in his 2011 re-election bid, he kept digging into issues, like the new trash contract, until his term came to an end. With the end of that term, a short era marked by inquisitive, intelligent councilors was replaced by the Complacent City Council.

Despite the abuse and arrows hurled at him over the years, Jim Mautino persisted with a smile on his face and hope in his heart. May God grant comfort and happy memories to his grieving family, and may God grant our country more intelligent, devoted public servants like Jim Mautino.

Vote NO on all 4

Originally posted on August 1, 2023. Post-dating to August 8 so it remains at the top of the page through election day. A previous entry has a just-the-facts discussion of the four August 8 bond issue and sales tax propositions.

Here are seven reasons to vote no on all four City of Tulsa ballot propositions at the special election next Tuesday, August 8, 2023:

1. Two-and-a-half years too early: The proposed sales tax may not go into effect until January 1, 2026.* A lot can change in two years and five months. Economic and global circumstances two years from now may be very different -- just think how different the world was two-and-a-half years ago -- and our priorities may change with those circumstances. We shouldn't commit nearly a billion dollars in spending so far in advance, nor should we start borrowing (and paying interest) on revenue that's two-and-a-half years in the future.

2. Hamstringing the next mayor and council: The proposals block the ability of new city officials to pursue capital improvements to implement their election platforms. A new mayor and city council will be elected in 2024, but the August 8 proposals lock up funding for capital improvements until 2030, after the end of the next mayor's term of office in 2028. It's selfish on the part of lame duck mayor GT Bynum IV, who is not running for re-election, to lock in spending priorities for his successor. There's plenty of time before the current tax runs out for the new mayor and council to decide on a new package. The new officials will have 10 months after taking office in December 2024 to put together a package and put it before the voters.

3. Too vague: $162 million is "itemized" for "citywide" but unspecified lists in broad categories -- streets, sidewalks, alleys, ADA implementation (whatever that means), bridge replacement. This list of vague citywide items includes traffic engineering, which is not a capital improvement but an operational responsibility, and project engineering inspection and testing, which in the past was always priced into individual projects as essential to any construction project. In the original 1980 "third-penny" sales tax vote and its early successors, specific intersections, bridges, widening projects, water and sewer lines, etc., were listed in the sales tax ordinance or general obligation bond issue, committing the city to specific projects with definable costs. It was possible to see whether or not funding was going to the most urgent needs and whether all parts of the city were given due consideration. These vague "citywide" line items don't give the voters anyway of telling whether we're being offered good value for money or whether contractor profits are being padded.

We also don't have specifics on nearly $80 million, divided between Proposition 1 and Proposition 4 for "Additional costs for completion of previously approved street projects listed in Improve Our Tulsa Proposition No 1 approved at an election held on November 12, 2019." Which projects overran? How much does each project require for completion?

Besides the "citywide" and "additional costs" items, many other line items are vague and undefined; some of them are outlined below.

4. $75 million for undefined "housing initiatives": When government sets out to solve a social problem, the money is wasted and the problem gets worse. $22 trillion was spent during the first 50 years of the War on Poverty, and there are more people dependent on government than ever before. The city wants $75 million to solve the homeless problem but they won't tell us how they will spend that money, not even why they think $75 million is the right amount to ask for.

The money will be spent in accordance with the recommendations of the Housing, Homelessness, and Mental Health Task Force, a group of the usual suspects and yacht guests that includes exactly one person who might have some direct experience dealing with homeless people.

The people in charge of our city government and the philanthropocrats** who control them see human beings as mere animals, automata that respond to stimuli in predictable ways. Their thinking goes that if you provide the proper environment and nutrients, people will thrive, just like plants do. That way of thinking leads to the arrogant belief that enough government money can fix anything: "If we can put a man on the moon" -- solve an engineering problem using the unchanging laws of physics and chemistry -- "we can end homelessness" -- a complex set of human tragedies that find their explanation in spiritual truths denied by the philanthropocrats and their minions.

The Founding Fathers and the Framers of the Constitution, informed by a Biblical anthropology, understood that all human beings are created in the image of God and as such have inherent dignity and worth, but also that all human beings are marred by the Fall, and inclined by nature to selfishness and evil, which requires the internal restraint of the Holy Spirit, a conscience externally restrained by the social pressure of a moral society, or, as a last resort, the threat of state violence to prevent violent evil.

Christian ministries like City of Hope Outreach and John 3:16 Mission have helped homeless people successfully leave the streets and rebuild their lives, because they begin with a true understanding of human nature. Materialist philanthropists and social service agencies, no matter how well-intentioned, cannot hope to address the problem and will likely only enable more of the self-destructive and societally destructive behavior they claim to be able to stop, if only they had enough money to spend.

5. Gilcrease Museum held hostage: Bynum IV & Co. are demanding another $7 million in "matching funds for improvements." In 2016, Tulsans approved $65 million to renovate Gilcrease Museum. In 2020, we were told that it had to be demolished and rebuilt. (Bynum IV chief of staff Blake Ewing wrongly claimed at the Tulsa GOP forum that we didn't know until the museum was closed that demolition was necessary. In July 2021, the doors closed for what we were told would be three years. In March 2023 we were told that more money was required, and recently we were told that the museum won't be open to the public until 2026. Bynum IV & Co. will have deprived an entire generation of Tulsa students of the opportunity to visit Gilcrease Museum during their high school years.

Like the proverbial car dealer who throws your keys on the roof and won't get them down until you buy a new car, Tulsa mis-leaders are demanding more money before they'll let us enjoy the priceless collection of artwork, artifacts, and historical documents that we, the Citizens of Tulsa, own. They don't deserve any more trust when they've already betrayed us over and over again. To earn our trust, the first step is to reopen Gilcrease, and put our collection back on display, with the money they already have in hand.

6. PAC in danger: Now City Hall mis-leaders want $55,790,000 for "Tulsa Performing Arts Center - facility renovation, infrastructure, loading dock improvements, safety and ADA improvements." This is more than half of the money for specified projects in Proposition 2. Given our experience with Gilcrease Museum, I would expect a similar bait-and-switch:

  1. Tulsans approve funding for PAC renovations
  2. Mis-leaders "discover" "serious problems" requiring demolition (or gutting)
  3. PAC closes with a promise to reopen in three years
  4. Mis-leaders "discover" a need for more money to reopen
  5. Construction delays keep PAC closed for two more years

I believe that Tulsa's mis-leaders wanted a new building for Gilcrease all along***, just like they wanted a new Arkansas River pedestrian bridge, and I strongly suspect they want a new PAC, but they know they cannot convince the voters to approve demolition of a beloved landmark or the full cost of the new facility. So they will deceive Tulsa voters, and if voters are stupid, they will fail to learn anything from past behavior and will let themselves be deceived once again.

Do we want to go for five or more years without a venue for Broadway theater, symphony, ballet, and opera? Until they deliver a new Gilcrease Museum to our satisfaction, we shouldn't trust Tulsa's mis-leaders with another precious cultural institution.

7. Millions more for a toxic lake: Work on the Zink Dam isn't complete yet, and the City wants another $3.5 million (per Proposition 2 in the bond issue resolution) or $5 million (per public statements) for "Zink Lake - infrastructure." Blake Ewing said during the Tulsa GOP forum that this was for parking lots, but when I asked where the document was that spells this out, I didn't get an answer. Meanwhile, Tulsa citizens have unanswered questions about toxic chemicals seeping into the lake from ground water under the refineries, past and present, along the river. Ewing dismissed these concerns as a "political, fun, fun hot button thing to get upset about."

In May 1979, Tulsa voters rejected the first attempt to pass a "third penny" sales tax for capital improvements. The list of projects was too vague, lacked guarantees that money would be spent as promised, and included some big projects that voters didn't want. In October 1980, 60% of Tulsa voters approved a more specific package with better safeguards and without the most objectionable projects. City of Tulsa officials have plenty of time to give us a solid package if we say no to this one.

Thanks to Jesse Rodgers and City Elders for the logo at the top of the page.

UPDATE: The Tulsa County Republican Party hosted a forum on the August 8 vote on Thursday, July 27, 2023, at 6 p.m., at the Embassy Church, 7100 E. 31st Street. The panelists included City Councilors Christian Bengel and Grant Miller, Mayor's Chief of Staff Blake Ewing, and me, Michael Bates. Darryl Baskin moderated the discussion and provided a live stream, which is archived on his TulsaLiveEvents.com Vimeo channel.

On Tuesday, August 8, 2023, on a day when there is nothing else on the ballot, on a day when only 14 jurisdictions across the entire State of Oklahoma have an election, City of Tulsa voters will be confronted with four ballot propositions, one to enact a new sales tax, and three for new general obligation bond issues. Combined, voters are being asked to approve $815,415,000 in new capital spending, not counting bond interest and fees.

The "temporary" 0.95% sales tax would go into effect when the current 2021 Miscellaneous Capital lmprovements Temporary Sales Tax (approved in 2019) expires on December 31, 2025, or earlier if that tax raises $193 million before that time. Based on my tally of sales tax revenues since the Improve Our Tulsa 2 tax went into effect, and assuming a 5% increase in revenues year-on-year (which is based on recent numbers), we might hit $193 million collected in October 2025, boosted by the increase in the Improve Our Tulsa 2 tax rate from 0.45% to 0.95% in July 2025. Even so, it means that we will vote on a tax and the list of projects to be funded more than two years before the tax goes into effect. Why so early? Why not wait at least until a new mayor and council take office in November 2024 and have had time to assess priorities and re-estimate project costs?

The new sales tax would expire on June 30, 2030, with no provision for an earlier expiration if receipts are better than forecast. If the new sales tax is defeated, Tulsa's overall city sales tax rate would be 2.7% and combined state, county, and city sales tax rate of 7.567%. If the new sales tax passes, the overall city sales tax rate would be 3.65%, an increase of 35.2%.

On the jump page, the ballot language for the four propositions, the ordinances and resolutions approved by the City Council for each, and the list of projects for each:

I've been asked to give a lecture to a civics class on City of Tulsa government. Below are the collection of links from which my presentation was drawn:

MORE perspective on local government and power dynamics:

A sex survey targeting teenagers was funded by the City of Tulsa using federal COVID relief funding. The survey was one of 70 non-profit projects selected for funding by a working group of four city councilors who are on next Tuesday's ballot -- Phil Lakin (District 8), Jeannie Cue (2), Lori Decter Wright (7), and Vanessa Hall-Harper (1) -- and approved by the full Council and Mayor GT Bynum IV. The survey, which remains online as of August 16, 2022, asks detailed questions of minors and concludes with links promoting websites for "tweens" and teens containing explicit sex ed materials.

Tulsa city officials routed $112,784 in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds to Amplify Youth Health Collective, a group that "coordinate[s] collective efforts within our community to expand access to sex education, promote healthy relationships, and engage the public in this conversation."

Two Oklahoma State University departments cooperated with the survey: The OSU Diversity and Rural Advocacy Group, and the OSU Center for Family Resilience of the OSU College of Education and Human Sciences.

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The survey on "teen sexual health & well-being" targets children ages 15-17. A separate survey is aimed at adults, and versions of both teen and adult surveys exist in Spanish. A caption on online posters advertising the survey notes the city's support as a conduit of federal funds: "This project is supported, in whole or in part, by federal award number SLT-1498 awarded to the City of Tulsa by the U. S. Department of the Treasury."

The survey asks teenagers for their sexual orientation, "sex assigned when you were born," and gender identity (with "agender," "non-binary," and "gender fluid" as options), and to rate their current sexual health as outstanding, good, neutral, poor, or terrible, and defined "sexual health" as:

...a state of physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being related to sexuality; it is not merely the absence of disease, dysfunction, or infirmity. Sexual health requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination, and violence. For sexual health to be attained and maintained, the sexual rights of all persons must be respected, protected, and fulfilled. (World Health Organization, 2002)

The survey later asks these minor children "questions about sexual health access," "about your own access to sexual health care [and] what you think and believe about access to sexual health care for other people," with "sexual health access" defined as:

The ability to get all of the resources you need to stay sexually healthy such as: (a) condoms (b) contraceptives (c) sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing & STI treatment (d) medically-accurate sexual health education (e) identity affirming communities/resources and (f) trusted adults.

A few questions near the end of the survey ask about COVID-19 impact on romantic relationships and access to sexual health services, presumably to justify the use of COVID-19 relief funds. The final page of the survey links to explicit websites with age-inappropriate discussions of sexual matters for pre-pubescent children and teens.

Here is a PDF of screenshots of the Amplify Tulsa / City of Tulsa-funded teen sex survey, including screenshots of the Tulsa Parks and Amplify Tulsa Facebook posts and the home pages of the sex ed websites linked at the end of the survey. These screenshots show the course of the survey after the respondent identifies his/her age as 15.

On Monday, July 18, 2022, the survey was promoted briefly on the Tulsa Parks Facebook page. An update was posted at 12:39PM CDT to the official Facebook account for the City of Tulsa Parks Department urging children as young as 15 years old to fill out an online survey about "teen sexual health & well-being." The post (at this link until sometime the morning of the 20th, when it appears to have been deleted) read as follows:

Attention, Tulsa! Our partners over at Amplify Tulsa need you to help them help Tulsa!

They are conducting a community needs assessment this summer to help identify how Tulsa can better support teen sexual health & well-being, as well as what parents, schools, healthcare providers, youth-serving organizations, & other community members need to support the young people in their lives.

There are two different surveys, one for teens 15-17 (to complete with permission from their parents) & one for adults. And, both are translated into Spanish. So, we hope you'll consider filling out this completely anonymous survey and/or sharing it with your community before August 15. Please & TY!

Here is a direct link to the surveys: https://okstateches.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_e2QBApTNODkN1Cm

#tulsaparks #amplifytulsa #communityhealthneeds #surveys

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Tomorrow, September 24, 2021, the City of Tulsa Election District Commission will hold a special meetingto consider a set of five proposed plans for redrawing Tulsa's city council district boundaries for possible presentation for public comment. The proposed plans were assembled by mapping staff at the Indian Nations Council of Governments (INCOG), which is a contractor to the City of Tulsa for planning services. The key agenda item: "Presentation and possible selection of alternative Council District Plans for public review and comment."

A series of four meetings for public comment on the proposals are planned for mid-October:

  • Tuesday, October 12, 2021, 7:00 p.m. Martin Regional Library, 2601 S. Garnett Rd.
  • Wednesday, October 13, 2021, 7:00 p.m. Hardesty Regional Library, 5131 East 91st
  • Thursday, October 14, 2021, 7:00 p.m. Zarrow Regional (West) Library, 2224 West 51st
  • Monday, October 18, 2021, 7:00 p.m. Rudisill Regional Library, 1520 N. Hartford

The proposed timeline for the Election District Commission calls for the commission to review input from the public meetings on October 22, select a preferred plan on November 5, hold a public hearing on the plan on November 19, then vote to approve the selected plan on December 10. The new plan will govern the 2022 Tulsa City Council elections.

Tulsa's city charter requires redrawing district boundaries following each decennial U. S. Census to take into account shifts in population. By charter, the city uses existing precinct boundaries as the atomic building block for districts, rather than going down to the block level as congressional and legislative redistricting must do.

Tulsa's 2020 population is 413,120, making the ideal district size 45,902. The five proposals deviate from the ideal between 3.0% and 4.3%. Currently, Districts 2, 3, 6, and 7 are overpopulated, 8 is slightly below the ideal, and Districts 1, 4, 5, and 9 need to add significant population. District 6 (53,536) has had the most growth in the last 10 years, thanks to new housing developments in the Broken Arrow school district (south of 31st and east of 145th East Ave). District 2 (51,363) has most of the territory that lies within the Jenks school district and has seen significant growth around Tulsa Hills. (One gets the impression that liberating the rest of the city from Tulsa Public Schools would encourage growth in those areas as well.)

The PDF of the proposed plans from INCOG includes statistics on the demographics of each district for each plan. Although African Americans now constitute 15% of Tulsa's population, the city is so racially integrated that it is difficult to draw a district that contains a majority of African Americans. Only INCOG plans 1 and 5 succeed in that, and only barely with African Americans comprising slightly over 50% of the population in District 1 in those two plans. (If we had 15 city councilors, more facets of Tulsa's population could be represented on the City Council.)

After approval of a charter change pushed by Mayor G. T. Bynum IV, the Election District Commission is now a five-member board, all appointed by the mayor. The board members are former City Councilors John Eagleton, Susan Neal, Rick Westcott, and Joe Williams, and the ubiquitous Sharon King Davis. ("Should we go out into the community, meet new people, and appoint someone without political and social connections, who's never served on a commission before? Nah, let's just appoint Sharon again.")

The 2011 commission was used by then-Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr. and his allies as an instrument of political revenge against his critics. Eagleton was drawn out of his district; his District 7 precinct was attached to District 9, where Bynum IV was the incumbent. Westcott faced some disadvantageous precinct shifts, losing heavily Republican precincts on the east side of the river, but after he announced his intention not to seek reelection, the proposed boundary changes were reversed. Major population shifts between districts helped well-financed challengers unseat incumbents in Districts 3, 4, and 5, as the incumbents had to build support where they had no previous relationships with constituents and neighborhood associations, where the media narrative of bickering councilors was unchallenged by direct personal experience. In a nutshell, the mayor and his allies successfully used redistricting to wipe out any check or balance from independent-minded councilors.

Ten years later, we don't have any dissidents on the City Council at all, and elections are now officially non-partisan (but not really), so the motives shaping the process will be different this time. Three of the members have found themselves on the wrong side of the city establishment, and two of them were directly targeted by the last redistricting effort, which offers some hope for integrity in the final product. I suspect there will be an effort to protect District 8 councilor Phil Lakin, an important cog in the Kaiser System as CEO of Tulsa Community Foundation and Bynum IV's heir apparent in 2024, but I don't see any evidence of a serious challenge to his 2022 re-election.

Given that the 2011 map was a gerrymander that involved moving a large number of people between districts to punish certain councilors, it would be appropriate to reverse some of those changes. For example, Maple Ridge should be moved back into 9, and the area east of Yale that shifted to 9 ("Bartlett's Revenge") should go back into 7. It would be interesting to start with the 2001 plan and create a plan that equalized population with a minimum of precinct changes.

For the sake of inclusion and equity, it would be good to pack as many half-million dollar homes into one district as possible (two districts at the most). The wealthy have dominated and will always dominate the mayor's office because of the resources required to run a city-wide campaign; for balance, the council should maximize representation of Tulsans from the working class, middle class, and small business owners. Pursuant to that, District 9 should not expand further northeast; it would make sense instead to add precincts like 115, 123, and 124 to 9.

Many jurisdictions are using a free website, Dave's Redistricting App, to allow citizens to experiment with potential maps and submit them to redistricting commissions for consideration. (The screenshot at the top of this entry shows Dave's Redistricting App with the current Tulsa district map.) Tulsa is not officially supporting such an effort, but I have created maps showing the current (2011) and previous (2001) district maps, as well as the five INCOG proposals:

I encourage you to sign up for a free account, duplicate the maps I've linked, make your own edits, and then publish and share your proposals.

MORE: My 1991 Tulsa Tribune op-ed in reaction to the Democrats' legislative gerrymander, setting out some principles that should govern redistricting, including the most important, communities of interest: "Ideally, districts should be centered around regions, cities, neighborhoods, and other natural affiliations. You should be able to give a simple geographic name to each district: northern Broken Arrow, Brookside, metro Oklahoma City."

UPDATE 2021/09/28: At the September 24, 2021, meeting of the Election District Commission, an additional map was introduced. Here is the current package of six maps. This is similar to Plan V, but it moves precinct 111 from District 2 to 9, precinct 123 from 9 to 8, and precinct 171 from 8 to 2. The change reduces the number of precincts moved from one district to another by 1, but increases the population deviation from 3.0% to 3.3%. I've added the map to Dave's Redistricting App and to the list above.

Goodbye, Gilcrease

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You have five more days (Wednesday, June 30, 2021, to Sunday, July 4, 2021) to visit Tulsa's Gilcrease Museum before the museum, as you've known it for the last 57 years, goes away forever. The museum is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day, with extended hours to 8 p.m. on Thursday. You can book online. The museum is being demolished and replaced, the result of a bait-and-switch with Tulsa voters, who had approved funds for museum expansion.

The City had promised renovating 64,000 square feet of the museum and adding 20,000 square feet of new construction. Here's a video, preceding the 2016 Vision Tulsa vote, showing a floor plan for an expanded museum, with a new entrance, gift shop, and an upward expansion to make the museum visible from downtown.

Gilcrease-Vision_Tulsa-2016-Plan.pngGilcrease-Vision-Tulsa-2016-Concept.pngFloor plan and conceptual drawing of Gilcrease Museum expansion as proposed prior to the 2016 Vision Tulsa sales tax vote

The change in plans was substantial enough to require public notice and City Council amendment of the Brown Ordinance governing the sales tax funds. The existing 134,000 sq. ft. building is being replaced with an 83,500 sq. ft. facility.

At 83,500 square feet, the new Gilcrease Museum will be markedly smaller than the existing one, a 134,000-square-foot structure built as a 1913 carriage house and subject to numerous expansions over the decades.

Note that this number is even smaller than reported when the demolition plan was first revealed.

While proponents claim, "By being thoughtful about the design, the 89,000-square-foot facility will have more exhibition space than the current 134,000-square-foot structure," I expect to learn, when the new building opens, that they tried and tried, but could not produce the added exhibition space within the constraints of the budget.

This past weekend, conceptual drawings of the new facility were released: A characterless glass box, surrounded by unshaded outdoor plazas. The Gilcrease Vision Task Force, appointed by Mayor G. T. Bynum IV, chose the firms redesigning the museum; I have so far been unable to locate a list of the members of this task force.

We had a rushed visit on Sunday afternoon, with plans to return one more time this week. Gilcrease Museum holds many happy memories for our family, like the 2006 city inauguration, which we attended with our brand new baby boy, celebrating the swearing-in of John Eagleton, Rick Westcott, and Maria Barnes; or special exhibits like Ansel Adams (2009), George Washington (2012), Thomas Moran, Norman Rockwell, and Dorothea Lange. For many years, Gilcrease hosted Santa Claus (aka my dad) for a special seasonal Funday Sunday; for our family, it was a chance for a family Christmas photo and to reacquaint ourselves with the masterpieces on display.

0126.2344_moran_lower falls_V4_o6.jpg

During our visit this past Sunday, several galleries were off-limits, including the gallery on the southwest corner of the building and the traveling exhibition gallery. The recreated artist's studio is gone. The large gallery that was once dedicated to paintings of the American West is now called "Americans All! / Americanos Todos!" devoted to art by immigrants. This gallery, uniquely in the museum, has captions in both English and Spanish. It includes works by great artists of the American West who once had dedicated galleries at Gilcrease -- Thomas Moran (from England), O. C. Seltzer (from Denmark), and Albert Bierstadt (from Germany) -- but it also includes works of less significance (to be kind) by more recent immigrants. Included in this latter category is a selfie-video of a young Mexican woman, Carmen Castorena, who was allowed to stay in the US under Obama's DACA program.

The Perfect Tommy Girl by Carmen Castorena

This performance piece examines my alteration process in becoming the ultimate American me. The setting is my bathroom. As I see my reflection and "operate" on myself through multiple bleaching procedures, lightening of my eyebrows, removal of facial hair, and changing the color of my eyes, I eat a bowl of fresh cacti. The phrase, "Nopal En La Frente (Cactus on Your Forehead)," is used to mock those who go around pretending they are not Mexican. The consumption of this native plant is a way to communicate that no matter what physical procedures you may undergo, a Mexican can never fool anybody into thinking they aren't Mexican. There is a battle between the exterior (seeing the physical changes) and interior (processing those changes) that forms the focal point of the performance. This video is my way of channeling years of alienation and reaching closure in the creation of my "ideal self."

(It's useful to know that attempts at trans-ethnic transformation are futile. The notion is applicable to other situations: "No matter what physical procedures you may undergo, a [male] can never fool anybody into thinking [he] [is]n't [male].")

A room of the gallery that might have been used to display more of the beautiful landscapes and Native American art stored in the vaults was instead used for two walls of editorial cartoons -- one by Bruce Plante, one by Thomas Nast -- advocating for unrestricted immigration -- and two walls with infographics designed to push the same political line.

This should be seen as a preview of the reborn Gilcrease Museum: The great works depicting the vast frontier of the American West will be displayed only to the extent needed to support new works that push a political message. The mingling of old and new is an effective strategy: We certainly would not have bothered with the exhibit except for the presence of iconic Gilcrease works by artists like Moran, Bierstadt, Seltzer, John James Audubon, and Augustus Saint Gaudens.

Want more evidence of the downgrade? Here's a video from Gilcrease Museum Senior Curator Laura Fry, speculating that painter Alfred Jacob Miller, his patron William Drummond Stewart, a Scottish nobleman and veteran of the Battle of Waterloo, and Antoine Clement, a French / Cree buffalo hunter, engaged in homosexual acts with one another, based on Miller never marrying and the friendship between the three men. Stewart had invited Miller to accompany him to the great trappers' rendezvous in 1837 in present-day Wyoming. Stewart commissioned Miller to paint scenes of the American West to decorate Murthly Castle in Dunkeld, Scotland. Clement was principal hunter of Stewart's traveling party. According to her LinkedIn profile, Fry was a member of the Mayor's Gilcrease Vision Task Force which authorized the ugly new building. The Gilcrease YouTube channel includes more of this sort of nonsense, like a presentation on "Gender in Pre-Columbian Cultures and Native Communities Today," part of a November 2018 symposium on gender.

Museums are part of the overall kulturkampf of the Left, the Long March through the Institutions. I will be saddened but unsurprised if long-time favorites, landscapes and scenes of the American West from the core of Thomas Gilcrease's collection, are never returned from storage, for lack of space, you understand.

According to some accounts, Thomas Gilcrease founded his museum in San Antonio in 1942 and moved it to Tulsa in 1949. But an Associated Press story in the December 20, 1942, Daily Oklahoman says that the "San Antonio oil man's 80-acre [Tulsa] estate has not been occupied for several years" and was being transformed "into a museum and orphanage for Indian children... by a crew of carpenters and painters.... The institution will be supported by the Thomas Gilcrease Foundation. The oil man has donated valuable assets and his extensive collection of Indian relics to the foundation."

Part of the building is said to date back to 1913. Walls of rough-hewn sandstone block can still be seen on the north and south sides of the building where they haven't been enclosed or superseded by later additions.

The Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art was transferred to the City of Tulsa on January 27, 1955, after citizens approved a bond issue in August 1954 for $2.25 million to pay the debts of oilman Thomas Gilcrease, staving off the dispersal of his priceless collection of the art and artifacts of the American West. (This video by Fry describes the early history of the museum.) The bonds were repaid over time by revenues from Thomas Gilcrease's oil assets. While the original mid-50s concept for the Civic Center included a 42,600 sq. ft. facility for the Gilcrease collection, in 1958, the existing grounds and building, which had been leased from Thomas Gilcrease, were deeded to the city. In 1961, Tulsans voted a half-million dollar bond issue for a museum expansion that opened to the public on October 27, 1963, which added the Vista Room and a 250-seat auditorium, tripling the size of the museum and enabling 40% of the collection at that time to be put on display. At the grand opening, the Gilcrease Foundation announced it was donating to the City 10.5 acres of land and its collection of art and artifacts, valued at $5 million in 1963.

A museum map from that period shows the following galleries:

  1. Introductory to the Collections
  2. American Classics
  3. Remington Collection
  4. Russell Collection
  5. Taos Artist
  6. Seltzer - Leigh - Johnson
  7. Landscapes - Treaties - People
  8. Special Exhibit - Willard Stone Sculpture
  9. Thomas Moran
  10. George Catlin - Alfred Jacob Miller
  11. Artifacts

Gilcrease Museum expanded again in the 1980s, this time with $12.25 million in private funds, to add a gift shop, restaurant, and additional exhibit space, including Helmerich Hall with its double-barrel-vaulted ceiling as the new heart of the museum and space for a conservation laboratory and anthropological collections. The museum doubled in size to 127,786 sq. ft. The new space opened on November 7, 1987. During the 1980s, admission was free, and the museum was open weekdays 9 to 5 and 1 to 5 on Sundays. The City of Tulsa has since provided additional capital funding for improvements via "Third Penny" sales taxes and bond issues. In September 2014, the Helmerich Center for American Research opened its doors.

So go see Gilcrease before it is transformed into something expensively worse. And next election, replace Bynum IV and the City Council with officials who will insist that the City of Tulsa's Gilcrease collection of art be curated and displayed to celebrate the American West, in the spirit of the oil man who brought it together and gave it to us.

In a social media post last Wednesday, Tulsa City Council chairman Vanessa Hall Harper labeled U. S. Sen Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) with a racist slur. As of this writing, Hall Harper has yet to retract or apologize for the slur, which remains posted on her personal Facebook profile, accessible to anyone on or off Facebook.

Tulsa City Council chairman Vanessa Hall Harper mocks U. S. Sen. Tim Scott with racist epithet

Reacting to Sen. Scott's response to Joe Biden's address to a joint session of Congress last Wednesday, April 28, 2021, Hall Harper posted the picture above, paraphrasing a sentence from Scott's speech, followed by a single word reaction:

"America is not racist"....SAMBO!!!!

Sen. Scott delivered a slightly different line as part of the following passage of his speech:

When America comes together, we've made tremendous progress. But powerful forces want to pull us apart.

A hundred years ago, kids in classrooms were taught the color of their skin was their most important characteristic -- and if they looked a certain way, they were inferior.

Today, kids again are being taught that the color of their skin defines them -- and if they look a certain way, they're an oppressor.

From colleges to corporations to our culture, people are making money and gaining power by pretending we haven't made any progress. By doubling down on the divisions we've worked so hard to heal.

You know this stuff is wrong.

Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country.

It's backwards to fight discrimination with different discrimination.

And it's wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present.

The photo on the right in Hall Harper's post is Sen. Scott. A reverse image search links the image on the left to the homepage of black-face.com, where it is an illustration in a series of negative stereotypes of African Americans with the caption: "The Buck is a large Black man who is proud, sometimes menacing, and always interested in White women." A further reverse image search on Yandex.com suggests that it was based on the following 1907 poster, reversed and converted to grayscale:

Billy King 1907 poster

That's African-American comedian, bandleader, and impresario Billy King (1875 - 1951). King wrote, produced, and directed musicals, and led a touring company called the Billy King Road Show, which evolved into the legendary Oklahoma City Blue Devils big band, which in turn spawned the Count Basie Orchestra.

Although Hall Harper did not elaborate on her remark, it could be inferred that she disapproved of Sen. Scott's speech, regarding him as a negative stereotype, a traitor to his race, inauthentic. The term "Sambo" traces back to the book The Story of Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman, originally a fable set in India, in which a boy outwits a group of tigers, who turn into ghee. Illustrations used for American editions of the book drew on negative stereotypes of African Americans, and the name Sambo itself became a derogatory term, even without the "Little Black" prefix.

(In 2020, in response to a petition drive, the original and last surviving location of the Sambo chain of pancake restaurants changed its name to Chad's. The chain used illustrations depicting the Sambo story with an Indian character. All but a few locations of the chain had dropped the name in the early 1980s. Tulsa had a Sambo's at 31st and Sandusky, which was converted to a Goldie's Patio Grill location decades ago. The Goldie's location, which retained many of the original Sambo's furnishings, closed with the pandemic in March 2020 and has not reopened since.)

Many more leftists on social media labeled Sen. Scott an "Uncle Tim," a play on his first name and the term "Uncle Tom," used over the last half century as a slur against African Americans who object to leftist social policies. So many people used the derogatory term that it became a trending topic on Twitter for nearly 12 hours until the social media platform was shamed into removing it.

Councilor Hall Harper has not yet, however, been shamed into removing her post about Sen. Scott. Her juxtaposition of photos of Billy King and Tim Scott inadvertently reinforces Scott's assertion of America's significant progress toward reconciliation and racial equality. Despite his great talents, King's career was limited by unjust discrimination, both official and unofficial. Today, the color of one's skin is no barrier to achieving the highest position in any field, whether as President of the United States, the billionaire head of a media conglomerate, a U. S. Senator from a state once known for slavery and discrimination, or even the chairman of the Tulsa City Council.

Eggs produced by Tina Nettles's backyard chickensOn Wednesday, April 28, 2021, the Tulsa City Council approved a massive rewrite of the city's animal ordinance (Title 2), which covers everything from pets to livestock to homing pigeons, at its regular 5 p.m. meeting. But the update didn't make any changes to the rules for raising chickens in residential areas, despite much input from citizens hoping to introduce best practices from other cities which line up with the practicalities of raising a healthy home flock.

The draft ordinance was developed by a commission of socially connected non-experts (with one exception), led by former Democrat Mayor Susan Savage. That draft passed through the Council committee process the previous two Wednesdays, and a few councilors proposed significant amendments. In the end, the revision didn't touch the poultry rules, was passed unanimously without debate, and with only one comment from the public.

The agenda item for the revised animal ordinance had three files linked, which I've uploaded here for future reference.

You can watch the entirety of Wednesday's meeting, a mere 40 minutes long, on Facebook and (eventually) on the City of Tulsa video on demand platform.

The new ordinance was delayed for over a year to the CCP Bat Virus; the commission had completed its work just before everything was shut down for the pandemic. In March 2020, BatesLine published an essay by Tina Nettles, on the Tulsa Animal Welfare Commission's contempt for the input of ordinary Tulsans who are knowledgeable about animals. Nettles, a writer and Tulsa resident, raises chickens in her backyard for the eggs as part of an effort to improve her family's self-sufficiency: She also grows vegetables and has a number of dwarf fruit trees in her backyard -- a lot typical for their 1950s midtown neighborhood. She and a group of her fellow backyard chicken farmers took every opportunity to share their input and expertise with the commission, to clear up misconceptions, and to point the commission to better ordinances in use in our peer cities. All to no avail -- their input was ignored.

After the commission completed its draft ordinance, the focus shifted to the City Council. While a couple of councilors were willing to give Tulsa's chicken owners a hearing, many seem to have closed their minds. A Public Radio Tulsa report on last week's Council committee meeting on the chicken rules and explains why councilors were unable to agree on changes relating to poultry. The following comments were in response to Democrat District 4 Councilor Kara Joy McKee's proposal to reduce the required minimum distance between a chicken coop and the nearest home from 35 feet (the distance in the current proposal) to 25 feet, to give residents on smaller lots the opportunity to raise chickens if they choose. The dismissive attitudes on display ought to dismay every Tulsan across the political spectrum.

[Democrat] District 7 Councilor Lori Decter Wright said cutting the minimum distance even more isn't a good idea.

"In our cul-de-sac neighborhoods especially, 25 feet in a cul-de-sac, every backyard could have a chicken coop. That's not going to be clean or safe," Decter Wright said.

It's highly doubtful that large numbers of residents of Decter Wright's district in south Tulsa are going to raise chickens in their backyard, much less a whole cul-de-sac full. Most of the neighborhoods in her district have large enough lots that the higher minimum distance wouldn't prevent everyone who wanted chickens from having them, but the higher distances would pose a problem to homeowners on smaller lots in less affluent districts.

[Democrat] District 5 Councilor Mykey Arthrell-Knezek said less than 35 feet didn't fly with Animal Welfare Commission Chair and former Mayor Susan Savage.

"When I proposed a 30-foot, Mayor Savage said no way. She was, like, '35 minimum,'" Knezek said.

Now, I credit Arthrell-Knezek with listening to chicken owners and proposing amendments to make the laws line up with best practices (as you'll see in the next paragraph). But this comment reveals an attitude that cripples democracy in Tulsa: The idea that elected city councilors need the permission of bureaucrats, appointed board members, or lobbyists to set policy. Susan Savage hasn't been mayor since 2002. She was appointed to lead the committee that reviewed the animal ordinance. Savage has no expertise in this area. With one exception (Christine Kunzweiler, wife of the DA and a veterinarian), none of Mayor Bynum IV's appointees to the Tulsa Animal Welfare Commission have any expertise, as I detailed in my intro to Tina Nettles's essay.

In any event, the Commission's work is over, they've made their recommendation, and now it's the Council's power and obligation to modify the recommendation or reject it altogether in the interest of the ordinary Tulsans who can't afford to hire lobbyists and don't have social connections like Savage & Co. The only lever most of us have over city government is our vote. If the City Council has been gaslit into believing that they must defer to unelected experts, our influence is limited to selecting which person gets to draw a salary to be a rubber stamp.

Arthrell-Knezek has also proposed allowing people to have up to 10 adult birds and doing away with a ban on roosters older than eight weeks, but some councilors would like to refine that. [Democrat] District 3 Councilor Crista Patrick said she wants to see a limit of one rooster per flock of hens.

"Only to avoid in my neck of the woods, we have less-than-honorable people that like to engage in cockfighting, and I do not want them to legally be able to say, 'I'm allowed to have 10 roosters at a time,'" Patrick said.

Cockfighting is already against the law. Those who are already breaking the law to hold cockfights have already found a way around rooster limits, but rooster limits hurt people raising chickens to feed their families.

The eight-week limit is problematic because chicks don't get big enough by that time to be harvested for meat (except for the commercial, factory-farm raised breed). This has been explained to the Animal Welfare Commission and the city councilors by the backyard chicken growers, but the commission ignored their input and most of the council seems ready to do the same.

Patrick's district primarily covers northeast Tulsa. District 8 Councilor Phil Lakin said his constituents have an entirely different perspective.

"For some reason, people in my area -- maybe because we're just more urban down in south Tulsa, there's not very much open space -- they're not very keen on -- the ones at least who have responded to me so far, I'll get a completely different reaction probably as I say this -- are just not keen on allowing any roosters whatsoever," Lakin said.

It seems unlikely to me that the residents of one of Tulsa's wealthiest council districts are likely to want to raise chickens to feed their families. I suspect that homeowners' association rules and deed restrictions would prevent it even if the law allowed it. Lakin's reaction points the problem with one-size-fits-all policies for a city as geographically large and economically diverse as Tulsa. Nearly all of our peer regional cities have a zoning tool often known as a neighborhood conservation district, a concept I've been championing for more than two decades, which allows customizing land use rules to protect the character of an established neighborhood.

Lakin's comment also reveals an atrophied view of liberty. Because his constituents don't want the option to raise chickens, no one in Tulsa should have it. Easy for the head of a multi-billion-dollar foundation to say.

If you're wondering why there was only one public comment on this massive change to city law: Using COVID-19 as a justification, the Council allows public comment to be submitted only via email or audio recording via phone by 5 pm the day before the meeting, as described in today's agenda. (You could still email your councilor at distX@tulsacouncil.org, replacing the X with the district number, but those comments won't be presented as part of the public meeting.)

One problem with this approach is that members of the public cannot adjust their remarks in response to previous comments, official presentations, or the demeanor of the councilors. When making live comments, it's possible to say, "I agree with what the previous speaker said, and here are some additional arguments in favor of this view," or "Let me clarify what the previous speaker was trying to say." Without the ability to react to other speakers, public comments are apt to repeat the same points over and over again, and the councilors are apt to tune them out. When commenting at an in-person public meeting, you could make eye contact with each of the councilors, even address each by name if you sense attention is drifting. Remote meetings eliminate this avenue for citizen influence, along with the power of filling the gallery of the council chamber with angry citizens, applauding and booing.

A Facebook post from Bob Wills' Texas Playboys under the direction of Jason Roberts:

Many of you have asked about the annual Bob Wills Birthday Bash at the historic Cain's Ballroom. We have been working with the folks at Cain's for the past couple months trying to figure out a sensible way to make it work. Simply put, the protocols in place in the city of Tulsa would limit our capacity severely, not to mention the inability to dance. We are still hopeful something can be done in 2021 and we'll keep you posted. The 2020 birthday bash was the last full capacity event held at Cain's Ballroom. One thing we're certain of though - we're planning a bigger and better Bob Wills Birthday Bash for the weekend of March 5, 2022. So make your plans now and come dance with us. Let's all do our part to get venues like Cains Ballroom back to full capacity sooner than later.

Doesn't sound like there's going to be anything at Cain's Ballroom for the weekend of Bob Wills Birthday. (Wills was born on March 6, 1905.) But if you want to hear the Texas Playboys next week, you can drive down to Billy Bob's Texas in Fort Worth on Thursday, March 4, 2021, for the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame induction ceremony, where Bob Wills will be one of seven to be honored. The Texas Playboys will be performing after the ceremony.

Bob Wills' Texas Playboys under the direction of Jason Roberts will be playing immediately upon the conclusion of this induction ceremony at Billy Bob's Texas. We are honored to be asked to help induct Bob Wills as well as the other deserving inductees into this great institution. Only a few tables and seats left. It will be a great night. Join us.

It's a little pricey at $150 per person, but that's for the entire evening, including cocktails, a silent auction, "cowboy cuisine," and the Texas Playboys. Billy Bob's is taking many precautions against the Chinese Communist Bat Virus, operating at half capacity, using a non-intrusive thermal camera to spot people who may be running a fever as they enter, requiring hand sanitizer and masks (except at your table), and enforcing social distancing. Dancing will be limited to 30 people at a time, but dancing will be allowed.

If Fort Worth can allow venues to reopen and special events to occur, surely Tulsa could as well.

If nothing else, Bob Wills' Birthday Bash could be turned into the Bob Wills Birthday Protest against Repressive City Policies. One can protest while two-stepping, can't one?

Gonzales Flag, Come and Take It, with a fiddle in place of the cannon

Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum IV narrowly avoided a November runoff, winning re-election outright with 51.9% in this first round of City of Tulsa voting. 30-year-old Greg Robinson II, running to Bynum's left, garnered 28.8% of the vote. Ken Reddick, running to Bynum's right, finished third with 13.8%, followed by Ty Walker at 2.8% and Craig Immel at 1.9%, the remaining candidates were below 1%. Turnout was 70,745, with 23.0% voting early. Had another 2,637 voters turned out to vote for candidates other than Bynum, he would have faced a November runoff with Robinson.

I'll be on Talk Radio 1170 KFAQ at 7:30 am Wednesday morning to talk about the results with Pat Campbell.

I had an enjoyable time as a member of a panel of commentators for KJRH's election night coverage, talking about the results and their significance. One of the striking things about the conversation was hearing about the Democratic Party's endorsement of Robinson, setting a precedent that Republicans would do well to follow. The Tulsa County Democratic Party chairman said something about flipping a council seat, which was humorously revealing. We all know that political philosophy matters, even in city government, and that people have party affiliations, despite the lack of a partisan primary. About 15 years ago, I proposed an idea I called multi-partisan elections, in which candidates of all parties would run on the same ballot, but with party labels, which might include words and phrases other than the names of national parties. The label next to a candidate's name might be that of a local coalition formed around local issues.

I started playing around with maps. I have QGIS, an open-source graphical information system suite, precinct and municipal boundary shapefiles from OK Maps, and precinct-by-precinct results from the Oklahoma State Election Board. I used Microsoft Access (I know, I know) to process the election board data before linking it to the precinct map. Here's my first, clumsy effort: A map showing the "swing" between Bynum's June 2016 vote and his vote today. The deepest purple shows precincts where Bynum's share of the vote fell by at least 25 percentage points; darkest green shows where Bynum's share of the vote went up by at least 25 points; in precincts with no color, his 2020 share of the vote was within 5% either side of his 2016 share.

Tulsa-2016-2020-Bynum-Swing.png

Recall that in 2016, Bynum was effectively the Democratic nominee, the progressive candidate, as no prominent Democrat sought the office. Bynum won with support from Democrats along with those Republicans who were disappointed with Dewey Bartlett Jr's service as mayor. This year, Greg Robinson captured those left-wing voters, while there was no well-funded or well-organized candidate to Bynum's right. Bynum's vote slid most dramatically in north Tulsa and midtown, while his vote improved in south Tulsa.

Now, there are all sorts of problems with the map above. I haven't figured out how to tweak the projection so that a line drawn north through the center of Tulsa points straight up (the shapefiles I'm using are based on Oklahoma as a whole). I haven't figured out how to add a legend, and I didn't bother adding precinct numbers as labels. I haven't done an intersection between the precinct shapefile and the municipal shapefile so that I only show the portions of precincts that are within the city limits. There's no proprietary watermark. All that said, it does give you a picture of how votes shifted, and I hope to put together additional (and more attractive) maps in the near future.

Here's one more: The percentage voting yes or no for Proposition 2, which involved changing a handful of references in the City Charter from he/him to they/them to be "inclusive." Darkest blues are yes > 70%, darkest reds are yes < 30%. Overall, the proposition passed by the narrowest margin of the five on the ballot, with 54.7% support.

Tulsa-2020-Proposition_2-Pronouns.png

Polling_Place_Vote_Here.jpgPolls are open today until 7 p.m. The Oklahoma State Election Board's online voter tool will let you know where to vote and will show you a sample of the ballot you'll see.

BatesLine_ballot_card-2020_runoff_thumbnail.png

Click the link above to download a printable ballot card listing the candidates I'm recommending and (if in the district) voting for in the Oklahoma runoff and City of Tulsa general election on August 25, 2020. Below I'll add more detailed information on issues and candidates. (This entry will change as I decide to add more detail, link previous articles, or discuss additional races between now and election day. The entry is post-dated to keep it at the top.) Please note that the rows on the chart are alternately shaded and unshaded for readability. The presence or absence of shading has no other significance.

As I posted this late Thursday night, there were races I had planned to write about in detail, but time was short, people were voting, and many have asked for a summary of my recommendations, so I've started by posting my printable ballot card and will fill in some details as I have opportunity between now and Tuesday.

Below you'll find some links to websites I found helpful in learning about candidates, their values, backgrounds, and political opinions.

When in doubt, I look at campaign contributions, which often tell a story about a candidate's ideological leanings or close ties with local power brokers. Campaign expenditures can be telling, too: Certain consulting firms have strong associations with the pay-to-play culture that makes our Republican supermajority legislature more crony-infested than conservative. Then there are principled conservative consultants; their presence on a campaign team is always a hopeful indication that the candidate is also a principled conservative.

In addition to runoffs in federal, state, and county primary elections, the City of Tulsa has an election for mayor and seven of the nine city councilors. (The auditor and the other two councilors won re-election unopposed.)

State law requires City of Tulsa campaign contributions and expenditures to be submitted to the City Clerk's office; the City Clerk posts them on the City's website. Sadly, many city candidates don't seem to have noticed that their pre-election reports were due on Monday, August 17, 2020, even though that information was included in the election packet that was provided to each city candidate who filed for office and which was also posted on the county election board website.

NOTES ON SPECIFIC BALLOT ITEMS:

U. S. House, District 5: Terry Neese. Winner of this runoff will go on to try to win back the seat taken two years ago by Kendra Horn, Oklahoma's lone congressional Democrat. The other runoff candidate, State Sen. Stephanie Bice, voted to raise taxes on Oklahomans in 2018, bypassing a vote of the people. I should note that there are controversies surrounding Neese's business practices and claims of Native American roots. (My primary pick, David Hill, would have been a much better choice than either Neese or Bice.)

Senate 35: Cheryl Baber. Baber is a known quantity among conservatives in state and local conservative circles. Creekpaum's strong backing from "the Kaiser System" should worry conservatives. Baber is the only candidate in the race who was wise enough to oppose SQ802. Baber has been endorsed by Governor Stitt, Senator Lankford, former Governor Keating, and the current and previous senators for District 35, Gary Stanislawski and Jim Williamson, both solid conservatives. I'm hoping this year will be an echo of Stanislawski's first race in 2008: City Councilor Cason Carter, a favorite of the Money Belt establishment, ran first in the primary, 44.5% to 40.6%, but fell short of a majority and lost the runoff to Stanislawski.

City of Tulsa proposed charter amendments: Yes on 1, 3, 5 (the odds are good), No on 2, 4. Click the link to read the actual charter changes that each proposition would enact, and why I support or oppose each.

Mayor of Tulsa: Ty Walker (R). Walker is a small businessman and a political conservative who deals with Tulsans from all walks of life on a daily basis. As someone who has lived on both sides of the tracks, as he puts it, Walker can be a bridge to link the disparate communities of our city, with a focus on encouraging home-grown businesses. This was a tough call, but I believe that Walker is the better candidate of the two conservatives running. You can read his response to the BatesLine questionnaire here. You can read my comments on each of the candidates in my article endorsing Walker.

The incumbent mayor is blind to the needs of the city beyond his little Midtown Money Belt world, indecisive, two-faced, and in thrall to progressive philanthropy. His disastrous handling of COVID-19 and of the George Floyd protests managed to make everyone angry at him, inspiring seven candidates from across the political spectrum to run against him.

In the council races, I support replacing all of the City Councilors, except Cass Fahler in District 5.

Tulsa Council District 1: Jerry Goodwin (D).
Tulsa Council District 3: Paul Eicher (D).
Tulsa Council District 4: Kathryn Lyons (R). Lyons was the only District 4 candidate to respond to the BatesLine questionnaire, and she gave solid answers. (The incumbent councilor, Kara Joy McKee, allowed constituents' homes to be condemned without investigating the situation, and she made a promise she didn't keep about initiating the revocation condemnation promptly at the beginning of 2020.)
Tulsa Council District 5: Cass Fahler (R). At a time when law enforcement is under attack, we need a strong advocate for law and order on the council.
Tulsa Council District 6: Christian Bengel (R).
Tulsa Council District 7: Justin Van Kirk (R).
Tulsa Council District 9: Jayme Fowler (R).

MORE INFORMATION:

Here are some blogs, endorsement lists, candidate questionnaires, and sources of information for your consideration.

TIP JAR: If you appreciate the many hours of research that went into this guide and into the rest of my election coverage, and if you'd like to help keep this site online, you can contribute to BatesLine's upkeep via PayPal. In addition to keeping me caffeinated, donated funds pay for web hosting, subscriptions, and paid databases I use for research. Many thanks.

UPDATE 2020/08/25, 12:46pm: I have updated the printable sheet to change my recommendation in Senate District 7, based on recent information from Jamison Faught.

Ty Walker, candidate for Mayor of Tulsa, 2020

What looked like a sleepy re-election run, for Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum IV as recently as the beginning of May, with one declared opponent and a perennial candidate in jail, turned into a free-for-all. As soon as he had some tough decisions to make, the smiley guy that everyone liked was suddenly the weak-kneed wimp whom everyone despised. COVID-19 (aka the Chinese Communist Bat Virus) and Black Lives Matter protests, and the Trump rally which linked the two, left GT unable to find decisions that would make the vast majority of Tulsans happy. Instead, his vacillation managed to anger Tulsans left, right, and center, and the peak of the first wave of dissatisfaction fell just as filing opened for city office. Seven opponents filed to challenge his re-election.

The Bynum administration has reaffirmed my belief that executive experience in a mayor is not necessary for keeping the city running. (It may be that having a pulse is not necessary for keeping the city's basic functions running.) We've never had a mayor under the current charter with previous experience running a business the size of city government. The various departments that manage basic city functions continue to run regardless of who's mayor. Every mayor since 1990 has had someone either serving as a city manager in all but name (with a title like Chief Administrative Officer or Chief Operating Officer) or with the title City Manager, even though Tulsa's charter calls for a strong mayor, unlike the "weak mayor / council / city manager" government that Oklahoma City has and which is established under the default charter in the state statutes, used by cities like Broken Arrow. Even under a wishy-washy schmoozer like GT Bynum IV, the machinery of city government chugs along. The trash is picked up, clean water flows through our faucets, street projects move forward, police officers and firefighters do their essential work. It's a bit like the body's autonomous nervous system, keeping the heart pumping, the lungs going, and the guts digesting regardless of what is or is not happening in the brain.

What we do need in a mayor is a functioning moral compass, an ability to make sound decisions and stick with them, and a vision that encompasses all of Tulsa. He needs to understand government's proper sphere in the functioning of society alongside families, churches, businesses, voluntary organizations, and other non-governmental mediating institutions, as well as the practical limits on government's ability to fix problems without creating others. We don't have that right now, and I only see one candidate that comes close to meeting that set of criteria: Ty Walker. I have voted for Walker, and I encourage you to do the same.

If you make decisions based on your billionaire backers' priorities or what you see your buddy in Oklahoma City doing, if what you mean by "data-driven" is really just following the conventional wisdom that will make you look smart in the eyes of New York Times reporters or among your homies in the Midtown Money Belt, you're going to have a tough time when difficult dilemmas come your way, and you won't be serving the best interests of the citizens.

A few examples of Bynum IV's bad judgment and lack of vision (from memory, so no links):

  • Supporting a tax package (as a councilor and mayoral candidate) that included unnecessary low-water dams, then failing (as mayor) to use the Muscogee Creek Nation lack of interest in funding as an opportunity to repurpose taxpayer dollars in more useful ways.
  • Decreeing by executive order that the City of Tulsa will officially pretend that there is no valid distinction to be drawn between real women and autogynephiliacs, thus endangering private spaces for females and separate female athletic competition.
  • Allowing the condemnation of a historic neighborhood where young families have been reclaiming old homes in order to protect an office building that was built in a 100-year flood plain, rather than finding a solution that would mitigate stormwater issues while saving the neighborhood.
  • Allowing other historic neighborhoods, like Crutchfield and Crosbie Heights, to live under the threat of blight declarations.
  • Pushing restriping of city streets to the confusion of the vast majority of street users (drivers).
  • Being a tough guy for Pat Campbell's conservative audience, vowing not to cave to protestors, and then a few hours later, caving to protestors, cancelling Tulsa's participation in a show (LivePD) which seemed to offend the protestors because it showed Tulsa Police officers ably handling difficult challenges.
  • Waffling on President Trump's appearance in Tulsa -- neither asking him to stay away out of concern for the spread of COVID-19 and civil unrest, nor taking advantage of Trump's visit to show off Tulsa to our nation's leaders or to call the President's attention to opportunities for city/federal cooperation.
  • Choosing not to institute a curfew. Other cities used curfews to allow peaceful protests to continue, while halting after-dark gatherings that often led to the smashing of store windows and dangerous obstruction of major streets.
  • Shutting down Tulsa's small retailers while allowing big-box stores which sell the same products to stay open during the pandemic. Bynum followed the herd, rather than creatively adapting lessons from places like Hong Kong, which combined moderate closures (schools and large gatherings), voluntary mask wearing, and reduced business capacity to allow businesses to stay open.
  • Pushing for an Office of Independent Monitor that would subject police officers to the oversight of a board without any law enforcement experience and without direct accountability to the public.
  • Pushing to raise the permanent sales tax level to pay for a basic function of government.

I could go on, but I need to finish this and get some sleep.

Bynum needs to go, but who should replace him? Can a challenger beat an incumbent who has raised over $600,000 for re-election? Let's go through our list of options, starting with a few easy discards.

Ricco Wright is on the ballot but ended his campaign after attempting to handle an accusation of sexual assault by stating his belief in the woman's account (Believe All Women!) but implausibly blaming his actions on being "roofied." (Rohypnol -- "hypno" is in the name -- causes "loss of muscle control, confusion, drowsiness and amnesia," not uninhibited sexual aggression.)

I discussed perennial candidate Paul Tay during the filing period. Someone who filed for office the day he finished a five-month jail sentence for outraging public decency doesn't deserve further consideration.

Zackri Whitlow seems to be running on a whim. He did not show up in the voter registration database in Tulsa prior to filing for office. He has not filed any campaign finance reports with the City Clerk, not even a Statement of Organization, indicating that he has not raised or spent any significant money to reach and persuade voters. He has appeared in a few online forums to promote a few pet ideas.

Craig Immel has impressed me with his willingness to respond to voters' questions on various platforms, including the BatesLine mayoral questionnaire. Even when I can't agree with him, I respect his thoughtfulness. I also admire his willingness to serve as the lead plaintiff against the plan (supported by Bynum) to convert riverfront park land to a basic shopping center. Of all the candidates, he has the best grasp of urban planning and development issues. If it were a head-to-head matchup between Immel and Bynum, I'd vote for Immel. But on other issues, he is left of center. His support for SQ 805 and SQ 780 points to a naive view of crime and its causes that would jeopardize the lives and property of Tulsa citizens. His stated disdain for the State of Oklahoma reflects an unbecoming elitism and sends a signal to small-town and rural Oklahomans who come to the metro area for jobs that they'll feel more at home in the suburbs.

Greg Robinson II has done an impressive job of organizing a substantial last-minute challenge to a well-funded incumbent mayor. His fundraising has unofficially surpassed $200,000 (but his campaign is one of several that has neglected to file the required pre-election report of contributions and expenditures). I've received almost as many mailers from Robinson as I have from Bynum, which points to a well-organized effort to reach and energize voters. In 2016, Bynum was helped by the fact that no Democrat bothered to file; instead, Bynum was effectively the Democrat nominee in the officially non-partisan mayor's race. Now Robinson may scoop up the base of Bynum's 2016 support.

Robinson's rhetoric and resume point to him being a doctrinaire leftist, but there are a couple of facts about him that are intriguing for the conservative voter: First, Robinson's father, Greg Robinson, Sr., was a Republican who came within 900 votes of unseating incumbent Democrat county commissioner Wilbert Collins in 2002. (Milton Goodwin, the Republican nominee in 1998, ran as an independent in 2002 and acted as a spoiler.) Tragically, Greg Sr. died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 48, just 10 weeks after the election. Greg Jr. was a young teenager at the time. Second, Robinson (Jr.) is a founder of Greenwood Leadership Academy, a charter school, so there may be some openness to school choice that the incumbent (whose parents could afford an educational alternative) doesn't share.

A conservative case could be made for preferring Robinson over Bynum. It would be refreshing to have a mayor, for the first time in almost three decades, with a clue about life outside the Money Belt. And I've noticed that it's easier to mobilize certain Republican officials to oppose bad ideas when they've been proposed by Democrats; if a RINO backs the idea, they fall in line.

To the alarmists out there: No one can win on Tuesday unless they get 50% of the vote. If a majority of voters don't vote for Robinson, he won't win. If a majority of voters don't vote for Bynum, he won't win on Tuesday. A November runoff, even if it's between Bynum and Robinson, the two best-funded candidates, would be a better result than if either candidate succeeded in getting 50% on Tuesday. Both would have to find ways to reach out to the conservatives they've spurned if they want to win. But I'd rather see a conservative in the runoff.

A conservative with political experience was unlikely to risk running against a well-funded, well-heeled incumbent who was (until a few months ago) quite popular and a registered Republican, albeit a RINO. So the two conservative claimants in the race are not well-funded, are still working their day jobs, don't have the background in city policy that you might hope for, and do have some things in their past that aren't very attractive.

Ken Reddick was the first to step up to challenge Bynum. He ran a credible race for City Council District 7 in 2018. But despite the early start, he failed to lay the groundwork necessary for a successful challenge, a task that involves fundraising, garnering endorsements (or at least persuading people not to line up behind the incumbent) Reddick has filed no campaign contribution and expenditure reports at all beyond the Statement of Organization for his campaign committee.

Restaurateur Ty Walker joined the race on the final day of filing. He had been thinking about preparing for a 2024 run, but he was persuaded by some regular customers to go ahead and file this time around. He also ran for City Council in 2018, in the race for the open seat in District 5.

I reached out to both candidates shortly after filing closed and encouraged them to meet and discuss if either of them would be willing to drop out and support the other. As far as I know that never happened. This would have been an ideal situation for state or county Republican leadership to intervene, perhaps by holding an endorsing convention to take the place of the primary that was eliminated by the move to non-partisan elections. But despite my private encouragement, nothing was done.

Because of CCP Bat Virus (which is real, which can kill and maim people, and which spreads through droplets) I have minimized my person-to-person interactions and have been grateful that I can work, for the most part, from home. But I did attend one meet-and-greet each for Reddick and for Walker. At the Reddick meet-and-greet at the Interurban Restaurant, I watched Reddick passively listen to various attendees vent their spleens about their pet issues. I waited around for close to an hour in hopes that the candidate would stand up and talk about his priorities and plans and take questions, but I got tired of waiting and went home.

A few weeks later I attended Ty Walker's meet-and-greet in a supporter's home. Walker had been out knocking doors in neighborhoods around Tulsa. His campaign team seemed sharp and focused (although they failed to get his pre-election contribution filing in as of this time). He held forth for a couple of hours, talking about his priorities and answering questions from the audience. I didn't agree with all of his answers, but his principles and his heart were clearly in the right place. Many of those differences reflect a perspective formed by growing up in Tulsa's North Community. As he points out often, he has lived on both sides of the track and uniquely among the options on our ballot can be a bridge across that track.

A BatesLine reader writes:

I believe that Ty Walker has the skills, temperament, and ethics needed for the job as mayor of Tulsa.
  • I believe him to be the most free of political influence. With several activists running for the position, and a mayor with a track record of heavy outside influence, Walker leads the pack.
  • I believe he's best equipped to guide the city through the economic recovery necessary from Covid. As a small business owner, specifically in the food service industry, he's well aware of the hardships small businesses face. I believe he's capable of not only seeing the current economic recovery, but he can help underserved communities grow their currently limited economic infrastructure.
  • I believe he's an inspiration to everyone on the personal struggles needed to be successful, and I believe that will help him be a positive agent for growth and helping the city mend it's current socio and economic divides.
  • I believe he's the most practical candidate, in terms of wanting to achieve practical goals. He's a crawl - walk - run type of candidate who won't be overly fixated with trying to fix everything with one singular action.

Walker isn't beholden to local or national philanthropists or interest groups. As someone actively involved in owning and running a restaurant, he's understands what our small businesses need as we try to recover from the COVID-19 shutdowns. He also understands the specific challenges that exist in the parts of the city where businesses have had difficulty taking root. He understands what it is to try and fail and try again. His vision is practical consisting of modest, incremental steps.

Something I noticed when watching the Sheridan Church Tulsa Town Hall forum (which was very well done) is that Ty Walker was one of the few candidates actually settled and involved in a church. (The question about church involvement is asked at about 58 minutes into the video.) Walker is an associate pastor at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in Okmulgee. At the beginning of this video from a few weeks ago, Ty Walker is giving some remarks (the video comes in after he has started) prior to the sermon, reminding the congregation that we will all meet death, none of us know when, and that we should all seek to be ready, walking in God's will.

Ty Walker is the candidate for Tulsans who want to bridge the cultural and ethnic divides in our city (without the kind of radical policies that are tearing other American cities apart), who want a conservative mayor who values the free market, economic opportunity, and growing local business (rather than lavishing incentives on billionaires trying to land the big fish).

I voted (at the election board Friday) for Ty Walker for Mayor, and I urge you to do the same. If he wins against all odds, Tulsa would be blessed. If Walker falls short, a large vote for him would signal that the remaining candidates need to reach out to conservatives in the November runoff.


A postscript: A few weeks ago, I was made aware of some accusations about Ken Reddick's marital history. I've been to the county court clerk's archive, looked at his divorce file, asked him some questions. I want to be careful about how I talk about these things for the sake of all involved, and I hope to post something this evening for the many people who are asking about it. Bottom line is that in my opinion there are internal inconsistencies in Ken Reddick's own account of his past and between his account and the official records, and that reinforces my doubts about his qualities as a candidate and a leader.

Five amendments to Tulsa's city charter -- our city's constitution -- will be on the August 25, 2020, ballot. As usual, the summaries you will see on the ballot paper only tell part of the story.

For the TL;DR folks, here are my recommendations:

Proposition No. 1: Yes
Proposition No. 2: No
Proposition No. 3: Yes
Proposition No. 4: No
Proposition No. 5: Yes

Or to put it even more briefly, vote YES on the ODD numbered propositions, NO on the EVEN numbered propositions. ODD is GOOD, EVEN is BAD.

Now the details, after the jump. Strikethroughs show language that would be deleted if the proposition passes, underlines show language that would be added.

2020-City_of_Tulsa-Council_Districts.png

I will be updating this entry as new information becomes available.

MIDDAY UPDATE:

Two more candidates have filed for mayor this morning: Gregory Robinson II, a Democrat, who was introduced at his Election Board press conference by Dr. Tiffany Crutcher, and Craig Immel, an Independent, who was the lead plaintiff in the battle to keep park land on Riverside Drive from being turned into a shopping center that might possibly someday have an REI-type store in it.

As previously announced, incumbent Democrat District 1 City Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper has filed for re-election. She has one opponent so far, Jerry Goodwin, also a registered Democrat.

Auditor Cathy Champion Carter and City Councilors Jeannie Cue, Crista Patrick, Cass Fahler, and Phil Lakin remain unopposed as of noon Wednesday.

No other new filings as of noon today. Candidates must file a notarized declaration of candidacy along with a $50 cashier's check or 300-signature petition at the Tulsa County Election Board, 555 N. Denver Ave., by 5 pm, today, Wednesday, June 10, 2020.

CLOSE OF FILING:

Two more candidates, Republican Ty Walker and Democrat Ricco Wright, filed for Mayor Wednesday afternoon, bringing the total number of candidates to eight.

City Auditor Cathy Champion Carter and two city councilors, Jeannie Cue (District 2) and Phil Lakin (District 8), failed to draw an opponent and have been reelected to another two-year term.

Two previously unopposed incumbents now have opposition. Paul Eicher, a Democrat, will face District 3 councilor Crista Patrick. Republican District 5 councilor Cass Fahler drew four opponents during the final hours of filing, all of them Democrats in their 30s, including 2018's second-place finisher Michael William Arthrell-Knezek aka Mykey Arthrell.

Kathryn Lyons, a Republican, filed in District 4, and Cheyenna Morgan, a Democrat, filed in District 6. Both districts have Democrat incumbents.

The names, ages, and addresses below are from the Tulsa County Election Board's official list of Monday filings. I've added incumbent status, registered voter name in brackets if it differs from the name used for filing, and party affiliation, which I checked against the current voter registration database.

Mayor
GT Bynum, 42, 3607 S. Florence Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105, incumbent, Republican
Paul Tay, 57, 415 W Archer, Tulsa, OK 74103, Independent
Ken Reddick, 37, 5008 S 85th East Ave, Tulsa, OK 74145, Republican
Zackri Leon Whitlow, 39, 2951 W 66th St, Tulsa, OK 74132, Democrat
Craig Immel, 44, 1739 West Newton Street, Tulsa, OK 74127, Independent
Gregory C. Robinson II, 30, 2307 E 29th Pl N, Tulsa, OK 74110, Democrat
Ty [Tyron Vincent] Walker, 54, 8538 E 24th St, Tulsa, OK 74129, Republican
Ricco Wright, 38, 1913 N Santa Fe Place, Tulsa, OK 74127, Democrat

Council District 1
Jerry [James G] Goodwin, 57, 2406 W. Pine Pl., Tulsa, OK 74127, Democrat
Vanessa Hall-Harper, 48, 2020 West Newton Street, Tulsa, OK 74127, incumbent, Democrat

Council District 2
Jeannie Cue, 5313 S 32 Pl W, Tulsa, OK 74107, incumbent, Republican

Council District 3
Crista Patrick, 46, 1918 N. Joplin Ave., Tulsa, OK 74115, incumbent, Democrat
Paul Eicher, 31, 509 S 76 East Ave, Tulsa, OK 74112, Democrat

Council District 4
Kara Joy McKee, 41, 1119 S Quebec Ave, Tulsa, OK 74112, incumbent, Democrat
Landry Miller, 26, 221 N Union Ave, Tulsa, OK 74127, Democrat
Casey Robinson, 38, 1260 E 29th Pl, Tulsa, OK 74114, Republican
Kathryn Lyons, 53, 2831 E 28th St., Tulsa, OK 74114, Republican

Council District 5
Cass [Cassidy G] Fahler, 47, 7383 E 24th St, Tulsa, OK 74129, incumbent, Republican
Mykey Arthrell [Michael William Arthrell-Knezek], 35, 1747 S Erie Pl, Tulsa, OK 74112, Democrat
Justin Schuffert, 35, 2216 S. 78th E. Ave, Tulsa, OK 74129, Democrat
Rachel Shepherd, 30, 5719 E. 30th St, Tulsa, OK 74114, Democrat
Nat Wachowski-Estes, 34, 1213 S 87th E Ave, Tulsa, OK 74112, Democrat

Council District 6
Christian Bengel, 52, 13173 E. 29th Street, Tulsa, OK 74134, Republican
Connie Dodson, 53, 13302 E. 28th St., Tulsa, OK 74134, incumbent, Democrat
Cheyenna Morgan, 29, 9 South 185th East Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74108, Democrat

Council District 7
Chad Ferguson, 40, 6751 S. 71st East Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74133, Republican
Justin Van Kirk, 29, 10709 E 100 Pl, Tulsa, OK 74133, Republican
Lori Decter Wright, 45, 8706 E 86th St, Tulsa, OK 74133, incumbent, Democrat

Council District 8
Phil [Philip Lawrence] Lakin Jr., 52, 9808 S. Knoxville Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74137, incumbent, Republican

Council District 9
[Bobbie] Leeann Crosby, 36, 3845 South Madison Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105, Democrat
Jayme Fowler, 61, 5601 S Gary Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105, Republican

City Auditor
Cathy Champion Carter, 65, 4120 E 22nd Place, Tulsa, OK 74114, incumbent, Democrat

UPDATED to include Justin Van Kirk and Jayme Fowler, whose names I overlooked when initially composing this report. UPDATED again to include information from Zackri Leon Whitlow and Landry Miller about their voter registration.

I've made this plea repeatedly on social media, on Pat Campbell's show on 1170 KFAQ, and here on this blog. And yet I look at the list of candidates after two of the three days of the filing period, and I am amazed to see so many unopposed candidates. Four of the city councilors do not have opponents, nor does the city auditor.

It's especially surprising after a fortnight that has put the spotlight on the importance of city government. Questions of law and order, police protocols and accountability are at the top of everyone's minds, and these questions are answered by our city council and mayor. Providentially, while we're all thinking about the importance of municipal policy, we have the greatest opportunity to make a difference, because it's filing period for city offices.

We only get to choose a new mayor once every four years, and now is the time to make sure there's someone on the ballot that you'd be happy to vote for. We only get to choose a new auditor and councilors every two years. There seems to be a lot of discontent, from across the political spectrum, with Tulsa City Hall, and I'd have thought that that discontent would burst forth this week in an outpouring of candidates for city office.

Do people still believe in elections? It looks like the protesters that blocked interstates and arterial streets don't. Instead of trying to elect a new mayor and councilors who are in agreement with their aims, to have a real seat at the table, it appears that the protesters' plan is to continue to protest, presumably in hopes that the existing mayor and council, whatever they may personally believe, will be inspired or intimidated by the protests into adopting the protesters' platform.

Perhaps because the news media loves the drama of protest and civil (or uncivil) disobedience more than the slog of legislation and debate, mass protests caught the public imagination as the way to effect change. Even the venerable Atlantic magazine is talking about "toppling" President Trump, as if we didn't have a presidential election in five months. Protesters in the US and the UK are defacing monuments and demolishing statues, as if it were impossible to enact the removal of offensive monuments through the ordinary processes of representative government.

You've heard the marchers' chants: "This is what democracy looks like!" No, this is what ochlocracy looks like. Democracy looks like people knocking doors for candidates, casting ballots, and sitting around committee tables poring over budget books.

In February 2020, the City Council voted 5-3 against putting a charter amendment on the ballot to create an Office of Independent Monitor (OIM) to review use of force cases by the police. Councilors Vanessa Hall-Harper (District 1), Kara Joy McKee (District 4), and Lori Decter Wright (District 7) were the only votes in support of putting Mayor Bynum's proposal on the ballot. All three have drawn opponents.

Councilors Jeannie Cue (District 2), Crista Patrick (District 3), Connie Dodson (District 6), Phil Lakin (District 8), and Ben Kimbro (District 9) voted against the OIM charter change, and Cass Fahler (District 5), who was absent, had voiced opposition to the proposal. Kimbro isn't running again, but only one of the other five (Dodson) has drawn an opponent. Only two candidates have bothered to file for the open District 9 seat.

Marlin Lavanhar, senior pastor of All Souls Unitarian Church, has drawn a couple of scathing cartoons critical of Mayor Bynum's response to the protests. So where is the challenger to Bynum from the left side of the spectrum?

I've checked a few names prominent in the protests and found that some of them are registered to vote in these districts whose councilors are opposed to their goals. If I dug further, I suspect I'd find that there's a leading protester in each one of these council districts. Why aren't they using their youth, enthusiasm, and energy to run for a real seat at the table, instead of being satisfied with scraps?

So who are the candidates who have already filed? Let's start with a look at the mayoral candidates.

Tulsa_Mayoral_Candidates_2020.jpg

GT Bynum is running for a second term. A professional schmoozer in one form or another for his entire career (Senate staff assistant, public relations, corporate communications, governmental affairs, lobbyist), Bynum IV is clearly in over his head, particularly now that the job demands tough decisions, not just ribbon-cutting and pious virtue signalling. Michael Mason has documented Bynum's deep ties to billionaire George Kaiser. In the words of New York Times writer Cassidy McDonald, "Kaiser has turned Tulsa into 'beta city,' U.S.A," a guinea pig for his social experiments, which are grounded in the materialistic worldview set out in his "Giving Pledge." However noble, Mr. Kaiser's intentions, Tulsans should not give him carte blanche to direct city resources to carry out his private philanthropic aims. Tulsans need elected officials who are not beholden to a billionaire who seems to see us as lab rats.

Ken Reddick is running as a conservative Republican and has already been campaigning for a few months. After many years as a manager for an electrical utility contractor and as an electrician, Reddick now has his own business managing projects for contractors in the utility and electrical fields, helping them to streamline processes and find efficiencies. Reddick ran a credible special election race for District 7 City Councilor in November 2018, but conservative support was divided among several candidates.

Paul Tay, who has run many times for mayor and city council, and made an infamous cameo appearance at the 2016 RSU-TV mayoral debate between incumbent Mayor Dewey Bartlett and challenger GT Bynum, was released Monday after five months in the Tulsa County Jail for outraging public decency. I won't repeat the specifics of his crime, for which he was convicted in a jury trial in January, but the state's witness list and the judge's instructions to the jury will tell you more than you wanted to know. Tay also has felony charges pending for possession of a stolen vehicle and violation of a protective order. When I first met him, way back in 1998, he had some cogent thoughts on urban planning and bicycles, but there's nothing cogent about his increasingly bizarre behavior. On his declaration of candidacy, Tay listed the Day Center for the Homeless as his place of residence, contrary to his voter registration address.

The fourth candidate, Zackri Leon Whitlow, doesn't appear in the voter registration database at all. Whitlow shows up on LinkedIn, Facebook, and IMDb. It appears that he is an insurance agent and broker, and that his agency may have been located in California, in Langley, Oklahoma, and now in Tulsa. It appears that he served as a butler at the Playboy Mansion, credited with an appearance on the reality series based there, "The Girls Next Door." I haven't found anything indicating his views on city issues.

City Auditor Cathy Champion Carter (formerly Cathy Criswell) is still unopposed. She has held the post without a challenger since her first election in 2013, when she defeated appointed incumbent Clift Richards and Josh Lewis. If the listing of internal audit reports on her City Auditor website is complete, Tulsa hasn't had a sensitive payments audit since FY 2017, and the pace of internal audits in general has slowed considerably over the past few years. It was the intention of the framers of our City Charter that the city auditor should be an "anti-mayor," acting as a whistleblower on abuse and corruption. Instead, Carter continues to follow the pattern set by Phil Wood, the first city auditor under the 1989 charter, quietly churning out reports but doing little or nothing to call attention to her team's findings, findings that might uncover inefficiency, waste, or even corruption.

If you're wondering whether or not to file, go for it. Every councilor should have a challenger. After filing closes at 5 pm Wednesday afternoon, you've got two days to investigate and speak with the other candidates who have filed, and if you'd rather back one of the other candidates you can withdraw by 5 pm Friday and take your name on the ballot. But let's at least make sure that every voter has good choices in every office and district.

At the end of the second of three days of candidate filing for the 2020 City of Tulsa elections, the incumbent mayor, auditor, and seven of the nine incumbent city councilors have filed for re-election, with Mayor GT Bynum IV drawing three opponents and incumbent Democratic Councilors Kara Joy McKee (District 4) and Councilor Lori Decter Wright (District 7) each drawing two opponents. Five council seats and the auditor's office have only one candidate each. Incumbent Democrat councilors Connie Dodson (District 6) has also drawn a Republican opponent. Republican District 9 councilor Ben Kimbro is not running for re-election; two candidates have filed thus far for that seat. Democrat District 1 Councilor Vanessa Hall Harper has confirmed to BatesLine that she will file tomorrow; Jerry Goodwin has already filed as a challenger for the seat.

Three candidates may have issues with their voter registrations, or lack thereof. District 4 candidate Landry Miller is not in the current state election board voter registration database as of noon today. Perennial mayoral candidate Paul Tay is registered to vote at 6104 N. Boulder, which does not match the residential or mailing address (both 415 W. Archer St., the Day Center for the Homeless) he supplied on his declaration of candidacy. The voter registration database also does not have a record for mayoral candidate Zackri Leon Whitlow; there is someone with a similar name and age registered to vote at a different address.

(UPDATE 2020/06/10: Zackri Whitlow responded to my inquiry about his voter registration: "I just submitted my Tulsa Voter Registration on Friday. I am an Oklahoma Native but had moved to California back in 2006. I was last registered in Riverside County and that should be in the process of them transitioning my new Voter Registration to Tulsa County." Whitlow says he has registered in Oklahoma as a Democrat. Landry Miller responded to my inquiry: "I am registered in District 4, under my current address. This was only recently changed because I hopped around Tulsa for a while trying to find the perfect spot to live. So therefore my previous registration was in Rogers County, where I waited to update my registration until March, so I could still vote in the presidential primaries (in Rogers County).")

In addition, four candidates -- Jerry Goodwin, Cass Fahler, Phil Lakin, and Leeann Crosby -- have filed under names that do not match their voter registration records. While state law permits a candidate to specify a ballot name that differs from their legal name, both of which are specified on a declaration of candidacy for state office, the Tulsa City Charter does not. In the past, I can recall a number of occasions where a city candidate's full name (including middle name and suffix) appeared on the ballot, even if it differed from the name by which the candidate was popularly known. This 2009 City of Tulsa primary ballot for Mayor and Council District 8 has middle names for almost all of the candidates.

This name-matching requirement seems to have motivated candidates to change their voter registration. For example, the mayor is registered as last name "Bynum," first name "G T," which allows his name to appear as "G T Bynum" on the city ballot, even though that would appear to be in violation of the section of law (26 O.S. 4-112) that requires each voter to register with his full name, in his case, George Theron Bynum IV.

The Tulsa City Charter, Article VI, Section 3.1, requires, "Any person who desires to be a candidate for a City office shall file with the Election Board of Tulsa County or its successor a Declaration of Candidacy which shall contain: A. The name and residence street address of the person as it appears on the voter registration records;...." A candidate who has provided a name and address combination that doesn't match a voter registration record for an address in the City of Tulsa would be in violation of that charter provision.

A candidate with an invalid declaration of candidacy could have his candidacy contested by an opposing candidate or, if no other candidate has filed, by any eligible voter registered to vote for the candidate. Contests must be filed by 5 p.m. Friday with a $250 deposit. Contests are governed by Title 26, Chapter A1, Article V of Oklahoma Statutes, sections 118 to 131. Section 117 states that the relevant election board can reject a Declaration of Candidacy "which on its face shows that the candidate does not meet the qualifications to become a candidate for the office set forth as contained in the Oklahoma Constitution, statutes or resolution calling the election."

Filing continues for one final day, tomorrow, Wednesday, June 10, 2020 at the Tulsa County Election Board, 555 N. Denver Ave., Tulsa, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. More about the filing and election process here.

The names, ages, and addresses below are from the Tulsa County Election Board's official list of Monday filings. I've added incumbent status, registered voter name in brackets if it differs from the name used for filing, and party affiliation, which I checked against the current voter registration database.

Mayor
GT Bynum, 42, 3607 S. Florence Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105, incumbent, Republican
Paul Tay, 57, 415 W Archer, Tulsa, OK 74103, Independent
Ken Reddick, 37, 5008 S 85th East Ave, Tulsa, OK 74145, Republican
Zackri Leon Whitlow, 39, 2951 W 66th St, Tulsa, OK 74132, Democrat

Council District 1
Jerry [James G] Goodwin, 57, 2406 W. Pine Pl., Tulsa, OK 74127, Democrat

Council District 2
Jeannie Cue, 5313 S 32 Pl W, Tulsa, OK 74107, incumbent, Republican

Council District 3
Crista Patrick, 46, 1918 N. Joplin Ave., Tulsa, OK 74115, incumbent, Democrat

Council District 4
Kara Joy McKee, 41, 1119 S Quebec Ave, Tulsa, OK 74112, incumbent, Democrat
Landry Miller, 26, 221 N Union Ave, Tulsa, OK 74127, Democrat
Casey Robinson, 38, 1260 E 29th Pl, Tulsa, OK 74114, Republican

Council District 5
Cass [Cassidy G] Fahler, 47, 7383 E 24th St, Tulsa, OK 74129, incumbent, Republican

Council District 6
Christian Bengel, 52, 13173 E. 29th Street, Tulsa, OK 74134, Republican
Connie Dodson, 53, 13302 E. 28th St., Tulsa, OK 74134, incumbent, Democrat

Council District 7
Chad Ferguson, 40, 6751 S. 71st East Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74133, Republican
Justin Van Kirk, 29, 10709 E 100 Pl, Tulsa, OK 74133, Republican
Lori Decter Wright, 45, 8706 E 86th St, Tulsa, OK 74133, incumbent, Democrat

Council District 8
Phil [Philip Lawrence] Lakin Jr., 52, 9808 S. Knoxville Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74137, incumbent, Republican

Council District 9
[Bobbie] Leeann Crosby, 36, 3845 South Madison Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105, Democrat
Jayme Fowler, 61, 5601 S Gary Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105, Republican

City Auditor
Cathy Champion Carter, 65, 4120 E 22nd Place, Tulsa, OK 74114, incumbent, Democrat

UPDATED to include Justin Van Kirk and Jayme Fowler, whose names I overlooked when initially composing this report. UPDATED again to include information from Zackri Leon Whitlow and Landry Miller about their voter registration.

Update as of 1:30 pm Tuesday: Republican Ken Reddick, 37, 5008 S 85th East Ave, has filed for mayor, and Republican Casey Robinson, 38, 1260 E 29th Pl, has filed for District 4 City Councilor. District 2 Republican incumbent Jeannie Cue, and District 7 Democrat incumbent Lori Decter Wright, 45, 8706 E 86th St, have filed for re-election. Cue is unopposed at this point, Wright has a Republican opponent, and there are now three candidates each running for mayor and District 4 city council. Landry Miller is not in the current state election board voter registration database. Paul Tay is registered to vote at 6104 N. Boulder, which does not match the residential or mailing address he supplied on his declaration of candidacy.

At the end of the first day of filing for the 2020 City of Tulsa elections, the incumbent mayor, auditor, and five of the incumbent city councilors have filed for re-election, with the mayor and two city councilors drawing one opponent each. Six council seats and the auditor's office have only one candidate each. No one has yet filed for the District 2 seat, currently held by Jeannie Cue. District 7 councilor Lori Decter-Wright has announced her intention to run for re-election. District 9 councilor Ben Kimbro is not running for re-election.

Filing continues Tuesday and Wednesday at the Tulsa County Election Board, 555 N. Denver Ave., Tulsa, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. More about the filing and election process here.

Perennial candidate Paul Tay has listed the Day Center for the Homeless at 415 W. Archer St. as his residence.

The incumbent auditor, the former Cathy Criswell, married William Lloyd Carter, Jr., last July and will be on the ballot this year as Cathy Champion Carter.

The names, ages, and addresses below are from the Tulsa County Election Board's official list of Monday filings. I've added incumbent status, registered voter name in brackets if it differs from the name used for filing, and party affiliation, which I checked against the current voter registration database. I wasn't able to locate Landry Miller's record.

Mayor
GT Bynum, 42, 3607 S. Florence Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105, incumbent, Republican
Paul Tay, 57, 415 W Archer, Tulsa, OK 74103, Independent

Council District 1
Jerry [James G] Goodwin, 57, 2406 W. Pine Pl., Tulsa, OK 74127, Democrat

Council District 3
Crista Patrick, 46, 1918 N. Joplin Ave., Tulsa, OK 74115, incumbent, Democrat

Council District 4
Kara Joy McKee, 41, 1119 S Quebec Ave, Tulsa, OK 74112, incumbent, Democrat
Landry Miller, 26, 221 N Union Ave, Tulsa, OK 74127, unknown

Council District 5
Cass [Cassidy G] Fahler, 47, 7383 E 24th St, Tulsa, OK 74129, incumbent, Republican

Council District 6
Christian Bengel, 52, 13173 E. 29th Street, Tulsa, OK 74134, Republican
Connie Dodson, 53, 13302 E. 28th St., Tulsa, OK 74134, incumbent, Democrat

Council District 7
Chad Ferguson, 40, 6751 S. 71st East Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74133, Republican

Council District 8
Phil [Philip Lawrence] Lakin Jr., 52, 9808 S. Knoxville Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74137, incumbent, Republican

Council District 9
[Bobbie] Leeann Crosby, 36, 3845 South Madison Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105, Democrat

City Auditor
Cathy Champion Carter, 65, 4120 E 22nd Place, Tulsa, OK 74114, incumbent, Democrat

In addition to the high-stakes presidential race, the City of Tulsa has its own high-stakes elections this year. All nine Tulsa City Councilors and the Tulsa City Auditor are on the ballot every two years, but in presidential years, the Mayor's office is also up for grabs. Filing period begins Monday, June 8, 2020, and ends Wednesday, June 10, 2020. Candidates file in-person at the Tulsa County Election Board, 555 N. Denver (in the old Marina-style Safeway building), between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. daily.


City of Tulsa Council Districts for 2020 elections

I'll stick to the nuts and bolts in this item; later I hope to explain why Tulsans should want to run for office and change the personnel running our city government.

Filing involves filling out a declaration of candidacy, getting it notarized, and presenting it at the county election board with a cashier's check for $50 for the filing fee. The filing fee is really a deposit, intended to deter frivolous candidates: If you get more than 15% of the vote when your name first appears on the ballot, or if you're unopposed, you get the cashier's check back. In lieu of the filing fee, you have the option of filing a petition signed by 300 registered voters in your election district if you're running for council, or city-wide if running for Mayor or Auditor. The information packet with all the forms, including the declaration of candidacy and all ethics disclosure forms, is on the Tulsa County Election Board website.

City elections are governed by Article VI of the City Charter. Council races are run by district. Our council districts were gerrymandered in 2012 evidently with the intent of eliminating then-Mayor Dewey Bartlett's harshest critics. The lines will be redrawn next year following the publication of the 2020 census results by a five-person committee appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the City Council. If the next council consists of the mayor's yes men, the mayor will be able to redraw the district lines to benefit his most loyal councilors.

To find your district, consult the Oklahoma Voter Tool, or use the city's interactive map, or consult this set of static maps, showing the precincts contained within each council district.

Tulsa's municipal elections are non-partisan, and the process has changed since the last mayor's election in 2016, going from three stages to two. The August 25, 2020, election is considered a general election. (The same date is used for runoffs for candidates for Federal and State Legislative offices.)

If two candidates are running for an office, the candidate receiving the most votes at the August election wins. If more than two candidates are running, the number of top candidates whose votes total at least 50% advance to a runoff on November 3, 2020, the same date as the general election for U. S. President, Senator, Congressmen, and state legislators.

To give you an idea of how this would work, suppose the top two candidates for Mayor fell short of 50% of the vote combined in a very evenly divided race.

Candidate A 25%
Candidate B 23%
Candidate C 14%
Candidate D 11%
Candidate E 10%
Candidate F 9%
Candidate G 8%

If these were a regular Oklahoma primary, only Candidates A and B would advance to the November runoff, but because their combined total falls short of 50%, one more candidate, C, would advance. Because A, B, and C's vote share exceeds 50% (62%) only those candidates will advance to November. This is a highly unlikely spread, except perhaps in a race for an open seat; in most cases, it will simply be the top two candidates advancing to the November runoff.

If you're unhappy with a mayor who makes concessions without consulting all stakeholders involved in a decision, if you're unhappy with a mayor who refuses to enact a curfew to protect Tulsa residents and businesses, if you're unhappy with a council that fails to hold the mayor accountable, if you're unhappy with councilors who break their promises to constituents who are facing the destruction of their homes by eminent domain, if you're unhappy that most of our elected officials are beholden to a billionaire who sees Tulsa as a lab rat for social experimentation, you ought to consider running for office. We can't have change unless we have different candidates to choose from.

riot_act_read_from_here.jpgA young friend of mine was incensed at the attitude of older folks about the incident on the North Detroit overpass of Interstate 244. "The point of a protest is this: How does it feel to be powerless?" So it was fine, in the eyes of this homeschooled, Christian young adult, for people to wander off of the planned demonstration route (on Detroit under the I-244 overpass), block traffic on a busy, elevated motorway, box in a driver towing a horse trailer, so that they could make the drivers feel powerless, too. And this is supposed to advance constructive change?

But people aren't powerless. Next week -- Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, June 8-10, 2020 -- is the filing period for City of Tulsa offices. Every office is on the ballot: Mayor, Auditor, and all nine City Councilors. If you don't like the way the police department is run, if you think laws are unjust or unjustly enforced, run for office. Pour your energy into finding candidates, organizing, and knocking on doors. This year, more than ever, leading up to the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, the message that motivated the peaceful protest late Sunday afternoon in Greenwood is going to be enthusiastically amplified by local broadcast and print media. (Here's the City of Tulsa 2020 election packet.)

Nicole Gelinas, a New York-based columnist and analyst on urban issues, tweeted to a 20-year-old who lamented that she couldn't attend the protests because she cares for an elderly grandparent:

Most responsible thing to do is stay home, plan long-term strategy for constructive, deliberate change. Throwing bodies on street to pandemic solves nothing, endangers people, actually creates huge anti-progressive backlash. (permalink)

When politicians see massive street protests, all they see is people who can't organize themselves into targeted, deliberate coalitions for *specific* action items. Rich white pols at home, vulnerable minorities on street risking COVID-19 death ... to maintain power structure. (permalink)

The other part of this is that massive, well-meaning, but naive and COVID-deadly street protests provide cover for well-organized anarchists with a *real* agenda. (permalink)

After tuning in at 10 to watch the news (with my shiny new, roof-mounted aerial antenna -- we've recently cut the cord), I stayed up late Sunday night, watching coverage and tweeting about it, for as long as the local stations were on the air. Fox 23 (KOKI) and News on 6 (KOTV) did a good job of covering the confrontations in Brookside, on Peorial between 36th Street and I-44. Amazingly, 2 Works for You (KJRH) was AWOL, even though the protest parked itself right in front of the station's studios for a long time. KJRH was busy covering a candlelight vigil at Archer and Greenwood during their 10 o'clock news, then ran their scheduled paid programming from Joel Osteen. KOTV packed it in shortly after midnight, after KOTV caught video of vandals breaking into Cash America pawnshop and Round the House consignment mall in the Bellaire shopping center (just north of I-44 on the east side of Peoria), shortly after which the thugs bashed in KOTV reporter Emory Bryan's car windows. KOKI called it a night a few minutes later. If we ever have actual news after midnight in this town, will anyone from our TV and radio stations be listening to the scanner to cover it? Who's got the night watch?

The two big confrontations on Sunday were on I-244 at Detroit, during the Black Lives Matter Rally in the afternoon, and on Brookside Sunday night. The organizer of the rally, Tykebrean Natrail Cheshier, has said publicly that these two protests were not part of her rally.

Friday night, May 29, Cheshier posted a description of the rally:

Sunday May 31, 2020
5pm
( show up @ 4pm to help set up)
Canned food donations go to the Vernon AME Church ( please put them on the front steps) !!
Also they have food drives all the time as well ( support that)
Water stations will be set up ( will need donated waters )
Snacks stations will be set up ( will need donated snacks)
Poster board station as well! Bring your own and extras as well! ( markers are welcomed)
Trash cans will be set up as well!

Speakers will start @ 5pm in the field by the church on Black Wall Street !
After the speakers we will March to the John Hope Franklin Park around 630 and that's where it will end!

I still have room for a couple more speakers!
If your wanting for speak you have to be on the list! ( please message me )

I will also need tables & chairs for the volunteers!!

This will be downtown on green wood!

Please park @ OSU Tulsa and walk to greenwood!!

SUPPORT BLACK OWNED BUSINESS!!

T shirts will be for sell from those businesses!

Please take time to look @ all of the plaques on the ground and walls as we walk around greenwood !!

THIS WILL BE THE 99 Year Anniversary of Black Wall Street being burnt down!

THIS IS A PEACEFUL RALLY AND IT WILL STAY THAT WAY!!

I hope this answers more questions!!!

At 5:24 am Monday, Cheshier posted a map of the intended route -- from the field next to Vernon AME Church, south on Greenwood, west on Archer, north on Detroit, east on Reconciliation Way (formerly Brady, north on Elgin to Reconciliation Park, stating:

Here was the route from yesterday but once I passed out in front a couple other "activist " Decided to leave me and take over. This route is what the cops wanted for us. No highway . I do apologize again. I didn't stay hydrated and got over heated ..

At 10:10 pm Sunday, Cheshier posted:

My rally was over around 7.. Whatever else happens tonight has nothing to do with my rally. Mine was peaceful up til I passed out and someone took over and went on the highway.... ( the people that were hit are ok( so I've heard)) other then that the rally was peaceful and I'm thankful .. I'm going to rest now.. thank y'all

black_lives_matter_rally_route-20200531.jpg

Going back through her Facebook feed and the event page for the rally, the rally seems like an earnest but hastily organized response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, tying the protest into the 99th anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, and it's clear that Cheshier and her fellow organizers had nothing to do with the foolhardy stroll on the interstate or the street blockade and vandalism on Peoria.

In Brookside on late Sunday night, Tulsa police officers with shields maintained a distance from the crowds and responded to objects thrown at them with pepper balls and, after things got completely out of hand, tear gas canisters. TPD officers handled themselves well, but were constrained by the presence of non-violent protesters and members of the general public from dealing with the violent characters present in the crowd.

As I write this early Tuesday morning, all of the Tulsa TV stations have ceased live coverage -- KTUL News 8 and Fox 23 were the only stations on the scene when I tuned in around 11:30 pm. The action was north of the intersection of 71st and Memorial, the heart of south Tulsa's retail corridor, some people were breaking store windows, some were standing in the middle of the street. The Oklahoma National Guard were present to back up the Tulsa Police Department. Again, pepper balls and tear gas were used to respond to violent provocation.

At Monday's news conference, Tulsa Mayor G. T. Bynum IV declined to issue a curfew or to take any other action that would make it easier for law enforcement to separate peaceful protesters from those intending to cause mayhem or do damage.

The situation would seem to fit Title 21, Chapter 55, Sections 1311 through 1321.10, of Oklahoma Statutes, which defines what a riot is, what constitutes participation in a riot, and the penalties that apply. The Governor can declare a state of emergency. The Governor can ban people from the streets, impose a curfew, ban the sale of fuel that might be used by rioters, ban other normally lawful activities. Municipalities are authorized "authorized to enact ordinances in general conformity with the provisions of this act," and if state and local laws differ, the stricter provision applies.

Title 8 of Tulsa Revised Ordinances authorizes the mayor to declare an emergency, order a general curfew, and close businesses that might fuel the rioters. Title 29, Section 105, declares (emphasis added):

It shall be the duty of the Chief of Police to preserve the public peace, to prevent the commission of crime, to arrest offenders, to protect the rights of persons and property, to provide police officers at fires to protect the firefighters and property, to suppress riots and insurrections and disperse unlawful and dangerous assemblies, to preserve order at all elections and all public meetings and assemblies, to prevent and regulate the movement of vehicles in the streets and to prevent the violation of all laws and ordinances.

For years I had heard and used phrases like "she read him the riot act" without knowing the historical basis for the cliché. Then a few years ago I was driving through the town of Young, New South Wales, Australia, on my way from Wagga Wagga to Cowra, and the sign above caught my eye.

THE RIOT ACT
READ FROM HERE

BY GOLD COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN
14th JULY 1861
MINERS ATTACK POLICE CAMP.

Young was the site of the Lambing Flat riot. Australian gold miners, envious of the organization and success of immigrant Chinese miners, attacked the Chinese miners and drove them away, destroying their camps and looting their belongings. When the police arrived to restore order and to arrest the riot ringleaders, the rioters responded with an attack on the police camp. The Gold Commissioner read the proclamation prescribed in the 1714 Riot Act, which declared the mob to be an unlawful assembly, ordered everyone to disperse, and made anyone remaining guilty of a felony, and the authorities will not be liable if any of the rioters are injured as the authorities attempt to arrest or disperse them.

What follows is the short version; you can read the full 1714 Riot Act here.

If any persons to the number of 12 or more unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assemble together to the disturbance of the public peace and being required by any Justice by proclamation in the King's name in the exact form of the Riot Act, I George I, Sess. 2, c. 5 s. 2, to disperse themselves and peaceably depart, shall to the number of 12 or more unlawfully, riotously and tumultuously remain or continue together for an hour after such proclamation shall be guilty of a felony.

Our sovereign lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God save the King.

It's past time that Gov. Stitt or Mayor Bynum IV read the local equivalent of the Riot Act, and put everyone on notice that every law-abiding Tulsan should be off the streets after a reasonable hour Tuesday night, and anyone gathering in traffic or in the company of those damaging local businesses will be presumed to be a rioter and dealt with accordingly.

MORE: This KJRH drone video provides context for the I-244 confrontation, showing the crowds diverting up the Detroit eastbound on-ramp and the concrete embankment and gathering on the eastbound lanes. You can see that cars are still arriving from the west, unaware of what is ahead. You can see the red pickup with large horse trailer, and in front of it, a silver car that the crowd allowed to pass through. A couple of police cruisers appear briefly on the edge of the frame, parked on the shoulder at the Elgin overpass, possibly as a vantage point for watching the march below.

MORE VIDEO:

Fox 23: Tulsa protest organizer Tykebrean Cheshier, speaks out against violent demonstrations. As on her Facebook posts, she disavowed and denounced those who went up onto I-244, and those who participated in unlawful street-blocking and vandalism over several nights.

Another video of the I-244 confrontation, provided to local news outlets, taken from the right side of the pickup, show an older man waving the truck ahead and urging his fellow demonstrators to clear the path. After the truck began moving, protestors moved into block his progress. I saw it first on Fox 23, but this looks like the same video, minus Clay Loney standing in front, so it's clearer to see that the truck's initial movement was into a cleared space, that the mob moved back in to obstruct the truck, and that the mob began beating on the truck before the truck began to move forward again.

Lower Falls of the Yellowstone, Thomas Moran, 1893Back at the beginning of March, we reported that Gilcrease Museum would not be renovated and expanded, as Tulsa voters were promised in April 2016, but would instead be demolished and rebuilt as a smaller facility, with the help of funding from the University of Tulsa and other donors.

The change is substantial enough that the new plans will not fit within the broad language of the "Brown Ordinance" adopted in advance of the April 2016 tax vote, so the provisions of the ordinance have been invoked and a legal notice has been published, announcing public hearings on June 10 and June 17, 2020, to consider an amendment to Title 43-K to change the name of the line item "Gilcrease Museum Expansion" to "Gilcrease Museum Facilities Improvements."

20200522-Tulsa_Gilcrease_Demolition-Brown_Amendment_Notice.jpg

The "Brown Ordinance" is named in honor of former City Attorney Darven Brown. City of Tulsa capital improvements were traditionally financed by general obligation bond issues (repaid by property taxes) or revenue bond issues (repaid by, e.g., water and sewer customers, parking garage customers, airline passengers). In 1979, Mayor Jim Inhofe attempted to pass a one-cent sales tax to fund a backlog of capital improvement needs, but the vote failed, in part because a sales tax, once in effect, could be spent on anything, even operational costs, unlike a bond issue, which could only be spent on the named improvements. Brown came up with the idea of an ordinance which set out the specific projects to be funded and the amount allocated for each, provided for a Sales Tax Overview Committee to monitor spending, provided for a process to ensure sufficient public notice of proposed changes, and established penalties (including removal from office) for spending any of the money contrary to the ordinance. With the Brown Ordinance in place (and with the Zink Lake low-water dam removed from the package), the sales tax passed on Inhofe's second attempt in 1980. A Brown Ordinance has been enacted for each city capital improvements sales tax vote ever since.

Title 43-K is the Brown Ordinance attached to the 2016 Vision Tulsa tax. It was amended within a year that of its passage. The promise that the South Tulsa/Jenks low-water dam would be cancelled and its $64 million in funding reallocated if Tulsa and the Muscogee Creek Nation could not reach a partnership agreement by December 31, 2016, was nullified in February 2017 and replaced with a deadline at the end of this year. (The original proposed change was to a vague deadline of "within a reasonable time.") The ordinance was changed again in May 2019 to move all $3.6 million designated for OSU-Tulsa to increase the BMX World Headquarters funding from $15 million to $18.6 million.

I hope that Tulsans will register their objections to this proposal publicly through social media and with their city councilors. Tulsans voted for expansion of Gilcrease, not contraction, not relocation, and certainly not demolition of this historic facility. The proposed new language doesn't fit the announced plans: Total or near-total demolition can hardly be considered a "facilities improvement." This could be considered an attempt to deceive in the legal notice and could subject the councilors to lawsuits and removal from office if they go ahead with it. Tulsans should insist that their councilors approve an honest title for the line item: "Gilcrease Museum: Demolition and reconstruction as a smaller facility," and it is this title that should be published as a legal notice.

Tulsans should also insist that this change not move forward unless and until the City begins to disentangle our priceless Gilcrease collection from the troubled University of Tulsa. The City should terminate its management contract with TU, reject any contributions from the Kaiser System (the name given by Michael Mason to the network of organizations linked to the Obama-backing billionaire), and insist that the collection remain at the same site. Any additional money needed could be reallocated from the dam project that will likely never happen. Some of these stipulations could be written into the Brown Ordinance to ensure compliance.

RELATED: President Trump tweeted on Wednesday:

The Tulsa, Oklahoma area has been approved for a transportation loan from the @USDOT of up to $120M to help expand highway on the Gilcrease Expressway West Project. This will mean less congestion and faster routes to popular spots! @GovStitt

The loan will be to the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority, which will repay the loan from the tolls it will be collecting on the five-mile stretch of the west leg of the Gilcrease Expressway between the I-44/I-244 west junction and US 412 at 57th West Avenue.

Tulsa's Golden Driller remade with the Tesla logo and with a face mask resembling Elon MuskIt's cringe-worthy. Some persons, apparently with the permission of the Tulsa County Public Facilities Authority, painted the Tesla logo on the chest of the Golden Driller, and painted the name Tesla on his belt buckle, over the word Tulsa. If that weren't bad enough, used some kind of wrap to cover the statue's face to turn it pale, almost white, to try match the appearance of Tesla chairman Elon Musk's pale, square face.

Images of this work began circulating on social media on Tuesday, May 19, 2020, and many people thought it was some kind of lame photo-manipulation meme. At 2 pm on Wednesday, Tulsa Mayor G. T. Bynum IV led an "unveiling" of the modified statue -- unveiling consisting of a big white sheet (twin size, if the Golden Driller had a bed) held by two cranes in front of the statue, then dropped on cue.

Meanwhile someone created a webpage called bigf***ingfield.com, urging Musk to locate his new "cybertruck gigafactory" in Tulsa.

While some Tulsans on social media applauded the effort, many more expressed emotions ranging from amusement to dismay at these gestures which were endorsed by our city's leaders, describing the promotions as cringe-inducing, pathetic, needy, and desperate. Some thought the Tesla logo on the Golden Driller was reasonable, but the Elon Musk mask was just creepy. (It reminded me of fictional TV celebrity Alan Partridge's visit to an obsessed fan's home.)

All this was triggered by a story in TechCrunch on May 15:

Tesla officials visited two sites in Tulsa, Oklahoma this week to search for a location for its future and fifth gigafactory that will produce its all-electric Cybertruck and Model Y crossover, a source familiar with the situation told TechCrunch.

Company representatives also visited Austin. A final decision has not been made, but Austin and Tulsa are among the finalists, according to multiple sources. The AP also reported Tulsa and Austin as top picks for the gigafactory.

It was earlier last week that Musk, frustrated by CCP Bat Virus-related restrictions in Alameda County, California, threatened to move the Fremont factory and Tesla headquarters out of California. On May 9th, Musk tweeted:

Tesla is filing a lawsuit against Alameda County immediately. The unelected & ignorant "Interim Health Officer" of Alameda is acting contrary to the Governor, the President, our Constitutional freedoms & just plain common sense!

Frankly, this is the final straw. Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately. If we even retain Fremont manufacturing activity at all, it will be dependen on how Tesla is treated in the future. Tesla is the last carmaker left in CA.

Neither Texas nor Nevada have an income tax, and Tesla already has a gigafactory east of Reno where batteries for its vehicles are manufactured.

I have the sneaking suspicion that rumors of Tulsa being considered were designed to frighten the City of Austin and the State of Texas into sweetening the deal. When a company comes to a vendor right before a deadline and asks for a quote, it's often an indication that the company has already selected another vendor for the work, but needs a competing quote to satisfy internal policies or as leverage to improve the preferred vendor's bid. The result is a lot of activity and expense with little realistic hope of a good result.

Several people have noticed the interesting timing of City of Tulsa's spat with Navistar IC Bus, the bus manufacturer that operates in Air Force Plant No. 3. The plant, used for building bombers during World War II, has a footprint of about 1.3 million square feet. Tesla's Nevada factory has a footprint of 1.9 million sq. ft.

When I was a young man, I learned the hard way that, contrary to TV shows and movies and the poetry we read in English class, wearing one's heart on one's sleeve, declaring one's undying and complete devotion to one's beloved, is not an effective courtship strategy. The object of such attention is apt to respond with indifference, pity, or revulsion. Those who went about their lives with confidence and purpose, without regard to the impression they made on the opposite sex, were far more successful with the opposite sex.

In 1908, a five-car train carrying 113 Tulsans, including a brass band, went around the northeastern and midwestern US on a two-week excursion to promote the city to potential businesses and residents. The Booster Train's itinerary included St. Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, Des Moines, and Kansas City. They were welcomed heartily everywhere they went. One participant, C. W. Deming, told the Tulsa Democrat upon their arrival home:

We arrived on fairly good time in all cities, unloaded ourselves, 113 strong, lined up behind the band and marched through the streets. Six or eight of us would walk along the sidewalks with an arm load of the special issue of the Booster [a daily paper printed on board the train] for every town we visited, throwing them in doors, mingled with the people and handed them papers out right and left through the large crowds which blocked the sidewalks and street crossings.

The Tulsa Boosters didn't go pleading with businesses to move to the city or trying to bribe them with incentive payments. They didn't focus flattery on Eastern kingpins in hopes of winning their investment. The Tulsa Boosters projected confidence and pride in their city, which had grown in eight years from a population of 1,313 to about 16,000. They touted the availability of energy for manufacturing. They brought an exhibition car to demonstrate the natural resources of the city and its environs. From page 3 of the April 20, 1908, New York Sun:

Out of alfalfa growing knee high in the exhibition car of their own private train..., more than 100 representative citizens of Tulsa, the greatest town of Oklahoma -- ask them! -- stepped upon the soil of Jersey and walked as quickly as possible to the ferryboat which was to give them an Easter morning glimpse of New York....

Alfalfa isn't the only thing growing in the car of the special train over in Jersey City. Whole branches of cherry trees are there, with cherries as big as they ought to be in April growing on them, branches cut from the trees a week ago whose fruit shows, as the Tulsans say, that the cherries left on the trees in Tulsa will be ripe and waiting for them when they reach home again in ten days more. Besides these there are samples of all the woods of the Tulsa region of Oklahoma and samples of the limestone, the shale and the other natural ingredients of Tulsan success and prosperity, and also photographs showing what a town situated on ten railroads can do in the way of growing in six years of lifetime. ...

The excursion is really a big one for Tulsa, more than a hundred of her business and professional men leaving their occupations and paying their share of a $25,000 or $30,000 trip of 3,500 miles for the purpose of bringing Tulsa to the world's notice and the hope of bringing the world to Tulsa. Tulsa buys of New York merchants, to be sure, but she buys mainly through St. Louis, Chicago and Kansas City branches or houses. Her business men feel that they might do better for themselves and better for New York also if they could deal direct with the metropolis.

This they desire to bring about to some degree if they can get acquainted to-day with Broadway -- the business part of Broadway. They also want to tell people that Tulsa can furnish 200,000,000 feet of natural gas every twenty-four hours at two cents per foot [per thousand feet, according to other stories] for manufacturing concerns which might find it convenient to establish there branches to take care of the great Southwestern trade.

It would be a great thing for Tulsa to gain a few thousand manufacturing jobs, but pathetic, needy, creepy gestures will not impress those who are selecting the site. So many of the people I've seen expressing enthusiasm for the Elon Musk mask on the Golden Driller or the vulgarly named website are also among those who frequently express shame and embarrassment about Oklahoma and our state's church-going ways. They seem to hope that Musk and company will come here to transform Tulsa into a progressive paradise, rather than to benefit from our conservative character. Perhaps that makes it hard for them simply to be dignified and confident in what our city and state has to offer.

Tulsa's leaders should emulate their predecessors from a century ago: Make Tulsa the best Tulsa we can be (not San Francisco or New York City or even Austin) and be confident enough in what we have to offer that we simply let the world know what they can find here, rather than grovelling in hopes of becoming something different.

MORE: The American Oil & Gas Historical Society has an article on the evolution of the Golden Driller, including the earlier, very different 1953 and 1959 versions for the International Petroleum Exposition (IPE). The present-day driller was built in 1966 alongside the permanent 9-acre IPE Building. This Land Press published the story of the permanent Golden Driller and its Greek immigrant designer, George Hondronastas. In dire shape, with a hole in his boot, the Driller escaped the wrecking ball and was refurbished in 1979.

Tulsa Gal, Atlas Obscura, Roadside America, and Wikipedia all have articles on the statue. Mental Floss ties the story of the Golden Driller into Tulsa's history as Oil Capital of the World. The Tulsa World has the story of Spooky, the cat who was rescued from the statue in 1976, at a time when the statue's skin was flimsier than it is now. Kent Schnetzler has posted a May 1966 photo of the Golden Driller, taken by his father, Robert Schnetzler, which shows the original, thinner shell of the statue, with the rebar grid clearly visible.

A scale replica of the Golden Driller stands in front of a 216 ft free-fall ride of the same name in Fraispertuis City amusement park in the historic province of Lorraine, in the northeast of France.

Does G. T. Bynum IV know anyone who lives east of Yale, north of 21st, or west of the river?

I've been watching the creation of blue ribbon panels for years, and this list is disturbingly familiar.

The mayor's picks for his Economic Recovery Advisory Committee are yet another expression of the tunnel vision of this city's ruling class, which can't see beyond its own little network of friends and associates, and which thinks of north, east, and west Tulsa as empty places you speed through to get to the airport, the lake, or Dallas.

When I posted this list to social media, all but one of my friends who replied spotted the deficiencies immediately. If you're in The Money Belt Bubble, if you're a Yacht Guest, you probably won't see any problem at all -- you'll think that this list is comprehensively representative of the city's economic life.

Small companies that make products and provide services for customers across the country and around the world -- they may as well not exist as far as Tulsa's trust-fund babies are concerned. Small, unfashionable businesses that serve the residents of Tulsa's forgotten neighborhoods -- barbers and beauty salons, cafes, neighborhood bars, local retailers, the businesses that are most vulnerable to a prolonged shutdown -- don't rate inclusion in a discussion of Tulsa's economic future.

TU is included, but not ORU, a university that draws students to Tulsa from around the world, many of whom stay after graduation and contribute to Tulsa's economy.

Churches aren't in the picture at all. Bynum IV apparently has no interest in the institutions that provide spiritual, social, and often financial support to vast numbers of Tulsans, institutions that have had to shut their doors and have taken a financial hit along with the rest of the economy.

Let's break down the list. First, you've got the power behind the throne, the woman who was rejected by the voters but found in Bynum IV a vehicle back to the Mayor's office: Kathy Taylor.

Kathy_Taylor-That.Is.Crazy.png

Then there are the Kaiser Konnections: Argonaut is George Kaiser's private equity fund, BOK is George Kaiser's bank, GKFF is George Kaiser's foundation, the University of Tulsa is George Kaiser's Kollege, and G. T. Bynum IV is George Kaiser's politician. I seem to recall reading that Gerry Clancy was too ill to continue as president of TU and had to stand aside, to be replaced by the wife of GKFF's executive director, but somehow he has the strength to nurse the city's economy back to health?

Three of the city's hospitals are represented and the city's largest private employer, American Airlines, which seems reasonable. But why do you need to hear from the general manager of the BOK Center, which already enjoys a $200 million public subsidy and is going to be propped up by the taxpayer however bad the economy may get?

There's a city councilor on the panel, and of course it's the councilor for the only district that matters, District 9, which contains the midtown portion of the Money Belt.

Arch-Chamberpot Mike Neal is on the list, head of a quango that pretends to be a branch of government when it's convenient (when it comes to taking tax dollars or hosting the State of the City address as a fundraiser) and a private club when it's not (when it comes to openness and accountability). Most of the rest of the names on the list are also members of the Tulsa Regional Chamber Board of Directors -- the same names that pop up time and again on public boards and commissions.

Tulsa is known around the world as the setting for the bestselling youth novel The Outsiders and the location for Francis Ford Coppola's beautiful film adaptation of the book. But Tulsa was then and still is run by a band of Socs who refuse to acknowledge that the rest of the city exists. This election year, Tulsa needs an Outsiders revolution. Tulsa's ignored neighborhoods need to drive off the mis-leadership of Bynum IV and his Soc cabal and elect a mayor and councilors who represent all of Tulsa.

MORE: Here's the official press release, for the record:

Mayor's Economic Recovery Advisory Committee Formed to Help Restore Tulsa Economy Amid COVID-19 Response

The City of Tulsa and the Tulsa Regional Chamber announced the creation of the Mayor's Economic Recovery Advisory Committee today to help guide near-term strategy around Tulsa's economic recovery while also identifying long-term opportunities for growth as the Tulsa community responds to the COVID-19 threat.

"As we manage a public health crisis using guidance from independent local public health experts, so too will we rely upon guidance from some of the best minds in Tulsa's private sector to recover from this economic crisis," said Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum. "I am very grateful for these Tulsans stepping up with their time and expertise across a broad array of industries. Working together, we will work to restore Tulsa's economy while protecting public health."

The Mayor's Economic Recovery Advisory Committee will focus on two main goals. First, to develop guidelines for safely reopening the Tulsa economy during the coming weeks and months, and second, to identify what the Tulsa-area business community needs to do to drive a stronger post-pandemic economy.

"We are confident that the City of Tulsa working in concert with the local business community can ensure we rebound as safely as possible," said Mike Neal, president and CEO of the Tulsa Regional Chamber. "This committee will also leverage the collective brainpower of many of Tulsa's brightest leaders in hopes of helping us all emerge from this challenge as quickly as possible."

Mayor's Economic Recovery Advisory Committee:

Steve Bradshaw, Bank of Oklahoma
Chet Cadieux, QuikTrip
Gerry Clancy, University of Tulsa
Carlin Conner, SemGroup (retired)
Kevin Gross, Hillcrest Medical Center
Marilyn Ihloff, Ihloff Salon & Day Spa
Ben Kimbro, Tulsa City Council
Dave Kollmann, Flintco
Paula Marshall, Bama Foods
Josh Miller, George Kaiser Family Foundation
Steve Mitchell, Argonaut Private Equity
Mike Neal, Tulsa Regional Chamber
Elliot Nelson, McNellie's Group
Jeff Nowlin, Ascension St. John
Erik Olund, American Airlines
Pete Patel, Promise Hotels
Anja Rogers, Senior Star Living
Larry Rooney, Manhattan Construction
Peggy Simmons, American Electric Power
Casey Sparks, ASM Global
Barry Steichen, Saint Francis Health System
Kathy Taylor, Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation
Rose Washington, Tulsa Economic Development Corp.

*Lead Staff: Kian Kamas, City of Tulsa Chief of Economic Development and Justin McLaughlin Tulsa Regional Chamber Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer.

For the most up-to-date news, information and business resources in Tulsa, visit www.cityoftulsa.org/COVID-19.

MORE: Longtime reader Bob comments:

Yes, again the Tulsa Regional Chamber of Commerce appears to be picking the Committee members.

For the actual business executives appointed to the Committee, I wouldn't see how they would actually have any real spare time to devote to a Recovery Committee.

BOKF CEO Steve Bradshaw, Q-T CEO Chet Cadieux, and the CEO's of Hillcrest, St. John's and St. Francis are all probably working double-overtime to save their businesses. And, the American Airlines executive appointed has EIGHTY AA jets parked at Tulsa International Airport, totally idle.

BOKF's stock has been plummeting, falling in the past year from $89 per share to a recent low of $35, and only very recently climbing back to $45 per share. Additions by the major banks to their Provision for Loan & Lease losses has been huge at the U.S. Multinational banks at quarter end 3/31. I'll look up BOKF's shortly.

Due to a cessation of elective surgeries, which provide all 3 Tulsa hospitals with the majority of their revenue, they've got to be hemorraging $$.

How much of his valuable time would the SFHS CEO who earned $1.7 million back in 2017, according to OCPA's "Perspective" newsletter, have to devote to a City of Tulsa committee?

What are Bynum's and the Chamber's REAL strategy?

Another "emergency" sales tax INCREASE to "save" City Government.

WHY? Because in the same Tulsa World edition as announcing the Economic Recovery Committee, Mayor Bynum announced a measly 3% cut in the city budget for the Fiscal Year 2021 beginning July 1.

That's Fantastical! The city is intentionally building in a revenue crisis that will hit later this year, but in time for a new Sales Tax initiative, probably a special election, because of the funding "Emergency".

There are now 26.5 MILLION people out of work nationally. The U.S. government accumulated Federal Debt will exceed our 2020 Gross Domestic Product!

There is NO revenue flowing to City facilities at the BOK Arena, Driller Stadium, or the PAC.

As measured earlier this week, less than 180 passengers were cleared that day by TSA at Tulsa International Airport. Normal volume is 5,000 daily.

All the malls are closed. That means no city sales tax generated.

Restaurants are drive-in, take-out, or home delivery only.

Oil prices have collapsed. closing at $17 per bbl today, after actually closing at negative $13 on Monday for the first time EVER. Meaning oil sellers of WTI were paying buyers to buy their May crude oil delivery contracts.

All the oil service companies are announcing layoffs, and capital spending reductions. Oil production companies are shutting in their wells all over the U.S, and offshore. Too much oil for the level of demand.

That's a fair point about the likely level of participation by the CEOs. If the people calling the shots already know the preferred outcome, the members of the Blue Ribbon panel are just there for window dressing. The last thing they want on such a committee is a member who will do research on his own time, who will ask probing questions, and who may come to a different conclusion than the prescribed result.

And in the spirit of Rahm Emmanuel's maxim -- "Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste" -- it wouldn't surprise me if the aim is to create a fiscal crisis that demands higher tax rates.

On Tuesday, March 17, 2020, Tulsa Mayor G. T. Bynum IV issued an executive order closing down dine-in service for all restaurants and shutting all bars, theaters, gyms, and recreational facilities in response to the Wuhan Bat Virus / COVID-19 pandemic. (Original link here. FAQ here.) Restaurants may offer take-out, drive-through, and delivery service. Institutional and business cafeterias may remain open. The dining facilities past security at the airport, soup kitchens, groceries, health care and childcare facilities are are among the exemptions.

The order mentions the pandemic declaration by the World Health Organization, and the emergency declarations by President Trump on March 13, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt on March 15, and by himself on March 16. The authority cited for the order:

Tulsa Revised Ordinances Title 8, Section 100 (G) provides that the Mayor, after proclaiming a civil emergency may in the interest of public safety and welfare make "Such other orders as are imminently necessary for the protection of life and property.

The closures took effect at 11:59 p.m. March 17 and will remain in effect indefinitely. Restaurants without their own off-street parking can request the city to designate an adjacent on-street parking space for curbside pickup. Restaurants will be able to allow customers to enter to place an order to go, but won't be allowed to sit down. Bars that serve food will be able to provide the same takeout service, but only for food. (No margaritas to go.) Retail stores may remain open.

As of 9:15 a.m. Oklahoma had 17 verified cases of coronavirus, with 247 negative tests, and 82 test results pending. That's almost double in the course of 24 hours. These are people who have been asymptomatic until very recently, going to church, going to work, shopping, hanging out in bars, giving you a hug, or shaking your hand.

The US is now ahead of the curve of growth in cases that Italy experienced. If you make a graph of COVID-19 infections vs. days, the US is about 11 days behind Italy. (Think of it like comparing your kids on a growth chart. I can tell by comparing my youngest son's height on each birthday to my oldest son's height on the same birthday that my youngest is on track to be taller than the oldest when he's fully grown.) Last week it was observed that the US curve matched the Italian curve almost exactly, but now the US infection numbers are rising faster than the Italian numbers.


Katherine Wilson, an American mother living in Rome, offered some advice yesterday to American parents:

The virus has ravaged our country. Hospitals in the north are on the verge of collapse. Intensive-care units are full of people who are elderly, but also people who are 40 and 50. The streets are empty, and restaurants are closed. You have to have an authorization paper to walk your dog.

Only 10 days ago in Rome, this wasn't the case. The government had closed schools and most sporting facilities, but nothing else. Our teenagers were socializing in the evening with their friends. Kids had time on their hands and were healthy and well rested. Did we, as parents, really want them at home on their screens, where they'd been all day?...

Our teens were going stir-crazy at home. Their friends were going out, and the government hadn't told us to restrict their activities. So, reasoning that this was a disease that didn't strike teenagers, we told them to wash their hands and unleashed them onto the sidewalks and piazzas, into other people's cars and homes....

The only thing that could have prevented -- or mitigated -- this tragedy in Italy is social distancing.

I'm not talking about a high-five instead of a handshake, or grandchildren not hugging their grandparents. I'm talking about not being close to another human being who is not your immediate family. This is the only available and effective measure to help slow the transmission of the disease.

When your teen complains that other parents are letting their kids go out and party, your reply should be something along the lines of "Where are my Beats?" Tune them out.

If in a few weeks reality reflects that you were too conservative, then hallelujah.

Wilson urges parents not to worry about screen time, not to hoard supplies, to get anyone traveling back home as soon as possible because of the possibility of travel restrictions, to find fun things to do together as a family, and not to get obsessive about the news.

In about 10 days we shall be able to see clearly how widespread the disease is, as infections become symptomatic, and shall be in a better position to know who is safe to be out and about and who is not. Social distancing now, while the infection is present but not yet symptomatic, gives us the best shot at protecting our loved ones.

MORE:

Sydney Morning Herald reported on March 13, 2020, on the physical effects of the Wuhan Bat Virus:

But when it's bad, it can mount an attack on the whole body - and start a storm in the lungs.

How it plays out depends on the two factors important to any invasion: the strength of your defences and the strength (or dose) of what you've been hit with....

As the body fights off the virus, inflammation starts in the lungs and can sometimes develop into pneumonia. In more severe cases - about 14 per cent - breathing becomes difficult as blood vessels leak and fluid builds up, restricting the lungs' ability to pump oxygen through the body. Patients might need a ventilator to breathe. A secondary bacterial infection might also hit, requiring antibiotics....

At the World Health Organisation, assistant director-general Bruce Aylward warns when danger strikes, it's often fast-moving. Doctors report patients can go downhill quickly during those "critical" second and third weeks and urge people with or suspected to have the virus to monitor their symptoms, particularly their breathing and fever....

As the immune system ramps up its defences, blood vessels start to leak and the lungs can be flooded with cellular debris, making it harder for them to pump oxygen to the rest of the body - and harder for patients to draw breath. "They start to drown," Professor Collignon says.

Falling blood oxygen levels put pressure on other organs, in particular the heart. More systems can start to fail, and blood pressure too, which, if it falls low enough can tip the body into septic shock, a whole-body infection....

Whatever your personal vulnerability, the dose of virus you first receive - say, from touching a contaminated door knob versus caring for an infected person over several days - also plays a big part in how your body copes. "The higher the dose the faster you will get sick, and the harder it will be on you," Professor MacIntyre says.

That could explain why otherwise young and healthy medical workers have died from the disease. Li Wenliang, the 34-year-old doctor who blew the whistle on early cases of COVID-19, went through a gamut of treatments after falling ill himself, including antivirals, antibiotics, even having his blood pumped through an artificial lung, but he died weeks later. As with SARS, clusters of severe infection are emerging in hospitals and households as people come into sustained close contact.

Eggs laid by backyard chickens. Photo by Tina Nettles.

UPDATE 2020/04/27: CCP Bat Virus has delayed the Tulsa City Council's final vote on the new animal ordinance, which is now set for the regular council meeting on May 11, 2020, 5 p.m., at City Hall. If you raise backyard poultry in the City of Tulsa, if you sell feed and equipment to people who do, if you have expertise in animal husbandry, or if you simply think government shouldn't block Tulsans from growing their own food in their own backyards, please volunteer to speak at the City Council meeting. As you'll read below, the "blue-ribbon commission" that rewrote the animal ordinance did not include anyone with expertise in this area and ignored the information that was provided to them by knowledgeable members of the public. This is a chance to make the case directly to those who will make the decision. Tina is hoping to have at least a half-dozen speakers, but the more the merrier.

Tina writes, "If you are willing but don't know what you'd say, I can help you. All last year I laid out information for the Mayor's commission, handing them dozens of pages of evidence that our ordinances for chickens are unreasonable currently, with footnotes, and we were soundly ignored. The commission has handed their recommendations (utterly unchanged by our recommendations) to the City Council, who will be voting to keep things restrictive if we don't show up and inform them of all the things they are not considering. This is our last stand. This is our Alamo (we probably won't die, though). I have information I can put in your hands to allow you to speak for up to 5 minutes, knowledgeably, confidently, and maybe make a difference in Tulsa for backyard poultry owners." Contact Tina through Facebook to volunteer.

Earlier this year, Tina Nettles, a resident of the Hoover neighborhood and a good friend of our family's, wrote to me about her eye-opening experience in dealing with bureaucrats and board members at Tulsa's City Hall. Tina raises a small number of chickens in her backyard, as do many other Tulsans, and she got involved in providing input to a city board that has been rewriting Tulsa's animal ordinance. What she learned is something that many other Tulsans have experienced when they attempt to participate in city public hearings -- City Hall doesn't want your expertise or your input if you're not wealthy or well-connected.

Former Mayor Susan Savage, who has lived in the Money Belt for as long as I am aware, and who as mayor had a documented problem appointing people outside the Money Belt to authorities, boards, and commissions, is the chairman of the Tulsa Animal Welfare Commission which headed up this rewrite. Four of the five members of the commission live in the Money Belt; three in the midtown portion. As far as I can determine, none of the commissioners live northeast of 71st and Harvard, north of 21st Street, or west of the river, and none are involved in agriculture. Home values range from $234,000 to $523,308. (Zillow's current estimate of Tulsa's median home value is $127,893.) Three commissioners are registered Democrats (Savage, Robin Flint Ballenger, Cordell Dement) and one of the registered Republicans, Teresa Burkett, only has contributions to Democrats and to ActBlue in the FEC's database of federal campaign contributions. (The other Republican is Christine Kunzweiler, a small-animal veterinarian who also happens to be the wife of District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler.)

Savage and Burkett presented the proposed revisions to the Tulsa City Council's Urban and Economic Development committee this past Wednesday, March 11, 2020, with Savage doing nearly all of the talking. Ballenger was also present but not at the table. The legislation had a First Reading at that night's City Council meeting (a formality, with no discussion), with a scheduled Second Reading scheduled for March 25, 2020. Here is the draft ordinance to be considered by the City Council, with backup material. Here is a local copy of the draft ordinance (50 MB PDF) which has been OCRed.

You can watch the video of the 50-minute committee presentation here. Councilors Cue, Decter Wright, Fahler, Hall-Harper, Lakin, and McKee were present, but only Hall-Harper and McKee had any substantial comments, and only McKee mentioned agricultural animals, specifically relaying constituent interest in raising goats in residential neighborhoods. Savage made reference to public comment, but it seems to have had no affect on the proposed changes. When Savage acknowledged the input of subject-matter experts, she referred specifically to the city's legal department and the Tulsa Planning Office -- in other words, the only expertise they wanted involved legal enforceability and compatibility with zoning laws, not expertise on animal agriculture in an urban context. No one from the public was invited to speak. The council did not review the legislation at all; once Savage's presentation was over, the council moved on to the next agenda item without (as far as I could see) voting on whether to advance it.

The revised animal ordinance has been placed on the March 25, 2020 May 11, 2020, 5 p.m., Tulsa City Council agenda. Now is the time to contact your city councilor (dist#@tulsacouncil.org, replace # with your district number 1 through 9) to urge them to listen to Tulsa citizens with hands-on experience raising chickens and other agricultural animals. (UPDATE 2020/04/27: Date changed to reflect the city's CCP Bat Virus lockdown.)

Here (and continuing on the jump page) are Tina Nettles's observations on the process of rewriting Tulsa's animal welfare ordinance. The accompanying photos are courtesy of Tina Nettles and show her hens and a collection of the eggs they've laid.


Tina Nettles with one of her backyard hensMonday December 2, 2019
10th floor, One Technology Center,
Tulsa City Hall
Tina Nettles

I'd stood before this microphone every month for the last five months with no difficulty, but tonight was so different, in the worst possible ways.

No fan of speaking in front of crowds, I hadn't suffered from this debilitating condition, of the dry mouth and the pounding adrenaline, the sound of my heartbeat whooshing behind my eardrums, until tonight. I literally felt the room was spinning around me and I clutched the lectern with trembling hands to try and make it all go still. What made this one moment feel like it was suddenly running in slow motion, with the whole universe coming unraveled as I struggled to connect even two sensical words together?

My eyes were finally open to how my nice little midwestern city's government had never been what I thought it was - the very picture of red-state conservativism, with minimal interference into the daily lives of its citizens. No. That's not what I was watching unfold before my eyes. Minutes before, the head of the commission had moved that the current wording of the chicken ordinances be voted on and passed to the city council in the near future, before we had even reached tonight's public comment, with no regard to what we had advised in all the months leading up to this moment, nor regard for what we were about to further advise.

[continued after the jump]

save_the_pearl_logo.jpgTonight at 5:30 pm, Tulsa District 4 City Councilor Kara Joy McKee is hosting a"2020 Priorities Visioning and Pie Party" at Will Rogers High School.

This is an opportunity to support the preservation of the Pearl District and oppose eminent domain abuse, not only in the Central Park Place subdivision, but also on the opposite side of downtown, in Crosbie Heights. The homeowners in the footprint of the unfunded and unneeded Elm Creek West Pond, in Paul Harvey's neighborhood, are still on "pause" with no information from city officials. At the final council meeting of 2019, Councilor McKee promised to take action to terminate the pending condemnation cases when the Council reconvened in the new year, but nothing has been done, and the issue has yet to be taken up at any Council committee meeting or regular meeting.

Back in December, Pearl District residents and other citizens raised concerns about the lack of action during the public comment period of the regular city council meetings. On December 4, 2019, John and Tara Dawson, the couple whose family home is in condemnation proceedings, stormwater management consultant Guy DeVerges, and I spoke to the council. Councilor McKee was out of town, but our remarks were recorded on video.

On December 18, at the same meeting at which Fletcher Stewart spoke about Crosbie Heights concerns, resident Dale Lawton and Chad Reese of the Institute for Justice spoke. Reese called on the Council to take specific actions: To make the "pause" official by revoking the condemnation order, and to reevaluate the entire flood mitigation plan and to find a better way if indeed flood mitigation is still needed. Following Reese's comments, Councilor McKee expressed regret for not having previously taken action to stop the condemnation process and got choked up at the thought that the possibility of losing their home would be hanging over the Dawsons' heads over the Christmas holidays. She expressed sorrow that the property was taken in the first place and apologized for focusing on the flooding issue and not pursuing relief for the Dawsons.

MORE: Links to video, maps, and other documents regarding the Elm Creek West Pond from the neighborhood meetings held on October 14 and 15, 2019

A press release issued on Tuesday, November 12, 2019, announced the organization of a group to rescue Paul Harvey's childhood neighborhood from demolition for redevelopment under the guise of stormwater management.

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Save the Pearl: New Group Formed to Oppose Tulsa Development Authority's Eminent Domain Plans

A community in Tulsa joins together to stop city officials from following through with plans to tear down homes for "urban renewal"

Tulsa, Okla.--Today, residents and supporters of Tulsa's Pearl District announced the formation of a new group, Save the Pearl Coalition. The new group is dedicated to stopping the city and Tulsa Development Authority (TDA) from taking residents' homes against their will for the purpose of redevelopment. While the TDA has publicized the plans as a drainage project to improve public safety, the city's plans show that the Pearl District project is actually meant to make the neighborhood look different by bulldozing existing homes and engaging in redevelopment. Save the Pearl Coalition seeks to protect Pearl District residents and won't stop its campaign against Tulsa's landgrab until the city abandons the use of eminent domain in pursuit of its redevelopment plans.

Tulsa's attempts to force Pearl District residents to sell their homes or else lose their property by force via eminent domain are not just wrong: They're unconstitutional. In May 2006, the Oklahoma Supreme Court held that the Oklahoma Constitution prohibits the use of eminent domain for economic development, giving Oklahomans greater protections from eminent domain abuse.

Rather than respect the limits the Oklahoma Constitution places on its power, the city chose to hand its so-called flood control project to the TDA years ago and it is now being used for one purpose: economic development. Tulsa has left a paper trail over the course of several years that shows that "flood prevention" is merely a pretext for the TDA's redevelopment vision for the Pearl District.

Back in 2010, the Pearl District detention pond project was described in Tulsa's Elm Creek Master Drainage Plan. That document stated that drainage ponds "have tremendous potential to become catalysts that will accelerate the revitalization of the Pearl District and surrounding neighborhoods." In a document from the city from 2018 titled "Final Plans for Elm Creek West Pond," Tulsa makes clear that the purpose of the pond is "to allow for redevelopment and revitalize the Pearl District." And the 2019 Pearl District Small Area Plan concedes that the flood control facilities "were intended to serve as a catalyst for new, large-scale, urban infill development to be produced through public-private partnerships."

In other words, according to Tulsa's own descriptions spanning a decade, this pond is not tailored to address drainage for Tulsa. It is perfectly tailored to help Tulsa and the TDA take over a neighborhood where families are currently living because it wants to redevelop the area.

"We welcome progress to the Pearl District, but not giving up our homes and this neighborhood for others to develop on," said Gabriela Tarvin, whose home is being targeted for the TDA's redevelopment plans. "We as private citizens have put our effort and money into making the dream of having a home in the city come true. And here we are, fighting for our home."

Gaby loves her home because it lets her live near the city. Growing up, she loved that her grandmother lived in Guatemala City, and she always wanted to live in a city herself. Despite the poor condition of the property when she and her husband bought it, they were willing to take a risk to renovate it into a beautiful home because of the tremendous view of the Tulsa skyline. That is now the view from her kitchen window, and she does not want to lose the home in a city that she's always dreamed of.

"My greatest hope is that the city recognizes this plan is unnecessary and has no real energy of its own. If you take a closer look at the city's explanation for why it's doing this, it simply doesn't make sense. We hope the city makes a better choice" said John Dawson, whose home the Tulsa government plans to take through eminent domain.

Save the Pearl Coalition has created a Facebook group, https://www.facebook.com/PearlDistrictTulsa/, to educate and gather support for residents like Gaby and John.

The group is working with the Institute for Justice (IJ), a national public interest, civil liberties law firm dedicated to stopping the abuse of eminent domain. IJ represented Susette Kelo and her neighbors before the U.S. Supreme Court in Kelo v. City of New London and has successfully litigated on behalf of property owners throughout the country. IJ has helped save over 20,000 homes and small businesses from eminent domain abuse through grassroots activism.

"This is an economic redevelopment issue hiding behind a flood mitigation pond in order to give it the veneer of public use," said Chad Reese, an activism policy manager with the Institute for Justice. "The Tulsa city government is offending the Oklahoma Constitution and our intelligence with this plan. Tulsa must abandon it once and for all."

Brent Isaacs, a native Tulsan and city planner active for many years in advocating for a better Tulsa, has has written a piece below about why you should to vote against the first item on the November 12, 2019, Tulsa ballot. Labeled on the first sheet of the ballot as "PROPOSITION IMPROVE OUR TULSA (Streets and Transportation Systems Construction and Repair Bonds)," it is a $427,000,000 general obligation bond issue "for the purpose of constructing, reconstructing, improving, repairing and/or purchasing streets and transportation systems," which will be paid for by an increase in property tax rates within the City of Tulsa.

(A second sheet contains two numbered propositions, both of which would raise the sales tax rate: Proposition 1, a 0.45% sales tax, later increasing to 0.95%, and expiring in 2025, would fund miscellaneous capital improvements. Proposition 2, a 0.05% permanent sales tax, would put money in the Economic Stabilization Reserve, aka the Rainy Day Fund.)

When Brent posted an earlier version of this essay on Facebook, I commented that the Engineering Services Department is like a computer, and it's running a program that it was given to run 50 years ago. The neighborhood-destroying zombie project that is the Elm Creek West Pond is another case in point. It's time that Tulsans, through our vote on November 12 and through our support for candidates for mayor and city council in 2020, terminated the current, outdated program and launched a newer, better program that takes these economic realities into account. He has kindly granted permission to publish an updated version of his essay here at BatesLine.


Why I am Voting No on Improve our Tulsa 2's Streets and Transportation Package

Brent C. Isaacs, AICP, 10/29/19

Tulsa is trapped in a structural infrastructure deficit- and that's why I am voting no on Improve our Tulsa 2, item one on November 12. Item one is a general obligation bond for mostly street projects. Say what? Why would I vote no? Wouldn't that make the problem worse?

I get that there are legitimate capital improvement needs for our city, the third penny sales tax is up for renewal and there will be no tax increase required. I wanted to vote yes, and will do so on item three that would create a standing "Rainy Day" fund for the City, and leaning toward voting yes on item two, for all the non-street projects that will be funded by extending the third penny sales tax. Normally, I am in favor of all propositions funding capital improvement projects but this time I have decided to vote no on the streets package. Here's why.

1. When it comes to streets, Improve our Tulsa 2 is doing the same thing we have been doing for over 40 years and it hasn't worked. Yes, streets have been widened and improved but we are still are no closer to ending our structural infrastructure deficit.

The land area in Tulsa grew dramatically in 1966 when the number of square miles in the city limits more than doubled nearly overnight. While that allowed for a population increase and allowed the City to capture sales tax revenue from the booming growth to the south and east, it also created demand, particularly for new street infrastructure, that has yet to be met. For a while, as the growth periphery continued to largely be in Tulsa's city limits, sales tax dollars continued to increase. However, over the last 20 years, as the growth periphery has moved beyond the Tulsa city limits to places like Jenks, Bixby and Broken Arrow, the growth in sales tax revenue has slowed dramatically and City operating costs just to maintain the same level of service have outpaced available tax revenue. The population of the city of Tulsa has been around 400,000 for nearly the same time frame.

Now we are faced with not only having to add infrastructure just to catch up with all the sprawling growth for neighborhoods developed long ago, but also having to rehabilitate infrastructure that was built in the 1960s, 70s and 80s that is largely worn out. Item one, the general obligation bond for $427,000,000, includes $64,000,000 for additional street widening with $295,800,000 for existing street repairs. But, this is just a portion of what's reported to be needed. The current capital improvement needs list is estimated to be in the billions. This is occurring as the city is no longer growing in population, sales tax revenues are flat and operating costs for the City of Tulsa are increasing faster than tax revenue.

2. The current growth patterns that have been fueled by our street infrastructure investments aren't sustainable.

The reality is that we cannot continue to invest in street infrastructure that does not more than pay for itself and fund its replacement with regular sales tax revenue. Otherwise, we will never get caught up. By continuing the cycle of investing in more of the same infrastructure, we are facilitating low density sprawling development that will not adequately pay for the cost of this infrastructure.

Joe Minicozzi, Principal and Founder of fiscal, development and tax analysis firm Urban 3 (http://www.urban-three.com/), stated in a 2012 Atlantic Cities article, now Citylab (https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/03/simple-math-can-save-cities-bankruptcy/1629/) "Low-density development isn't just a poor way to make...tax revenue. It's extremely expensive to maintain. In fact, it's only feasible if we're expanding development at the periphery into eternity, forever bringing in revenue from new construction that can help pay for the existing subdivisions we've already built."

This describes the situation in Tulsa accurately. The only way to fund all this street infrastructure and even possibly get caught up is to dramatically increase sales and property taxes. This is largely viewed as being politically unfeasible and, as I argue below, is economically unwise.

3. Infrastructure should generate additional wealth for a city, not create additional tax burdens.

Minicozzi and Chuck Marohn, Founder and President of Strong Towns (https://www.strongtowns.org/), an organization promoting smart, incremental development that is financially sustainable for cities, have created models showing the amount of property tax created per acre for different types of development. They have showed that while everyone thinks a big Walmart on a suburban site will generate an enormous amount of tax revenue, because of the infrastructure required to service such a large site, the amount of property tax revenue per acre is much lower than traditional denser development found in downtowns and older urban neighborhoods. While the City of Tulsa is dependent on sales tax, not property tax, revenue to fund operations, locally the Urban Data Pioneers civic group attempted to do a similar analysis of Tulsa development patterns based on sales tax revenue in 2017. The picture was largely similar.

Thus, for example, when considering street improvements, we need to look at more than just traffic counts or the pavement condition index. We need to consider what type of development will this facilitate and will it generate additional tax revenue that more than covers the cost of the improvement and provides replacement cost funding.

4. The list of street projects included in a proposal needs to be subjected to more than just the analysis from Engineering Services. The economic value created and whether the improvement facilitates the type of city Tulsans desire should be part of the selection criteria.

As I currently understand it, Engineering Services maintains the list of needed capital improvement projects. Street projects are reviewed and ranked to determine which have the greatest need based on traffic counts, age, pavement condition index, etc. However, nowhere in these is the level of economic activity, tax revenue likely to be generated and whether the type of development helps create Tulsans' desired city, considered. With a few exceptions, Engineering Services largely controls the capital improvement process.

The most recent gauge of what Tulsans would like for our city is the Tulsa Comprehensive Plan, that came out of PlaniTulsa. It represents the views what thousands of Tulsans said they wanted our city to look like. Currently, the plan is administered by the Tulsa Planning Office at INCOG. They should have a formal role in reviewing and determining which capital improvement projects are needed to achieve this vision.

Besides opening the process up to the Tulsa Planning Office, there should be an independent economic analysis done for projects to determine whether they generate additional tax revenue or economic activity that exceeds their original and replacement costs. Ultimately, a project selection committee should be formed that makes the final recommendations on projects based on these criteria to the Mayor.

5. The City has done a poor job managing and completing construction on existing capital improvement projects that have already been funded.

You don't have to look far to see projects, particularly projects impacting our streets, that have taken a really long time or have been redone multiple times in Tulsa in recent years. As I speak, there has been a large hole on Denver right in front of 5th Street by Central Library and the Tulsa County Courthouse that has been there for weeks and weeks. Nothing seems to really be happening but it is causing back ups regularly for people going to court, the library or the BOK Center. I don't understand why there hasn't been more a sense of urgency in getting this inconvenient construction completed. Or, outside of downtown, Lewis between 11th and 21st Streets has been in different stages of construction for years. First, it was redoing the intersection at 15th and Lewis, then multiple projects from 15th to 21st Streets, then work from the Broken Arrow to 11th Street to narrow the street creating on street parking. Now, with the work on the Broken Arrow Expressway bridges over 15th and Lewis, the area is torn up again. I don't understand why these projects, along with countless others, couldn't have been better coordinated and completed in a much shorter timeframe.

Tulsans have expressed frustration with continual street construction. Bumper stickers have been spotted that say "Tulsa...finish something!" or "Welcome to the City of Road Construction". I realize that construction is often the price of progress but can't we figure out a way to do it better? Other cities don't seem to have as much constant construction as Tulsa does.

While some people will say voting no on the street improvements will halt progress in our city, I disagree. There are plenty of capital improvement projects, including streets, that have been approved by the voters but have yet to be completed. In the meantime, can't we rethink our street capital improvements approach and come back with a new proposal that considers these options above? Tulsans deserve better and we should start now.

Brent C. Isaacs, AICP, is a local urban planner in Tulsa.

Prior to yesterday's meeting concerning the Elm Creek West Pond in Paul Harvey's old neighborhood, the Institute for Justice issued a media advisory:

HEARING: Tulsa Residents Protest City's Attempt To Take Their Homes Using Eminent Domain For Redevelopment Project

Today, the city of Tulsa has scheduled a public meeting with residents of Tulsa's Pearl District to explain why the city will use eminent domain to take residents' homes if they refuse to sell. Tulsa residents attending today's meeting plan to protest the city's attempt to forcibly take their homes against their will. Tulsa, in partnership with the Tulsa Development Authority and Universal Field Services, have targeted approximately 45 homes in phase one, near VFW Post 577 and the Indian Health Care Center Resource Center on Sixth Street, to pave the way for a mixed-use development where the neighborhood currently sits. The city's plans call for taking almost every residence in this subdivision.

"The city's claims that it needs a stormwater pond are a thinly veiled attempt to do an end run around the Oklahoma Constitution's prohibition on the use of eminent domain for economic development," said Arif Panju, a managing attorney with the Institute for Justice. "Eminent domain should be reserved for public use--such as roads--not for redevelopment projects that involve the use of public power for private gain."

The city's claim of using eminent domain for a public use due to needing stormwater drainage has raised eyebrows in the neighborhood, both due to the existence of stormwater drainage immediately next door in Centennial Park, and because developers have purchased homes and land in and around their neighborhood.

John Dawson, whose home Tulsa plans to take through eminent domain, calls his home in the Pearl District "his family's little slice of paradise. He added, "I can see how it might not be appealing on the surface to some people, but it wouldn't take long for most people to realize it's pretty awesome."

The Institute for Justice is a pro-bono legal-aid organization that helps citizens fighting unconstitutional government overreach. The abuse of the government's power of eminent domain abuse is a principal focus of the group.

The IJ's statement seems to allude both to the concept sketches from Alaback Design which shows new condos and mixed-use development surrounding the pond and to the acquisition by the Indian Health Care Resource Center (IHCRC) of nearly all the remaining property in the neighborhood (outlined in blue in the map below), including the entire block between Owasso and Peoria Avenues, 5th Street and 5th Place, which would have a view toward the downtown skyline over the new pond.

Elm_Creek_West_Pond-IHCRC.png

This will be brief, as I'm worn out. Over 100 people turned out for tonight's meeting between city officials and contractors and neighborhood residents to discuss the Elm Creek West Pond, a stormwater detention facility which would wipe out Paul Harvey's childhood home and his neighborhood, using eminent domain to displace families who moved into the area because of the neighborhood's well-built but affordable homes near downtown, parks, and entertainment.

I live-tweeted the meeting as a Twitter thread; the unrolled version is here. Councilor Kara Joy McKee livestreamed the meeting on Facebook.

Councilor McKee did a fair job of running the meeting. She started with a recitation of her "communication norms" -- ten practices to keep the meeting focused and civil -- then collected questions from the audience. There was a presentation from members of the project team, including the project manager, the hydrologist, and the real estate acquisition manager. The presentation was supposed to have been tailored toward answering questions, but that didn't quite happen, and the final session, which was supposed to have allowed for comments from the community, instead went back to ensure that a portion of the questions had been answered.

One of the key unanswered questions is how the City intends to pay for construction of the pond. We were told that acquisition is funded and that there's money, from stormwater management fees, to cover maintenance of the acquired properties. There was a vague slide about funding from stormwater revenue bonds, but the question "how much?" went unanswered. We also need to know who would authorize the issuance of these revenue bonds.

Because so many questions went unanswered and the building was due to close, Councilor McKee said she would abbreviate a meeting scheduled for Tuesday evening at the Central Center and would devote another 90 minutes to this topic, beginning at 6 pm.

There was a passing mention by City Engineer Paul Zachary about the urgency to acquire a boundary of properties to block acquisition by the Indian Health Care Resource Center. More about the IHCRC's recent purchases later.

Councilor McKee mentioned she would be contacting the City Attorney's office to see what options the council has. I would caution any elected or appointed official to take advice from city attorneys and bureaucrats with a grain of salt, to listen as much for what they don't say as what they do. I've seen citizens elected or appointed to boards, and then they are trained and tamed by the bureaucracy. I told this to my thirteen-year-old son, who was at the meeting, and immediately he said, "Just like Yes, Minister!" We've been watching the timeless British sitcom about the struggle between a government department's permanent bureaucrats and the politicians who are in charge in name only. It ought to be mandatory viewing as part of civics education and for new elected officials.

More tomorrow.

VIDEOS:

October 14, 2019, meeting, as live-streamed by Councilor McKee
October 15, 2019, meeting, as live-streamed by Councilor McKee

DOCUMENTS:

Here are documents mentioned or handed out at the October 14 meeting and its continuation on October 15. In response to my request, Mayo Baugher, Councilor McKee's aide, emailed me these documents on November 20, 2019. I have run optical character recognition on the Pearl District Small Area Plan PDF to make it more accessible to search engines:


  • West Pond Concept Report - March 2018: Presented by Guy Engineering, Swift Water Resources Engineering, Alaback Design Associates to the City of Tulsa. The report notes that the $22 million needed for completion of design and construction has not been secured, but the city will continue to acquire properties until the money they have runs out. The report also shows potential private residential redevelopment around the ponds.

  • Parcel Right-of-Way map with pond overlay: Detailed map, as of 1 October 2019, showing parcels in Central Park Place to be acquired for the proposed Elm Creek West Pond. Three parcels are shown as in the process of acquisition. Note that 48 lots are going to be permanently under water in order to remove 50 other lots from getting wet once in 100 years.

  • Properties Removed From Floodplain: Map and list of 50 properties that are claimed to be removed from the City of Tulsa 100-year regulatory floodplain by the Elm Creek West Pond. It looks like the biggest claimed hazard -- flooding of the Inner Dispersal Loop -- could be handled with detention ponds in vacant state-owned land south of 13th Street.

  • Powerpoint for City Engineering Services Q&A presentation on October 14, 2019: Answers seem responsive on the surface, but many sidestep what's really at stake.

  • "Alternative Pond Sites": The title is misleading. In fact, this shows alternative pond configurations for the west pond, east pond, and a potential third pond northeast of the MKT tracks. Only one truly alternative site is shown: Using open space between the ramps of the 7th Street/8th Street interchange with the east leg of the Inner Dispersal Loop. This document is only maps -- no information about capacity, advantages, disadvantages.

  • 2797-1004 (CPA-81) Pearl District Small Area Plan: Includes adoption documents from the TMAPC and the City Council.

Tulsa District 4 City Councilor Kara Joy McKee is hosting a public meeting on Monday, October 14, 2019, at the Central Center at Centennial Park, 1028 E 6th St, Tulsa, Oklahoma 74120, from 6 pm to 8 pm, to discuss the planned Elm Creek West stormwater detention pond. The City Council has begun condemning homes in the neighborhood where legendary radio newsman Paul Harvey spent his childhood, and his childhood home is itself in the footprint of the pond and threatened with demolition for the sake of a pond of questionable utility and funding.

Pearl_District-E_5th_Pl-IMG_20190926_1845232.jpg

The Dawson home at 1111 E. 5th Place is one of the homes that Councilor McKee and her colleagues have voted to condemn, with the approval of Mayor G. T. Bynum IV. The Dawsons purchased the home last summer, moved in, and have done extensive renovations to the century-old home. The homes of other urban pioneers in the neighborhood have not yet been condemned, but unless the City Council votes to halt the acquisition process, it's only a matter of time. Other owners would gladly begin renovation work but have been deterred by the city's pond plans.

Here is Councilor McKee's note about the event:

This letter below was sent to affected residents earlier this week. If you know residents in this area, please help me remind them to attend. Many have questions about the use of eminent domain and what houses may or may not be taken by the city and why. I am hopeful that we'll get more clarity at this meeting.

Dear Property Owner/Resident in the Elm Creek Basin- north of Central Park:

You are invited to a public meeting with the City of Tulsa's engineering staff and consulting engineers to discuss a project in your neighborhood.

The meeting will be held Oct. 14, 2019, at 6 p.m. in the auditorium of Central Center at Centennial Park, 1028 E. Sixth St.

PROJECT AREA: Elm Creek Basin - north of Centennial Park

PROPOSED WORK: Pearl District Flood Control
(Elm Creek West Pond)

FUNDING SOURCE: 2014 Improve Our Tulsa sales tax

CONSULTING ENGINEER: Guy Engineering Services, Inc.

CONTACT:
Chris Gimmel
Stormwater Design Project Manager
City of Tulsa
(918) 596-9498
cgimmel@cityoftulsa.org

This meeting will give area residents and property owners the opportunity to ask questions and learn about the scope and duration of the project.

Anyone wishing to attend and needing accommodation for a disability can contact Compliance Officer, LaKendra Carter, in the Mayor's Office of Resilience and Equity, (918) 576-5208, at least 48 hours before the meeting.

The public is welcome to attend to attend to watch, listen, and hold us accountable as we work out what has happened so far and what should be happening going forward.

Pearl_District-1111_E_5th_Pl-201908.jpg

I hope that the councilor and the other city officials who plan to attend will come a little early and then walk a block north to see the Dawsons' home and the other renovated homes threatened by this pond. A City Council vote set condemnation in motion, and a City Council vote could rescind it.

Tulsa has a bad habit of condemning property and then not using it. Maple Park sits on land where homes once stood, cleared for a Riverside Expressway interchange that was killed by neighborhood protests. The near northside neighborhood still sits empty, 15 years after the city finished clearing it for college buildings that will never be needed. When the "Model Cities" urban renewal program bought and cleared most of Deep Greenwood, the promised redevelopment never took place, and the land sat empty until it was repurposed decades later for what are now the OSU-Tulsa and Langston-Tulsa campuses.

Property acquisition should stop and condemnation actions should be rescinded until the necessity of the Elm Creek Basin ponds are re-evaluated and, if the ponds are still deemed necessary, full funding for construction has been secured.

MORE -- A few examples of public officials rescinding an eminent domain taking:

Johnstown, New York, June 2019 (Leader-Herald): Council unanimously votes to rescind condemnation vote a month earlier. (Recorder News coverage)

Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, September 2018 (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel): Village rescinds farmland taking because they don't need the land yet.

Carolina Beach, NC, August 2018 (PortCity Daily): City rescinds eminent domain for purchasing entire properties, opts for easements for beach replenishment.

West Vincent Township, Pennsylvania, January 2012 (Fox Rothschild law firm): Township rescinds taking of 33 acres belonging to Ludwig's Corner Horse Show Association, in response to public outcry. "I have seen governmental entities far too often become entrenched in their actions and irrationally refuse to reconsider their decisions. Fortunately, the Township was an exception."

Maybe the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office and the Tulsa Police Department should have a more formal basis for making enforcement decisions than viral news stories.

This September 19, 2019, NBC News story about the City of Fort Collins, Colorado, dropping appeals to a challenge to their public nudity ordinance seems to have prompted legal discussions at Tulsa City Hall and the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office.

On September 25, 2019, KOTV's Lori Fullbright posted a preview of a story that declared that Tulsa officials had decided not to enforce our state and local public nudity laws and that fairgoers could be topless as well.

Tonight, Fullbright had conflicting statements from Tulsa County Sheriff Vic Regalado, who decided that he won't be enforcing Oklahoma's public nudity laws and the City of Tulsa, first announcing that public nudity laws would not be enforced, and then reversing course.

I saw several reports on social media of topless women near the Fairgrounds, and I had a sighting myself, around 7 pm tonight -- a woman in jean shorts and flip flops, and nothing else, walking down Yale Avenue past Memorial Baptist Church.

All of the confusion might have been averted if our city and county officials had bothered to consult the actual court records, which took me a few minutes to locate online. (Tenth Circuit opinions are here. Eighth Circuit opinions are here. Dockets and filings in federal district and appeals court cases can be found at the US Courts PACER website, for which registration is required.) It would also help if our local officials had the courage to recognize and resist federal rulings that amount to legislation from the bench.

No final ruling has been issued by any federal judge on the constitutionality of the Fort Collins city ordinance, and no ruling will be issued. The plaintiffs asked for a preliminary injunction to prevent Fort Collins from enforcing the law while the case was pending, and Federal District Judge R. Brooke Jackson, a Harvard Law grad and Obama appointee, granted it. The City of Fort Collins appealed the injunction, but a bare 2-1 majority of a three-judge 10th Circuit panel upheld the injunction and remanded the case back to the District Court. The City of Fort Collins entered a stipulation that made the District Judge's injunction permanent, and the case was terminated.

Here is the case summary from the panel's majority opinion (emphasis added):

The city of Fort Collins, Colorado, enacted a public-nudity ordinance that imposes no restrictions on male toplessness but prohibits women from baring their breasts below the areola. See Fort Collins, Colo., Mun. Code § 17-142 (2015). In response, Free the Nipple, an unincorporated association, and two individuals, Brittiany Hoagland and Samantha Six (collectively, "the Plaintiffs"), sued the City in federal district court. They alleged (among other things) that the ordinance violated the Equal Protection Clause, U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1, and they asked for a preliminary injunction to halt enforcement of the ordinance. The district court agreed. It enjoined the City, pending the resolution of the case's merits, from implementing the ordinance "to the extent that it prohibits women, but not men, from knowingly exposing their breasts in public." Free the Nipple-Fort Collins v. City of Fort Collins, 237 F. Supp. 3d 1126, 1135 (D. Colo. 2017). The City then brought this interlocutory appeal to challenge the injunction.

The appeal presents a narrow question: Did the district court reversibly err in issuing the preliminary injunction? We answer no. Exercising interlocutory jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1), we affirm the district court's judgment and remand the case to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

The majority opinion was written by Gregory Phillips, an Obama appointee. He was joined in his opinion by a Clinton appointee, Mary Beck Briscoe.

Harris Hartz, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote a dissenting opinion, attacking the plaintiff's objection that the law enshrines culturally-conditioned stereotypes that have no scientific basis.

Further, even if notions of the erotic are purely culturally based, it is unclear why that is relevant to the validity of indecency laws. The purpose of those laws is to reduce antisocial behavior. Such laws must deal with the real world. Legislation itself is rational even if the behavior it attempts to control is irrational (such as sexual assault purportedly caused by objectification of the female body). What would be the state of society if legislation could control only rational behavior? A regulation designed to reduce the antisocial effects of irrational thinking does not constitute an endorsement of that irrational thinking. Are laws regulating pornography and obscenity invalid if the societal harms they are intended to prevent are caused by cultural influences rather than purely biological ones? The only assumption about men and women underlying the Ordinance is that because of the erotic potential of female breasts, their public exposure will induce misconduct.

Earlier today, Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter weighed in on the matter, pointing out that other Federal courts had upheld similar laws:

"The Tenth Circuit's preliminary decision in the Fort Collins case - a case that has now ended without a full adjudication - does not change local and state laws in Oklahoma on the subject," Hunter said in a statement.

The city of Fort Collins declined to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court....

Hunter said the 10th Circuit's ruling is out of line with most court rulings on the topic.

"The majority of courts around the country that have examined this issue have upheld traditional public decency and public nudity laws," Hunter said. "These courts have recognized that states and political subdivisions have a legitimate interest in prohibiting public nudity as traditionally defined."...

Oklahoma City's public indecency rules ban women from going topless in public.

A spokeswoman for Oklahoma City police said the appellate court's ruling is specific to Fort Collins, Colorado and does not apply in Oklahoma. City police will continue to enforce public indecency laws as outlined by state law and city ordinance, said police Sgt. Megan Morgan.

"Someone in OKC who is in violation of the law could be cited and/or jailed as this is a misdemeanor crime," she said.

One contemporaneous example is a case (Case No. 15-3467-CV-S-B) brought against Springfield, Missouri, by the local chapter of Free the Nipple, with the help of the state chapter of the ACLU. The case was heard by Beth Phillips, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri, an Obama appointee. Springfield tightened its public nudity ordinance in September 2015. FTN filed a suit the following month. Springfield modified its ordinance in March 2016. FTN amended its complaint to challenge the revised ordinance. The 2016 ordinance was upheld by Judge Phillips, then upheld on appeal in July 2019 by a unanimous three-judge panel in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals: Chief Judge Lavenski Smith and William Duane Benton, appointed by George W. Bush, and David Stras, appointed by Donald Trump. You can read the appeals court ruling in Free the Nipple v. Springfield here. The court cited Ways v. City of Lincoln, issued in 2003, as precedent and wrote:

Springfield's ordinance is substantially related to its important governmental interests in promoting public decency and proscribing public nudity to protect morals, public order, health, and safety.

The injunction of the 10th Circuit panel is an attack on the right of American communities to govern themselves. It is an effort to impose San Francisco's perverted moral notions on Sallisaw.

I am reminded that this is the sort of outcome that Phyllis Schlafly warned would occur if we ratified the Equal Rights Amendment. ERA opponents warned that ratifying the ERA would abolish the right of the American people, through their elected representatives, to draw distinctions between men and women where appropriate. And so the ERA fell short of the required number of states for ratification, despite Congress extending the original ratification period. Nevertheless, the unaccountable federal courts have chosen to impose their moral vision on the people of the United States, implementing the ERA through the back door of judicial activism.

The Eighth Circuit now has 11 judges appointed by Republicans and only one appointed by a Democrat, Barack Obama. The Tenth Circuit has seven Democrat-appointed judges and five Republican-appointed judges. I can think of two Tenth Circuit judges and a Colorado federal district judge that need to be impeached.

Pearl_District-E_5th_Pl-IMG_20190926_1842015.jpg

I had to be downtown last night, and I decided to go for a walk. On a whim, I walked under the east leg of the IDL to Paul Harvey's old neighborhood, which the City of Tulsa is acquiring, lot by lot, house by house, to convert to a stormwater detention pond.

I took some pictures along Madison Avenue, and then on 5th Place. I noticed that several homes were well cared for and recently updated. I also noticed that the city had already placed a metal sign in each of several vacant lots that they had already purchased, declaring each lot a STORMWATER MANAGEMENT FACILITY.

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While I was in the neighborhood, I had the chance to chat with the Dawsons, the family whose home has been condemned by the city for the planned Elm Creek West Pond. Their investment in improving their new home, inside and out, was evident. Before they moved in, the house had been used to store restaurant equipment.

At the moment, it appears that only a couple of homes are in the condemnation process. My guess is that the city was pursuing a strategy of picking off one home at a time in order to avoid mobilizing the neighborhood to organize.

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The Elm Creek West Pond is a zombie project. Bureaucratic inertia is at work. At some point in the past, the project was deemed worthwhile and was added to a list of capital improvements, at which point it went into hibernation. When the funding finally arrived, after over a decade, it lurched back to life, without any reexamination or reconsideration. Is it still necessary? Is it still the best way to accomplish the goal?

From Engineering Services' perspective, they're just following a plan. The people responsible for adjusting the plan to changing circumstances, the City Council, just sits there and nods.

The City Council has the power to stop this zombie. The City Council has the power to put land acquisition on pause while the necessity of the project is reviewed and alternatives are considered.

In reply to a Preserve Midtown Facebook post about this situation, Amanda DeCort, executive director of the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture, wrote:

Ye Olde Unfunded Stormwater Project has been keeping the residential areas in the Pearl District down for 20 years. Neighborhood de-stabilization. And still no funding. Ridiculous. It's a shame the City won't rethink this. Hard to believe there's not another patch of dirt to put a pond on.

Some questions that ought to be asked before this project is allowed to proceed any further:

  1. How much property damage would be averted in a 100-year-rainfall event if this pond is built? Would it be cheaper just to pay for repairs if a flood occurs?
  2. Are there more localized improvements that could protect particularly vulnerable or valuable buildings? For example, the SpiritBank (originally Mapco) building at 18th and Baltimore has a large vacant area just upstream, to the north across 18th St, that could be used for stormwater retention. And I can't help but notice a great deal of unusable open space in the shadow of the the southeast interchange of the Inner Dispersal Loop.
  3. How many acre-feet of additional storage is really needed, given the capacity of the Centennial Park lake and other changes in the watershed since the original study was done 30 years ago?
  4. Wouldn't it be better for minimizing stormwater runoff if we kept the single family homes, each with a yard that can soak up rainfall, rather than replace them with the high-density, no-open-space development shown in the artist's conception of the pond?
  5. How much improvement could be obtained by funding the replacement of impermeable parking lots -- like the big ones surrounding the Indian Health Care Resource Center (IHCRC) and VFW buildings -- with permeable paving solutions.
  6. Why not use the large chunks of already vacant land in the neighborhood to build smaller detention ponds, rather than demolish more homes? For example, 2/3rds of the block northeast of 5th Pl and Owasso is an unpaved grassy lot -- some of it owned by the City of Tulsa, some by the IHCRC. Another large grassy lot stands northeast of 5th Street and Owasso, owned by IHCRC. That's enough land to make up for the homes that would not have to be acquired -- assuming all that storage capacity is truly required.

After gathering all of the information, the City Council has the discretion to weigh competing concerns against each other. Even if the entirety of the engineer-decreed stormwater capacity can't be obtained through alternative means, it's OK for the Council to decide that the residual flooding risk is more acceptable than the loss of a neighborhood.

Protecting the remaining historic homes in the neighborhood, guaranteeing these urban pioneers the stability they need to invest further in their properties, reweaving the urban fabric that connects the East Village to the 6th Street corridor, the new Studio District, Whittier Square, and the TU campus -- these are goals that ought to outweigh marginal improvements in stormwater capacity.

Councilor McKee, come out to 5th Place and meet with these homeowners. Bring some council colleagues along, then see for yourselves what they've done to renovate their homes. Listen to their vision for the future of their neighborhood. Then call a halt while there's still time.

MORE LINKS:

April 7, 2016, agenda for the Tulsa Development Authority, noting receipt of "Elm Creek/6th Street Drainage Detention and Conveyance Plan" from Roger Acebo. (The executive session was to include a discussion with counsel concerning the Redevelopment Agreement dated June 30, 1986, between the University Center at Tulsa and the Tulsa Development Authority. It was under this agreement that TDA acquired and razed the Near Northside neighborhood for future campus expansion that will never happen.)

September 1, 2016, report from Roger Acebo to the TDA regarding the 6th St. Infill Acquisition/Relocation Plan. The report provides this summary of the project. Note that the listed funds are barely enough to acquire the "interested owner parcels," much less all 153, and that leaves no money for actually building the pond.

  • Acquisition of properties are considered voluntary in nature.
  • There are not enough available funding to purchase all 153 parcels in the two locations (West Pond / East Pond concept); therefore, acquisitions are occurring as property owners express interest through responses from direct mailings and/or telephone contact.
  • 23 properties are under City ownership at the two locations.
  • 24 properties are actively being processed for acquisition consideration due to owner interest.
  • 106 properties not being processed due lack of full funding, not ready to sell, or apparent lack of interest.
  • Expenditures for this project shall be paid out of previously identified and associated City sales tax:
    • Improve Our Tulsa (6014-5451101-040522-148150) balance - $974,150.00
    • 2006 Street Package (063106) balance - $1,325,178.00
    • Current estimated acquisition costs of the 24 interested owner parcels: $1,380,085.00.

Here's Roger Acebo's June 1, 2017, update to TDA, dealing specifically with the acquisition of the bus garage NW of 5th St. and Owasso Ave. from Wiltom Enterprises.

  • Acquisitions are being conducted as voluntary in nature.
  • All acquired properties will eventually be incorporated into a flood management design or future redevelopment project by TDA on behalf of the City.
  • 153 total parcels are identified in plan area. Of these:
    • 119 parcels are not being processed either due to lack of full funding, not ready to sell, or apparent lack of interest.
    • 23 parcels are under City ownership at the West pond and East pond locations.
    • 1 additional property owners have shown interest in selling.
    • 10 parcels have now been acquired by TDA.
    • 1 home to be scheduled for demolition.
    • Of 6 tenants in acquired properties:
      • 5 have been relocated

The City Council recently dealt with another condemnation on the same block, a renovated home with a separate apartment at 1408 E. 5th Street. The final pages have a screenshot of a "Project Expense Inquiry" which shows project 148150: Pearl District Flood Control as having a budget of $4,383,276.43, with $1,261,207.05 already spent as of July 29, 2019. Why spend the money to acquire land if you don't have money to build the project?

Note that in 2016 and 2017, acquisitions were "being conducted as voluntary in nature." When did the switch get flipped to compulsory acquisition?

A stormwater detention pond planned by the City of Tulsa is displacing owners of historic homes, affecting the western part of what is today known as the Pearl District. One of the property owners, now in the midst of a judicial condemnation process, has been trying to gain public attention for his neighborhood's plight. News on 6 had a story on the issue last Thursday.

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John and Tara Dawson bought the home at 1111 E. 5th Pl., in the Central Park Place subdivision, on June 21, 2018, for $65,000, according to Tulsa County Assessor records. Photos on that assessor's property page indicate a considerable amount of recent renovation, both completed and ongoing, including the addition of a loft. The home was built in 1903.

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The Tulsa City Council voted to condemn the Dawsons' home on July 10, 2019, as one of a group of six items that received almost no comment. Chairman Phil Lakin declined to read the list of items, and only one of the items, involving a Zarrow Foundation donation for a deputy police chief to tour psychiatric emergency room facilities in Arizona, received any comment. The condemnation passed unanimously, with the support of District 4 Councilor Kara Joy McKee. The whole process took about 90 seconds.

At the Urban and Economic Development Committee on June 26, 2019, City Director of Engineering Services Paul Zachary stated that the Dawsons bought the property shortly after the city sent "Notice of Interest and Opportunity" letters to property owners in June 2018, and that the former property owners did not inform the city of the property transfer. The Dawsons' purchase price was the same as the city's offer to the previous owners. A city review appraisal did not modify their estimate of market value. According to Zachary, the property owner refused to meet with the city to discuss the offer in January, declined the offer in February, stating that it was too low, but refused to present a counteroffer, and had not responded to the final offer in April. The backup material for this agenda item lists the contacts between the city and the owner. (Meeting agenda is here.)

Councilor McKee's response at that meeting suggested that she wasn't familiar with this major project within her district's boundaries. The question that needed to be asked, but wasn't asked by the incurious rubber-stampers that currently sit on our City Council, was whether the detention pond was actually necessary.

The planned detention pond is part of the Elm Creek Basin Stormwater Management Plan, one of the many such plans drawn up in the wake of the 1984 Memorial Day flood. The Elm Creek basin includes most of the Pearl District and the southwestern part of the Kendall-Whittier neighborhood. Elm Creek flows in an underground tunnel between the western end of Centennial Park lake, under the Gunboat Park neighborhood, west of the 18th and Boston area, through Veterans Park, emptying into the Arkansas River just south of the 21st Street bridge. Despite receiving 12 inches of rain in 8 hours, flooding along Elm Creek was minimal (USGS has a map of the areas flooded in 1984) compared to that experienced along Mingo Creek and its tributaries, in parts of Brookside, and along the Sand Springs Line west of downtown. The ancient Elm Creek drainage system had done its job.

The Centennial Park lake was built as part of that post-1984 plan, but the plan had been modified for the sake of aesthetics. The original plan called for Centennial Park to be replaced by a deep, steep-sided detention basin, unusable for recreation. Rather than completely eliminating the park for a large, shapeless stormwater facility, a new community center was constructed, and the lake was landscaped, creating a beautiful place to walk and a lovely foreground for views of the downtown skyline. (The history of the Elm Creek Master Drainage Plan is discussed beginning on page 27 of the amended 6th Street / Pearl District Infill Plan.) Under the revised plan, two smaller ponds would be added to handle the remaining capacity determined by the hydrologists, one pond north of 6th Street and one southeast of 6th and Peoria.

Elm Creek has not been a high priority for stormwater mitigation. In February 2013, a PowerPoint presentation by City of Tulsa Engineering Services identified the Joe Creek 47th Street relief line near Evanston Ave. and Perryman Ditch (Rockford Ave. north of I-44) as highest priorities for funding. A heat map of stormwater complaints had most of the Elm Creek basin in an area coded for 0-5 complaints per square mile over a five-year period. A list of repetitive loss areas, compiled in 2017, identified only two in the Elm Creek basin: A triangle of land upstream from the Katy tracks between 4th Place, Rockford and Troost Avenues (11 paid damage claims, totalling $205,075 over 40 years), and six properties northwest of 8th Street and Wheeling Avenue (six paid damage claims, totalling $68,471 over 40 years). Neither situation is likely to be improved by this Elm Creek West Pond, which is on a different tributary of the creek. None of the paid claims listed occurred since the construction of the Centennial Park lake or improvements to storm sewers in the basin. None of the Elm Creek basin is within any FEMA flood zone, but a narrow band along the path of the creek is within the City's regulatory flood plain (see plate 36 and plate 37, or see the interactive Tulsa Regulatory Floodplain Map here)

In previous years, the City of Tulsa attempted to get funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for the project. The city submitted a request for funding on August 8, 2011, which was denied by FEMA on November 20, 2012, "citing deficiencies in the SOW, engineering feasibility and effectiveness, cost estimate, NEPA compliance and project eligibility." FEMA received an appeal on March 28, 2013, and denied it on August 27, 2013. Tulsa submitted a second-level appeal on November 19, 2013. FEMA Headquarters reviewed the appeal and sent a final denial letter on July 14, 2014, stating:

Benefit Cost Analysis - FEMA Headquarters performed a reevaluation of the Benefit Cost Analysis to determine the validity of what was submitted by the applicant. Our reevaluation, using all of the inputs provided by the applicant, indicates that total benefits derived from protection of the 31 structures is $27,446,627. With a total project cost of $9.95M, the resulting BCR is 2.76. However, a closer review of the data indicates that the applicant is subscribing too many benefits to the structure located at 1802 S. Baltimore Ave. The assumptions pertaining to a complete shutdown of this structure during a flood event and the loss of use for an extended period of time cannot be substantiated or supported. The structure located at 1802 S. Baltimore Ave. provides $24.13M in benefits while the project as a whole yields $27.45M in benefits which accounts for 88.0% of total project benefits. FEMA's reevaluation of the BCA yields a benefit cost ratio (BCR) of 0.33 demonstrating that this project is not cost-effective....

The project will remove less than half of the structures from the 100 year floodplain and the benefits would accrue to primarily one structure. Given that one structure (1802 S. Baltimore Ave, a 10-story bank building [owned by Spirit Bank]) is providing the bulk of the benefits for this project, it may be more feasible and cost effective to merely provide some type of floodproofing mitigation for this single structure.

I note that there is nearly a full city block of vacant land and surface parking just north of the Spirit Bank building which could be turned into storm water detention, probably at considerably less expense. John Neas proposed bringing Elm Creek to the surface in this area back in 1991.

Funding for the Elm Creek project was included in the 2013 "Improve Our Tulsa" sales tax and bond issue package, under the heading of Planning & Economic Development: "Phase I Pearl District Flood Control and Redevelopment - $5,000,000." That appears to be the source of funding for this acquisition.

The Alaback Design website shows the concept for the Elm Creek West Pond's development: Five city blocks cleared away for the pond itself and for high end mixed-use and residential redevelopment on the periphery. It's hard for me to understand how a pond that is only needed to hold water during a hundred-year flood would be brim-full as depicted.


elm_creek-west_pond-pearl_district-areial-graphic-2.jpg

Included in the pond's footprint is the childhood home of legendary broadcaster Paul Harvey at 1014 E. 5th Place, a 2212 sq. ft. house with first and second floor porches, built in 1920.

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His mother, Anna Aurandt, the widow of Harry Aurandt, who was murdered by armed robbers in 1921, continued to live in the home for decades. A poignant ad in the December 13, 1922, Tulsa World, announces: "WILL SHARE my house with one or two ladies or man and wife, moderate charges. Mrs. H. Aurandt, Osage 3992." The ad before that one lists the address and offers to rent the entire first floor to "reliable adults" for $75 a month. The 1957 Polk city directory shows that Mrs. Anna Aurandt had two boarders that year. She died in 1960. BatesLine reader S. Lee, who lived next door to Mrs. Aurandt in the late 1950s, provided the photo below, taken by his father during one of Paul Harvey's visits home.

Mrs. Anna Aurandt and her son, Paul Harvey, at her home at 1014 E. 5th Pl., Tulsa, Oklahoma in the late 1950s

This is one of those situations where the City Council ought to have acted as a check and balance on the engineers and asked for alternatives that would have protected the urban pioneers trying to revive this historic neighborhood. A Reddit thread notes that during our extremely heavy rains (just shy of a 50-year-flood event) in June, the elevation of the Centennial Park pond only increased by about 3 feet, well within its capacity, and no flooding was noted in the neighborhood.

Unfortunately, institutional inertia means that it's unlikely that the feasibility and worth 15-year-old plan will be revisited in time to spare the neighborhood. The condemnation court case is well underway, and the only question to be resolved is what is the fair market value for the property. Our Dear Leader, Mayor Bynum IV, is too busy playing tourist and issuing imperial decrees that turn reality on its head to delve into why his city government is crushing the dreams of an actual creative young couple -- the sort of people he allegedly wants to attract to our fair city.

I will be on with Pat Campbell on AM 1170 KFAQ tomorrow morning, August 29, 2019, just after the 8 a.m. news, to discuss Tulsa Mayor G. T. Bynum IV's executive order adding gender identity and gender expression to the city's non-discrimination policy.

(UPDATE: Here's the podcast of my August 29, 2019, conversation with KFAQ's Pat Campbell.)

I'll save my detailed discussion for the show, but here are some relevant links and a few brief thoughts.

Last Friday morning, August 23, Pat spoke to Dr. Everett Piper about the new non-discrimination policy.

Here is Executive Order 2019-05, establishing the new non-discrimination policy. It was promulgated on August 19, 2019.

Also, on July 31, 2019, the City Council approved a change to Title 5, Section 102, the ordinance that establishes the City's Human Rights Commission. Ordinance 24196 modifies the membership of the commission, which is required to have 12 to 15 members. Previously the Human Rights Commission had only two set-aside seats, both for Tulsans with disabilities, in recognition of the decision to dissolve the Commission on Concerns of the Disabled. Now most of the positions reserved for advocates for special interests:

The membership shall be constituted as follows: one (1) member who is serving on the African-American Affairs Commission; one (1) member who is serving on the Hispanic Affairs Commission; one (1) member who is serving on the Indian Affairs Commission; one (1) member who is serving on the Commission on the Status of Women; one (1) member who is an advocate for the rights of individuals with disabilities or the provision of services to them, but it is not necessary that this member have a disability as defined in Section101 E. herein; one (1) member who is an advocate for the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer communities; one (1) member who is an advocate for issues uniquely impacting Tulsa's community of veterans; and the remaining members at large.

The revised ordinance does not define the term "queer," which I don't believe has ever been used in official city documentation before.

Sexual orientation is not a new addition to the city non-discrimination policy. Back in May 2010, Bynum IV, then a city councilor, came out as a progressive and pushed for this change, based on a private promise he had made to local activists. The mayor at the time, Dewey Bartlett Jr, signed the proposition into law, which passed by a 6-3 vote, despite a 6-3 Republican majority on the council at the time. This was around the time that Bynum IV became a federal lobbyist with the George Kaiser Family Foundation as a major client.

I wrote at the time:

The heart of the matter is this: For millenia, the cultural consensus among almost every civilization around the globe, among every major religion and even among the irreligious, has been that one's sexual conduct is a reflection of one's character. For the last 50 [years] or so there has been a campaign, fairly successful in the west, to insist that no one should ever suffer reproach for his sexual behavior, no matter how deviant. This ordinance imposes the moral perspective behind that campaign on the people of the City of Tulsa. It is an act of cultural imperialism by a vocal minority over the vast majority of Tulsans.

In 2015, the City Council, led by Blake Ewing and Bynum IV, approved adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the city's housing non-discrimination ordinance. Once again, Mayor Bartlett Jr signed the proposal into law. Note that the definitions of "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" differ from those used in the most recent policy decree.

Richard Florida's "Creative Class" theory, which have been around for about 20 years, may explain part of the push for this. Stephen Malanga summarized the theory back in 2004:

In his popular book The Rise of the Creative Class, which just appeared in paperback after going through multiple hardcover editions, Florida argues that cities that attract gays, bohemians, and ethnic minorities are the new economic powerhouses because they are also the places where creative workers--the kind who start and staff innovative, fast-growing companies--want to live. To lure this workforce, Florida argues, cities must dispense with stuffy old theories of economic development--like the notion that low taxes are what draw in companies and workers--and instead must spend heavily on cultural amenities and pursue progressive social legislation....

To capitalize on the hot new economy, Florida tells policymakers, they must reach out to the creative class, whose interests are different from those of the buttoned-down families that cities traditionally try to attract through good schools and low taxes. The new creative class craves a vibrant nightlife, outdoor sports facilities, and neighborhoods vibrant with street performers, unique shops, and chic cafés. In Florida's universe, the number of local bands on the pop charts becomes more important to the economy than tax codes. "It is hard to think of a major high-tech region that doesn't have a distinct audio identity," Florida writes, sounding more like a rock critic than an economics prof. Creative workers want to live and work in "authentic" neighborhoods of historic buildings, not areas that are "full of chain stores, chain restaurants and nightclubs," he asserts. Accordingly, cities should stop approving expansive new condo developments on their outer boundaries and instead focus on retooling former warehouse and factory districts.

It isn't all rock music, antique architecture, and snowboarding, however. Workers also seek enlightened communities and employers who encourage differences. In focus groups, Florida says, young knowledge workers say that they are drawn to places "known for diversity of thought and open-mindedness." For example, young heterosexual workers tell Florida that they seek out companies that offer domestic-partner benefits, not because they plan to use them, but because such benefits signal that the company practices the kind of tolerance they approve of.

It should be noted that Florida himself has begun walking back some of his conclusions and has recognized that many of these creative-class cities have seen middle-class displacement and growing income inequality.

Bookmarked for further reading: The City of Tulsa commissioned Place Dynamics of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to do a study of Tulsa's retail health and to identify strategies for improvement. The 245-page Tulsa Retail Market Study and Strategy report is now online.

From the city website:

The City of Tulsa relies on sales tax income within the city limits to fund operations, maintenance and capital improvements. It is the lifeblood of our revenue stream and is supported by economic development initiatives that create jobs. As part of the Vision Tulsa initiative, the City hired a consultant, Place Dynamics, LLC of Milwaukee, Wisconsin to prepare a comprehensive market analysis and strategy to:
  • Provide a retail market study
  • Assess specific retail districts (districts to be determined)
  • Review the emergence of the small box retail stores
  • Investigate the cash economy, where financial transactions are carried out in cash, rather than debit withdrawals or credit.
  • Forecast for growth and demand
  • Develop a market-based economic development strategy

Working with our retail stakeholders (representatives from banking, real estate management, local business, developer, chamber, economic development) we will examine the big picture of our retail environment, by identifying the trends that shape both retail and dining industries, and how they play out in Tulsa. Select districts will undergo a more in-depth analysis to assess their potential and the degree to which they meet the needs of the trade areas they serve. The end result will be a market-based economic development strategy with recommendations to help guide future business programming and incentives.

The report states: "A total of 13 study areas were selected for analysis, with the intent of examining a cross-section of commercial area types. In doing so, they [sic] areas that were studied will serve as case studies and models that may be applicable in other locations across the city." Here's the list, with my annotations in brackets.

  • Pine and Peoria [including Pine west to the Midland Valley Trail]
  • Pine and Sheridan [I-244 north to OK-11]
  • 21st Street corridor [nodes from 15th to 23rd at Yale, Sheridan, and Memorial]
  • Downtown
  • Route 66 East [11th Street from Peoria to Columbia, plus 6th Street from Peoria to St. Louis]
  • Tulsa Promenade [includes Southroads, OU-Tulsa campus, Highland Plaza]
  • 51st and Union [51st from 33rd West Ave to US 75]
  • 71st and Peoria [Peoria from 61st to 71st; 71st from Peoria to Joe Creek]
  • 51st and Memorial [includes Fontana Center, Memorial from 46th to 51st]
  • 71st Street Corridor [Memorial to Garnett]
  • International District [21st Street from Garnett to 129th East Ave]
  • River West/Eugene Field [West Tulsa townsite]
  • 36th Street North [Cincinnati to Peoria]

This is not the first time that Tulsa has asked an outside consultant to help boost its retail profile. In 2004, the City of Tulsa commissioned the Buxton Group to identify sites for new retail development that would help the city capture a greater share of regional retail dollars. Buxton pinpointed two key locations -- 71st Street and U. S. 75 on the west side; I-44 at 129th East Ave on the east side -- that would capture customers inside and outside the city limits. The first site became the Tulsa Hills development, thanks to the tireless efforts of then-City Councilor Chris Medlock. National retailers that might have located in Jenks landed within Tulsa's city limits instead, allowing us to capture sales tax revenue for city operations. The east-side site was never developed beyond a McDonald's. National retailers that might have found a home there within Tulsa's city limits instead located near the Hard Rock Casino in Catoosa.

In writing the previous entry about the Covington Catholic High School students, I wrote about how local Tulsa media pushed a narrative that Tulsa City Councilors, particularly those elected with grassroots support over the objections of the chamber of commerce, developers, and other special interest groups, were bickering troublemakers. This narrative was used to trash the reputations of diligent, intelligent councilors who dug into issues, asked insightful (and uncomfortable) questions, and refused to be rubber stamps. Believe it or not, there was a time when we had councilors like that.

In researching the previous article, I came across some BatesLine articles that are worth re-reading as background to the current situation at City Hall. The excerpts below deal specifically with bickering, but click the links to delve deeper and get a primer in Tulsa's recent political history. Most of the articles were about specific City Council races, but I took the opportunity to address recurring themes.

September 7, 2009:

When I asked [Phil] Lakin about why he was running for City Council, he talked about infighting and bickering between council and mayor and between city and county. He seemed to blame the councilors for the mayor keeping them in the dark.

Lakin's critique of some current councilors reminds me of what I've heard from other councilors in the past about their predecessors. The gist of it: "If they'd just be nicer, people would pay more attention to the substance of what they're saying." Many of the councilors who have said that in the past have later learned the hard way that as soon as you challenge the power or the budget of some entrenched interest, everyone will think you aren't nice, no matter how nicely you make your case. The newspaper will run pictures that make you look angry. The mayor will accuse you of bickering. And then some council candidate will come along and tell you that if you'd just be nicer, people would pay more attention to the substance of what you're saying.

July 24, 2011:

What I saw in that Tuesday meeting fit a pattern that I've seen often during 20 years of involvement in local politics. A city bureaucrat looks at the certificates on the wall and his years of service and assumes he is the authority not merely about how things are done but the authority on what ought to be done.

So a new city councilor or a new member of an authority, board, or commission comes into office with a concern that isn't being effectively addressed by city government. The first answer from the bureaucracy is rarely, "Gee, why didn't we think of that?" It's almost always, "Nothing can be done," or, "We've never done it that way." And that answer is supposed to be the end of it.

If the councilor (or commissioner) persists, the bureaucracy attempts to re-educate the councilor, in the most condescending manner possible, to understand that his ideas are impossible to implement. Rather than saying, "Let's see how we can meet your concerns," the bureaucracy delivers the message, "Your concerns are ignorant and illegitimate."

What happens next depends on how the councilor deals with the initial rebuff. Some simply back off and tackle another issue. Some, like Tom Tuttle from Tacoma, become fully assimilated to the point where they'll defend the status quo and attack any other councilor who challenges it.

Then you have the councilors who do their own research, who dig into ordinances and budgets and case law and what other cities are doing, and they persist in asking "why not?" and presenting alternatives. From a bureaucrat's point of view, such a councilor is a pain in the posterior, a threat to their comfortable, stable existence, and must be taken down. If you can use your lack of cooperation to provoke the councilor, passive-aggressively, to the point of expressing his irritation, you win.

Since this sort of inquisitive, pro-active councilor also poses a threat to other entrenched interests, the aggrieved bureaucrat can usually find a helping hand from the various organs of the Cockroach Caucus, who miss the days when all one had to do was pull on their strings to get the councilors to do their bidding. The obligatory unflattering photo, misleading headline, twisted caricature, and tut-tutting editorial follow in due course.

It's a misunderstanding of the nature of bureaucracy to think that bureaucrats will be supportive and encouraging of a councilor's ideas for new ways to solve a problem, if only the councilor will be polite and patient. (People seeking public office really should read Jim Boren's books first.) It's not that bureaucrats are bad people, but it's a profession that tends to attract the risk-averse. You don't climb in a bureaucracy by taking risks. The exceptions to the rule are there, and they're real treasures because they're rare. Too often, bureaucrats will try to wait the councilor out -- keep holding meetings, keep delaying a final plan, until the councilor gets interested in another project or gets voted out of office.

It's a pretty good indication that a city councilor is doing what he ought to be doing if he's getting shot at by the bureaucracy and the daily paper. Jim Mautino is a good councilor, and if District 6 voters want an advocate for their interests who won't be deterred by bureaucratic foot-dragging, they'll return Jim Mautino to office this fall.

To which I would only add that people seeking public office should also watch Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister to learn the ways of bureaucrats.

September 3, 2011:

Too many city leaders, who only skirt the edge of the district on their way to Grand Lake, are content to make this part of town as a dumping ground for ugliness. Jim Mautino sees District 6's section of I-44 as the gateway to Tulsa from the east and northeast, an ideal spot to capture retail dollars from visitors to the city and thus sales tax revenues to fund the level of service Tulsans expect from their city government.

Jim's focus on developing within the city limits has made him a target for those with a vested interest in using city assets to fuel development in our suburbs. His opposition to disadvantageous long-term water deals between Tulsa and growing suburbs was a major factor in the unsuccessful 2005 effort to recall him from office.

I have a litmus test for people who comment on city politics. If all they can talk about is the "terrible bickering" on the City Council, I know that they've absorbed the latest meme -- a meme pushed by those special interests who want all power concentrated in a mayor they can control -- but they haven't really been paying attention. This council has worked well together, with a long list of significant accomplishments while fending off lawsuits and sniping from Bartlett Jr and his allies.

When Jim returned to City Hall in 2009, he set out to be newly elected Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr's strongest advocate on the City Council. He urged his fellow councilors to give Bartlett Jr the benefit of the doubt for at least six months as he got his new administration going. Despite their good-faith effort to work with the new mayor, Bartlett Jr managed to alienate each councilor, one by one, with broken promises, misleading information, and contemptuous treatment.

Mautino may have been Bartlett Jr's last supporter on the Council. The final straw was Bartlett Jr's response to Mautino's recommendation for a vacancy on the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission. Mautino had suggested Al Nichols, a mild-mannered retired Air Force officer and long-time leader of the Mingo Valley Neighborhood Association, as someone who could bring some much-needed geographical and neighborhood balance to the TMAPC. Bartlett Jr seemed very receptive, but a short time later Bartlett Jr told Mautino that Nichols was "toxic," presumably because Nichols was knowledgeable enough about zoning and planning not to be a puppet for the developers' lobby. Instead, Bartlett continued to delay, ultimately nominating former Councilor Eric Gomez, who had very recently been rejected for re-election by his constituents.

September 10, 2011:

A small group of wealthy Tulsans want total control of city government. They don't want thoughtful citizens on the City Council who will ask direct questions or who will stand firm against special-interest manipulation. They want a City Council full of well-trained monkeys who will vote on command. They exist under various names -- TulsaBizPac, Coalition for Responsible Government, Tulsans for Better Government, Save Our Tulsa -- I call them the Cockroach Caucus. They've used unsubstantiated claims of "bickering" and "ward politics" to discredit the councilors we've elected to represent us.

These are the people, the Cockroach Caucus, who created a year of turmoil with their 2004-2005 attempt to recall two city councilors over policy differences. For all the whining and complaining they do about "Council bickering," they dragged the city through a divisive year of attacks and smears, all because they didn't like the results of an election, and they refused to work harmoniously with the councilors that the people of Tulsa had elected.

These are the people who led us into the Great Plains Airlines mess. They promised us openly that the taxpayers were at no financial risk, while they were secretly promising financiers that the taxpayers would pick up the tab if their wacky airline idea failed. It failed, state taxpayers coughed up $30 million in transferable tax credits with nothing to show for it, and Tulsa taxpayers got saddled with $7.1 million, which we're paying for with higher property taxes.

These are the Midtown Money Belt people who don't like the councilors that east and west and south and north Tulsa elect to represent our interests at City Hall. Middle-class and working-class Tulsans want more cops on the beat, city pools that open in the summer, streets that don't tear our cars to pieces, zoning that protects our neighborhoods against shoddy redevelopment, and economic policies that attract and keep growing businesses. The Midtown Money Belt types want taxpayers to subsidize their entertainment -- islands in the river, expensive concerts at the arena, WNBA. They want us to subsidize the success of their investments in suburban real estate, at the expense of growth within the city limits to help fund public safety and infrastructure.

So because they don't like the fact that the rest of us elect councilors focused on efficient basic city services, these people propose charter changes to dilute geographical representation on the City Council. They yearn for the days when you could drive a golf ball from the Mayor's midtown backyard into the yards of the other city commissioners. They want to pack the council with at-large councilors who have to be wealthy enough to afford a city-wide race or beholden to those who are.

These people have decided to back a group of candidates so they can take back control of the City Council. They don't care if their candidates are well-informed, and they don't want candidates with the backbone to oppose special interests who want to misuse city resources for their own benefit.

June 22, 2014:

Another thing you can do to make me regret my endorsement is to send a letter that refers to the "constant petty bickering" of the 2009-2011 City Council. The reality is that the nine councilors got along very well with one another and worked together across partisan lines. The problem, from Dewey Jr's point of view, is that they were united in their distress with Dewey Jr's actions and his refusal to build a cooperative working relationship. So Dewey Jr and his Chamber and developer buddies promoted the "petty bickering" meme and redrew the district lines to separate these councilors from the citizens who knew and appreciated them. The same people who wanted them gone want you gone, too, and for the same reasons.

There is a repeating pattern: A new reformer comes to the Council and arrogantly thinks, "The reason my bozo predecessors got tossed is they refused to be intelligent and polite in their approach. I'm going to be intelligent and polite and everyone will love me and accept my ideas." Guess what? Your "bozo" predecessors thought the same thing about their predecessors. No, the problem is that their ideas and your ideas are threatening to certain special interests, and they will paint you as a troublemaker and a petty bickerer so that low-information voters can't wait to toss you out of office....

Have some respect for the councilors who blazed this trail before you. Because of their willingness to take risks and endure ridicule and defamation, the Overton Window is open a little wider for you.

Mollie Z. Hemingway asks, regarding the unraveling of the mainstream media narrative about activist Nathan Phillips and his confrontation last weekend with the young men of Covington Catholic School:

The thing I keep thinking about: if many media types are dishonest about reporting contradicted and shown to be dangerously false by hours of extensive video evidence, how astronomically much are they misreporting their claims based on absolutely nothing but anonymous sources?

To which Just Tom replied:

Tom's Test: Pick a subject you absolutely are an expert in. Review the media coverage of that subject. Ask yourself, if the media has that record in something you know about, what is their probable record in subjects you aren't an expert in?

Which is another way of phrasing the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect, as defined by bestselling author Michael Crichton:

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray [Gell-Mann]'s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward--reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

You can extend the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect beyond one's area of expertise to events one has personally witnessed. Some of us who have attended a public hearing have read or watched news reports of the hearing and wondered whether the reporter was even present. Or perhaps the reporter was just so ignorant of the relevant laws and procedures that he didn't understand which parts of the hearing mattered and why.

But after you've encountered a number of these disconnects between what you know to be true and how it's being reported, you notice a pattern: The "mistakes" always seem to run in one direction. The reporters and editors choose to publish stories and to report only those elements of a story advance a particular narrative. Like any good fiction writer, they choose adjectives and adverbs that will induce a particular emotional reaction to the characters in the story and the issues at stake.

If subject-matter experts and engaged citizens are susceptible to Gell-Mann Amnesia as they read and watch the news, how much more are the bulk of voters who don't have an area of personal knowledge or expertise that might tip them off to the possible inaccuracy of what they see in the news?

The classic example here in Tulsa was the years-long effort to portray Tulsa City Councilors as useless, bickering wretches. Those of us who attended City Hall hearings and townhall meetings knew that in fact the councilors targeted by the Whirled and other outlets were heroically fighting for the interests of homeowners and taxpayers against entrenched special interests. But engaged citizens are always a minority in any election, and the proportion of voters with first-hand knowledge of City Hall and their city councilor was diluted by the 2011 gerrymander and further diluted by the move of city elections to the same date as state and federal elections. The voters without that first-hand knowledge of City Hall knew only the "bickering" narrative promoted by the local media and reinforced by campaign material funded by those same special interests.

When I was researching my article on the brief existence of Swanson County, I was struck by the open partisanship displayed by the newspapers of 1910. The Kiowa County Democrat in Snyder carried lengthy front page articles arguing for the creation of the new county and attacking the arguments of the naysayers. As the Swanson County Democrat, the paper was unabashed in taking Snyder's side in the dispute over the location of the county seat. If you wanted to read anything positive about Mountain Park or about the sheriff (the lone elected official who stayed put in Mountain Park), you weren't going to read it in the Democrat. The reader was better served by the blatant and unabashed bias on display than the veneer of neutrality adopted by modern media outlets to hide the narrative they seek to push; the reader of a century ago would have been under no illusion that the paper would give him both sides of the story and would have known to look to other sources to round out his view of an issue.

The Covington Catholic / Nathan Phillips story is helpful in reminding a broader swath of news consumers to be skeptical of what media outlets are trying to feed them. The existence of multiple video sources, longer than the original viral video, uncut, and from multiple vantage points, shifted the question from "Aren't these MAGA-hat kids horrible?" to "Who you gonna believe, me or your own lying eyes?" Let's hope that the experience overcomes the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect and inspires a skepticism that extends even to stories for which there is no video and to news outlets of every medium from the global to the local.


RELATED:

In 2017, a former Oklahoman researching a story for the Guardian contacted me, claiming to want an informed conservative perspective on Oklahoma's budget problems. My answers didn't fit his preferred narrative, so he reduced my hundreds of words of analysis, offered in good faith, to a dismissive phrase set in a misleading context. Lesson learned.

Dan Levin from the New York Times got severely "ratioed" when he posted the following Tweet:

I'm a New York Times reporter writing about #exposechristianschools. Are you in your 20s or younger who went to a Christian school? I'd like to hear about your experience and its impact on your life. Please DM me.

Alumni of evangelical and Catholic schools and from the Christian homeschooling movement quickly responded to say positive things about their educational experience and at the same time cast doubt on Levin's good faith, based on his Twitter timeline to that point. The assumption was that he would minimize or exclude positive testimonies in favor of those that could be used to paint Christian education in a negative light, in an attempt to build popular support for legal attacks on Christian education. I paged through Levin's previous retweets from the #exposechristianschools hashtag and all that I found were negative about Christian education. Since the above tweet appeared and received an overwhelmingly negative reaction, Levin has retweeted at least as many positive testimonies of Christian education as negative.

(In Twitter parlance, ratioed refers to the ratio of the number of replies to the number of likes and retweets, with the assumption that replies are generally negative reaction, while likes are positive, as, generally, are retweets, although Twitter users may retweet an item accompanied by a negative comment. In this case, as I write this, there were 9.2K replies to 2,002 likes, and 1,192 retweets, or roughly a 3:1 negative ratio.)

The #ExposeChristianSchools hashtag started to trend after news that Karen Pence, wife of the Vice President, was returning to teach at a Christian school which upholds Biblical views on marriage and sex, something regarded as a scandal by the Left. At 12:39 a.m. on January 20, I noticed that the "Top" 20 tweets for that hashtag had likes and retweets in the single and low-double digits, while responses favorable to Christian schools had been pushed down. The maximum number likes of any tweet in the "Top" 20 was 57, while the tweet ranked 21st had over 17000 likes, followed by more favorable tweets with thousands of likes. It appeared that someone at Twitter was manually tweaking the algorithm to favor opinions condemning Christian schools.

Rod Dreher points out that Levin had been tweeting such articles as an attack on the Home School Legal Defense Alliance. Dreher writes, "The New York Times is trying to gin up anti-Christian hatred," and notes that this sort of thing may push more Trump-hostile or -ambivalent Christians into supporting his re-election in 2020:

A Christian friend who has been a very strong opponent of Trump, but publicly and privately, these past few years, texted to say that the Levin tweet, and what it represents, has forced him to think that he might have to vote for Trump in 2020 simply because the hatred of the Left is so frightening.

MORE:

This recent New Yorker story by Jill Lepore traces the evolution of American journalism from the strongly partisan press of the 19th century, the shift to just-the-facts reporting for a mass audience in the early 20th century, the move to a more adversarial and interpretive role beginning in the 1960s, the failures of newspapers to recognize the business opportunities and dangers of the Internet, and the influence of Facebook, Google, and click-tracking on editorial judgment. She bookends the historical sketch with homey reminiscences of helping with her family's paper route delivering the Worcester Telegraph and Gazette in the 1970s. About the current state of play, Lepore writes:

All kinds of editorial decisions are now outsourced to Facebook's News Feed, Chartbeat, or other forms of editorial automation, while the hands of many flesh-and-blood editors are tied to so many algorithms. For one reason and another, including twenty-first-century journalism's breakneck pace, stories now routinely appear that might not have been published a generation ago, prompting contention within the reportorial ranks....

There's plenty of room to argue over these matters of editorial judgment. Reasonable people disagree. Occasionally, those disagreements fall along a generational divide. Younger journalists often chafe against editorial restraint.... Sometimes younger people are courageous and sometimes they are heedless and sometimes those two things are the same....

In the age of Facebook, Chartbeat, and Trump, legacy news organizations, hardly less than startups, have violated or changed their editorial standards in ways that have contributed to political chaos and epistemological mayhem.

At NiemanLab, Brian Moritz warns that the "subscriptionpocalypse" is about to hit, and that's bad news for local newspapers.

Eventually, consumers' subscription budgets hit a wall. We can't assume people are going to subscribe to everything. You can't expect people to subscribe to their local paper (which is vital to democracy, we tell them) AND The New York Times and the Washington Post (because Democracy Dies in the Dark) AND Netflix AND Hulu AND HBO Go AND The Athletic AND ESPN Plus AND their favorite podcast on Patreon AND ...

I found that item from this thread by journalism professor Jeremy Littau, tracing the financial decline of newspapers to the 1970s, as subscription rates year over year began to drop, and as chains began to gobble up local newspapers and take on massive debt in the process. Also discussed: The insane profit margins once enjoyed by local papers, the advent of free online classifieds, hedge funds buying and stripping papers for assets, the demographic time bomb -- newspaper readers are dying off and not being replaced, non-profit journalism as a possible way to sustain local accountability. Littau's conclusion: "The seeds were planted long ago by greedy, short-sighted owners."

Littau linked to the Trusting News project, which is researching why readers don't trust journalists and working with newspapers to develop and test strategies for rebuilding trust.

In his thread, Littau also wrote:

What I'd implore you to do, though, is look for ways to invest in local news because that is where it matters most. Good god, you think Washington is corrupt? Try City Hall. Some of the worst stuff I saw as a reporter happened there.

But if local paper ownership is involved with local corruption, what then? A bit later, KTUL tweeted the stub of an AP piece on a new documentary lionizing New York City columnists Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill:

The two men embodied a time when New York was a rollicking and complicated place, and each lived for the streets and stories of the little guys who made the city run. Every city had their own Breslins or Hamills, who made the powerful tremble and shake their fists. Their newspapers were required reading.

Yet a string of layoffs at media companies this week illustrates the peril faced by local journalism today that has made "truth to power" newspaper columnists an endangered species.

This may not have been the case in New York with Breslin and Hamill, but how often, in smaller cities, were "truth to power" columnists in the local paper really attack dogs used to tear down activists, reformer elected officials, and whistleblowers who threatened taxpayer-funded gravy trains for the publisher and his cronies?

In the summer of 1983, I was in Manila,and the English language newspapers were filled with op-eds and news analysis pieces about this corrupt murderer named Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino, who was threatening to return to the Philippines. Some columnists treated him as a danger to the republic, some treated him as a laughing stock, but if you had taken them at face value, you wouldn't have known that Ninoy's real problem was that his popularity posed a threat to Ferdinand Marcos's hold on power.

UPDATE:

One of Nick Sandmann's lawyers has assembled a 15 minute video montage showing what happened at the Lincoln Memorial:

I am getting caught up on the local news after all the pre-Christmas busyness and was disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that Mayor G. T. Bynum IV has shut down our city planning department and outsourced the task of evaluating the future direction of city development to a quasi-non-governmental organization that is controlled by a board dominated by suburban city and county governments, the Indian Nation Council of Governments (INCOG). Bynum announced the change in October.

The City of Tulsa has only eight seats on INCOG's 62-member-board, so the planners making recommendations on City of Tulsa zoning changes and changes to Tulsa's comprehensive plan will be more accountable to the suburbs competing with Tulsa for residents and sales tax revenue than to our own elected officials.

Until this change, planners working for the City of Tulsa dealt with the city's comprehensive plan and small-area plans, while planners employed by INCOG evaluated applications for rezoning, variances, and special exceptions, providing recommendations to the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission (TMAPC) and City of Tulsa Board of Adjustment (BOA). Effectively, this meant that any long-term plan developed by city staff with the participation of Tulsa citizens could be undermined by INCOG staff at the point where planning is implemented, by recommending that the decision-making bodies ignore the comprehensive and small-area plans and approve zoning changes, variances, and special exceptions that violate those plans. Four out of the 11 members of TMAPC, which vets all proposed changes to the city's zoning map and zoning ordinances, are appointed by the Tulsa County Commission, with no accountability to the City of Tulsa's elected officials.

The new Tulsa comprehensive plan originally called for uniting long-term and short-term planning for the city within city government. From the Strategies section of the final draft of Our Vision for Tulsa:

Organization matters, and currently Tulsa's planning and development functions are spread between many agencies and departments. Development services and economic development functions reside in different departments. The city's redevelopment activities and programs are carried out by the Tulsa Development Authority, and staffed by the City's economic development and real estate management staffs. Neighborhood planning functions are a part of city government. While the city is leading PLANiTULSA, long range planning and zoning is staffed by INCOG under contract with the City, and the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission (TMAPC) with both county and city appointees is the key planning advisory body and is responsible for both zoning and comprehensive planning.

For PLANiTULSA to be successful it is critical that the city coordinate development-related activities so they work together to effectively address changes desired by Tulsans. The City of Tulsa should enhance staff capacity and technical skills and consolidate city development-related activities into a Community Development Department as well as bring the current and long range planning functions that are currently outsourced to the INCOG into this new structure. This would result in City staff providing the review and analysis of development requests as well as staffing the Tulsa Metropolitan Planning Commission. The City of Tulsa should continue to support INCOG's leadership role in regional planning and transportation. INCOG's support and regional leadership is critical to implementing the PLANiTULSA vision.

After fit-throwing by certain developers and INCOG, this was significantly watered down in the version that was ultimately adopted by the TMAPC and the City Council.

When Mayor Bynum was Councilor Bynum, he supported consolidating planning within the City of Tulsa as a matter of accountability, as reported by Urban Tulsa Weekly's Mike Easterling:

That's a question ["What's the problem with INCOG?"] Bynum seems happy to answer. He claims he has no beef with regional planning in general and strongly supports INCOG's lead role in compiling a transportation plan for the area. But he hasn't always been happy with what the city has gotten from the agency in terms of land use planning.

"Not so much a feeling that they don't provide good service as much as there is a lack of accountability," he said. "The situation that crystallized that for me was the situation with the Sonoma Grande apartment complex. That was built using a (planned unit development) that was something like 30 years old and had been approved by the previous form of government (Tulsa switched from a commission form of government to the current mayor-city council style in 1989.) That's how old it was."

The controversy over Sonoma Grande may well have proved to be a tipping point in the debate over zoning and development in Tulsa. Residents of a neighboring subdivision were furious about the height and proximity of the apartments, claiming they weren't adequately warned about it beforehand.

Bynum contends the INCOG planning staff presented the plan for the complex to neighbors as an innocuous project, and few of them bothered to show up at the Planning Commission's public hearing. It was only when the project was being built, and the size of it became apparent, that neighbors became alarmed. By then, it was too late, he said.

"So you've got people in a really nice neighborhood who had probably experienced substantial damage to their property values by this project," he said.

Many of those residents complained to the City Council, Bynum said.

"When we tried to raise this as an issue, the Planning Commission pointed at INCOG, and INCOG pointed elsewhere," he said. "Ultimately, no one could be held accountable for this terrible error that impacted those folks."

That experience left him with serious doubts about the current system.

"If we can have a system that makes accountability more clear and stayed within the city, I would be supportive of that," he said.

Bynum made a bolder statement, quoted later in the same story:

"...the city shouldn't have its land use in the hands of a bureaucracy that's not accountable to the public."

In that same story, several people (including myself) point out that the INCOG planning staff seemed to see their job as facilitating whatever a developer wanted, rather than evaluating a planning application in light of long-term planning goals and the interests of all affected property owners.

The complaints about INCOG's performance in land use planning go well beyond councilors' concerns about accountability. Other critics, including former Planning Commission member Liz Wright, believe INCOG planners don't take an unbiased approach to evaluating the development proposals that cross their desks.

"They're not neutral," she said. "They're not being fair to the citizens."

[Village at Central Park developer Jamie] Jamieson believes INCOG has developed an institutional bias on the side of developers at the expense of neighborhoods. That's not good for anyone, he said.

"Developers need to put the interests of neighborhoods first," he said. "Ultimately, you develop a better bottom line by doing that. And that's not to say there aren't some good people at INCOG, because there are."

The proper relationship between Tulsa and INCOG -- one in which the city is the client, with its interests being served -- has largely been forgotten in favor of that developer-friendly approach by INCOG, he said.

"It's been flipped on its head for too long," he said, a dynamic that has led to an endless series of disputes between developers and neighborhoods.

Bates believes the INCOG planning staff has simply grown too comfortable with the developers and attorneys they work with on a routine basis, and have concluded it is their job to facilitate what those developers want -- regardless of whether it's in the best interests of the surrounding area or the city at large.

He said that's not so much a case of outright hostility toward residents.

"It's more a case of misjudging the importance of public support," he said. "They operate in a world where the public's voice is seen as irrelevant to the outcome of a zoning or planning decision. That's kind of a foreign notion."...

Bates doesn't mince words when evaluating the job INCOG has done on the city's behalf.

"I think it's been bad," he said. "There are certain individuals who work for INCOG who have the ability to do real planning, but institutionally, there's not any real forethought. They'll make a zoning change and then go back and change the comprehensive plan to reflect that."

[Then-Councilor Bill] Christiansen shares Bates' contention that residents routinely get short shrift in such cases. And he said he can't do much to help them.

"In terms of zoning, the citizens have been at the back of the bus," he said. "It's hard for a councilor because we try to do the right for our constituents, and under the current process, it's very difficult."

Christiansen repeated Bates' assertion that a handful of zoning attorneys have grown too close relationship to INCOG's planning staff, some of them even working in the same building as the Planning Commission. That gives them a distinct advantage over the average citizen, he said, though he noted he doesn't blame them for exploiting that.

"They know the system and how to access it," he said. "The citizens don't know the process at all, and they wind up calling the council."

The alienation of power from accountability is by design. A certain element within Tulsa's development community wants to be able to Build Anything Absolutely Anywhere, without regard to the impact on surrounding property owners, and has fought against any changes that would protect Tulsa's interests in our competition with the suburbs. They like it when planning and zoning decisions are shaped by bureaucrats who aren't answerable to our own elected officials, and they work to defeat elected officials who try to legislate in the city's best interests.

For example, suburban property developers and their allies led the 2004-2005 campaign to recall Councilors Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock. Medlock, Mautino, and fellow councilors Roscoe Turner and Jack Henderson opposed the reappointment of Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority board members who had approved sweetheart, long-term water deals that seemed designed to fuel suburban growth at Tulsa's expense, and they opposed construction of a bridge across the Arkansas River for the benefit of new development in Bixby.

A city's land-use policy ought to support the interests of the city's residents. That's more likely to happen if all the decision-makers involved in the process are accountable to city elected officials. The 2010 version of G. T. Bynum IV understood that. You're welcome to speculate as to why Bynum IV, 2018 model, disagrees.

Thanks to last year's ill-advised, whimsical change to the Tulsa City Charter, the 2018 City of Tulsa elections are even further out of sync with the rest of the political calendar. Today was the first day of the three-day filing period for City Auditor and all nine City Council seats. Filing requires a $50 deposit, refundable if you are unopposed or receive more than 15% of the vote.

The city "general" election will be held on August 28, 2018, coinciding with the state runoff primary. This year, the state runoff is likely to draw heavy Republican turnout for the governor's race and the First Congressional District race, neither of which are likely to be decided in the June primary, and this could very well skew the city results. If no one receives a majority in a given race in the August "general," the top two candidates in the race will advance to a "runoff" that falls on the November state and federal general election date, with a much higher turnout than the August election.

It's a mess, and it relegates city elections and city issues to the backburner.

On the first day of filing, at least one candidate filed for every seat. Nine Democrats, four Republicans, and one Libertarian filed. Incumbents Cathy Criswell (Auditor), Jeannie Cue (District 2), Connie Dodson (District 6), Anna America (District 7), Phil Lakin (District 8), and Ben Kimbro (District 9) have all filed for re-election. Of this group only Kimbro has drawn an opponent: Paul Tay.

Incumbent Vanessa Hall-Harper (District 1) has not yet filed, but two challengers have: Lana Turner and Jerry Goodwin.

Long-time District 3 councilor David Patrick is not running, but his daughter Cristin Patrick is, as is Justin Rolph. So far, only Barbara Kingsley has filed to replace District 4 councilor Blake Ewing. District 5 councilor Karen Gilbert is running for a seat in the State House; Mykey Arthrell and Eliah Misthaven are running to succeed her.

Below is the full list of the first day's filings, complete with party affiliations, which were confirmed today through the Oklahoma State Election Board voter search tool. The first name on the line is the name that will appear on the ballot; the name in parentheses is the name under which the candidate is registered to vote.

Although City of Tulsa elections are non-partisan, and nothing other than a name will appear on the ballot, party affiliation is at least some indication of governing philosophy, so I note it here. Also, party organizations will often make resources available to candidates of their party running in non-partisan school and municipal elections. Personally, I would love to see a full slate of candidates running on the principles espoused by Strong Towns.

CITY AUDITOR
Cathy Criswell (Cathy Ann Criswell), 4120 E 22nd Pl, Tulsa OK 74114, 07-10-54, Democrat

CITY COUNCILOR OFFICE NO. 1
Lana Turner (Willana Geneva Turner), 2426 West Oklahoma Street, Tulsa OK 74127, 04-02-64, Democrat
Jerry Goodwin (James G Goodwin), 2406 W. Pine Pl., Tulsa OK 74127, 02-10-63, Democrat

CITY COUNCILOR OFFICE NO. 2
Jeannie Cue, 5313 S 32 Pl W, Tulsa OK 74107, 01-22-54, Republican

CITY COUNCILOR OFFICE NO. 3
Crista Patrick (Crista Caye Patrick), 1918 N. Joplin Ave., Tulsa OK 74115, 09-24-73, Democrat
Justin Rolph (Justin David Rolph), 534 S. 101st E Ave, Tulsa OK 74128, 11-28-92, Republican

CITY COUNCILOR OFFICE NO. 4
Barbra Kingsley (Barbra Kristi Kingsley), 1112 E 19th St, Tulsa OK 74120, 02-19-73, Democrat

CITY COUNCILOR OFFICE NO. 5
Mykey Arthrell (Michael William Arthrell-Knezek), 1747 S Erie PL, Tulsa OK 74112, 08-12-84, Democrat
Eliah Misthaven (Eliah Sage Misthaven), 8314 East 25th Place, Tulsa OK 74112, 12-18-97, Democrat

CITY COUNCILOR OFFICE NO. 6
Connie Dodson (Connie L Dodson), 13302 E. 28th St., Tulsa OK 74134, 04-29-67, Democrat

CITY COUNCILOR OFFICE NO. 7
Anna America (Anna Marie America), 6849 E. 56th St., Tulsa OK 74145, 05-22-63, Democrat

CITY COUNCILOR OFFICE NO. 8
Phil Lakin Jr (Phillip Lawrence Lakin Jr), 9808 S. Knoxville Avenue, Tulsa OK 74137, 08-05-67, Republican

CITY COUNCILOR OFFICE NO. 9
Paul Tay (Paul C Tay), 4004 S Toledo, Tulsa OK 74135, 09-01-62, Libertarian
Ben Kimbro (Benjamin Wade Kimbro), 3207 South Evanston Avenue, Tulsa OK 74105, 07-03-72, Republican

Published November 9, 2017. Postdated to keep this at the top of the blog until the polls close. If you appreciate the hours of effort behind detailed analysis you can't find anywhere else, Hit the tip jar!

Polling_Place_Vote_Here.jpg

The City of Tulsa is holding a special election this Tuesday, November 14, 2017. The ballot will consist of seven proposed amendments to the City Charter which were approved by the City Council over the course of the summer.

Polls are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Early in-person absentee voting for residents of the Tulsa County will be available at the Tulsa County Election Board, 555 N. Denver Ave., just north of downtown Tulsa, from 8 am. to 6 p.m. Thursday, November 9, and Friday, November 10, plus from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, November 11. The Tulsa County Election Board has published an information sheet on the November 14, 2017, election.

In addition to the Tulsa special election, voters in House District 76 (northern part of Broken Arrow) have a special general election between Republican Ross Ford and Democrat Chris Van Landingham to fill the vacancy left by the death of State Rep. David Brumbaugh, and voters in Senate District 37 will choose a successor to Sen. Dan Newberry -- Republican Brian O'Hara, formerly Congressman Jim Bridenstine's Deputy District Director, faces 26-year-old Allison Ikley-Freeman. Bixby voters have a franchise renewal on the ballot, and Sand Springs has a city bond issue.

SAMPLE BALLOTS:

Last Friday morning, Pat Campbell interviewed me about the City of Tulsa, November 14, 2017, ballot propositions. Click the link to listen to the 30 minute podcast.

Here is a summary of the seven City of Tulsa ballot items, with links to details of the charter language to be changed and my analysis.

  1. Summary nuisance abatement: YES
  2. Electronic notice to councilors of Special Meeting: YES
  3. Sloppily written amendment intended to allow emergency clause on resolutions: NO
  4. City general election to be moved to August: NO
  5. Mayor appoints Election District Commission: NO
  6. Permit political activities by civil service employees and sworn public safety officers: NO
  7. Ineffective attempt to constrain funds generated by public safety tax: NO

As a supplement to my commentary on Prop 4, I have written a timeline of the changes Tulsa has made to its election process. Five changes were made in the six-year period between 2006 and 2012.

For your convenience, here is a single-page summary of my recommendations on the 2017 Tulsa City Charter propositions.

For the sixth time since 2006, we will be tinkering with election dates. Two other proposals would have an impact on elections -- the composition of the Election District Commission and allowing city employees under civil service protection to participate in political activity.

An election resolution for the first five of the proposed amendments was approved by the City Council on July 12, 2017, and approved by Mayor G. T. Bynum IV on July 17, 2017. Resolutions sending the sixth and seventh proposed amendments to the voters were approved on August 16, 2017.

The seventh of the seven charter change propositions on the City of Tulsa November 14, 2017, ballot would add language to the City Charter with the intent of preventing the money from the public safety tax approved in April 2016 to be spent on any other purpose.

Here are direct links to the current text of Tulsa City Charter, Article II, Section 7.1, City Council, Budgets and Tulsa City Charter, Article III, Section 1.4, Mayor, Executive and administrative powers and duties.

The mark-up below shows the how the text of Article II, Section 7.1, and Article III, Section 1.4, would change if Proposition No. 7 is approved, with added text underlined. No text would be removed by this proposition.

Section 7.1. - Budgets.

Prior to the expenditure of general funds, or funds from the sale or issuance of an obligation of the city, or from any other source, the Mayor shall submit to the Council a budget for the expenditure of such funds or amendments to previously adopted budgets. The Council shall adopt budgets or amendments and make appropriations by ordinance, provided, that no revenue derived from the 2017 Public Safety Sales Tax, as set forth in detail in Title 43‐I Tulsa Revised Ordinances, shall ever be budgeted, spent or used for any purpose other than public safety as described therein.

Section 1.4. - Executive and administrative powers and duties.

The Mayor shall be the chief executive and administrative officer of the city and shall:

...

C. Prepare and submit to the Council annually, on or before the first day of May, an operating budget, a capital program, and a capital budget; submit recommendations for amending adopted budgets, provided, that no revenue derived from the 2017 Public Safety Sales Tax, as set forth in detail in Title 43‐I Tulsa Revised Ordinances, shall ever be budgeted, spent or used for any purpose other than public safety as described therein;

While I appreciate the intention behind this, it should be obvious that the proposal won't accomplish what is desired. Making the meaning of language in the City Charter (which can only change with a vote of the people) depend on the language in an ordinance (which can be changed without a vote of the people) makes it easy to undermine the intent of the charter provision without getting public approval to remove it. The Council could vote to redefine public safety to include, say, park maintenance. While such a change would require following the Brown Ordinance process with public notice and public hearing, that wouldn't stop a determined council and mayor. The charter amendment wouldn't make it any harder to redirect or misdirect this money than it already is.

This proposed amendment also does not prevent the council and mayor from redirecting general fund money currently paying for police and fire protection to other purposes, effectively nullifying the intended benefit of approving the earmarked public safety tax. While Title 43-I declares that intent, there is no mandatory language that prohibits reducing general fund spending on police and fire from historic levels or penalizes elected officials who do so. They wouldn't even have to go through a Brown Ordinance process to adopt a budget that cuts general fund spending on public safety.

Finally, even if this amendment could accomplish its intended purpose, earmarking funds hinders flexibility to prioritize spending when revenue drops. Different "colors of money" -- funds from specific sources that can only be spent on specific agencies -- mean that some agencies are swimming in money while higher priority public purposes go unfunded. This is a significant contributor to our current state budget crisis, but it isn't getting the attention it should. Earmarked revenues set up a classic conflict between concentrated benefit and diffuse cost: An agency (and its employees, contractors, and clients) that benefits from this arrangement will zealously defend its earmark, but the cost (finding revenue elsewhere for other government purposes) is spread over too many agencies and taxpayers to incite sufficient support to overcome agency resistance. Politicians respond to this imbalance of passion by backing off of earmark reform -- less hassle to impose a little tax hike on everyone or cut a small amount from a wide swath of government than to deal with the sound and fury of taking dedicated funding from a specific program.

I'll be voting no on Proposition No. 7.

The sixth of the seven charter change propositions on the City of Tulsa November 14, 2017, ballot would change the rules regarding the political involvement of city employees protected under civil service and sworn public safety employees. A yes vote on Proposition No. 6 would allow civil service city employees and firefighters to attend and speak at the public meetings of the City Council and any other municipal board and commission. They would also be allowed to campaign while off-duty and out of uniform.

Here are direct links to the current text of Tulsa City Charter, Article X, Section 10.1, Civil Service Commission and Merit System, Political Activities Prohibited and Tulsa City Charter, Article XI, Section 5.1, Fire Department, Political Activities Prohibited.

The mark-up below shows the how the text of Article X, Section 10.1, and Article XI, Section 5.1, would change if Proposition No. 6 is approved, with added text underlined, and deleted text stricken.

ARTICLE X. CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION AND MERIT SYSTEM.

Section 10.1. ‐ Political Activities Prohibited Permitted.

No person in the classified service shall take an active part in any campaign for the election of officers of the city, except to vote and privately state a personal opinion.

Municipal employees in the classified service may attend and express their views at city council meetings, or any other public meetings of municipal entities. Any municipal employee in the classified service may actively participate in partisan and nonpartisan political activities. Provided, the political activity in which the employee participates shall be exercised only during off‐duty hours and while not in uniform. Any federal statutes restricting the political activities of certain municipal employees shall supersede the provisions of this section as to such employees.

ARTICLE XI. FIRE DEPARTMENT

Section 5.1. ‐ Political Activities Prohibited Permitted.

No chief, officer, or sworn member of the Fire Department shall take an active part in any campaign for the election of officers of the city, except to vote and privately state a personal opinion.

Any chief, officer, or sworn members of the Fire Department may attend and express their views at city council meetings, or any other public meetings of municipal entities. Any chief, officer, or sworn member of the Fire Department may actively participate in partisan and nonpartisan political activities. Provided, the political activity in which the employee participates shall be exercised only during off‐duty hours and while not in uniform. Any federal statutes restricting the political activities of certain municipal employees shall supersede the provisions of this section as to such employees.

Prohibitions against soliciting campaign contributions would not be affected.

I can appreciate the proposition that city workers should be able to speak at public meetings, whether it is a situation unrelated to their job (a zoning case in their neighborhood) or an issue where their job knowledge could shed some valuable light.

The civil service bargain is this: The election result won't cost you your government job, but in exchange for that security, you agree not to act publicly to try to influence that result. This is the opposite of old spoils system, where public employees would campaign for incumbents in hopes of keeping their jobs and citizens would campaign for challengers in hopes of getting city jobs.

Even Franklin Roosevelt, that friend of organized labor and expander of government, opposed collective bargaining and strikes by public employee unions, seeing the hazard these practices would pose to the public interest. An unsavory alliance between public-employee unions and state and local elected officials have created political machines reminiscent of the old spoils system, and these political machines have driven local governments into default, unable to keep the promises that were used to buy the votes and volunteering of public-employee unions.

The current ban acts as a protection. A city employee whose political views might differ from the majority of his union can avoid having that dissent exposed in a way that could sour his relationships with union stewards, co-workers, and supervisors. When asked to campaign for a candidate or cause, he has a ready excuse to keep his views to himself. The proposed modification would strip that excuse away.

A more narrowly drafted modification allowing employees to speak on city issues would be worth considering, but a wholesale change to allow employees to campaign for or against the people who will decide their raises is a dangerous step in the direction of bankrupt cities across America. I'm voting no on Proposition No. 6.

MORE: A recent article in National Affairs details the rise of public-employee unions and the unique dangers posed by their participation in politics.

A 2012 Reuters story explains how San Bernardino, California, went from middle-class city to bankrupt basket case:

Yet on close examination, the city's decades-long journey from prosperous, middle-class community to bankrupt, crime-ridden, foreclosure-blighted basket case is straightforward -- and alarmingly similar to the path traveled by many municipalities around America's largest state. San Bernardino succumbed to a vicious circle of self-interests among city workers, local politicians and state pension overseers.

Little by little, over many years, the salaries and retirement benefits of San Bernardino's city workers -- and especially its police and firemen -- grew richer and richer, even as the city lost its major employers and gradually got poorer and poorer.

Unions poured money into city council elections, and the city council poured money into union pay and pensions. The California Public Employees' Retirement System (Calpers), which manages pension plans for San Bernardino and many other cities, encouraged ever-sweeter benefits. Investment bankers sold clever bond deals to pay for them. Meanwhile, state law made it impossible to raise local property taxes and difficult to boost any other kind.

No single deal or decision involving benefits and wages over the years killed the city. But cumulatively, they built a pension-fueled financial time-bomb that finally exploded.

MORE: City Finance Director Mike Kier writes, in his personal capacity, concerned that city employees who want to remain on the political sidelines lose their cover if Prop 6 is approved.

I am concerned that employee participation in political campaigns will undermine the existing merit system, which replaced a patronage system in the 1950s. Will employment decisions be based on merit, or will they be based on the employee's political activity? When political activities are allowed, they can be expected; and when expected they can be required. Employment decisions at all levels could be challenged as retaliation or reward for political activities. How will department heads and managers adjust to the political activities by employees or to expectations for their own activity? How will City Council staff members adjust from prohibited to allowed political activity, a change which most of the Council supports?

The fifth of the seven charter change propositions on the City of Tulsa November 14, 2017, ballot would change the makeup and responsibilities of the Election District Commission, which redraws the City Council district lines after each Federal decennial census. A yes vote on Proposition No. 5 would expand the size of the commission from three members to five, make all of them mayoral appointees, subject to council confirmation, and add contractors and city employees to the category of those ineligible to serve. The five-member commission would include two registered Republicans, two registered Democrats, and one registered independent. The commission's meetings would be subject to the state Open Meetings Act. A sentence added to Article VI, Section 10.2 would direct the commission to follow some specific criteria regarding boundaries, partisan composition, and racial and ethnic demographics.

Here is a direct link to the current text of Tulsa City Charter, Article VI, Section 10.1.

The mark-up below shows the how the text of Article VI, Sections 10.1 and 10.2 would change if Proposition No. 5 is approved, with added text underlined, and deleted text stricken.

SECTION 10.1. - ELECTION DISTRICT COMMISSION.

There is hereby created an Election District Commission which shall consist of five (5) three (3) members. The governing body of the two (2) political parties having the largest number of registered voters within the city as of the date of the preceding general election shall each appoint one (1) member of the Election District Commission. The Mayor shall appoint one (1) member, to be appointed by the Mayor subject to confirmation by a majority vote of the entire membership of the Council. Of the five (5) said members, two (2) shall be affitliated with the political party having the largest number of registered voters within the city as of the date of the preceding general election, two (2) shall be affiliated with the political party having the second largest number of such voters, and one (l) shall be an independent voter. Said members shall not have changed their political party affiliation within the last year. All members shall be registered voters and residents of the City of Tulsa. No two (2) of the members shall be residents of the same Council district at the time of their appointment. The appointments shall be made and the Election District Commission shall be organized no later than the 31st day of January, 1991, and no later than the 31st day of January 1st day of July, 2021, and no later than the 1st day of July of each tenth year thereafter. In the event the members of the Election District Commission are not appointed within the times herein provided, such appointments shall be made by the Presiding Judge of the District Court of Tulsa County. Persons holding an elected office shall be ineligible for appointment to the Election District Commission. No City of Tulsa employee, contractor or elected official shall be appointed to serve on the Election District Commission. If a vacancy shall occur in the Election District Commission, a qualified successor shall be appointed within twenty (20) days after the date the vacancy occurs as provided for original appointments.

SECTION 10.2. - ADJUSTMENT OF ELECTION DISTRICT BOUNDARIES.

The Election District Commission shall adjust the boundaries of Election Districts each ten (10) years after the completion of the Federal Decennial Census. The Election District Commission shall determine the population of the city and each existing election district according to the preceding Federal Decennial Census and shall prepare a proposed Election District Plan. The Election District Commission shall consider natural and neighborhood boundaries, shall disregard partisan considerations, and shall avoid diluting minority votes. Each district shall consist of contiguous, compact territory and be as nearly equal in population as possible. The district boundary lines shall conform with precinct boundary lines. The Election District Plan shall establish the population and boundaries of each election district. The proposed Election District Plan shall include a map and description of the districts. The Election District Commission shall hold at least one (1) public hearing on the proposed Election District Plan. Notice of the hearing shall be published in a newspaper of general circulation in the city at least ten (10) days prior to the date of the hearing. All meetings of the Election District Commission shall be open meetings as regulated by the Oklahoma Open Meeting Act, Title 25, Oklahoma Statutes, Section 301 and following.

If you scroll back through council minutes, you'll find alternative, rejected versions that would have allowed the City Auditor to serve or to nominate a member and that would have required members to reside in different quadrants of the city. Instead, the City Council chose a version that allows the mayor to pick all the members.

I will be voting no on Proposition No. 5. Long-time readers will know that fair redistricting has been a passion of mine for decades. In fact, it was the subject of my first published essay, in May 1991, back when condemnation of gerrymandering wasn't fashionable because Democrats were creating the gerrymanders.

The principle of separation of powers, with separate, co-equal institutions responsible for executive and legislative responsibilities, is a safeguard against corruption and tyranny. Giving the mayor the ability to pick all the members of the commission redrawing district lines gives him too much power over the body that is charged with scrutinizing his performance and keeping him in check.

By that measure, the existing system is already broken. In 2011, Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr not only had his own appointee to the commission under the charter, but a Bartlett Jr partisan was appointed by the GOP county chairman, giving Bartlett Jr and his Cockroach Caucus allies the ability to severely damage the reelection chances of the councilors he had alienated. Councilor John Eagleton, Bartlett Jr's most eloquent critic, was drawn out of his own District 7. Districts 3, 4, and 5 were redrawn to encompass a large number of new voters who would not have a relationship with the incumbent councilors, but would instead have their opinions formed by big-money campaigns painting them as bickering naysayers.

The new proposal doesn't fix the problem, but instead makes it worse. The council would have to confirm the mayor's appointments to the board under Proposition 5, but it is easy to imagine scenarios where a mayor would join with enough cronies on the council to form a majority. This cabal could fill the Election District Commission with minions who would redraw the lines to create safe seats for the mayor's friends and undermine any councilor who offered skepticism or resistance.

The redistricting problem is already well-constrained by the charter and amenable to an automated or semi-automated solution: You have about 180 precincts, and you have to distribute them into 9 contiguous groups of precincts with similar population. Define a few "core areas" encompassing communities of interest which ought to be included in a single district -- e.g., west of the river, the Money Belt, far north Tulsa -- then start the process by adding single precincts to each of these cores until the population is close to the ideal. Another approach would be to start with existing districts and make the minimal number of reassignments to make the numbers work.

If you must include people in the process, there are ways to create a commission that isn't compromised by self-interest. In 1991, I suggested using unsuccessful candidates to draw a rival redistricting plan; the voters would then decide between that plan and the legislature's plan. Constrained sortition is another approach: Let interested citizens apply to serve, lightly screen them with a test of geographical and numerical comprehension, and then draw nine names out of a hat to form the commission.

Like the election calendar, the redistricting process deserves careful and thorough examination and public debate, not a quick patch that seems

To adapt something I wrote in 2011 in advance of the first Republican-majority redistricting process at the State Capitol: Taking a fair approach to redistricting means preserving the right of voters to fire their representatives. It's a matter of accountability and fairness to the voters; fairness to the minority faction is merely a side effect. Lines ought to be drawn with regard to communities of interest, without regard to incumbent political interest.

The fourth of the seven charter change propositions on the City of Tulsa November 14, 2017, ballot would once again scramble our city election process. A yes vote on Proposition No. 4 would modify three separate sections of Article VI (Election and Qualification of Officers), with the effect that the three-stage system we currently have would be reduced to two stages, the June primary would be eliminated, the general election would be moved from November to August (the same date as the state runoff election), and what is now described as the general election in November would be called a runoff.

The mark-up below shows the how the text would change if Proposition No. 4 is approved, with added text underlined, and deleted text stricken.

SECTION 1.3. - GENERAL ELECTIONS.

In November in the year 2011, and in November In August in the year 2018, and in August each year thereafter in which an elected officer's term expires, a general election shall be held on the day specified by the laws of Oklahoma for the election of those officers whose terms expire.

SECTION 2.2. - ELECTION PROCEDURE.

In the calendar year of the adoption of this amendment of the Charter2018, and in each year thereafter in which an elected officer's term expires, a primarygeneral election shall be held in August on the day specified by the laws of Oklahoma, at which time the qualified electors of the city shall nominate candidates forfill the officeoffices of those whose terms expire. Only qualified electors residing in an election district may vote in the primary election for candidates for the office of Councilor for such election district. All qualified electors residing in the city may vote in the primary election for candidates for a city-wide office such as Mayor or City Auditor. If a candidate for office is unopposed at the primary election or becomes unopposed by death, disqualification or withdrawal, such candidate shall be deemed elected. If a candidate for an office receives more than fifty percent (50%) of all votes cast for that office at the primary election, such candidate shall be deemed elected. If only two (2) candidates file for an office, there shall be no primary election, and the names of the two (2) candidates shall be placed on the ballot at the general election. If more than two (2) candidates file for an office and no candidate receives more than fifty percent (50%) of all votes cast at the primary election for that office, the two (2) names of the several candidates for eachthe office receiving the greatest number of votes totaling fifty percent (50%) at such primary elections shall be deemed nominated and placed on the ballot at the generala run-off election, unless the number of votes for such two (2) candidates does not exceed fifty percent (50%) of all votes cast for that office; in that event the several candidates in November, on the day specified by the laws of Oklahoma, and the candidate receiving the greatest number of votes and for whom the votes cast at the primary election total at least fifty percent (50%) of all votes cast for that office shall participate in a run-off primary election in which the two (2) candidates for each office receiving the greatest number of votes at suchsaid run-off primary election shall be deemed nominated and placed onelected. In the ballot atevent of a tied vote among the generalsaid candidates, the election shall be decided by lot.

SECTION 3.4. - TIME OF FILING.

Beginning in the calendar year of the adoption of this amendment of the Charter 2018, Declarations of Candidacy shall be filed with the Secretary of the appropriate Election Board no earlier than 8:00 o'clock a.m. on the second Monday in April June and no later than 5:00 o'clock p.m. on the next succeeding Wednesday of any year in which an elected officer's term expires.

Here is a link to the current text of Tulsa City Charter Article VI.

The ballot title reads:

Shall the City Charter of the City of Tulsa, Article VI, 'Election and Qualification of Officers', be amended to hold elections for City offices in August of an election year, require candidates for City offices to file their candidacy in June, and provide for run-off elections, whenever necessary, in November?

Five times between 2006 and 2012 the City of Tulsa made significant changes to the election process: changed the election calendar, lengthened then shortened terms of office, converted elections from partisan to non-partisan. 2016 was the first mayoral election to be held reflecting all of those changes. This latest proposed change would be the sixth modification in 11 years. This instability reflects a failure by voters and councilors to think carefully about the electoral process as a complex system. The election process is too important to be subjected to ill-considered, whimsical alterations.

I've written what turned out to be a lengthy history of all the changes to Tulsa's city election process since the council-mayor form of government was adopted in 1989. Because it was so long, I've broken it out as a separate entry.

The proposed amendment on next Tuesday's ballot is intended to fix the long lame-duck problem that surfaced after the 2016 election, when challenger Tweedledee IV earned more than 50% of the vote against incumbent Mayor Tweedledum Jr in the June primary. The new mayor-elect had to wait five months before taking office. (I've seen worse: Rogers County Treasurer Jason Carini had to wait an entire year between defeating incumbent Cathy Pinkerton Smith in the June 2014 primary and taking office at the beginning of July 2015.)

The proposed fix will create other problems. The new proposal would have a general election in August on the same date as the state partisan runoff election and a top-two runoff, if no one wins a majority, in November. If a party primary for governor, senator, or congressman has no clear winner (very likely in 2018 with a half-dozen candidates already seeking to replace Mary Fallin), August could be a high-turnout election, with lopsided turnout for one party (Republican, most likely) having a lopsided effect on non-partisan city elections.

There are other methods to fix the problem exposed by the 2016 mayor's race. The process for electing non-partisan at-large district judge in our Judicial District has a primary if there are more than two candidates, and the top two candidates in the primary face each other on the November general election ballot, even if one of the candidates received a majority of the vote in the June primary (26 O. S. 11-112). This is because eight of our district judge positions are nominated by Tulsa County voters, one is nominated by Pawnee County voters, but both Tulsa and Pawnee Counties voters decide the winner in November.

Nevertheless the top-two-regardless process could be justified even if the universe of potential primary voters and the universe of potential general voters were coextensive. Voting history statistics suggest that large numbers of eligible voters sit out the primary and let the primary voters winnow the choices to a number they can get their minds around. I wonder how many City of Tulsa voters sat out last June's primary thinking they'd get to vote for the top two candidates in November. With those expectations at work, you could justify borrowing the judicial election rules so that the June vote only narrows the field and never picks the winner.

But the pros and cons of the proposal on the ballot, the proposal outlined above, the previous short-lived systems ought to be discussed and compared side-by-side before we approve any further changes to our election system. We need to have a thorough city-wide discussion about the kind of system we want. Do we want to separate city elections from federal elections, so that there can be more focus on city issues? Should we require charter amendments, bond issues, and tax increases to be considered only on general election ballots? Do we want a first-past-the-post system, simple and quick, but apt to give us officials without a majority mandate; a multi-tiered runoff system, which takes time, but allows voters to focus on smaller numbers of candidates in later stages; or instant runoff voting, quick, but requires voters to consider and rank all the candidates at the same time?

Until we have a commission on city elections to debate and evaluate the possibilities before making recommendations, I will be voting no on every piecemeal modification to the City of Tulsa election process.

ONE MORE THING: Prop. 4 would effectively convert Tulsa's election system into a Louisiana-style jungle primary. In a 2006 UTW column, I explained that a top-two single-runoff voting system can produce results like the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial primary, in which the two candidates that advanced to the runoff -- Edwin Edwards aka "the Crook" and David Duke aka "the Klansman" -- were widely despised by the population. Incumbent Gov. Buddy Roemer finished a very close third. Any one of several small contingencies could have produced a different result with a governor acceptable to a majority of the public.

Here is a brief history of all the changes to the City of Tulsa Charter, Article VI, Elections. That link leads to the current text of Article VI and the text of each change, with the ballot language and election results of each.

When Tulsa adopted a mayor-council form of government in 1989, it retained the same election schedule that had been used under the commission form of government, holding elections in the spring of even-numbered years, except that under the new charter the mayor's term was doubled from two to four years. As under the previous charter, elections remained partisan.

1990-1994: The three-day filing period began on the second Monday in January, party primaries were held on the first Tuesday in February, and the general election was held on the first Tuesday in March, except for the initial 1990 general election, which was set for the first Tuesday in April. Terms of office began first Monday in April, except for the initial terms under the new charter, which began on the first Monday in May.

1996-2006: At the 1994 general election, voters approved a charter change moving the general election one week later, to the second Tuesday in March. This schedule remained in place through the 2006 election cycle. The only change to the election process during this period was the addition of a $50 filing fee -- really a deposit, refundable if a candidate won the primary or general or achieved at least 15% of the vote.

It was toward the end of this period that the tinkering with the election process began in earnest.

2008: A 2006 ballot question moved the city primary and general elections, beginning in 2008, to coincide with state election dates in February and April and to reduce the number of times citizens had to go to the polls. Prior to that time, the primary was set for the first Tuesday, with school-board elections following on the second Tuesday, then the city general on the 2nd Tuesday in March, and school-board runoffs (if necessary) on the 1st Tuesday in April. The new charter language did not name a specific Tuesday but referred to whichever Tuesday of that month would be authorized in state statutes for an election; practically speaking, this would be the same dates specified by state statute for school elections.

But the 2008 Tulsa primary wasn't held in Februrary as prescribed by charter. Instead, at the request of the Tulsa County Election Board, it was moved to March, so as not to complicate the process of giving the correct ballots to each voter, with the partisan presidential and non-partisan school primaries occurring at the same election. They wanted to avoid the SNAFU of four years earlier, when the 2004 city primaries were held on the same date as a heavily-contested Democratic presidential primary. (Republican voters in at least one precinct were given Democratic city primary ballots, enough to exceed the margin of victory in the David Patrick vs. Roscoe Turner rematch. The election was declared invalid and the race had to be re-run; Turner won.)

Meanwhile, more radical changes to city government and the election schedule had been under discussion.

After grassroots candidates won a majority of the council seats in 2004, special interest groups (which collectively I referred to as the Cockroach Caucus) sought to undermine the result, first by targeting two councilors, Chris Medlock and Jim Mautino, with a recall election, held on July 12, 2005. Both councilors won the right to retain their seats by a wide margin. Next, many of the same individuals and groups launched a petition drive to add at-large seats to the City Council, diluting geographical representation. When that petition drive stalled, then-Mayor Bill LaFortune established a Citizens' Commission on City Government to study possible amendments to the charter. Chaired by Ken Levit and Hans Helmerich, the commission met over several months, then issued a final report in June 2006.

The commission recommended against a change to the structure of the City Council, but recommended moving to non-partisan elections and to moving the elections to the fall of odd-numbered years. The move to the fall would allow door-to-door campaigning in better weather and longer days, and new officials would have some months to get their bearings before having to produce a budget for the following fiscal year. The spring election calendar left little daylight for door-to-door campaigns, and new officials took office just in time to create next year's budget. The change to election dates was considered in 2007 as part of the standard charter amendment process, put on the April 2008 ballot, and was approved by the voters.

Non-partisan elections were not placed on the ballot by the City Council; in 2009 an initiative petition for non-partisan elections circulated by "Tulsans for Better Government" was ruled invalid in form and to have fallen short of the required number of signatures.

2009: Filing for city offices for three days beginning the second Monday in July, primary election on the state election date (second Tuesday) in September, and general election on the state election date in November (second Tuesday in odd-numbered years). This system, which had been vetted by a commission and subjected to extensive public debate, lasted only one election cycle.

2011: In 2009, some councilors got the idea that three-year staggered terms would be better -- wouldn't have to run as often, wouldn't have as much turnover at each election. In November 2009, at the very first general election held under the new fall, odd-year election schedule, voters foolishly approved the change. All nine seats were up for a vote in 2011, but the terms were one year for districts 1, 4, and 7, two years for 2, 5, 8, three years for 3, 6, 9, with all subsequent terms being three years. One of the awkward things about this plan was that council districts with terms expiring in odd-numbered years would have a September primary and a 2nd Tuesday in November general election, coinciding with the auditor's race and, every four years, the mayor's race, while council districts with terms expiring in even-numbered years would have an August primary coinciding with the state runoff election and a November general coinciding with the statewide or presidential election. A contentious senatorial runoff could completely change the numbers likely to turn out and vote in a council race, boosting the number of voters who hadn't been paying attention to the local races.

2012: In 2011, at the very first election under the system approved in 2009, voters approved yet another change, making elections non-partisan, and moving to a primary, runoff, general system to coincide with statewide and presidential elections. The amendment unwound the previous calendar reforms, setting Districts 1, 4, and 7 to go back to the two-year term beginning in 2012, and the remaining districts to serve truncated terms to start two-year terms beginning in 2014. The next mayor's race would remain in 2013, but the following election would be moved up to 2016 and coincide with presidential elections thereafter.

These changes got on the ballot by means of an initiative petition, backed by the same Cockroach Caucus (this time under the name "Save Our Tulsa") that had been trying for years to make it harder for grassroots candidates on a shoestring budget to win council seats. A councilor who didn't need big money to get elected wouldn't be beholden to the Cockroach Caucus. If they can't get back to the good old days when the City Commissioners all lived within a Par 5 of each other, they can at least make sure the councilors' string-pullers all live in the Money Belt. Statewide and presidential elections bring in a ton of voters who aren't paying attention to city issues and are likely to vote for the council candidate with the most expensive publicity -- at least that's the idea. Without a party label on the ballot, voters would have fewer clues to remind them for whom they intended to vote; this too would make voters more likely to vote for the candidates with the biggest budget.

The non-partisan proposal also created a system of three elections -- a primary in September, a runoff on some unspecified date (if no two candidates received a combined 50% of the vote in the primary), and a general election in November between the top two candidates remaining either from the primary or run-off primary. (I explained the process in detail here, although the method approved in 2011 had already been tweaked by the time the 2013 election rolled around.)

2013-present: A further amendment to Article VI, approved in June 2012, eliminated the language that set September as the primary election date, so that the city primary, runoff, and general election would be held on the same dates as the corresponding state elections, and it moved the city filing period from July to April in an attempt to match the state filing period (a claim made by the ballot title). But the language of the amendment set the filing period as the second Monday to the following Wednesday; meanwhile the state, in 2011, had changed its filing period to the second Wednesday to the following Friday. In most years, the city filing period would come first, with a day's overlap with the state filing period, but in years when April begins on Tuesday or Wednesday, the state filing period would be at the end of the first full week in April and the city filing period would be at the beginning of the following week.

In 2013, Bill Christiansen and two other candidates were eliminated in the June primary, there was no August runoff, and Dewey Bartlett Jr and Kathy Taylor were on the ballot in November. In 2016, there were only two well-financed candidates, and Tweedledum IV managed to defeat incumbent Tweedledee Jr and receive more than 50% of the vote in June, winning the election then and leaving a five month lame-duck period before the Mayor-elect would take office.

Proposition 4 on the November 2017 city special election ballot would revert to a two-tier non-partisan election system, with a general election on the same date as the August statewide/federal partisan runoff, and a runoff election, if necessary, on the same date as the November statewide/federal general election.

The third of the seven charter change propositions on the City of Tulsa November 14, 2017, ballot would permit councilors to approve resolutions with an emergency clause for immediate effect. A yes vote on Proposition No. 3 would modify Article II (City Council), Section 10 (Effective Date of Ordinances and Resolutions). The mark-up below shows the how the text would change if Proposition No. 3 is approved, with added text underlined, and deleted text stricken.

SECTION 10. EFFECTIVE DATE OF ORDINANCES AND RESOLUTIONS.

Ordinances adopting budgets, making appropriations, pertaining to local improvements and assessments, or and any ordinance or resolution adopted as an emergency measure shall take effect at the time stated therein. All other ordinances and resolutions shall take effect at the time stated therein, but not less than thirty (30) days from the date of first publication. Ordinances adopted by vote of the electors shall take effect at the time stated therein or, if no time be stated, thirty (30) days after the election. An ordinance or resolution adopted as an emergency measure to provide for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, welfare, or safety shall describe the emergency in a separate section. The vote of at least two-thirds ( 2/3 ) of the entire membership of the Council shall be required to adopt any ordinance or resolution as an emergency measure.

Here is a link to the current text of Tulsa City Charter Article II, Section 10.

The ballot title reads:

Shall the City Charter of the City of Tulsa, Article II, Section 10, 'Effective Date of Ordinances and Resolutions', be amended to clarify that the City of Tulsa may adopt resolutions as emergency measures, and state the effective time thereof, in the same manner as it does ordinances?

Once again, I would love to link you to video of the debate on this proposition, but there was no discussion at all when the Council voted to put this proposition on the ballot, and video from the June 21, 2017, Urban and Economic Development committee meeting is not available on the TGOVONLINE.com, which provides (or used to provide) on-demand access to recordings of official city meetings. The minutes for that meeting indicate only that Senior Assistant City Attorney Bob Edmiston spoke and that the proposition would move forward.

Whoever drafted this amendment doesn't seem to understand the difference between AND and OR in describing sets. The current language of the section lists four different classes of ordinances which go into effect at the stated time, without a minimum 30-day delay. An ordinance which falls into any of those four classes avoids the waiting period. The new language changes the "or" to an "and": An ordinance would have to adopt a budget AND appropriate funds AND pertain to local improvements and assessments AND contain an emergency clause in order to go into immediate effect. I don't believe this was the intent. Breaking that first sentence into two would have made it easier to express the intended logic clearly. "Ordinances adopting budgets, making appropriations, or pertaining to local improvements and assessments shall take effect at the time stated therein. Any ordinance or resolution adopted as an emergency measure shall take effect at the time stated therein." Or if you must lump it into one sentence: "Ordinances adopting budgets, making appropriations, or pertaining to local improvements and assessments, or any ordinance or resolution adopted as an emergency measure shall take effect at the time stated therein."

This is clearly intended to be a housekeeping amendment, whose intent is already present in the later sentences of the same section, but a housekeeping amendment should not leave a bigger mess than it purports to tidy. I'll vote NO on Proposition 3 and hope that the City Council will check with a homeschooled eighth-grader about Boolean algebra and logical expressions before they try again.

The second of the seven charter change propositions on the City of Tulsa November 14, 2017, ballot would permit City Councilors to be notified of special meetings electronically. A yes vote on Proposition No. 2 would modify Article II (City Council), Section 3.1 (Meetings). The mark-up below shows the how the text would change if Proposition No. 2 is approved, with added text underlined. If this proposition is approved, no text would be deleted.

SECTION 3.1. MEETINGS.

The Council shall meet regularly at such times and places as the Council shall fix by ordinance; provided, that the Council shall hold not less than two (2) regular meetings each month at the City Hall. The Mayor, the Chairman of the Council, or one-third (1/3) of the members of the Council may call special meetings of the Council upon written notice electronically transmitted to each member of the Council or served personally on or left at the usual place of residence of each member of the Council, at least twenty-four (24) hours prior to such meeting and upon such further notice as is required by the laws of Oklahoma. The notice shall state the date, time and place of the meeting and the subjects to be considered. No subjects other than those stated in the notice shall be considered at the special meeting.

Here is a link to the current text of Tulsa City Charter Article I, Section 3.

The ballot title reads:

Shall the City Charter of the City of Tulsa, Article II, Section 3.1, 'Meetings', be amended to allow the required notice of special meetings of the City Council to be delivered to Councilors electronically?

Public notice of special meetings is under the State of Oklahoma's Open Meetings statute.

Once again, I would love to link you to video of the debate on this proposition, but there was no discussion at all when the Council voted to put this proposition on the ballot, and video from the June 21, 2017, Urban and Economic Development committee meeting is not available on the TGOVONLINE.com, which provides (or used to provide) on-demand access to recordings of official city meetings. The minutes for that meeting indicate only that Senior Assistant City Attorney Bob Edmiston spoke and that the proposition would move forward.

I would hope for some more specific language in city ordinance defining what constitutes "electronically transmitted." Text message? Facebook message with "seen" notification. E-mail with delivery acknowledgement? I've seen critical messages I've sent fail to reach some of the recipients or get stuck in a spam trap. I've known of the same thing happening with messages sent to me. But that level of specificity isn't needed in the City Charter. I'm inclined to vote YES on Proposition 2.

The first of the seven charter change propositions on the City of Tulsa November 14, 2017, ballot has to do with abatement of nuisances, specifically with repeat offenders. A yes vote on Proposition No. 1 would modify Article I (Corporate Powers), Section 3 (General Grant of Power), Paragraph O. The mark-up below shows the how the text would change if Proposition No. 1 is approved, with added text underlined. If this proposition is approved, no text would be deleted.

SECTION 3. GENERAL GRANT OF POWER.

Subject only to such limitations imposed by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, by the Constitution and such laws of Oklahoma binding upon cities adopting charters for their own government under the authority granted by Article XVIII, section 3, of the Constitution of Oklahoma, and by the provisions of this amended Charter, the City of Tulsa shall have the power:

O. To abate nuisances of any kind, and summarily to abate any nuisance re-occurring on the same property under the same ownership, within twenty-four (24) months of previous nuisance abatement on that property, and to assess the expense thereof as a special tax against the land upon which the nuisance is located; and

Here is a link to the current text of Tulsa City Charter Article I, Section 3.

The ballot title reads:

Shall the City Charter of the City of Tulsa, Article I, Section 3, 'General Grant of Power', Paragraph 'O' be amended to clarify that the City of Tulsa may summarily abate a nuisance re-occurring on the same property under the same ownership within twenty-four (24) months of a previous nuisance abatement on that property?

The abatement process is described in Title 24 (Nuisances) of Tulsa Revised Ordinances. A nuisance can involve anything from high weeds to junk vehicles to meth labs to public indecency to illegal gambling to wild animals. City inspectors notify the owner that a nuisance exists, the owner has a set period to correct the problem himself, at which point the city can take care of the problem (e.g., mowing an overgrown lot, bulldozing an abandoned building) and impose the cost of abatement on the property owner as a tax. There is a process of notice, hearing, and appeal, but if there is a second violation within two years of the previous nuisance, the city can clean up the nuisance without notifying the owner, a summary abatement. This also resets the 24-month clock for further summary abatements.

That this on the ballot indicates that there is some question whether the existing ordinance calling for summary abatement for repeat offenses is permitted under the language of the charter, which mentions abatement, but not summary abatement. I would love to link you to video of the debate on this proposition, but there was no discussion at all when the Council voted to put this proposition on the ballot, and video from the June 21, 2017, Urban and Economic Development committee meeting is not available on the TGOVONLINE.com, which provides (or used to provide) on-demand access to recordings of official city meetings. The minutes for that meeting indicate only that Senior Assistant City Attorney Bob Edmiston spoke and that the proposition would move forward.

While I can see the potential for abuse of summary abatement, I can also see the need. Given that this procedure is already in place, and that this proposition clarifies that it is permitted under the City Charter, this appears to be a housekeeping amendment, and I am inclined to vote YES.

Appreciate the hours of effort behind detailed analysis you can't find anywhere else? Hit the tip jar!

It may come as some surprise to you that the City of Tulsa is holding a special election four weeks from today, Tuesday, November 14, 2017. There won't be any names on the ballot, nor any taxes or general obligation bonds. The ballot will consist of seven proposed amendments to the City Charter which were approved by the City Council over the course of the summer.

While the required public notices have been issued, and the proposals received some attention by news outlets, the official city websites seem to be ignoring the election. As of this writing, the election does not appear in the Calendar of Events on the official City Of Tulsa homepage:

CityOfTulsa-homepage-20171017-1750.png

Nor is there any mention of the election on the Tulsa City Council homepage, current news page, or archived news page (click to view screenshots of each), or on the official
Twitter accounts of the City of Tulsa or the Tulsa City Council.

1. Summary nuisance abatement
2. Electronic notice of Special Meeting
3. City resolutions with Emergency Clause
4. City elections to be moved to August
5. Change in membership of Election District Commission
6. Permit political activities by civil service employees and sworn public safety officers
7. Attempt to constrain funds generated by public safety tax

(UPDATE: As a supplement to my commentary on Prop 4, I have written a timeline of the ridiculous number of changes Tulsa has made to its election process. Five changes were made in the six-year period between 2006 and 2012.)

For the fourth or fifth time in the last 10 years (I've lost count), we will be voting on tinkering with election dates. Two other proposals would have an impact on elections -- the composition of the Election District Commission and allowing city employees under civil service protection to participate in political activity.

An election resolution for the first five of the proposed amendments was approved by the City Council on July 12, 2017, and approved by Mayor G. T. Bynum IV on July 17, 2017. Resolutions sending the sixth and seventh proposed amendments to the voters were approved on August 16, 2017.

Here is the sample ballot for the City of Tulsa November 14, 2017, special election.

Because the City Council chose to put these items on the ballot at a time when no state elections are being held, City of Tulsa taxpayers will bear the cost of opening nearly 200 polling places. According to 26 O. S. 13-311, these expenses include, but are not limited to "compensation for members of each precinct election board, per diem and mileage for the chairman and vice chairman of the county election board, the cost of supplies and ballots and the rental of polling places."

Over the next week or so, I will analyze each proposal in detail -- show precisely what charter language is being changed, report, based on City Council minutes and meeting videos, on who proposed it and their rationale, report on objections raised by councilors, city staffers, and others, and give you my analysis and conclusions about each amendment.

UPDATED to add links to later entries discussing the individual propositions. On 2017/11/09, I changed the description of Proposition No. 7 from "Lockbox for funds generated by public safety tax" to "Attempt to constrain funds generated by public safety tax," which is a more accurate description.

Walt Helmerich III, whose foundation donated $1 million toward the 1991 purchase of the riverfront property now known as Helmerich Park, and who served on the board of the bank that owned the land, rebuffed an overture from a private developer who wanted to create a "major mixed-use entertainment, recreational, retail and office complex" on the site, according to a sworn declaration by Rodger Randle, who was Mayor of Tulsa when the land was acquired. The city's half of the purchase price was paid out of the Park Facilities Improvements Account of the surplus from the 1985 Third Penny Sales Tax fund.

Randle's history of the park's acquisition provides some important context in the dispute over the city's proposed sale of part of the park at the corner of 71st and Riverside for commercial development.

In March 1991, according to Randle, Helmerich contacted him, offering to raise private funds for half of the $4.5 million purchase price for the 67 acres between 71st Street and Joe Creek, Riverside Drive, and the Arkansas River.

At about the same time, Randle writes, local zoning attorney John Moody approached him on behalf of an out-of-state developer with a plan for commercial development for the land, telling Randle that the developer would seek to purchase the land from the bank. Randle attempted to arrange a meeting between Moody and Helmerich, so that Moody could present his plan, but Helmerich was not interested:

Mr. Helmerich was a member of the board of the First National Bank. Helmerich was also an avid supporter of public parks. I was informed that Mr. Helmerich wanted to cancel the meeting and was not interested in Moody's proposal. I directed a member of my staff to inform Mr. Moody that the meeting had been canceled.

Later in the declaration, Randle explains the constraints created by the "Brown Ordinance" process, which ensures that Third-Penny sales tax funds are spent as promised and which imposes a process for amendment intended to draw public attention to any proposed changes, including the expenditure of surplus funds:

In this case, we were allocating the surplus funds specifically to the Park Facilities Improvements account of the 1985 third-penny sales tax. Had we wanted to include the future option of this land being developed by a private party for economic development purposes we would have allocated all or part of the surplus 1985 sales tax funds to acquire the property to the sale tax's Urban and Economic Development category as we did other items in the 1985 third penny sales tax ordinance, TRO, Title 43-B, §§ 100, et seq., as amended. We did not do this because itwas our intent to use the property exclusively as a City park....

In my opinion, any sale of any part of the park property for a commercial shopping center, such as is proposed in this case, would be a violation of this ordinance, an attempt to divert the funds to other purposes or projects and a breach of official City policy as clearly established in 1991.

Randle also explained the decision to put the property in the name of the Tulsa Public Facilities Authority:

Prior to closing on the property, city staff recommended that formal legal title be held by TPFA, as was done with the convention center. Why this was done is not clear to me but had something to do with achieving maximum flexibility regarding municipal bond financing for possible recreation facilities at the park. At no time was it contemplated that the park could or would be sold for private commercial development.

As a Title 60 trust, TPFA would be able to issue bonds against its own anticipated revenue. This suggests to me that they were considering the possibility of revenue-generating activity on the site as a means of financing recreational facilities -- perhaps concessions renting bicycles or canoes, a rentable facility for events, a snack bar or cafe. In this situation, TPFA would have borrowed against anticipated revenues from these activities to build the facilities to house them, without requiring additional taxpayer investment. Such a scenario wouldn't make sense unless you intended to keep the land under public ownership.

The copy of Randle's statement that I received was an attachment to a letter from attorney James L. Sturdivant to Mayor G. T. Bynum IV. The late Tulsa philanthropist Patti Johnson Wilson was Sturdivant's client and was one of about 30 contributors to the $1.25 million in private donations that was added to the Helmerich $1 million and the city's $2.25 million to purchase the land for the park. Sturdivant writes, "I do not know the amount of her contribution but I do know Patti would not have given money to the City to engage in a land play. She certainly would have given to acquire a park."

Sturdivant and Randle both expressed concern about the impact of the park land's sale on future donors. Sturdivant writes, "Will future donors worry about the City taking their money, buying park land, then selling it?" Randle stated, "[Selling the land for commercial development] was never contemplated because it would undercut the City's future ability to seek private donations for other projects. Donors would be uncertain that their funds would be used as intended. In this case, in addition to Mr. Helmerich, almost thirty other private parties contributed."

The complete text of Randle's declaration follows the jump:

The Oklahoma Supreme Court voted unanimously today to allow Tulsa residents to move forward with a lawsuit against the City of Tulsa and the Tulsa Public Facilities Authority over the proposed sale of part of Helmerich Park to a private developer. Here is a statement from Save Helmerich Park, the citizen group opposing the sale of park land:

The Oklahoma Supreme Court today denied the City of Tulsa's and the Tulsa Public Facility Authority's request for the Court to assume original jurisdiction in the pending lawsuit to stop the sale of land in Helmerich Park to a private developer.

The Court's decision was unanimous. The City of Tulsa and the Tulsa Public Facilities Authority (TPFA) had escalated their efforts to bar Tulsa citizens' access to the Courthouse contrary to Article II, § 6 of the Oklahoma Constitution which provides: "The courts of justice of the State shall be open to every person, and speedy and certain remedy afforded for every wrong and for every injury to person, property, or reputation; and right and justice shall be administered without sale, denial, delay, or prejudice."

By filing a Writ of Prohibition with the Oklahoma State Supreme Court, the City and the TPFA directly challenged Tulsa District Court Judge Jefferson D. Sellers' decision to deny a motion to dismiss the suit filed by Tulsan Craig Immel on August 11, 2015, which was amended and joined by four other Tulsans in January 2016.

For a year and a half, attorneys for the City and the TPFA agreed that Tulsa County District Court was the proper place to hear this controversy and agreed the plaintiffs were proper parties to bring the lawsuit to prevent the sale of land in Helmerich Park. But at the eleventh hour - apparently anticipating a loss in District Court - the Mayor and the TPFA directed their attorneys to reverse course and sought to prevent Tulsa citizens and taxpayers from having a say in the proposed sale of publicly-owned parkland and the potential misappropriation of city tax dollars.

The plaintiffs are resolute in their position, presented a vigorous written and oral response to the City's attempt to deny citizens and taxpayers access to the court system.

The lawsuit now returns to the jurisdiction of District Court Judge Jefferson Sellers for trial.
Speaking on behalf of the plaintiffs, former Tulsa Mayor Terry Young expressed pleasure with the decision.

"We're prepared to fight this in District Court and we believe we have the winning arguments," Young said.

Young added, "It's time for the Dallas-based developer - UCR - to withdraw from the sale contract and go home."

There are those who worry about the influence of the wealthy on federal politics but are quite blasé about the influence of the wealthy on local politics.

That slobbery, smooching sound you heard Saturday was Wayne Greene's column in the Saturday, December 31, 2016, Tulsa World, telling all of us we should accept with thanks and praise every perfect gift that comes from Our Kaiser Above.

The specific occasion is the news that a north Tulsa property owner has refused to sell his dream home and the acreage it sits on to the George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF), land that GKFF wants for an industrial park.

The triangle of land between 36th Street North, Mohawk Blvd, Peoria and Lewis Avenues is largely undeveloped. Dirty Butter Creek and its tributaries converge here, making it susceptible to flooding, which may explain why it was passed over by developers during Tulsa's period of northward suburban expansion in the 1950s.

This inexpensive land afforded some families the possibility of building their dream home, surrounded by woods, but close to the conveniences of the city. Along the north side of Mohawk Blvd, far from the creeks, several attractive, large homes were built on small acreages. All but one of these have now been acquired and removed; one remains, owned by Charles and Rebecca Williams, and they have refused to take an offer that is twice the assessor's estimate of their property's value.

The Tulsa World published a story about the Williamses early last week. A few mildly negative comments about Kaiser on that article prompted Greene's column.

It's ironic that whoever headlined Greene's column used the term "local hero" to refer to George Kaiser. There's a movie called Local Hero, one of my all-time favorites, set in a little seaside village in Scotland. The hero of the title is the one property owner who refuses to sell to an American billionaire for a massive industrial project.

Let's examine a few of the things Greene says in his column:

The city's $10 million infrastructure participation in the project was thoroughly debated during the Vision tax extension process. It had the support of the municipal political leadership for the area at the time and was approved by the City Council. Subsequently, voters signed off on the Vision package, including the industrial park.

I suspect the only topic of debate was "will this project get more votes for the dams?" As I wrote back before the vote, the suspiciously round numbers allocated for many of the projects suggest that no serious effort was made to estimate the actual cost for the proposed projects. "If I were a cynic, I might believe that the City Council had no interest in whether these projects were feasible or appropriately budgeted. I might believe, were I a cynic, that these items were included just to get a few more hundred voters to the polls in the mood to vote yes on everything." What exactly was $10 million supposed to cover? It looks like a payola project -- not a serious effort to fund a well-defined project.

The "municipal political leadership for the area at the time" appears to refer to City Councilor Jack Henderson. Northside community leaders complained that the priorities expressed by residents were ignored by Henderson and the council in favor of their own pet projects. Projects associated with a long-term neighborhood planning effort for the 36th Street North corridor were left on the cutting-room floor. Henderson lost his bid for re-election this November to one of the leading critics of his choice of projects.

As to how thoroughly it was debated: Going back through news coverage prior to the election, I find nothing that specified where the proposed industrial park would be located, nothing more specific than "North Peoria." It appears that it was only after the vote took place that the specific location, which isn't even adjacent to Peoria Ave., was identified.

In hindsight, it appears that the reason the 36th Street North small area plan was ignored in Vision Tulsa is because it conflicted with GKFF's intentions and two years of behind-the-scenes land acquisition. Neighborhood stakeholders, working with city planners, identified the undeveloped land between Dirty Butter Creek, Mohawk, and 36th Street North as ripe for new single-family residential development, not as the site for a major industrial facility. Was there anyone on the City Council or in the Mayor's office who would champion the wishes of local residents over the plans of a billionaire's foundation? There used to be. Now we have a mayor who used to be a lobbyist for the billionaire's foundation.

Greene mistakenly believes the new Macy's distribution center will be in Owasso:

Eventually, the project is envisioned to be the home to 1,000 quality jobs, which could be the beginning of the economic turnaround north Tulsa has wanted for years. Want to know why the Macy's distribution center ended up in Owasso and not Tulsa? Owasso had a site that was ready to go. Tulsa didn't.

While it's true that the Macy's center site is near Owasso, and the land used to be owned by an entity called the Owasso Land Trust (despite the name, a commercial entity, not governmental), the site is actually within the City of Tulsa's municipal fence line -- unincorporated land that Tulsa could annex but which is protected against annexation by Owasso or any other city or town. (Presumably Tulsa does not annex this property or other nearby facilities in the Cherokee Industrial Park because it's more attractive to businesses if they don't have to pay city sales tax, use tax, or property tax and if they don't have to put up with city regulations.)

A bit further on in the column, Greene praises the many donations GKFF has made to keep local non-profits running. He continues:

Of course, that hardly scratches the surface of the efforts of the Kaiser foundation to improve Tulsa. From the city's national model early childhood education program to the game-changing A Gathering Place for Tulsa under construction along Riverside Drive, almost all of the good things going on in our community have the leadership (and funding) of the Kaiser foundation.

Whatever you may think of the two specific items mentioned in this paragraph, that last line goes way over the top in its praise of GKFF, or else it reveals Greene's tunnel vision, limiting civic life to a handful of big, highly publicized projects. I could list dozens of job-creating companies, innovative entrepreneurs, charitable and educational initiatives, none of which have anything to do with Kaiser or his foundation.

As to those two examples: Research has failed to show a positive impact on learning outcomes for all the massive public and private investment in putting what we used to call preschool-aged children into classrooms. Making it more affordable for one parent to stay home, parents being married and staying married, connection with a faith community all do more to help children learn and grow. The Gathering Place looks like it will be a lovely park, but hardly "game-changing." GKFF is putting another park in walking distance of a number of other lovely parks and some of Tulsa's wealthiest neighborhoods, while working-class neighborhoods often lack parks, shopping, or any other outdoor space where neighbors might gather. North Tulsa has been particularly hard hit with the removal of recreation centers and swimming pools in recent years.

Greene confesses to having a small flowering plant related to the pea and legume families with GKFF:

You can complain about whatever your particular vetch is with the Kaiser foundation. Personally, I wish the Gathering Place project would get done faster. I miss running along the river and when I drive south the Peoria Avenue detour taunts me with the memories of Riverside Drive.

But that doesn't prevent me from recognizing that my relatively minor inconveniences and the hundreds of millions of dollars marshaled by the Kaiser foundation are going to one day give Tulsa one of the most magnificent community parks in the world, the sort of thing that could help propel Tulsa socially and economically.

I think he means "kvetch," a Yiddish word that can either be a verb (to complain) or a noun (a persistent complainer). One dictionary says it can be used to mean "complaint," but I've never come across that.

The notion that a park, however magnificent, could "propel Tulsa socially and economically" again reveals that Greene's view of civic life is far too narrow.

Greene's little complaint ought to stir a doubt in his mind: How is it that a private organization is granted permission to shut down major public thoroughfares for two years? Even public construction projects are rarely permitted to shutdown a road completely. Ordinarily, public need and convenience would be balanced against the presumed cost and schedule savings of a total shutdown.

That GKFF was able to get a two-year total shutdown of Riverside Drive and the Midland Valley Trail without a murmur of protest from city officials ought to frighten Greene. We can be appreciative of a billionaire's generosity, but we need city officials and the media to remain on guard, to scrutinize his plans and his actions, particularly as they interact with public infrastructure and public policy.

There are strong incentives for city officials and columnists to be good yacht guests, fending off criticisms and keeping their own qualms to themselves. They might want GKFF's support for their own pet projects. They might hope someday to work for a GKFF-funded organization or might have a relative who works for one. The elected officials don't want Kaiser and affiliated donors and PACs to fund an opponent in the next election.

Wouldn't it be lovely if Tulsa had leaders willing to defend plans developed by their fellow citizens against changes pushed by billionaires? We did, about 10 years ago, but they've all been run off and replaced with rubber stamps. I won't hold my breath waiting for things to change.

MORE: There's an interesting pattern in the sales records for the parcels that are proposed to become an industrial park. Nearly all of the parcels I checked were first acquired by Mapleview Acquisitions I LLC, whose registered agent is former Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission chairman Joseph M. Westervelt. Many of the properties were then conveyed to NP36 LLC (registered agent Frederic Dorwart) in a multi-parcel transaction on December 8, 2016, although some parcels appear to be owned still by Mapleview Acquisitions I LLC, according to records on the county assessor's website. Westervelt is notable for his efforts to frustrate and undermine implementation of the Pearl District small-area plan; makes sense that he'd be involved in a development that undermines the 36th Street North small-area plan.

Newly sworn-in Tulsa Mayor G. T. Bynum IV has appointed outgoing mayor Dewey F. Bartlett Jr. to the City of Tulsa-Rogers County Port Authority.

The Tulsa World published a list of 52 appointments by Bynum IV to authorities, boards, and commissions. By my quick count, 23 are reappointments to the same position on the same board. The "new" appointments include the familiar names of frequent appointees to boards and commissions and City Hall insiders. A few examples: Longtime trash board member Cheryl Cohenour to the Greater Tulsa Indian Affairs Commission, former Metropolitan Environmental Trust chief Michael Patton to the trash board, Bama Pie chairman Paula Marshall to the Port Authority, school board member Lana Turner-Addison to the Sales Tax Overview Committee, former State Rep. Darrell Gilbert to the Ethics Advisory Commission.

Some reappointments hint at the likely direction of the Bynum administration -- namely no change in direction. Bynum has reappointed Toby Jenkins, head of Oklahomans for Forcing Other Oklahomans to Pretend There's No Difference Between Natural Marriage and Gay "Marriage," to the Human Rights Commission. Both appointments to the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission are reappointments, so if you bet that Bynum would take a fresh approach to development and land use, you just lost your bet. Ditto for the two reappointments to the Tulsa Development [Urban Renewal] Authority.

I see no reason to stop referring to the new mayor and the old mayor as Tweedledee IV and Tweedledum Jr. Politicians used to promise a chicken in every pot. Under Mayor Bynum IV, we'll have water in the river and a perverted man in every ladies' locker room. Prosperity is just around the corner!

The City Council and the Mayor didn't need to put Vision Tulsa on a special April ballot. The Vision 2025 tax doesn't expire until December 31. They had plenty of time to perform due diligence, get solid estimates, consider consequences and hidden costs, but they wanted it on a low-turnout election date, and it was all about getting approval for the dams.

Now we're learning about some of those hidden costs and our dear sweet city councilors are expressing regrets. Jarrel Wade reports in the Tulsa World:

City officials gave city councilors details Thursday on millions of dollars the city eventually will need to support the hiring of additional police officers and firefighters with Vision Tulsa money.

Adding more than 160 police officers and 65 firefighters to the public-safety ranks will require direct support from other city departments, including information technology, human resources, asset management and medical.

IT Department costs alone for the technology involved in policing will run about $645,000 per year, city officials estimated.

All told, the estimated cost of supporting the additional staff eventually will reach almost $2 million per year that wasn't specifically added to Vision Tulsa's public safety permanent tax.

But it's OK, because we won't hire all those officers overnight, so it'll be a while before those support costs will be realized.

Paying for it out of the tax proceeds would mean less money to hire police officers and firefighters. But finding the money in the city's general fund would mean more burden on already restricted funding for other departments -- a burden that the public-safety tax was designed to alleviate.

But it's OK because the councilors are really, really sorry they rushed this to a ballot before analyzing the costs.

[Councilor Phil] Lakin and Councilor Anna America said they regret that the support costs of the public-safety tax weren't specifically built into the package.

"We should have thought through better, earlier, and said, 'Hey, let's make sure we accommodate this,' " America said, saying Thursday's report is a lesson for future packages.

"No funding package should go through without this kind of analysis happening first and making sure that we accommodate that in the funding package."

I believe I said something like that, very early in the process:

Not only is the proposed package far from a cohesive vision, but the Basis of Estimate (BoE) -- the details that justify the amount budgeted -- for each item is dreadfully inadequate. There's reason to believe that the estimates are way off, which means that some ideas that could be funded won't be, and other ideas will be promised (like the low-water dams in Vision 2025, or the juvenile justice facililty in Four to Fix the County) and attract votes, but won't have any possibility of being built without going back to the voters for more money....

The better path would be for the Council to whittle down the list and propose a shorter-term (five years, max), pay-as-you-go (no "advanced funding" line item for interest and bond fees) sales tax that funded only those items that were of general public benefit and had been thoroughly vetted for feasibility and an accurate estimate of cost.

Dear Councilors Lakin and America: Be grown-ups, take responsibility for your failure to do your job, and resign.

Save Helmerich Park posted the following comment from R. Dobie Langenkamp, former Director of the National Energy Law and Policy Institute and Chapman Distinguished Professor of Energy Law at the University of Tulsa Law School, about the business flaws of the Tulsa Public Facilities Authority effort (with Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr's enthusiastic approval) to sell 9 acres of Helmerich Park for a commercial development, reciting some of the history of the property and analyzing the price against the market value of land near major intersections. Even if you don't have a problem with selling off riverfront parkland, you ought to have a problem with the city selling a valuable piece of property at a major intersection without competitive bidding.

Dear Friends of Helmerich Park.

Craig Immel, Terry Young, Herb Beattie, and Greg Bledsoe have spelled out the legal and policy flaws regarding the Helmerich Park decision. Let's look at the deal from a business standpoint. Do so and you will agree with me that it is absurd if not suspect.

The entire 60-plus acres was mortgaged over 30 years ago to the First National Bank for $12.5 million. Surely its appraisal at that time substantially exceeded that amount. The Bank foreclosed on it and Walt Helmerich arranged for the purchase for the City from the bank (he was a member of the board) for $4.5 million. He raised $2.5 million from public spirited friends (Who attended a breakfast at the Tulsa Club for $800 each) and Roger Randle as Mayor came up with the remaining $2.5 million announcing that the land would be used for a park to be exceeded in size only by Mohawk.

The developer - possibly using REI as a bait and switch - has proposed to buy the key nine (9) acres - the "cream" as it were - for $895,000 ($1.465 million less a $570,000 credit to the developer in return for on-site infrastructure improvements). This amounts to less than $2.50 per square foot. Ask any of your realty friends what a corner on two major thoroughfares is worth these days. The numbers I get are from $10 and up. The entire 60-acre parcel was worth about $5.00 a foot when the First National Bank took the $12.5 million mortgage on it 30 years ago. This corner lot should be appraised before further action. such an appraisal would indicate a value of 5 million or more (400,000 sq ft x $10).

This option to the developer was given for virtually nothing ($5,000, refundable consideration) and has just been extended until August for exercise without additional consideration.

Initially, Tulsa was told the parcel sought would be for REI alone - after Clay Bird has finished his no competition sweetheart deal - it was for a full 9 acres for an entire shopping center not specifically requiring the involvement of REI.

Why are Dewey and Clay Bird giving this park parcel away without an appraisal or a public bidding procedure?

Why is Dewey hell bent on seeing that this particular Dallas developer gets this park property for a song?

Grand Juries have been impaneled for less.

R. Dobie Langenkamp

Save Helmerich Park adds this note: "The former Luby's parcel diagonally across the intersection from this corner of Helmerich Park - 2.48 acres/108,217 square feet - has a 2016 value of $3.695 million. If my math is correct, that is over $34.00 per square foot."

Remember, Mayor Bartlett Jr supports this deal, and not one member of the City Council opposed changing the comprehensive plan to facilitate the deal. (G. T. Bynum IV recused himself.) If this bugs you, as it should, you have until 5 p.m. Wednesday to file to run against these mis-representatives.

If you take time to read the Vision Tulsa ballot resolutions and ordinances that define the new city sales tax rate and control how the new city sales taxes will be spent, the barrage of changing tax rates and effective dates may make your head swim. That's why I put together an infographic to help me visualize those changes. This infographic revealed a trap, a hidden tax hike that Dewey Bartlett Jr., G. T. Bynum IV, and the rest of the City Council hope you overlook.

Proponents claim that Vision Tulsa won't increase the overall sales tax rate, but there's a hidden trap in Proposition 3 that will force voters in 2021 to accept a hike in the overall tax rate in order to continue the longstanding "Third Penny" for streets and other basic infrastructure.

This chart shows the current allocation of City of Tulsa and Tulsa County sales taxes, with the proposed changes on the April 5, 2016, ballot highlighted with a heavy black boundary. Blue regions are permanent taxes for operations, orange regions are temporary taxes primarily for basic infrastructure capital improvements like streets and sewers, purple regions are "vision" taxes primarily for amenities and "economic development." City taxes are shown with darker shades, county taxes with lighter shades.

Tulsa_Sales_Tax-Rate_Shifts-Timeline.png

Tulsa County's "Vision 2025" 0.6% sales tax expires at the end of 2016. The City of Tulsa is proposing a combination of temporary and permanent taxes that begins at 0.55% for 4½ years, climbs to 1.15% for 4 years, shrinks back to 0.65% for 6½ years, and then leaves a permanent increase of 0.345%. Tulsa County is proposing a 0.05% increase for 15 years.

Starting in 1980, Tulsa citizens have approved a series of temporary sales taxes, earmarked for streets, reservoirs, sewers, stormwater system, and other fundamental city infrastructure. Because the original tax was an additional 1% levied on top of the 2% sales tax for the city's general fund, it became known as the "Third Penny."

The current "Third Penny" is 1.1% and it expires on June 30, 2021. If Vision Tulsa passes, it will grab a half-penny from that expiring "Third Penny" and put it toward Proposition 3, which includes building two new low-water dams in the Arkansas River. Another 0.1% from the expiring tax will go to increasing the permanent tax for public safety operational costs. That leaves only a ½ penny for a new streets package.

That four-year bulge in the Vision Tulsa tax amounts to $160 million that won't be going to rebuild our crumbling streets. Instead, that's just about what it will cost to build two new dams in the river.

If we VOTE NO on APRIL 5, the Council can eliminate the dams and a couple of other wasteful projects, and thus eliminate that four-year, ½-penny bulge in the Vision Tulsa tax, before sending it back to us for another vote. That would leave room for our traditional "Third Penny" for streets and basic infrastructure to be extended as usual in 2021 without an overall tax increase. To make that happen, we have to VOTE NO ON APRIL 5.

MORE:

Here is a PRINTABLE VERSION of the Tulsa sales tax timeline that you can download and hand out to your friends.

Infographic and text Copyright 2016 by Michael D. Bates. Limited license granted to opponents of Vision Tulsa to copy and distribute without alteration prior to April 6, 2016.

Tulsa County Republicans will meet in precinct caucuses tonight, Thursday, February 4, 2016, at 6:30 p.m. the first step in the quadrennial process to elect delegates to the Republican National Convention and members of the Republican National Committee, and to determine the party platform.

Groups of Tulsa County precincts will meet at 19 central locations spread around the county. The gathered precincts will go through the preliminaries as a group, then break up into individual precinct caucuses to elect delegates to the March 5, 2016, County Convention (who will in turn choose delegates to Congressional District Convention in April and the May 14, 2016, State Convention) and to vote on resolutions to be forwarded to the county and state conventions for inclusion in the platform. A presidential preference straw poll will be taken -- exactly like the Iowa caucus, non-binding, but a chance to gauge the sentiments of Republican activists less than a month before we make our binding choice in the March 1 primary. The tulsagop.org website has the list of caucus locations and answers to frequently-asked questions about the process.

These central meeting locations were developed as a convenience for precinct officials and delegates. Some precinct chairmen may prefer not to host strangers in their home, and some delegates may feel more at ease in meeting people they don't know in a public place rather than someone's home. Some precincts have no officials currently, and a central meeting place gives interested newcomers a place to go and get things restarted. The central locations also provide an opportunity to meet fellow activists from nearby neighborhoods in a less crowded environment than the county convention.

Over the last couple of years central locations were organized by State House district, but this year, they were grouped more geographically and precinct chairmen were given a choice of locations. At least one precinct has opted out of the central-meeting approach and will meet within the boundaries of their precinct. Whatever the case, your precinct location should be posted on the door of your regular voting location by Thursday evening.

The precinct meeting is the launch pad of the platform process, and the timing couldn't be better for speaking out on some big current local issues. While many platform resolutions passed by the precincts deal with national issues and may percolate to the Republican National Platform, our Tulsa County platform also covers city and county resolutions. I'm hoping that every precinct passes a resolution expressing opposition to the new river sales tax proposal, which will be on the ballot in April.

With a school board election next week and a special primary for sheriff on March 1, I expect candidates will be making the rounds of the meetings. (Please be aware that, in the only contested school board seat in the county, Stan Minor is a Republican and appointed incumbent Cindy Decker is a Democrat.)

I especially want to encourage my skeptical young millennial friends to come to a precinct meeting -- preferably as a delegate, but at least as an observer. It's an often overlooked aspect of our election process, and I think that seeing it may alleviate some of your cynicism.

Back in September 2010, BatesLine first looked at Tulsa City Councilor G. T. Bynum's lobbying practice and the obvious concerns that arise when a local official is acting as a paid agent for an organization actively engaged in local political issues. I mentioned Bynum's lobbying for the George Kaiser Family Foundation again in 2011, when he appeared to be cruising toward re-election without opposition. Shortly before that year's primary, an ethics complaint was filed against Bynum mainly regarding his votes to waive competitive bidding on bond issues, resulting on bond contracts being awarded to the Bank of Oklahoma. Bynum's grandfather, former Mayor Robert J. LaFortune, served at the time on the board of BOK Financial Corporation and owned shares of stock in the corporation worth over $2 million.

Now four years later, journalist Theodore King has a story on the Okie Blaze taking a look at Bynum's current roster of lobbying clients and noting Bynum's work in 2010 lobbying in Washington on behalf of the George Kaiser Family Foundation for federal funding for low-water dams in the Arkansas River and his current advocacy on the Council for a plan to fund the dams.

King notes the silence in local media (BatesLine excepted) about Bynum's work as a lobbyist, specifically his work in the past for GKFF. While news stories occasionally identify Bynum as "managing partner at Capitol Ventures, a government relations firm" (for example, this June 17, 2015, Tulsa World story), I was only able to find one story, from September 4, 2011, in which the word lobbyist was used in reference to Bynum:

[Robert] Pinney also is critical of Bynum's lobbying work for the city of Miami, Okla.

However, the City Charter does not prohibit councilors from working as lobbyists.

Last week TRIP, a national transportation research organization, released its annual urban roads report, ranking U. S. cities by percentage of major roads and highways in poor condition and on the cost to drivers resulting from the bad roads. Tulsa and Oklahoma City ranked 17th and 16th respectively on the first measure -- in each city, 45% of the streets are in poor condition. Tulsa's cost per driver for bad roads was 4th in the nation at $928, slightly worse than OKC, in 5th at $917.

TRIP describes the basis for this additional cost measure: "Driving on roads in disrepair increases consumer costs by accelerating vehicle deterioration and depreciation, and increasing needed maintenance, fuel consumption and tire wear." The numbers come from TRIP's analysis of 2013 Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) statistics.

Only 7% of Tulsa's major road and highway miles are considered to be in good condition, 8% in fair condition, 40% mediocre, and 45% poor. The classifications correspond to ranges of numeric ratings: The International Roughness Index (IRI) and the Present Serviceability Rating (PSR). Poor means an IRI above 170 or a PSR of 2.5 or less.

Compare Tulsa's numbers to the national breakdown:

An analysis of 2013 pavement data found that 28 percent of the nation's major urban roads - Interstates, freeways and other major routes - had pavements that were in substandard (poor) condition. These are roads and highways that provide an unacceptable ride and are in need of resurfacing or more significant repairs. TRIP's analysis of federal highway data from 2013 also found that 41 percent of these major urban routes provided an acceptable ride quality and were in either mediocre or fair condition. The remaining 31 percent of major urban highways and roads were found to provide good ride quality.

Here are links to TRIP's full urban roads report and appendices.

In that report, TRIP has recommendations for improving the longevity of roads, beginning with foundations, better construction materials, and early preventive maintenance (crack sealing, overlays). It's the sort of thing Tulsa's former streets commissioner Jim Hewgley has been saying for years.

It would be interesting to trace back to the locally collected data that informed the FHWA's numbers and ultimately TRIP's analysis. I suspect that much of the mileage covered by the numbers in the Tulsa metro area is the responsibility of ODOT, rather than municipal or county authorities. ODOT seems rather fond of new construction (e.g., the Oklahoma CIty I-40 relocation, the upcoming I-35/I-240 rebuild) and not so fond of maintenance.

It has been the City of Tulsa's policy for at least 15 years to build sidewalks when rebuilding arterial streets. During the recent reconstruction of Yale Avenue between 21st and 31st Streets, utilities were moved and sidewalks were built on both sides of the street, allowing safe passage for pedestrians and those in motorized wheelchairs. Even the historic brick columns that once marked the entrance to the Lortondale farm and the Meadowbrook Country Club were demolished to make room for the sidewalks, which were built within the city's right-of-way.

Even the east side of Peoria between 21st and 31st, through the well-to-do Terwilliger Heights neighborhood near Philbrook Museum, has a sidewalk, although it twists and turns around utility poles.

My very first column for Urban Tulsa Weekly, back in September 2005, was about the value of a walkable environment to people with disabilities, as well as other Tulsans who don't drive:

For tens of thousands of our fellow Tulsans, walkability isn't about rows of trendy cafes and quirky consignment shops, or about sidewalks to nowhere; it's about independence. For them, driving simply isn't an option. I'm not talking just about those who can't afford to operate a car.

There are those who are physically unable to drive. Many senior citizens, troubled by glare at night or uncertain of their reflexes, prefer to drive only during daylight or not at all. Teenagers are old enough to get around on their own, but either can't drive yet or shouldn't. For those who can't drive, urban design makes the difference between freedom and frustrating dependence.

Danny, a friend from church, has cerebral palsy and suffers from seizures. He can't drive, and he can only walk short distances with a cane, but he can get around with his electric scooter. Unfortunately, he lives on South Lewis, and he's been pulled over by the police more than once trying to go to the supermarket on his scooter. There aren't any sidewalks, and the only way to get to the store is on the street. Using Tulsa Transit's LIFT paratransit service requires booking a day in advance, waiting outside up to an hour for a ride, and leaving early enough to pick up and drop off other passengers on the way to his destination. LIFT isn't available on Sundays. If the next errand isn't reachable from the first by foot or scooter, it means another bus ride and another long wait. Because of the shape of our city, Danny doesn't have the freedom to go where he wants to go when he wants to go, and it makes Tulsa a frustrating place to live.

So sidewalks matter to Tulsans, and it's right and smart for the city to build them in the city's right-of-way, along with rebuilding the water and sewer lines when rebuilding the streets.

Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr evidently doesn't agree with the wisdom of this long-standing policy, because he has asked the Public Works Department to delete the sidewalk along the east side of Riverside Drive from plans for rebuilding that road around The Gathering Place. Dewey Jr seems to think it would be safer for pedestrians from nearby neighborhoods to cross four lanes of high-speed traffic on Riverside Drive, walk along the River Parks trail, and then cross Riverside again.

I wish I could say I was disappointed, but I can't say that I'm surprised. At least the neighborhood will be safe from muggers on Hoverounds.

MORE: No, they can't use the Midland Valley Trail to get to the Gathering Place; it's closed for three years.

STILL MORE: Good for Public Works director Paul Zachary for refusing to remove the sidewalk from the plans. Boo to Bartlett Jr. for forcing the removal, apparently at the behest of a campaign donor who is also his oil company's landlord.

Tomorrow morning (Friday, September 19, 2014) at 8:05 am, I'll be on 1170 KFAQ with Pat Campbell to discuss "improvements" to the Arkansas River, the broad prairie stream that flows through the western and southwestern parts of the city of Tulsa. The "improvements" would involve renovating the Zink Lake dam, built in 1980, and building three new dams to fill the river to its banks, for a total cost estimated at $240 million. (UPDATE: Here's the audio of my KFAQ interview with Pat Campbell.)

Earlier this month, friends and fans paid their final respects to comedian Joan Rivers. She was a groundbreaker for women in stand-up comedy, Johnny Carson's long-time backup host on the Tonight Show and then his competitor, a survivor of personal and financial tragedy who made an impressive comeback, and a staunch supporter of Israel's right to exist.

But Joan Rivers may be best known, particularly among the younger generation, for her frequent trips to the plastic surgeon. Rivers demolished her natural beauty in pursuit of an elusive ideal and spent a fortune only to end up looking harsh, alien, and artificial.

What drives an attractive woman to undergo one expensive and risky elective surgery after another? The obvious cause is insecurity, low self-esteem. She must have been convinced that she could only be attractive if she drastically altered her appearance, and evidently no one could convince her otherwise.

JoanRivers-before-after.jpg

You could ask the same question about cities. Why would a beautiful city pursue risky and expensive plastic surgery in pursuit of artificial enhancements that ultimately fail to increase the city's charm and appeal?

Whether Hollywood star or Midwestern city, the drive for extreme surgical makeovers betrays a lack of self-confidence and a break with reality. Many a city tore down charming Victorian or Craftsman homes for brutalist public housing towers. After World War II, owners of Art Deco and Romanesque Revival commercial buildings were persuaded to cover their facades with metal cladding, in order to look "modern" and "up-to-date." Decades later, building owners are tearing off the cladding to put the unique elements of each building on view once again.

Our consumption-driven economy thrives on insecurity and discontent. An unscrupulous plastic surgeon could boost his bottom line by persuading potential patients that they're hideous without his help. Heavy construction companies, civil engineering firms, and bond advisors and attorneys can benefit financially by persuading voters that their city is too ugly to attract residents and visitors, but paying them hundreds of millions of dollars will make the city presentable -- at least until it's time for the next nine-figure tax package.

Conventional wisdom is conventional, and the conventional wisdom about the Arkansas River is that it's ugly and no one wants to be around it because it isn't filled with water from bank to bank. If we want to have development along the river, the conventional wisdom goes, we need to ensure that there's water in the river by building new low-water dams and fixing the one we already have. And we have to have development along the river if we want to attract the kinds of young hipsters that pick where they want to live and then look for a job.

We have water in the river. What seems to annoy people is that we also have sandbars and shelves of shale that are visible when the water level is low. If only we would spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build dams, we could raise the water level by a few feet and spare visitors the hideous sight of our sandbars. They they will like us and spend money here -- or so the deluded, insecure thinking goes.

But some of Tulsa's visitors really like our sandbars.

Wildlife in the river bed more interesting than a river full of water

On a frosty morning twenty-five years ago this January 21, I took my girlfriend to the Audubon Society's bald eagle watch. (Later that day I proposed to her.) At the time, we were amazed to realize that just 20 miles from downtown Tulsa you could watch our once-endangered national symbol in the wild. Earlier this year, in commemoration of that auspicious day, I took my family to the Audubon Society's bald eagle watch.

In 1989, the Audubon Society set up their eagle watch just below Keystone Dam. The eagles seemed to prefer the shallow waters below the dam to the deep and broad expanse of the lake above the dam.

In 2014, the Audubon Society set up their eagle watch in Helmerich Park, on the east bank of the river south of the 71st Street bridge. Over the years the eagles had extended their range downriver and into the City of Tulsa itself. We watched bald eagles come and go from a nest across the river on the west bank, notwithstanding the proximity of Jones Riverside Airport.

Click on the photos to enlarge.

Bald eagle nest on the west bank of the Arkansas River near 81st Street in Tulsa, January 2014

We saw bald eagles, both white-headed adults and black-headed juveniles, soar above the river and dive down in search of a meal. And we saw hundreds of white pelicans.

White pelicans on a sandbar in the Arkansas River at Tulsa, January 2014

As you can see from the photos, the pelicans preferred to roost in the shallows where the sandbars met the river or in shallow places where the sandbars were barely submerged.

Hundreds of white pelicans on a sandbar in the Arkansas River at Tulsa, January 2014

The bald eagles liked the sandbars as well. We watched one mature bald eagle eating a fish on a sandbar, not far from a rivulet that crossed the sandbar to connect two branches of the main stream.

A bald eagle perches on a sandbar, eating a fish he grabbed from the Arkansas River at Tulsa, January 2014

A bald eagle perches on a sandbar, eating a fish he grabbed from the Arkansas River at Tulsa, January 2014

A gull tried to snatch the eagle's catch.

A gull approaches a bald eagle perched on a sandbar, eating a fish he grabbed from the Arkansas River at Tulsa, January 2014

But the eagle waved him away.

Wings flapping, a bald eagle perched on a sandbar defends his catch from a gull, in the Arkansas River at Tulsa, January 2014

A little while later, the adult was replaced by a juvenile, working on the same fish on the same sandbar.

Immature bald eagle perches on a sandbar in the Arkansas River at Tulsa, with a fish caught by an adult eagle, January 2014

This was the view of the Arkansas River from Helmerich Park on January 25, 2014, looking northwest toward the 71st Street bridge and Turkey Mountain. This is boring? This is ugly?

Immature bald eagle and hundreds of white pelicans perch on a sandbar and in the shallows of the Arkansas River at Tulsa, January 2014. Looking northwest from Helmerich Park toward the 71st Street Bridge and Turkey Mountain.

But instead of the shifting patterns of water and sand and the variety of wildlife, some Tulsans are adamant that we need a flat, monotonous expanse of water from shore to shore so that we can feel pretty.

What do we think "water in the river" will do for us?

When Tulsans enthuse about the impact of water in the river on tourism and economic development, they inevitably mention San Antonio's River Walk. The San Antonio River, as it bends through downtown, is about 40 feet wide -- about the width of a two-lane street. You can easily cross from one side to the other. You can easily spot someone you know on the other side and call out and wave. The Arkansas River through Tulsa ranges about 1000 to 1600 feet wide -- twenty-five to forty times wider.

In 2006, Canadian architect Bing Thom, hired by Tulsa's Warren family, proposed a way to create the River Walk feel: Excavate much of the west bank between 11th and 21st Streets, build an island with shopping and high-rise housing near to the east bank, with a little channel about the width of the San Antonio River separating it from the east bank. Price tag to the taxpayers would have been at least $600 million. Building housing in the river's floodway was unlikely to get Corps of Engineers approval. Excavating the west bank, once the site of oil refineries, might mean dredging up toxic materials now buried and settled.

If you want a street's-width River Walk, a better bet might be to follow OKC's lead and actually replace a street with a canal. Or tame one of our larger creeks and put development alongside. Combining the two ideas, the Elm Creek Master Drainage Plan includes a canal running down the middle of 6th Street east of Peoria. Many years ago, an architect proposed exposing the lower reach of buried Elm Creek, near 18th and Boston, for a creekside promenade.

Perhaps the water-in-the-river fanatics are thinking about the pleasures of watching the sun drop into the Pacific at nightfall. You really need at least 20 miles of open water to get that effect. That would mean excavating a lot more than the River West Festival Park. We'd have to flood Red Fork and turn Lookout Mountain into an island.

Maybe it's a reflecting pool that they want, so that motorists crossing the river on I-44 can spend some of their 15 seconds on the bridge looking north to see the skyline reflected in the river, just like that Ken Johnston painting. But even in that painting the water is rippled by the wind, as tends to happen with a broad, open expanse of water.

Do they think more dams on the river will bring about more recreation on the river? It's doubtful. Zink Lake has been around for over 30 years. The ferry boats and sailboats in mid-'70s "artist's conceptions" never materialized. Silt and sand don't let the water get too deep. We haven't even seen paddle boats on Zink Lake. Some number, probably not more than 100, participate in rowing on the river. I suspect more Tulsans had been on the river during the 1970s heyday of the Great Raft Race, prior to the completion of Zink Dam, than in the years since.

For a few years, Steve Smith ran airboat tours and then occasional guided canoe trips on the Arkansas River between Zink Dam and Keystone Dam. If I recall correctly, he tended to attract more out-of-town visitors who saw his brochure in the rack in the hotel lobby than locals. His descriptions of his tours, which you can find various places around the web, emphasize the variety you can see from the river -- wildlife, shoreline, little islands. But as far as I can find, he's no longer in that business.

Oklahoma City, Austin, and Wichita all have dammed, brimful rivers, but none of them have attracted vibrant riverfront development. The excitement in those cities is to be found in walkable neighborhoods of historic buildings away from the river.

We have a beautiful river. It needs some cleanup in places. The levees may need repair -- but that's a public safety and stormwater control matter, and we shouldn't let city leaders logroll elective cosmetic surgery in the same tax issue as a necessity. Let's stop listening to the hack plastic surgeons who want us to feel insecure enough to pay them hundreds of millions of dollars to "make us pretty." Let's appreciate the God-given beauty we already possess and the wildlife that enjoys it, in its changing variety.

MORE:

The BatesLine archive of stories about the Arkansas River.

David Schuttler has some beautiful wintertime video of pelicans and herons from the stretch of the river west of Sand Springs:

John Eagleton writes to inform me that, after my appearance on KFAQ, all the "tax-and-spend hooligans" are angry with me. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saeculi saeculorum. Amen.

Charles Hardt, former City of Tulsa Director of Public Works, opposes building dams and encouraging development along the river. He says the 100-year-flood standard isn't stringent enough when it comes to the damage a river flood can do. Hardt's training is as a hydrologist, and he led the city's massive stormwater mitigation efforts following major floods in 1984 and 1986.

"We are talking about adding more things to the river banks — and potentially in the river — that could make the flooding worse and create the potential for a lot more loss of life and more property damages," he said.

Hardt said development in and along the river can act as a "plug" that impedes the natural flow of the river —-- a flow that in times of heavy rainfall scours the river's bottom and banks to increase the river's capacity.

"You're encouraging development that is not compatible with the river's function, and that is to carry the water from upstream to downstream," he said....

Hardt's not just worried about the dams that might be built in the river. He's concerned about one that already exists --— Keystone Dam, and he would like to see a major push to study and repair Corps infrastructure projects.

"Its effectiveness and the maintenance of it and what its capabilities are needs to be well understood before we put other things downstream from it —-- other things meaning low-water dams, development along the river," Hardt said.

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Many of my hipster urbanist friends are very fond of food trucks. Food trucks today offer a wide variety of cuisines and a wide range of sophistication and price. The mobility of the kitchen allows the restaurant to go where the customer is. Better food can be offered for a lower price because the truck avoids some of the costs that attend a brick-and-mortar eatery. There are no restrooms to clean and stock, no dining room to manage, no tables to clear, no dishes to wash. Cashier and sous-chef duties can be handled by family members; no need to deal with the complexities of being an employer.

The owner/chef can take his skills to where the customers are, and when the customers aren't there, he can park the truck at home and pursue other work. When demand is high, he can run his truck seven days a week. When it's slow, he can shut down for a while without the ticking of the rent clock. Food-truck fans are rightly concerned to protect this innovative approach to food delivery from regulations that seek to eliminate the food truck's competitive advantages under the guise of protecting the public health.

Many of these hipster urbanists are also very concerned about funding cuts for Tulsa Transit, the regional bus service. The system is almost unusable. Every year or so, I take a trip by bus. I'm always frustrated by the long headways (period between buses on a route), long layover times, and limited hours. Only those who have more time than money choose to ride Tulsa Transit. For many, the only alternative is to pay for an expensive taxi ride on the occasions when time matters and friends aren't available to provide a ride.

The solution most frequently proposed is to implement a tax to provide the bus system with a consistent stream of revenue which can pay for more buses, more drivers, and more frequent service. The problem with that approach is that you're going to wind up with excess capacity most of the time, just to ensure that someone can catch a bus on short notice.

What's the most efficient mechanism for allocating supply to demand? The free market, as long as barriers to entry and the allocation of supply are kept to a minimum. Which reminds me of this joke from the Unix fortunes file:

On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in receipts of $65. The next day his take was $67. The third day's income was $62. But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied no less than $283 on the desk before the cashier.

"Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier. "This is fantastic. That route never brought in money like this! What happened?"

"Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth Street and worked there. I tell you, that street is a gold mine!"

The absurd element that makes this funny is that everyone knows buses are supposed to follow a fixed route, even though, unlike streetcars, they could be moved to meet demand, even though they never are.

The debate over the regulation of food trucks reminds me of a similar debate 100 years ago. Streetcar companies had been granted franchises by cities to lay track and hang wire on certain streets. The companies made massive capital investments, but they were hamstrung by city regulations and, sometimes, union contracts setting maximum fares and minimum staff levels.

To give you a sense of the struggle between streetcar company and city government, in 1922, the Oklahoma Union Traction company decided to stop running its St. Louis Ave. line to Orcutt Park. The popular amusement park had given way to private development around what we now call Swan Lake. Demand along the line had dropped. OUT wanted to stop running the line but didn't want their competitor, Tulsa Street Railway, to take it over. Presumably the rails and wire had reuse or scrap value as well, so OUT began pulling its infrastructure out of St. Louis Ave., over the objections of the City of Tulsa. The state Corporation Commission, regulator of intrastate rail, was drawn into the dispute.

Early adopters of the private automobile figured out that they could make money toward gas and car payments by driving along streetcar routes ahead of the next trolley and picking up passengers for a nickel (or "jit") each. Passengers liked jitneys because they got where they were going faster and more comfortably than if they waited for the next streetcar. Streetcar companies hated jitneys, because they stole the fares the companies needed to cover their capital investment and fixed costs.

Streetcar companies fought back with political muscle, persuading city councils to pass restrictions and bans on jitneys, bans that persist to this day. The Institute for Justice, which provides pro-bono support for economic liberty cases, worked to overturn Houston's anti-jitney law in 1994:

Santos v. City of Houston. Like Ego Brown, Houston entrepreneur Alfredo Santos discovered an untapped market. A cab driver, Santos discerned a need for a third transportation alternative beyond expensive taxicabs and highly subsidized public buses. He discovered the solution in Mexico City: the "pesero," or in English, the "jitney."

Jitneys are a transportation mainstay in large cities around the globe. They run fixed routes and charge a flat fee, like buses. But they pick up and discharge passengers anywhere along the route, like taxis. They are smaller and more efficient than buses and less-expensive than taxis. They also are ideally suited to low-capital entrepreneurship.

Santos began using his cab during off-duty hours as a jitney, operating in low-income Houston neighborhoods. The business was successful, quickly attracting other jitney operators. But the city quickly shut the industry down, invoking its "Anti-Jitney Law of 1924."

In the 1920s, jitneys were the main source of competition to subsidized streetcars. The streetcar companies lobbied in city halls across the country, all but exterminating jitneys. Seventy years later the streetcars are nearly all gone, but the anti-jitney laws remain. Today they are supported by the public transportation monopolies that replaced the streetcars.

Santos challenged the law in federal court, which struck it down as a violation of equal protection and federal antitrust laws. The city did not appeal the ruling, thereby allowing another favorable economic liberty precedent to stand.

(You can read the Santos v. City of Houston jitneydecision online. And here's an article from half a year later about Santos's vision for jitneys, the taxi industry's push for regulation, and support from Houston's transit authority.)

Santos argues that entrepreneurs and the marketplace, not the government, should decide whether there is a demand for jitneys. Santos, 41, has spent more than ten years fighting for jitneys. A cab driver for ten years, Santos had seen jitneys working in Mexico City, where they are called peseros. Wearing a cowboy hat so potential passengers could easily spot him, he would drive East End streets holding out fingers for the number of places available in his cab. Yellow Cab found out about the practice and threatened him with the loss of his cabby's lease if he didn't go back to running his meter as required by law....

Santos says jitneys will attract poor people and immigrants who don't own automobiles and are reluctant to call cabs because of the high cost and poor service. Chernow, however, says that about a third of Yellow Cab's trips originate in low-income, minority neighborhoods.

The secret to operating a jitney, Santos says, is to run the route religiously, make lots of quick trips, and develop new customers. Perhaps a driver will occasionally deviate to take a passenger home in a pouring rain, he concedes, or help someone get their groceries to the doorstep. But the driver will need to return quickly to the route to maintain the quality of the service.

Fast-forward 13 years, and a Houston blogger calling himself The Mighty Wizard wonders why jitneys, now legal in Houston, aren't effective in meeting the transit needs of the subject of a news story whose six-mile commute takes 83 minutes by bus.

So why aren't jitneys more widely used in Houston? Well, whenever something is legal but rarely used, the Wizard immediately starts suspecting government interference and sure enough, if one decides to pay a visit to the City of Houston ordinances governing the operation of jitneys (Chapter 46, Article VI), one immediately notices some very serious regulatory barriers to entry that would be jitney operators face in entering the competitive field for transportation.

He spots three barriers to entry and to meeting the needs of customers: The vehicle can't be more than five years old (a standard never used for public transit vehicles or cabs), the driver can't deviate from the route or negotiate price with potential customers (reducing fares might make sense when demand is slack), and a jitney owner must maintain bonding and insurance from which a government operator is exempt.

There are more, but no doubt that the usual rationale would be offered as to why these regulations are in place and that is that we need to protect the public. It should be equally obvious to everyone that this ordinance doesn't protect the public from anything, but was instead written to protect Yellow Cab and Metro from market competition, not to help the citizens of Houston get around more quickly or conveniently.

Jitneys also present another problem, this one in the political marketplace. Jitneys don't allow politicians to spend billions of dollars in cost overruns on big transportation make work projects, they don't allow for photo opportunities or to put their names into the history books, nor do they help politicians obtain millions in campaign contributions. They also would drive lovers of government transit berserk. However by lifting lifting the regulatory barriers to entry to jitney operations, the City just might allow a solution to come forward which could allow Mrs. Jenkins to get to her job in 10 minutes and to succeed where taxpayer funded public transit fails.

Way back in 2002, when Tulsa County's "Dialog" process was underway, they sought public input for projects to improve Tulsa County. I offered two proposals: Deregulate jitneys and enable neighborhood conservation districts. Neither idea involved massive construction contracts or revenue bonds, so neither idea went anywhere in the process, which was all about finding popular local projects that could be wrapped around a new arena to get it past the voters.

Before we plow more money into Tulsa Transit and a route model ill-suited to Tulsa's urban layout, why not give private operators a chance to meet the need? They might choose to run a fixed-route without deviation. They may choose a starting point, but the destination and route would be determined by the needs of the current batch of passengers. They might take reservations, like Super Shuttle does with hotels, picking up a series of passengers to deliver them to a common destination.

You may object that the free market may not provide the quality of service needed at an affordable cost. I could imagine churches using their buses and vans as jitneys during the week, with fares reduced to whatever was necessary to cover fuel, if that. Merchants in a shopping center might pool funds to ferry shoppers from home to the store and back. There may be some benefit in a publicly funded "backbone" service -- frequent service along a small number of corridors, to which jitneys would connect.

Transit regulations, like food regulations, should protect the public's health and safety, but otherwise leave the market free for innovation. My hipster friends are excited about taxi alternatives like Uber and don't want to see them entangled in government regulations designed to protect the taxi monopoly. They should be just as excited to unleash a lower-tech, lower-cost means of transportation for the benefit of their less affluent fellow Tulsans.

MORE: An article from the January 2000 issue of The Freeman explains how illegal-but-tolerated jitneys operate in Detroit.

Dan Keating, a conservative Republican, recently appointed by Gov. Mary Fallin to the State Board of Education, has written a scathing column in the Tulsa Beacon denouncing Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr's campaign for pushing party affiliation over his performance as mayor and saying that it's time for Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr to return to the private sector.

Keating says that Bartlett Jr "has made little effort in cultivating former Councilor Bill Christiansen supporters, who are pivotal to winning re-election." Keating agrees with former Mayor Kathy Taylor's argument that the primary results show that 2/3rds of Tulsa voters are dissatisfied with Bartlett Jr's record. Calling Bartlett Jr an "absentee mayor with practically no vision for the future or plan for today," Keating concludes, "We've given the mayor every opportunity to produce. He doesn't own the job. It's time for Dewey to return to Keener Oil."

Keating notes the lack of cranes in the air and the lack of serious economic development. Bartlett Jr's claim of 7,000 jobs created in the metro area over the last four years doesn't impress Keating:

That makes it 146 jobs per month. This column reported the state of Utah gaining 18,000 California jobs in just one month. Why? Because they worked on it and called in California. As the Utah governor's office reported they had "boots on the ground."

Keating is also upset with Bartlett Jr's absence from meetings of key public authorities on which Tulsa's mayor serves as an ex officio member, noting two authorities in particular, the Emergency Medical Services Authority (EMSA) and the Tulsa Authority for the Recovery of Energy (TARE), which oversees Tulsa's trash system. An audit of EMSA by State Auditor and Inspector Gary Jones turned up extravagant spending by the CEO and criticized the board for a lack of oversight.

Another out of control authority that Mayor Bartlett sits on is Tulsa's TARE Board. Tare is short for Tulsa Authority for the Recovery of Energy. TARE as you may recall had worked itself out of a job, but since no bureaucracy ever lets itself simply vanish, the authority reworked Tulsa's trash collection system, borrowed millions of dollars and charged ahead. Competent trash haulers were fired and new pricing policies implemented. Most service billings doubled. Green waste required special tags and clear trash bags.

But, it was worth it. Right? Wrong.

The green waste recovery equipment never worked. So for a year, Mayor Bartlett's people postured, burned all the trash together and kept the money. The mayor's excuse was that he missed most of those board meetings.

Republicans who pay more attention to state and national politics than City Hall may be surprised, if not shocked, that a solid Republican like Dan Keating would endorse against the re-election of a Republican mayor. They may be tempted to dismiss Keating as a RINO. (Oddly, the same people seem unwilling to dismiss Bartlett Jr as a RINO for his 2009 endorsement of Taylor's re-election.)

It's an indication of Bartlett Jr's skill at burning bridges that many Republicans who pay close attention to what's happening at City Hall are unwilling to endorse him for re-election. Lawsuits against councilors, support for Vision2, gerrymandering, an apparent lack of interest and leadership in the important decisions made by the City's authorities, boards, and commissions have all served to alienate local GOP activists. Many of these Republicans would be willing to forgive him for being bumbling or naive, if those were the only problems, but there's a layer of nasty and vengeful on top of the bumbling and naivete that makes reconciliation impossible. When someone has put you in the position of having to hire an attorney and has never bothered to apologize, you're not going to lend your support to his reelection campaign.

As far as I am aware, no city councilor who has served during Bartlett Jr's term as mayor -- none of the nine that he mostly chased out of office, none of the nine who replaced them -- has endorsed him. The Fraternal Order of Police, which has endorsed Republicans and Democrats in the past, voted unanimously to endorse Taylor. Had Bartlett Jr and his team not burned so many bridges with his fellow Republicans, he would be a shoo-in for re-election.

Oklahomans for Life, an organization that works for pro-life legislation at the State Capitol and publishes candidate questionnaires on abortion, euthanasia, and related issues, has noted Tulsa mayoral candidate Kathy Taylor's financial support for Emily's List, a political action committee that requires a radical pro-abortion litmus test of any candidates seeking its support. The OfL press release:

Radical Abortion Group Supporter Kathy Taylor
Opposing Pro-Life Mayor Dewey Bartlett in
November 12 Tulsa Mayor's Race

Kathy Taylor, a big financial supporter of the radical pro-abortion organization Emily's List, is running against pro-life incumbent Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett in a tight race in the November 12 city of Tulsa election.

Kathy Taylor made her most recent contribution to the radical pro-abortion group in April of this year, after she was already running for mayor of Tulsa.

Emily's List is a single-issue pro-abortion political action committee which supports only hard-core pro-abortion candidates who hold the most extreme pro-abortion positions on public policy issues. They require that their endorsed candidates support such radical pro-abortion measures as partial-birth abortion and taxpayer-funded abortion on demand.

Dewey Bartlett, the incumbent Tulsa Mayor, is a strong supporter of the right to life. He is an outspoken defender of the lives of unborn children.

Dewey Bartlett is the son of the late Dewey F. Bartlett, Sr., Governor of Oklahoma in the 1960's and United States Senator from Oklahoma in the 1970's. The late Senator Bartlett was one of the leading pro-life champions in Congress during his years in the U.S. Senate.

Using the federal campaign contribution database at OpenSecrets.org, I find one contribution by Taylor to Emily's List, $250 on April 9, 2013. I looked through all Taylor and Lobeck contributions in Oklahoma and Florida to be sure I didn't miss anything, as Taylor has sometimes been listed with her husband's name, her maiden name, with and without her middle initial, and with home addresses in Tulsa and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

Taylor's contributions are overwhelmingly directed to Democrat candidates and party organizations, including Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Chris Coons, Elizabeth Warren, the DNC Services Corp, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Party of Oklahoma. She has been generous in support of pro-abortion, left-wing control of the federal government.

Taylor has made a handful of federal contributions to Republicans over the years: Marc Nuttle, Slade Gorton, Michael Flanagan, Bill McCollum, and, famously, George W. Bush.

Here's how Kathy Taylor explained her contributions to Bush and other Republicans to La Semana Del Sur, during her 2006 Democratic primary:

"There are times, both in business and in politics, when you need a seat at the table," describing her contributions to members of the opposing party as a method of facilitating dialogue rather than an indication of ideological support.

Bartlett Jr's federal contributions since 1990 have been exclusively to Republican candidates, with one exception: A $250 contribution to 2nd District Congressman Dan Boren in 2008. Bartlett Jr also was the poster boy for Republicans for Kathy Taylor in 2009, before Taylor dropped out of her bid for re-election.

As I noted in 2006, even though abortion isn't often an issue at City Hall, it does come up from time to time. In 1996 and 1997, the City of Tulsa, under Democrat mayor Susan Savage, steered some of its federal block grant to Planned Parenthood of Eastern Oklahoma, the local affiliate of America's leading abortion provider. In 1998, there were enough pro-life councilors to stop the grants to Planned Parenthood, which have never resumed.

In the same article, I offered three reasons, not directly related to a mayor's duties, why pro-life issues matter in local elections:

  1. A candidate's views on the sanctity of human life tell you something fundamental about his worldview and values.
  2. A local office can be a stepping stone to higher office where life issues arise more often. By electing a pro-abortion-rights candidate to local office, you are giving her a line on her resumé that may help her defeat a pro-life candidate in a race for state or federal office.
  3. In particular, a pro-abortion-rights mayor can use that position to raise money for pro-abortion-rights candidates for state and federal office. If you do business with city government, and the Mayor sends you an invitation to a fundraiser for her friend the candidate for State Senate, you'll send a check in order to stay on her good side, even if the candidate's ideology is antithetical to your own.

While these remain considerations, in Kathy Taylor's case the latter two concerns haven't yet played out. After her term as mayor, she did not run for higher office and, however much money she gave and raised for Oklahoma Democratic candidates and organizations, it has had no impact on Republican majorities in the legislature and GOP dominance of our federal delegation and all statewide offices.

CORRECTION: I am informed that my inference concerning Cheryl Cohenour's service on the TARE board, based on frequent news reports mentioning her as a board member prior to 2011, was incorrect. Taylor campaign research director Joey Wignarajah contacted me (directly this time) and provided me with TARE board minutes documenting Cheryl Cohenour's 2008 departure and 2011 return.

In 2008, Cohenour was replaced on the TARE board by Taylor's appointment of Michael Pierce. The City Council confirmed Pierce's appointment on October 30, 2008. Cohenour was brought back to the board by Bartlett Jr to replace Stephen Schuller and was confirmed by the Council on March 3, 2011.

The TARE minutes, as far as I can tell, are not available online, and the City Council agenda archives continue to be unsearchable (but I'm working to change that). I found no news reports of Cohenour's departure or her return. Wignarajah said he had to file an open records request to get copies of the TARE minutes.

The reason for Cohenour's departure in 2008 would affect the way we interpret her return in 2011. Did she step aside on her own initiative? Did Taylor decide not to reappoint Cohenour because Taylor disagreed with her views on the new trash service? Or did Taylor not reappoint Cohenour because she was unlikely to win confirmation from a City Council unhappy with the proposed new approach to trash service?

I have revised this article in light of this new information. Notwithstanding the interruption in Cohenour's service, it still appears to be the case that four of the seven TARE members (Anderson, Berlin, Bowles, Pierce) who approved the bid documents -- the requirements for the new trash service, the basis upon which proposals were evaluated and a winner selected -- were holdovers from the Taylor administration. Between the time the bid documents were approved and the contract was awarded, Bartlett Jr appointed Councilor David Patrick to replace one of the four, Beverly Anderson, the fallout of a series of disputes involving board members and contractors. There is no question that the essential features of the new trash service were defined and in use for the pilot program that was conducted while Taylor was mayor and an ex officio board member.

A few weeks ago, word reached me that the Kathy Taylor camp was displeased with a blog entry in which I opined that the former Tulsa mayor deserved an equal share of the blame with current mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr for our transition from a trash system that Tulsans overwhelmingly liked to one that has had numerous problems.

Here's what I wrote:

Whoever wins, we'll still be stuck with the complicated and messy trash system imposed upon us by board members that Kathy appointed and Dewey re-appointed (or didn't bother to replace).

The counterclaim from the Taylor camp came in the form of an anonymous Word document that bore (in the document's properties) the name of Joey Wignarajah, research director for the Taylor campaign. The document claimed that my assertion about who appointed the board members was incorrect.

There are seven TARE board members: The mayor (or his proxy) and six appointees. They are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the City Council to serve a three-year term.

An appointee continues to serve until a replacement is appointed, even if his term has expired. The mayor can keep a member in office without the council's confirmation by simply refusing to reappoint the current member or to appoint a replacement. While we passed a charter amendment a few years ago to allow the council to make an appointment if the mayor delays for more than two months, the City Attorney opined that that provision didn't apply to authorities like TARE which were created by state law. Bartlett Jr chose not to make new appointments to replace three of Taylor's appointees on the board (Bowles, Powell, Schuller) until the major decisions about the new trash service were made.

Bartlett maintains that he wants to keep the three members because of their experience and the major service decisions that are looming for the trash board as its long-term hauling contracts expire.

In July 2010, the City Council had rejected Bartlett Jr's reappointment of Bowles, Powell, and Schuller, all of whom were Taylor holdovers. The Councilors wanted new board members who would be responsive to citizen desires to keep what they liked about our trash service.

The document from the Taylor campaign acknowledges that Steve Berlin, William Bowles, and Michael Pierce were her appointees, but it cites Cheryl Cohenour as originally a Bartlett Jr appointee with a starting date of service of 3/4/11.

I recalled that Cohenour had served on the TARE board at least as early as 1998. She was Anna Falling's leading antagonist during the controversy over trash rates and Falling's attempt at a free recycling pilot program. Based on Cohenour's departure at the expiration of her term in 2013, her $500 contribution to Taylor's 2006 campaign, her frequent appearance as a key TARE board member in news stories during the Taylor administration, and no news reports of her departure or return, I assumed that Cohenour's service on the board was continuous, and that Taylor must have either reappointed her or allowed her to continue without reappointment. That turned out not to be the case. Taylor did not reappoint Cohenour in 2008 and instead appointed Michael Pierce.

So it's true that, when the new contract was awarded, only three of the seven members of the TARE board had been appointed by Taylor.

More significant, however, is the date when the request for proposals (RFP) was issued. At that point the shape of the new system -- defined by the requirements that the winning bidder would have to meet -- was set in stone. At that point four of the seven board members (Anderson, Berlin, Bowles, Pierce), a majority, had been appointed or retained by Taylor. Randy Sullivan and Cheryl Cohenour were the only new Bartlett appointees (plus City Manager Jim Twombly as the mayor's ex officio designee).

It could be argued that the groundwork for the bid documents was laid while there were even more Taylor appointees still on board. Sullivan had been confirmed only six weeks before the bid documents were issued, replacing Taylor appointee Steve Powell, and Sullivan and the rest of the board declined to change the bid documents in response to a request by the City Council to have bidders also include a price for continuing traditional trash service (twice-a-week, customer-supplied bins). The implication is that the process of preparing the bid documents began much earlier in the year, and Sullivan's arrival didn't herald any major changes in TARE policy.

Going back even further, the fundamental features of the new trash system were well-formed over three years earlier, during the Taylor administration. The pilot program for the new system was launched by the TARE board while Taylor was mayor and an ex officio member of the board (either in person or through her designee). A November 5, 2007, story shows that all the basic elements were in place -- mechanically lifted, standard city-issued carts, and half the service for nearly the same cost.

Eventually, a plan to change all twice-a-week service routes to the new once-a-week service by 2011 is expected to be presented to the council.

"I really think this is the future of Tulsa's trash collection," said Joe Moran, chairman of the Tulsa Authority for the Recovery of Energy....

Each residence was provided with one 96-gallon, wheeled trash cart and an 18-gallon recycling bin. Smaller sizes of carts also were available.

The monthly curbside service fee for the program is $12.52, which includes recycling pickup regardless of whether the customer chooses to recycle....

Cheryl Cohenour, who heads up the authority's long-range planning committee, said it has been the panel's goal to adopt a uniform service across the city.

"We're going to have to do a lot of education to get people prepared," she said. "Change can be difficult. But these survey results show it's possible."

A February 1, 2008, story shows that the Council was expressing concern that the pilot program was not producing enough savings to the ratepayer to justify the added inconvenience, and that the trash board understood that there were political issues surrounding the changes:

Some councilors have argued that the program, which has converted five routes to once-a-week, cart-based service that includes recycling, should provide a better savings.

The program's monthly curbside rate is $12.37, compared with the normal $13.44 rate for the twice-a-week service without recycling....

The trash board is looking to hire a management and engineering consulting firm, R.W. Beck, to help explore its options for a uniform trash service across the city and to look at the long-term savings that could be realized by switching Tulsa's standard service....

Board members hope to have some information in hand before the end of May to help persuade councilors to continue the pilot program.

"That's going to be a major political hurdle for us to overcome," said Joe Moran, the trash board's chairman.

A May 7, 2008, story has Cohenour urging the council to extend the pilot program another six months, with the council dubious about cutting service in half while only cutting $1.07 a month off of the rates.

In September 2009, Taylor appointed the Mayor's Task Force on Refuse and Recycling. A year later, the task force Taylor appointed recommended a trash service with substantially the same features that were ultimately included in the new system.

Throughout Kathy Taylor's term of office from April 2006 through November 2009, questions and concerns about the new system were being raised, and Taylor could have used her power of appointment and her seat on the board to shift it to a more customer-oriented direction. But she didn't.

Dewey Bartlett Jr had enough time to replace a majority of the TARE board prior to the finalization of the bid documents and to take advantage of his ex officio position on the board to revise the board's plans. Instead, Bartlett Jr expressly chose to keep Taylor appointees on the board while all the important decisions were being made, despite the objections of city councilors.

If you don't like paying twice the price for the service you used to have (or almost the same price for half the service), if you don't like the automated trucks leaving every cart on your block in the middle of the street on trash pickup day, if you don't like mandatory carts with loose lids that let vermin in and odors out, both Kathy Taylor and Dewey Bartlett Jr deserve the blame. Either one of them could have exerted leadership to ensure that the new system retained the features Tulsans liked about the old trash service, but neither did. Both Taylor and Bartlett Jr stood by while an unelected board radically transformed a basic service of local government, over the objections of the citizens.

MORE from the Taylor mayoralty:

Tulsa World (OK) - Wednesday, July 9, 2008: With trash plan canned, carts now in contention:

At a May trash board meeting, member Cheryl Cohenour talked about participants getting to keep the carts and the board reimbursing the independent haulers for the cost.

But since that time, it apparently was decided that the haulers would instead pick up the carts.

The City Council last month signaled the end of the yearlong program, which converted the routes to a once-a-week, cart-based service that included recycling, by allowing it to expire.

The routes this week reverted to the city's standard twice-a-week service.

Councilors expressed frustration about the meager savings experienced by participants and were reluctant to change a service that most residents enjoy.

Curbside collection rates for the pilot program were $12.37 per month compared with the $13.44 per month for the twice-a-week service.

Because the Tulsa City Council's website throws a roadblock in the path
of search engines indexing past agendas and minutes, I'm posting direct,
static links to each meeting agenda. Here is the fourth entry in the
series, covering 2010.



Because the Tulsa City Council's website throws a roadblock in the path of search engines indexing past agendas and minutes, I'm posting direct, static links to each meeting agenda. I obtained these by searching manually for agendas from each month in sequence, then copying and pasting the results. I'm hopeful that this will enable full search engine indexing of the TulsaCouncil.org archives, including backup material. Here is the third entry in a series. Each entry will cover one year.

Because the Tulsa City Council's website throws a roadblock in the path of search engines indexing past agendas and minutes, I'm posting direct, static links to each meeting agenda. I obtained these by searching manually for agendas from each month in sequence, then copying and pasting the results. I'm hopeful that this will enable full search engine indexing of the TulsaCouncil.org archives, including backup material. Here is the second entry in a series. Each entry will cover one year.

Because the Tulsa City Council's website throws a roadblock in the path of search engines indexing past agendas and minutes, I'm posting direct, static links to each meeting agenda. I obtained these by searching manually for agendas from each month in sequence, then copying and pasting the results. I'm hopeful that this will enable full search engine indexing of the TulsaCouncil.org archives, including backup material. Here is the first entry in a series. Each entry will cover one year.

Here is the monthly sales tax news release from Mayor Dewey F. Bartlett Jr's office, dated February 5, 2010. This is two months after Bartlett Jr was sworn in, just shy of three months after he was elected mayor in 2009.

Please especially note the final paragraph, which I've highlighted in bold. It's very interesting in light of recent ads claiming that his predecessor (whom he endorsed for re-election) drove Tulsa to the brink of bankruptcy.

MONTHLY SALES TAX, USE TAX COLLECTIONS
FROM MID-DECEMBER TO MID-JANUARY

The preliminary report from the Oklahoma Tax Commission regarding sales tax collections for the City of Tulsa have now declined 11 consecutive months including the last eight months of declines averaging 11 percent.

According to the preliminary report, sales tax collections from mid-December to mid-January totaled $17,771,635, a 9.8 percent drop from $19,696,317 for the same month last year. Use taxes, which businesses and others pay on purchases of equipment from out-of-state vendors, were above budget estimate at $1,598,877. From the same period a year ago, use taxes have declined by 7.8 percent or $135,619.

"As expected, we are continuing to see sharp declines in our sales tax revenues. Our combined receipts for both sales and use tax are slightly lower than our revised budget expectations,"Mayor Dewey Bartlett said. ''With the $10 million reduction to our general fund, we will continue to monitor expenses closely until the end of the year."

The General Fund portion of sales and use tax totaled $1.34 million for the month, a little less than $100,000 lower than our revised budget expectations.

Mayor Bartlett added, "It should be clear that the economic problems that we are experiencing are the result of declining revenues due to the national recession, not any express actions by the current or previous administrations. Both the Bartlett and Taylor administrations have collectively reduced our annual expenses by $25 million."

Maybe it just took Bartlett Jr another year or so to realize how badly his predecessor (whom he endorsed for re-election) mismanaged the city's finances.

After all, it wasn't until inauguration day that Bartlett Jr figured out that there was a budget crisis at all, even though the woman he endorsed for re-election decided not to run in order to devote her full attention to it, and even though she invited him as Mayor-elect to shadow her at any meetings on her schedule, offered to provide him briefings on critical issues, including the budget crisis, and provided office for him and space for his staff at City Hall during the month-long transition.

Bartlett will be installed as Mayor on Dec. 7. In the meantime, Bartlett and his transition team will begin to deal with the most pressing issues, with the City's budget problems at the top of the list.

"There is a lot of hard work ahead - this current budget crisis is unprecedented. The finance team and I are ready to get started," said Mayor Taylor. Mayor Taylor plans to brief Bartlett on the current state of this year's budget, and the issues which will need to be considered regarding next year's budget.

"We have an office set up for Mayor-elect Bartlett. He can occupy the office as soon as he would like and we will provide space for other staff as well," said Mayor Taylor.

Each department has drafted a summary of its staff and budget as well as issues to be addressed.

"I will be personally briefing the new mayor, as soon as he is available, on all the issues I am handling that need to be transitioned to the Mayor-elect," Mayor Taylor said.

The Mayor-elect will be invited to attend all management meetings, as well as attend any meeting on Mayor Taylor's schedule. Her staff has prepared a list of events and dates for which the Mayor's presence has been requested after her term ends.

(Both Taylor and Bartlett Jr deserve blame for financial mismanagement, specifically for running up the budget during flush times, forcing painful cuts when revenues shrank. Taylor also refused to deal seriously with concerns raised by then-Councilor Bill Martinson, seeming to treat him as an adversary who needed to be crushed like a bug, rather than an ally in the cause of fiscal sanity.)

Just got an email from the Tulsa County Republican Party announcing volunteer door-knocking days on behalf of Dewey Bartlett Jr, running for re-election as Mayor of Tulsa. Although this is officially a non-partisan race, both candidates are closely identified with their respective parties, and both were elected to their first terms on a partisan ballot.

Several things about the email were surprising. Five dates were listed, and of those five, only three were going to be staffed by the Tulsa County Republican Party. One date was for the Rogers County Republican Party and another for the Washington County Republican Party. The City of Tulsa has no territory in Washington County, and only a narrow fenceline in Rogers County. Occasionally you have as many as two Rogers County voters who show up to vote in a city election. The email address for the point of contact for the effort is that of the Oklahoma Republican Party's northeastern field rep.

I can understand why the state GOP would be concerned. Kathy Taylor has the means to self-fund a campaign for higher office, threatening solid GOP control of the State Capitol and Oklahoma's congressional delegation. A defeat in November, one presumes, would put an end to any ambitions for higher office.

On the other hand, consider that Democrat Susan Savage was mayor for 10 years, left office without ever being defeated, and was considered a potential candidate for higher office, but she has never even made the attempt. Her only post-mayoral position has been her appointment as Secretary of State by a fellow Democrat, Gov. Brad Henry. If she ran to be a senator or congressman or governor, Kathy Taylor would have to run for office as a Democrat, and her views on national and ideological issues would come to the fore. Republicans who might be comfortable with her as mayor would block her from election to a legislature where the numbers of Ds and Rs determines overall control.

Taylor herself seems to have had a couple of ripe opportunities to move up into state or national elective politics, but she hasn't. Presumably her pollsters tell her she can't win statewide or even CD1-wide right now.

It's sad that Bartlett Jr can't muster enough enthusiasm among Republicans in the City of Tulsa to get them to knock doors for him. I imagine that many Republican activists were turned off by Bartlett Jr's endorsement of Taylor's re-election, his hostility toward the Republican-majority council that served during the first half of the term, and by what appears to be at best a chilly relationship with the councilors who replaced them (most of them with the support of Bartlett Jr's allies). Not to mention his support for gay-rights legislation and the Vision2 pork-barrel and corporate welfare county tax. (Not that Taylor is any better on those issues.) I still have yet to hear of a current councilor who endorses Bartlett Jr's re-election.

I imagine that the Democratic Party is as anxious to get Taylor elected as the Republicans are to prevent it, and that they too are importing out-of-town Democratic activists to support her campaign.

So our first-ever non-partisan mayoral election has become a proxy battle between the two major national parties. The motivating issue for politicos outside our city limits (and for some inside) is whether the Democrats' best hope for breaking the Republican monopoly in Oklahoma will have or will be deprived of Tulsa City Hall as a platform from which to run for higher office.

But the question on the minds of many Tulsans: What difference will November's result make to the way city government is run? Whether it's Taylor or Bartlett Jr, the same "leading Tulsa citizens" -- the usual suspects -- will be appointed to authorities, boards, and commissions. Whether it's Bartlett Jr or Taylor, the same guy who has been around since the Randle Administration will oversee urban planning and serve as the Mayor's proxy on the Planning Commission.* Whoever wins, we'll still be stuck with the complicated and messy trash system imposed upon us by board members that Kathy appointed and Dewey re-appointed (or didn't bother to replace). Whoever wins will fall all over himself or herself to back the Tulsa Regional Chamber's latest wheeze.

*NOTE: Dwain Midget appears in news reports as early as February 7, 1991, as the Mayor's representative on the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission. The description in the linked article is incorrect: the Mayor does have a vote on the TMAPC, a vote which which has been exercised by Mr. Midget on the Mayor's behalf for over 22 years under five different mayors from both major parties. Many neighborhood association leaders have long seen Midget as a consistent vote for the development lobby and hostile to neighborhood concerns. If there really were any significant differences in policy between the last five mayors, wouldn't a new mayor have bothered to replace someone in such a key role with someone closer to the new mayor's perspective?

Oklahoman urban reporter Steve Lackmeyer may have unintentionally sparked another street-naming controversy up the turnpike in Tulsa.

Lackmeyer recounted the 1961 renaming of Oklahoma City's Grand Avenue to Sheridan Avenue. The name Sheridan, to honor Civil War general, Ft. Sill founder, and "Indian fighter" Philip Sheridan, was a compromise after merchants requested a renaming to erase the bad reputation of Grand Ave and honor a new Sheraton Hotel. Lackmeyer looked into the background of the street's namesake:

And here's where it gets really politically incorrect: Sheridan liked to kill American Indians. His biographer quoted him as saying "the only good Indians I saw were dead" in response to a Comanche chief who introduced himself to the general as a "good Injun." He made this lovely comment while at Fort Sill - the same command that oversaw the opening of the unassigned lands in Oklahoma, including what is now Oklahoma City.

Sheridan's assault on American Indians was more than just a military guy taking his job too seriously.

During the winter of 1868, he attacked Cheyennes, Kiowas and Comanches in their winter quarters, taking the livestock, killing those who fought back, and driving the survivors back onto reservations.

Gen. Sheridan didn't like buffalo either:

Historians noted that when the Texas legislature considered outlawing bison poaching on tribal lands, Sheridan personally testified against it, suggesting lawmakers instead give each of the hunters a medal, engraved with a dead buffalo on one side and a discouraged-looking Indian on the other.

There are a lot of places named Sheridan in the US, and the ones I've checked all seemed to be named to honor this murderous racist.

While Sheridan Avenue in Oklahoma City is a relatively short and minor street, Sheridan Road in Tulsa is a major thoroughfare, a section-line road stretching from Mohawk Park and the Tulsa Zoo in the north, along the west boundary of Tulsa International Airport, and all the way to the Arkansas River near Bixby in the south. There are Sheridan Road exits on the Gilcrease Expressway, the Broken Arrow Expressway, and Skelly Drive. There must be many hundreds of businesses with a Sheridan Road address, including Sheridan Lanes, a bowling alley with a beautifully animated neon sign.

City Council, the ball is in your court.

FINAL UPDATE! Council votes 7-to-Patrick to change the name within the IDL to M. B. Brady Street in honor of the Civil War era photographer, thus preserving the street name while clarifying that we don't wish to honor W. Tate Brady. Not sure if I should applaud the finesse of this move or hoot derision at a too-clever-by-half decision that is likely to make no one happy. Maybe the most eloquent reaction is a comment by JR Seifried on KRMG's story: "lolwut"

UPDATED AND BUMPED 2013/08/15: Yesterday, Councilor Phil Lakin, who was missing from last week's debate and tie vote and won't tell how he would have voted had he been there, announced that tonight's up-or-down vote may not happen:

"Together, we are reorienting ourselves -- and our votes -- toward a constructive solution rather than simply engaging in an up-and-down vote on changing the name of Brady to Burlington," Lakin said in a prepared statement.

I humbly suggest that, notwithstanding the tongue-in-cheek aspects of what follows below, the core idea is a constructive solution: Appoint a commission to look at the history behind all of Tulsa's names, decide on criteria that make a name unacceptable, propose substitutes for unacceptable names (preserving, I hope, Tulsa's orderly street-naming and numbering system), and propose a means for covering the cost of renaming. The public would adopt or reject the renaming and its attendant costs by an up-or-down vote.

Originally published on August 12, 2013.

rename_all_the_things.pngThe problem with the proposal to eradicate the name Brady from Tulsa's map is that it doesn't go far enough. Tate Brady was a founder of the City of Tulsa and a booster of its early growth, but he was also involved in some evil and despicable acts and organizations.

On Thursday, the City Council will vote again on whether to rename a street that honors a Klansman to honor instead a family that grew wealthy on the human misery of the slave trade.

The renaming of Brady Street and Brady Place to Burlington Street and Burlington Place respectively would be one of several Tulsa street renamings in recent years. These are true renamings, not mere double-signing. (An example of double-signing: 41st Street between Peoria and Riverside is called "Nancy Apgar Avenue" to honor the late Brookside Neighborhood Association leader, but 41st Street remains the address of homes and businesses along that stretch of road.)

In 1997, Tulsa renamed the former Osage Expressway to honor the late Baptist pastor and civil rights leader L. L. Tisdale. The former Crosstown Expressway, which bears I-244 and US 412 from the Inner Dispersal Loop to the eastern city limits, was renamed the Martin Luther King Junior Memorial Expressway in 1984 at the direction of then-Gov. George Nigh. A segment of Haskell Street was renamed John Hope Franklin Boulevard in honor of the historian. Last year, N. Cincinnati Avenue from Archer Street to the northern city limits was renamed Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard -- an idea that had been brewing since the late 1980s.

But Tate Brady was hardly alone in his evil deeds and attitudes. His case has attracted the most attention because of Lee Roy Chapman's research in This Land Press, but there are others who are honored in the name of a street, a school, a library, or a theater who contributed to some atrocity of the past or held attitudes that we now consider repugnant.

Overlook for the moment any positive contributions to the community, and let's look at the worst that can be said about many of the people whose names are reflected in city streets and city-owned property.

For example, the city's Richard Lloyd Jones Jr. Airport honors the late Tulsa Tribune executive and long-time airport authority member. But he was named to honor Richard Lloyd Jones Sr., his father and predecessor at the Tribune who is believed to have published an inflammatory editorial that sparked the 1921 attack on Tulsa's African-American community.

Not to ignore another former Tulsa newspaper family, Eugene Lorton was publisher of the Tulsa World in November 1917 when its editorial page called for the lynching of members of the International Workers of the World. A day later, a group called the Knights of Liberty kidnapped and tortured 17 members of the I. W. W.; Tate Brady was named as a ringleader in what became known as the "Tulsa Outrage."

Tate Brady chaired the committee for the 1918 reunion of the United Confederate Veterans, but many of the other names on the committee are honored with Tulsa parks and streets. S. R. Lewis is the namesake of Lewis Avenue. Charles Page has a boulevard. The names Owen, Howard, and Turner can be found on city parks. Eugene Lorton's name is on this list, as are famous Tulsa oilmen McBirney and McFarlin. C. N. Haskell, Oklahoma's first governor, is on the list, too -- he signed the state's Jim Crow laws and is the namesake of Haskell St.

That's just early-day Tulsa. We haven't touched the places named to honor the architects of the second destruction of the Greenwood district via urban renewal and the Model Cities program in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Mayors, commissioners, city attorneys, members of committees -- all should be investigated for culpability in demolishing what Tulsa's African-American community painstakingly rebuilt after the 1921 riot.

Greenwood itself is named after Greenwood, Mississippi, which is named for Choctaw chief Greenwood LeFlore, who owned slaves, betrayed his own people by signing the treaty for the tribe's removal to Oklahoma, and urged the Five Tribes to support the Confederacy.

We could rename Greenwood to Garrison, to match the name the sixth block east of Main has in far-north Tulsa, but Garrison got its name for racist reasons. The blue-collar white people to whom Tulsa's far-north subdivisions were first marketed wouldn't have wanted to live on a street whose name was associated with Tulsa's African-American community.

We can't do anything about George Kaiser Family Foundation naming its private property after Woody Guthrie, who was a vocal advocate for a murderous ideology responsible for the deaths of tens of millions and the enslavement of billions in Russia, China, Cuba, southeast Asia, and around the globe. But Tulsa could dis-honor the old Red by giving Guthrie Avenue a different name.

One block further west, Sam Houston was involved in the theft of Texas from Latino rule to Anglo rule. Indian and Jackson Avenues are, ironically, next to each other. President Andrew Jackson, the founder of the modern Democrat Party, was a racist demagogue responsible for the deaths of thousands of Native Americans on the Trail of Tears.

Waco Avenue may have had a neutral meaning when it was named, but nowadays it's associated with the burning of the Branch Davidian compound, which inspired the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, according to the perpetrator of that atrocity.

Rather than handle these renamings piecemeal, with the potential of a new renaming (and a four-hour long public hearing) at every week's City Council meeting, the City Council should appoint a diverse commission of historically minded citizens to research the histories of all names under the control of the City of Tulsa and its boards and commissions.

This commission -- perhaps to be called the Commission for the Sanitation of Politically Incorrect Names (C-SPIN) -- would report back with a comprehensive recommendation to rename certain streets, an estimate of the cost to rename, and a revenue proposal (sales tax or general obligation bond issue) for funding the recommended renamings, including city expenses like street signage and grants to affected businesses and residents to cover signage, business cards, letterhead, and other street renaming expenses.

The commission would have to consider whether a person's misdeeds rises to the level of deserving the removal of his or her name from a public place. They might wish to set criteria that would be applied consistently to decide thumbs up or down. Not everyone will agree with my worst-case assessments

Just like the Federal Base Re-Alignment and Closure Commission (BRAC), the recommendation could not be amended, but would be submitted to City of Tulsa voters for an up-or-down vote on the renaming and the tax to fund it.

One-by-one renaming will be inefficient and unquestionably inconsistent. A comprehensive review of all names at once will allow the mayor and council to focus on other crises, will tend toward a consistent application of criteria, and will put the matter to rest for, we hope, many years. I hope the City Council will consider this possibility on Thursday.

A proposed hotel/office/retail development in the Bob Wills District that was stymied in 2008 by Mayor Kathy Taylor and the Tulsa Development Authority now looks to move forward, five years later and after a lawsuit and settlement.

The half-block west of Elgin between Archer and Brady is owned by the Tulsa Development Authority. Currently a parking lot, it was previously home to a Fuelman unattended gas station. Developers Will Wilkins and Cecilia Wilkins (Will's mother) plan to build a four- to five-story building with retail on the ground floor, office space on the second floor, and hotel rooms on the upper floors. They have a tentative agreement with the TDA; final agreement is expected at the TDA's August 1 meeting.

In December 2007, a TDA staffer suggested to the Wilkinses, who had worked with the TDA on a number of previous infill projects, that they consider developing the site, across the street from the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce's planned mixed-use development.

Planning and negotiations were moving along smoothly for several months, until then-Mayor Kathy Taylor set out to get the Tulsa Drillers in a new ballpark downtown. Long story short, in August 2008, the TDA cancelled the Wilkinses' exclusive negotiating rights to the site -- part of an effort to control all the land around the ballpark -- the Wilkinses sued, and the suit was finally settled a few days before going to trial in June 2012.

You can read a detailed account of how Taylor and the TDA treated the Wilkinses in the BatesLine archives:

The Control Freaks' Squeeze Play: The history of the proposed development, who made it unravel, and the damage done to Tulsa as a place for creative entrepreneurs.

TDA chairman's letter announcing intent to terminate Wilkinses' exclusive negotiating period, and Kathy Taylor's response

Novus Homes sues City of Tulsa for interference: In 2009, The Wilkinses added the City of Tulsa and Kathy Taylor to their lawsuit against TDA. This entry explains
what they learned in discovery that led them to add the City and Taylor to the suit.

That last link also has links to other BatesLine articles covering the dispute.

My dilemma in this November's mayoral election is that both candidates have, as mayor, badly mistreated good people trying to do good things for Tulsa and have hurt the City's reputation and progress in the process. I'm not talking about oversights or mistakes, but deliberate actions. There are plenty of examples in Dewey Bartlett's column, but this is one of many in Kathy Taylor's column -- a positive downtown development had to wait five years longer than necessary because of her bulldozer approach to the ballpark deal. If either Bartlett or Taylor were truly repentant for their bad actions -- publicly acknowledged what he or she did wrong, why it was wrong, and how he or she plans to ensure that he or she acts with integrity in the future -- it would go a long way toward winning my support.

WhatMeDewey.jpgOne of Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr's principal attacks against his rival, former City Councilor Bill Christiansen, is that Christiansen agreed to then-Mayor Kathy Taylor's plan to borrow $67 million in revenue bonds to buy the One Technology Center building to serve as a new City Hall, with the bonds to be repaid by the sale of the old City Hall and other buildings and by rent from tenants in the new building.

Bartlett Jr has numerous radio ads attacking Christiansen on this point and a mailer with a picture of Christiansen looking like a vampire and the text, "He [Christiansen] put taxpayers $67-million in debt to move City Hall into new office space.... Paying off the debt created by Christiansen will leave Tulsans strugging for operating cash for many years. The lavish spending cost Tulsa critical dollars for needs like police and fire protection."

But three years ago, Bartlett Jr was praising and defending the purchase of One Technology Center.

In January 2010, video of my 2007 speech to the city council opposing the One Technology Center deal went somewhat viral, circulating by email and on social media. At the time, there was a battle over falling revenues and budget cuts, with Bartlett Jr's administration talking about a layoff over 100 police officers. (On January 22, 2010, Bartlett Jr laid off 124 police officers.)

What grabbed people's attention about the video, I think, was how close my calculation of the extra annual operating expenses had been to the actual City Hall overrun that had been announced in August 2009. The video was used to make the point: City officials were told that the deal would cost more money, they plunged ahead anyway, and now they were paying for their shiny new toy by laying off cops and making Tulsans more vulnerable to crime.

Emily Sinovic, then a reporter for Fox 23, called to ask for my comment on the ongoing interest in the speech. She also contacted the office of Mayor Bartlett Jr. Here's a link to the January 15, 2010, Fox 23 story about the cost of operating Tulsa's new City Hall

Dewey Bartlett Jr could have taken the opportunity to denounce the City Hall purchase as a bad deal and to cast some blame at Kathy Taylor and several city councilors for adding to the city's budget woes by supporting it.

But Dewey didn't do that. Instead the Bartlett Jr's spokesperson defended the City Hall purchase using arguments similar to those Taylor used three years earlier in support of the One Technology Center deal. According to the Fox 23 story, "A spokesperson in the Mayor Bartlett's office issued an emailed statement in response to the youtube video."

Here's the statement from Bartlett Jr's office to Fox 23.

No additional taxes on citizens were required to purchase OTC. The purchase of the building was financed through the sale of $67 million in tax-exempt revenue bonds to fund the purchase, moving and modification costs. To protect Tulsa taxpayers from risk, the City negotiated a 10-year lease with Bank of Oklahoma, which guarantees $28.7 million in rent revenue over 10 years. The guarantee covers leases with Level 3 Communications and Deloitte-Touche, which continues to lease space. The leasing of vacant office space has been impacted by a downturn in the economy and less demand for Class A office space, but we are aggressively marketing and have recently shown office space to potential tenants.

By vacating the five other City buildings (old City Hall, 707 S. Houston, TFD Headquarters, Francis Campbell Council Room, Hartford Building) that were consolidated into One Technology Center, the City avoided millions of dollars in maintenance costs and capital expenditures required for those buildings.

There also are many other benefits to having the consolidated office space: improved efficiencies, reduced travel between remote sites and better energy-efficiency with lighting, healing and cooling than the former City Hall and other buildings. City offices occupy 30 percent less total space than before.

The City of Tulsa purchased the building, along with the garage and furnishings and fixtures and technological features, for $52.25 million, or about 23 percent of the building's original cost to build.

It's true: The new City Hall has been a drag on city finances. Kathy Taylor was wrong to push for it, and Bill Christiansen was wrong to vote for it. But Dewey Bartlett Jr was wrong not to stand up and object at the time of the vote and wrong to defend the idea three years later. Bartlett Jr's ads denouncing Christiansen on this issue are hypocritical, cynical politics.

MORE: Here's what I said to the City Council about the proposed purchase of One Technology Center:

auditor_lewis_yardsign.PNGOvershadowed by expensive campaigns for Tulsa mayor and county commissioner, the other race on next Tuesday's ballot is for the crucial office of Tulsa City Auditor.

The city auditor was envisioned by the drafters of Tulsa's 1989 city charter as a counter-balance to the power concentrated in the mayor's office. The auditor has full organizational independence to build a team of auditors and to pursue investigations into the operations and spending of city departments, authorities, boards, and commissions.

But all that power does no good if the auditor refuses to use it or can't manage his own team effectively. While good things can be said about each of three men who have served as auditor under the '89 charter, it can't be said that any of them made full use of the job's authority to save the taxpayers money. Phil Wood, who served for over 20 years, was a pioneer in putting city government information on the web, using his own personal website until the city's official web presence caught up. Wood assembled a well-regarded team of internal auditors. But Wood was reluctant to call public attention to his team's findings for fear of seeming too political.

Preston Doerflinger defeated Wood in 2009 with a promise to do better, and he was slated to head the effort to implement the KPMG efficiency study, but he only stuck around for two years before being called up to serve as State Finance Director.

The current auditor, Clift Richards, was appointed by Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr in 2011 to fill Doerflinger's unexpired term. A Wednesday, June 5, 2013, story in the Tulsa World paints a statistical picture of poor performance under Clift Richards's leadership. The number of improvement recommendations produced by the auditor's office have plummeted from 43 in fiscal year 2008-2009, Wood's last full year in office, to 7 in FY 2011-2022. Under Richards, the office's budget is 25% higher than the average for offices of 6 to 10 auditors, and only 49% of the auditors time is spent on actual audits, compared to a national average of 72%.

Richards's analysis of his department's shortcomings doesn't exactly inspire confidence in his leadership:

He attributed productivity shortfalls mainly to high employee turnover, saying the office often serves as a stepping-stone for better-paying private auditing jobs. He said that forces the office to spend more time training workers while losing progress on audits being conducted by outgoing employees.

An effective city auditor has to be able to counter the lure of the private sector with a sense of mission and cameraderie. If salary is a stumbling block, he has to be willing to go to the City Council and argue for the budget to build and keep a good team together -- not as much money as the private sector, but enough to keep good people on board. Wood managed that much; Richards, by his own testimony, has not.

Meanwhile down the turnpike, State Auditor and Inspector Gary Jones and his team have cleared a massive backlog of required audits and have uncovered misdeeds and shoddy financial practices at every level of state, county, and municipal government. Jones is what Oklahoma has always needed in our State Auditor -- he's persistent, he's efficient, he takes the initiative to protect the taxpayers, and he's unafraid to step on toes, even if those toes belong to a member of the same party.

One of the Jones team's blockbuster audits uncovered extravagant and questionable spending at the Emergency Medical Services Authority (EMSA) which serves Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and a number of other municipalities. A leading member of the EMSA audit team is now seeking to bring that same spirit to the Tulsa City Auditor's office.

Josh Lewis, CPA, graduated summa cum laude in accounting from the College of the Ozarks, worked five years in private sector accounting, and for the last two years has worked as the most senior member of the State Auditor's Tulsa office. According to his campaign bio, Lewis has audited "county governments, federal grants, emergency medical services, and perform[ed] multiple investigative/fraud engagements."

Josh Lewis points out that he is the only candidate without close ties to a mayoral candidate. Clift Richards was appointed by Bartlett; Kathy Taylor appointed Cathy Criswell as Chief Risk Officer in the Mayor's Office and has given $1,000 to Criswell's campaign. We need a City Auditor who is not beholden to the mayor or anyone else whose work his team will be scrutinizing.

Tulsa taxpayers need an energetic, assertive team leader to protect our interests at City Hall. His record, his experience, and his vision for the role indicate that Josh Lewis is the best choice to be Tulsa's City Auditor.

MORE: The State Auditor's audit of EMSA and a News on 6 story about the EMSA audit. From the report:

During the period examined, Mr. Williamson was reimbursed for a number of expenditures that the general public would consider unwarranted and extravagant such as spa goods and services, an American Airlines Admirals' Club membership, and multiple lifetime subscriptions to Sirius Satellite Radio. However, these expenditures are merely indicative of more serious Board inadequacies that allow abusive expenditure patterns and negatively impact public confidence in EMSA's performance, such as a disregard for the organization's fiduciary responsibilities, deficient financial oversight, and insufficient performance assessments.

It is incumbent on the Board of Trustees to aptly govern EMSA. Policies in support of the Authority's mission must be implemented and consistently followed to ensure effective oversight and accountability. Without proper policies involving purchasing, expense reimbursement, and conflict-of-interest disclosure, the Board has unintentionally fostered a culture of acquiescence in which officers and employees are permitted to establish inappropriate patterns of expenditure behavior and fail to disclose potential conflicts of interest, unbeknownst to members of the Board.

American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 1180, which represents non-sworn employees of the City of Tulsa, has filed a petition for declaratory judgment against the City of Tulsa for the City's failure to comply with the union's request for public financial information in a timely fashion, as required by Oklahoma's Open Records law.

The petition was filed in Tulsa County District Court on June 5, 2013, case number CV-2013-00690. It has been assigned to District Judge Linda G. Morrissey.

Here are the allegations in the petition:

5. On or about February 5, 2013, Plaintiff requested written records from Defendant pursuant to the Oklahoma Open Records Act 51 OKLA STAT. § 24A.1 et seq. See Exhibit "A" attached hereto and made part hereof.

6. To date, Plaintiff has not received the documents requested on February 5, 2013 from Defendant.

7. On or about April 23, 2013, Defendant requested a copy of an audio recording of a telephone call from Defendant pursuant to the Oklahoma Open Records Act 51 OKLA STAT. § 24A.1 et seq. See Exhibit "B" attached hereto and made part hereof.

8. On or about April 26, 2013, Defendant responded to Plaintiffs request of April 23, 2013, stating that Defendant is not required to produce the requested audio recording in response to an Open Records Request.

9. On or about May 28, 2013, Plaintiff requested time sheets, overtime forms, leave reports, lists of employees, and emails containing certain words from Defendant. See Exhibit "C", attached hereto and made part hereof.

10. To date, Plaintiff has not received the documents requested on May 28, 2013, from Defendant.

11. As to the remaining records, Defendant has not produced them to date and despite the length of time that has passed since they have been requested has not provided a date certain that they will be produced in a reasonable amount of time.

12. Plaintiff seeks these records to be fully informed about their government, to obtain documents to adequately seek justice, to plan for future contract and benefit negotiations, and to efficiently and intelligently exercise their inherent political power and rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

The union local is asking the court to find that they are "entitled to the requested records pursuant to the Oklahoma Open Records Act," to award them attorney's fees and costs, and "such other and further relief as the Court deems just and proper."

Among the documents being sought are financial documents that have, in the past, routinely been published to the city website, but which have been available only sporadically in recent years. The online archive of City of Tulsa monthly financial reports goes back to February 2002, but the most recent three posted to the site are from February 2013, September 2012, and May 2012. The Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, was delivered to the mayor on November 29, 2012, but (based on the Internet Archive's holdings) it doesn't appear to have been posted to the website until Februrary 1, 2013. (See the City of Tulsa's archive of Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports here, going back to 2003.)

AFSCME has scheduled a 10:00 a.m. Thursday press conference to discuss the petition.

tulsaNow-logo.pngGrassroots civic group TulsaNow sent a questionnaire to the candidates for Mayor of Tulsa; Bill Christiansen and Kathy Taylor responded. There were multiple attempts to contact incumbent Dewey Bartlett Jr, but he did not respond.

Question topics include delays in PLANiTULSA implementation, police department scandals and rising costs, park demolitions, downtown surface parking, mass transit and bike lanes, and economic development.

Two comments for now:

It was encouraging to see that the idea of a downtown surface parking moratorium has become to conventional wisdom in 2013. It was a way-out idea back in 1998, when, as a city council candidate, I proposed a downtown parking summit among TCC, churches, and office building owners to address demolition for parking. As recently as 2006, the CORE Tulsa report, a collection of very modest measures to encourage preservation and discourage demolition downtown, was spiked by the Tulsa Preservation Commission at the urging of Kathy Taylor's administration. Taylor showed no leadership on the issue when she had the opportunity, as mayor, to do so, and you have to assume that her aide Susan Neal was working on Taylor's behalf.

It was discouraging to realize that all three major candidates are social and fiscal liberals. According to Kathy Taylor's response, extending benefits to same-sex partners of city employees "is one area where all three major candidates expressed agreement at the FOP forum." Bill Christiansen's response failed to answer the question: "Bill Christiansen does not discriminate against anyone and is for inclusivity. Bill practices marriage from the biblical meaning and supports the legal meaning of marriage as it is." No one addressed the problem of cost -- would employees bear the full marginal cost of adding coverage, or would we have to squeeze the city budget to pay part or all of it? -- or the question of verification -- how does the city know that this person is really your "domestic partner" and not just an uninsured acquaintance? And no one hit upon the idea of letting an employee add any adult to insurance, without regard to the existence of a "partnership," which would avoid forcing the taxpayers to bless all kinds of immoral relationships as pseudo-marriage for the purpose of benefits.

City of Tulsa general fund budget by fiscal year and mayor, 2003-2014

Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr has released his proposed budget for the upcoming 2013-2014 fiscal year, which begins July 1. (That's an 8 GB PDF.) The budget is slightly lower than last year, reflecting the drop in revenues that caught Bartlett Jr and his administration by surprise, leading to a hiring freeze for the last quarter of the 2012-2013 fiscal year.

The above chart shows the general fund budget over the last 10 years. The complete city budget includes many other funds, but the general fund is a good apples-to-apples comparison, as it doesn't include fee-for-service funds like trash and water. This is the part of the budget where the mayor has the most control.

What you'll notice is a steep climb in the general fund budget under Taylor and again under Bartlett Jr, with a drop in the middle under both mayors when the 2008 recession hit Tulsa and sales tax revenues plummeted.

Here's the thing to remember about government budgeting in Oklahoma. The Oklahoma State Constitution and state statutes require a balanced budget for the state and all of its political subdivisions. While you can issue bonds for capital improvements, you can't simply get out the credit card to pay for operations when you want to spend more than available revenues. A mayor has to cut spending. There is no other option when revenues are down.

But when times are fat and revenues are flowing, a mayor does have a choice: He or she could show restraint and hold spending increases to the rate of inflation. A few voices -- former City Councilor John Eagleton was the most prominent -- called for restraining the growth of government to the rate of inflation, but those voices were ignored.

The other option: The mayor could expand existing programs, create new programs, and allow spending to increase to consume all available revenues, making cuts all the more painful when revenues contract, as they eventually will.

Kathy_Taylor-That.Is.Crazy.png

Kathy Taylor opted for the latter course. Taylor boosted the general fund budget by 18.5% over three years, half again faster than the rate of inflation over the same period (June 2005, when Bill LaFortune's last budget was approved, to June 2008, when Taylor's peak budget was approved). Had Taylor kept her spending increases to the rate of inflation, no cuts would have been necessary -- the 2008-2009 budget would have been $242.3 million instead of the actual amount of $255.3 million, and the actual 2009-2010 budget of $244.5 million would have represented an increase.

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Dewey Bartlett Jr was an even bigger spendthrift than Kathy Taylor. He cut when he had to in FY 2010-2011, to stay within available revenues, but then Bartlett Jr's general fund budgets rose 17% in just two years, over a period (June 2010 to June 2012) when the CPI rose only 5%. Once again, had Bartlett Jr held his spending to the rate of inflation, the 2012-2013 budget would have been only $245.2 million.

Had spending been held to the rate of inflation through both the Taylor and Bartlett Jr administrations, the City of Tulsa would have avoided painful budget cuts and would have a fatter rainy day fund.

It's time Tulsa got off of the budget roller coaster and took a more cautious, conservative, and steady approach to city budgeting.

MORE: Download the FY13-14 City of Tulsa Proposed Budget.

Here's a table showing the Consumer Price Index month-by-month going all the way back to 1913.

Citizens for a Better Vision was the grassroots group that led the successful opposition to Vision2, using a minuscule budget compared to the millions at the "vote yes" side's proposal. Now they're trying to influence the development of proposals to re-up city sales and property taxes for a new funding package for city infrastructure, a combined package that may top $800 million, with hopes that the ultimate proposal is one worthy of the voters' support.

Tonight, Wednesday, March 27, 2013, at 6 p.m., at the Martin East Regional Library, 2601 S. Garnett in Tulsa, Citizens for a Better Vision will host a meeting to allow the public to express their concerns and air their comments on the developing proposal to extend the City of Tulsa sales taxes (1 1/6 cent) and general obligation bond issue that have been devoted for the last few years to street repair. All mayoral candidates and all members of the City Council have been invited to attend the meeting.

There have been City Hall sponsored meetings ("City Hall in Your Neighborhood"), but, according to the Citizens for a Better Vision flyer, "all questions [at the official City Hall-sponsored meetings] are filtered through notecards and some citizen concerns are altogether ignored." In contrast, the flyer for tonight's meeting promises that "Everyone's Voice Will Be Heard!"

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This meeting is a great opportunity to express your "must haves" and "dealbreakers" to the mayor and council, who must approve any package that goes before the voters. Here are a few of my requirements that have to be met before I'd support a funding package.

1. Streets only: No corporate welfare, no unfulfilled wishes from Vision2, only the construction and maintenance of streets. Anything else would have to be on a separate ballot item, preferably not even on the same ballot or the same day.

2. No permanent taxes: No more than a five year term before the tax sunsets.

3. A "Brown ordinance" with teeth: A clear and complete list of projects to be funded, with an estimated cost for each, and a basis for estimate for the cost of each. (The Brown ordinance was a key element in the passage of the first 3rd Penny sales tax in 1980, after a blank check tax was defeated by voters the previous year.)

4. Pay-as-you-go: No borrowing money against future sales tax revenues to fund current projects. By keeping it pay-as-you-go, all the money goes to projects, instead of bond fees and interest.

What are your dealbreakers for a new streets package? List some in the comments below.

Just in case you don't read the insert in your city water bill:

There will be a household pollutant collection event on Saturday, April 13th, 2013, and Sunday, April 14th, 2013, on the north side of Expo Square, Gate 7, off of 15th Street, from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. both days. Accepted items include

  • household cleaners and toxins,
  • yard-care products,
  • pesticides,
  • acids,
  • caustics,
  • thinners,
  • household flammable liquids,
  • all fluorescent light bulbs,
  • firearms ammunition (.50 caliber or smaller),
  • smoke alarms,
  • thermostats, oil,
  • antifreeze,
  • oil-based, aerosol, and hobby paints,
  • prescription medications.

Not accepted: Latex paint, commercial waste, radioactive waste, pressurized gas cylinders, water reactive chemicals, explosives and dioxins. (You can dispose of latex paint by opening the can and letting it dry completely, then disposing with other trash.)

(Does anyone else remember approving a permanent, year-round hazardous waste collection facility as part of a "Third Penny" sales tax package? We'll explore what happened to that idea in a later entry.)

100px-Seal_of_Tulsa,_OK.pngThe following weekend, April 20-21, 2013, are free landfill days for City of Tulsa residents, from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day at the Quarry Waste Management Inc. Landfill on 46th Street north, 1.5 miles east of US 169. You must show a utility bill or driver's license with an address within Tulsa's city limits. Tires are accepted with the state mandated fee -- $1 for motorcycle and bicycle tires, $3.50 for tires to 19.5" inside diameter, $2.50 for agricultural tires not more than 14" wide and 44" in diameter.

Finally, free mulch is available at the City of Tulsa's mulch-processing site, 10101 East 56th Street north (just east of Mingo Road), open seven days a week, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., except City holidays. (Strictly speaking, there ain't no such thing as a free mulch. Your trash fees pay for this.) You can also drop off yard waste, as an alternative to disposing of green waste with normal trash pick-up.

(Note to the person who edits the water-bill insert: Rather than print a 103-character URL that someone will have to type in, work with the IT department to set up a short, memorable URL -- something like "http://cityoftulsa.org/yardwaste" -- to redirect to the page.)

GETTING THERE: Click this link for a Google map showing the three City of Tulsa waste disposal locations mentioned above.

Last year the City of Tulsa changed the secondary disinfectant used in our drinking water from chlorine to chloramine, a derivative of ammonia. The change was to meet EPA regulations intended to eliminate a carcinogenic by-product of chlorine disinfection (trihalomethanes), but the replacement method has its own unpleasant side effects: Chloramine-treated water can't be used in fish ponds or for dialysis, it can cause rubber plumbing parts to deteriorate, may leach lead from old pipes, and there are concerns that it hasn't thoroughly been tested for health effects on humans.

A group called Tulsans Against Chloramine attempted unsuccessfully to persuade the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority to stop the conversion to chloramine and opt for a safer method of disinfection. Since the conversion, TAC has been continuing to work to educate the public about their concerns and building pressure to reverse the decision.

Tulsans Against Chloramine have invited candidates for Tulsa mayor to attend their meeting this Tuesday night, March 12, 2013, at 6:30 at Hardesty Regional Library, 8316 E 93rd St, Tulsa. The speaker will be Robert Bowcock, an expert on the use of chloramines in public water supplies.

Join Tulsans Against Chloramine for a meeting to discuss the CHLORAMINE in our water supply and what WE can do to reverse the decision. The Tulsa Mayoral candidates have been invited to attend this meeting. We feel it is important for them to know our concerns and to have the most up to date information regarding Chloramine.

Let's make Tulsa a city that does the right thing for the health and property of its people as well as our environment.

Our guest speaker is Mr. Robert Bowcock, who is a national water specialist and an American Water Works Association member for over 30 years. He conducts environmental investigations with Erin Brockovich. Mr. Bowcock is working with TAC to stop the use of Chloramine and move towards a safer alternative for the Tulsa area.

Please join us to make a difference in our community.

Dewey Bartlett JuniorMy guess is that Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr has a friend at the libertarian Reason Foundation or has a friend who is a major donor to the organization, because they've posted another story -- with video this time -- hailing him as a budgetary genius. Clearly, the only Tulsans they've been asking about Bartlett's record are Bartlett himself and his publicist. Earlier this year, an article appeared on the Reason Foundation's website under Bartlett's byline.

The article, posted on December 10, 2012, began:

When Mayor Dewey Bartlett took office on December 7, 2009, Tulsa, Oklahoma was in its worst budget crisis since the Great Depression.

"We would have probably had to file for bankruptcy," Bartlett tells Reason TV. "It certainly got us focused on how to run a government better."

With a $10 million budget shortfall and employee compensation spiraling out of control, thinkng about layoffs was just the beginning. Bartlett schooled himself about the budget and decided to focus "on things a government really should do and also make a decision on what a government really doesn't need to do." He reformed pay for police and firemen, sold unused vehicles and property, and privatized some city services, including the city's zoo.

Worst budget crisis since the depression? Tulsa had a deeper crisis in 2002, when Susan Savage was leaving office. Officials projected a $11.3 million shortfall. Incoming Mayor Bill LaFortune and the City Council approved an FY03 budget that was $13 million lower than its FY02 budget. They didn't raise taxes, either.

Bankruptcy? Mayor Junior doesn't know the meaning of the word. There was no chance that Tulsa would default on its general obligation debt, funded by property tax, or its revenue bonds, funded by sales taxes. You don't declare bankruptcy just because you don't have as much money to spend as you expected. You declare bankruptcy when you can't even make the payments on your debt. The City of Tulsa had to tighten its belt, like nearly every Tulsan has had to do. Unlike cities in some other states, Oklahoma's cities and towns are required by state law to balance their budgets every year.

It's nice that Bartlett Jr bothered to "school[] himself on the budget" after he was sworn in. Many candidates for public office feel an obligation to study the issues before running, but clearly that was unnecessary for a candidate with a famous name and a pile of daddy's money.

Terry SimonsonIn the video, there's a cameo (likely unintentional) by Bartlett's former chief of staff Terry Simonson, who is seen pushing through a door marked Office of the Mayor at 14 seconds into the video.

At 2:22, Bartlett begins to talk about the Management Review Office, and a pull-quote appears from a May 2011 Tulsa World web story, headlined "Management Review Office tackles 18 projects."

The city's Management Review Office - created to vet and help implement the KPMG study's efficiency recommendations - is working on projects that are expected to save Tulsa a minimum of $2.6 million annually.

$2.6 million is certainly worth saving, but it's not all that impressive as a percentage of the city's more than half-billion-dollar annual budget.

The graph at 2:30, comparing City of Tulsa spending to the rate of inflation, was produced by City Council researcher Jack Blair at the request of Councilor John Eagleton. Eagleton was at times the lone voice for fiscal restraint during the Kathy Taylor administration, calling for limiting budget growth to the rate of inflation. Because Eagleton's counsel was rejected in 2006, 2007, and 2008, the cuts were far more painful when the revenue shortfalls hit in late 2009.

Apparently ignorant of the fiscal warnings from Eagleton and colleagues Bill Martinson and Rick Westcott, Bartlett Jr endorsed Kathy Taylor for reelection until she opted to quit the race. By his own statement, Bartlett Jr didn't seem to get hip to the budget crisis until the day he was sworn in, when Finance Director Mike Kier came into his office "with a very concerned look on his face." Bartlett Jr's 2009 mayoral campaign didn't address fiscal issues at all; rather it was focused on his Democratic opponent's support for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.

I applaud Bartlett Jr's initiative to apply the penny test to detect unused and unneeded vehicles and his efforts to sell off surplus capital equipment and real estate. It's good to see managed competition, an idea that emerged about 20 years ago from Indianapolis in the administration of Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, at work in Tulsa, but I seem to recall some of that began under Bill LaFortune. (In managed competition, when a city function is considered for privatization, city employees are able to bid against private companies and have an incentive to find savings.)

It's notable that the City Council gets no mention from Bartlett Jr in this exercise in self-backpatting. The Council spends weeks examining, amending, and ultimately approving the city's budget. Their effort to restore key services without raising fees was thwarted by Bartlett Jr's veto, according to then-Councilor Rick Westcott, in a November 24, 2010, UTW news story by Mike Easterling.

From Westcott's perspective, other factors have contributed to the falling out between the mayor and the council, particularly the list of fee increases Bartlett proposed in the spring to help restore the city services that had been cut. When the council shot down those increases and countered with budget amendments of its own that restored those services without raising any fees, it appeared to make the mayor angry, Westcott said.

"He vetoed our budget, specifically our amendments, and that's not the way a fiscal conservative should approach the budget," he said.

Westcott also maintains the day-to-day operations of the new administration leave a lot to be desired.

"He's missed several deadlines of several different issues," Westcott said. "It does not appear there is anyone on the staff paying attention to those things ... There have been several examples over the course of the year where he's missed deadlines. I find that very disappointing. That's basic stuff."

As I noted in the same story, Bartlett Jr was the first mayor in my recollection who had managed to alienate all nine city councilors. You might expect a budget-cutting mayor to face the ire of councilors supported by public employee unions, but he managed to tick off the most devout fiscal conservatives on the council as well. There are indications that his relationship with the new crop of councilors isn't much better.

Bartlett Jr's mishandling of police layoffs should have caught Reason's attention. A federal grant could have been used to avoid layoffs and the significant costs of processing the layoffs and recall -- possibly exceeding $1 million, not to mention the bad publicity for the city.

The next time Reason decides to lionize a local public official, I hope they'll do some independent research first. Maybe talk to other elected officials, talk radio hosts, city hall reporters, local bloggers. I'm sure the city officials of Bell, California, would have told Reason all sorts of good things about themselves, too.

MORE: Reason surely wouldn't approve of Vision2, the corporate welfare and pork barrel plan that Bartlett Jr spent months promoting as campaign co-chairman. Vision2 would have borrowed money today against revenues that wouldn't be collected for four years in order to fund specialized equipment for the benefit of a bankrupt airline and in order to accumulate a "deal-closing" fund that would be doled out to benefit politically favored companies.

In a recent issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly, Terry Simonson, who left his position as Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr's chief of staff under an ethical cloud, makes a very weak case for de-annexing the Tulsa County Fairgrounds (aka Expo Square) from the City of Tulsa.

Over the history of the Fairgrounds' existence at their current location, various portions have been inside and outside the city limits. In 2007, the City Council voted to annex all 230-some acres of it, to be effective in January 2009. The delay was the result of a deal between then-Mayor Kathy Taylor and the county commission. County commissioners, who double as members of the Tulsa County Public Facilities Authority (TCPFA, aka the Fair Board), warned of dire consequences to the prosperity of Expo Square and the city if the annexation went through. Because the City surrounded the unincorporated territory on all four sides, it did not need the consent of the owner -- Tulsa County -- to complete the annexation.

(Note that Simonson neglects to inform the readers that three of the TCPFA trustees are the county commissioners, and the other two members are appointed by the county commissioners.)

As Simonson himself acknowledges, the years since annexation have been good years for Expo Square. The Tulsa State Fair has "come out ahead" the last three years -- all three years the fairgrounds have been completely within the city limits. The Arabian Horse Show renewed its contract through 2017. Gun shows continue to draw big crowds.

Having to collect city sales tax and comply with city regulations hasn't hurt Expo Square's ability to attract trade shows, horse shows, and other special events, and it hasn't hurt the Tulsa State Fair.

Despite the success Expo Square has enjoyed during its time within the city limits, Simonson calls for its deannexation:

Because Expo Square tries to operate free of intrusive government regulations and politics, it's time to turn back the clock and for the city council to de annex the fairgrounds. Some will remember that in an ill-fated and short-sighted attempt to shore up its own failing financial picture, the city believed in 2009 that if it imposed the city's sales tax on sales at the fairgrounds, and charge the fairgrounds city utility rates, it would be a tremendous financial windfall. It was never going to be, and it hasn't proven to be. Instead, Expo now spends over $148,000 on utility charges it didn't have to pay, has to deal with the inspection, permitting, and other city government red tape regulations.

I don't like intrusive regulations and politics either, but if a city regulation is unjustified, Simonson should work for its repeal citywide, not try to get a special exemption for the Fairgrounds. If a city regulation is reasonable, it should apply to everyone.

What Simonson wants, really, is what any landlord would love to have: The ability to lure tenants away from other landlords with the promise of tax and regulatory exemptions. That's hardly fair to landlords who can't offer the exemption, especially when everyone depends on the same public services.

Whether or not collecting city sales taxes at the Fairgrounds has been a windfall, Fairgrounds retail sales now contribute their fair share towards the upkeep of the city streets that allow people to reach the Fairgrounds, the upkeep of the city storm sewers that carry stormwater away from the Fairgrounds (a considerable amount since so much of the 230+ acres is impermeable), and the cost of city police and fire protection for the Fairgrounds and environs.

One of the most important benefits of having the Fairgrounds within the city limits is that the planning of its future development will be done in conjunction with planning for the adjoining neighborhoods, guided by the City of Tulsa's comprehensive plan, with the involvement of City of Tulsa planning staff, and with the final say of the Tulsa City Council. I suspect that eliminating this independent oversight of Fairgrounds development is the real aim of Simonson's push for deannexation.

When the Fairgrounds was outside the city limits, there were no checks and balances over land use changes. The TCPFA, made up of the three county commissioners and two people they appoint, would propose a special exception or variance, and the County Board of Adjustment (appointed by the county commissioners) would approve it. Or the TCPFA (three county commissioners plus two people they appoint) would propose a zoning change or comprehensive plan amendment, the TMAPC would make a recommendation, and the county commissioners could vote for the TCPFA's proposal regardless of the TMAPC's recommendation. There was no one looking at proposed changes to land use at the Fairgrounds to mitigate any impact on the surrounding neighborhoods.

This is the heart of the issue: With Drillers Stadium and the old Tulsa City-County Health Department likely to be redeveloped, just across 15th Street from a residential area, City of Tulsa planning staff and City of Tulsa councilors should evaluate any of the TCPFA's redevelopment plans in accordance with the comprehensive plan and the zoning code. Terry Simonson and his former county bosses don't want that, it would seem.

Simonson makes a very misleading statement near the end of his essay:

The state and local economies have improved enough that the city council should do the right thing by giving Expo Square back to the TCPFA.

The city never took Expo Square away from the TCPFA. The Fairgrounds are owned, as they have been for decades, by Tulsa County. Just like the County Courthouse, the David L. Moss Correctional Center, County Election Board, LaFortune Park, the county road barn at 56th and Garnett -- all owned by Tulsa County, but within the Tulsa city limits and governed by the City of Tulsa's ordinances. Other county properties are within the limits of other Tulsa County municipalities -- Haikey Creek Park, for example. Simonson isn't calling for deannexation of those county properties; why should Expo Square be any different?

MORE: Some past BatesLine articles and Urban Tulsa Weekly op-eds about annexation:

November 2006: Annexing the Fairgrounds

Again, it has to be emphasized that annexation wouldn't change ownership. The fairgrounds would still be owned by Tulsa County and run by the Tulsa County Public Facilities Authority (TCPFA, aka the fair board), which consists of the three county commissioners and two other members.... Annexation wouldn't affect the fair board's ability to enter into long-term, non-competitive sweetheart contracts.

But annexation would eliminate the anomalies in law enforcement and tax rates. The fairgrounds and the surrounding land would be subject to the same zoning ordinances and zoning process. The same sales tax rate would apply to businesses on and off the fairgrounds. The same hotel/motel tax rate would apply to the fairgrounds motel and to nearby motels. The same noise ordinances would apply on and off the fairgrounds.

When the fair board considers a lease, they'd have to consider whether the proposed activity complies with city ordinances. I'm sure existing uses would be grandfathered in, but any zoning relief needed for whatever replaces Bell's would have to pass muster with the City of Tulsa's Board of Adjustment (which applies the law as it is; one of Bill LaFortune's positive legacies) or the Tulsa City Council. Currently, anything the fair board (made up mostly of the county commissioners) wants to allow only needs approval by the County Board of Adjustment (appointed by the county commissioners) or the county commissioners themselves. There's no independent check on fairgrounds development.

UTW, March 7, 2007: Annexation Fixation

Typically, unincorporated areas are places with very little development and much open space. When your nearest neighbor lives a quarter-mile away, what he does on his property isn't likely to affect your enjoyment of your property. In such a sparsely settled area, you don't need many rules to maintain peace, safety, and quality of life.

But in a densely developed area, those rules are essential. As Robert Frost wrote, "Good fences make good neighbors." I spent several years of my childhood in a subdivision in an unincorporated area, and I can attest to the problems created by noise, dogs allowed to run free, lots allowed to grow wild.

To maintain quality of life where homes and businesses are packed closely together, the city regulates land use, noise, lighting, and other potential sources of annoyance that may spill over onto a neighbor's property.

But here in the heart of our city is a huge chunk of land that isn't subject to any of those rules, and without those rules in place, the Tulsa County Public Facilities Authority has not been a considerate neighbor....

The TCPFA has allowed outdoor auto racing (in violation of a 1984 promise) and the annual Chili Bowl indoor races, both of which create noise in excess of city standards. During the 2004 Chili Bowl race, even with the Expo Building's doors closed, noise was measured at 85 dB nearly a half-mile away. You can imagine the impact on homes right across the street.

If Expo Square were within the city limits, the TCPFA would have to provide better noise insulation for the building or require Chili Bowl participants to muffle their cars. Given the economic impact of the Chili Bowl, I'm sure that the city would make reasonable accommodation on that issue, as well as on the issue of city building permits (another concern cited by annexation opponents). What matters is that the city would be in the loop, not helplessly enduring whatever nuisances the county chooses to harbor at the Fairgrounds.

The Chili Bowl continues to thrive and grow, by the way, notwithstanding the jurisdiction of the City of Tulsa.

Bill_Christiansen_Tulsa.jpgIn a Thursday press release, former Tulsa City Councilor Bill Christiansen, the only announced candidate for next year's mayoral election, announced his opposition to the Vision2 Tulsa County sales tax scheme on the November 6, 2012, ballot.

In his statement, Christiansen, who served on the Dialog/Visioning Task Force Steering Committee that assembled the Vision 2025 plan in 2003, contrasts the lengthy process that led to Vision 2025's list of projects to the hastily and haphazardly assembled Vision2 grab-bag.

Christiansen rightly characterizes the public meetings on Vision2: "The five Vision2 meetings consisted of people who wanted money for their project or people who were against the proposals all together." He calls for a focus on meeting our essential needs first and then talking about how to prioritize the "nice to have" items.

Christiansen's statement in full:

The citizens of Tulsa have before them a new $748.8 million Vision2 Plan that contains two propositions for the voters to consider on November 6th. The Vision2 Plan has an "Economic Development" portion and a "Quality of Life" portion, with each part approximately the same size. The sponsors of the proposal have had an input period of roughly two months to hear one-way public comment on the "Quality of Life" issues only.

I attended all the public Vision2 meetings and was amazed to see the process moving forward so quickly, especially considering the staggering financial size of the issues and the far reaching ramifications of the projects themselves. As a member of the Vision 2025 leadership team, we spent over a year taking public input and having public discussion with complete transparency and openness of what that vision entailed. On election day, all citizens of Tulsa County knew exactly what they were voting for. Vision2 is considerably larger and is being pushed through the process without open discussion and one-on-one dialog with their elected officials. The five Vision2 meetings consisted of people who wanted money for their project or people who were against the proposals all together. Many of the projects are worthy, but when you get into the details, many are things that would be nice to have rather than the essential needs of our citizens.

I am not against exploring the needs of the city. I am not against these proposed projects. I am for focusing on our immediate needs. Once those needs are met, let's prioritize our "wants". We need to focus on repairing and widening our streets and making certain public safety is funded properly so all Tulsans can feel safe in their city.

This process deserves the same level of analysis we did with Vision 2025. There is no need to rush these Vision2 projects. I believe we need to hold on this Vision2 proposal and believe we can accomplish a better vision for our future.

We have the time to do it right, we won't have the chance to do it over.

Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr is holding the first in a series of Vision2 public forums tonight (August 27, 2012, Webster High School, 5:30 to 7:30 pm) to ask what projects should be funded with the money the county would <sarcasm>graciously</sarcasm> allow the city to have. Never mind that no public forums were held before the Tulsa County Commission decided to put the three-quarters-of-a-billion-dollars sales tax extension on the November ballot.

Tulsa voters should ask the mayor why any Tulsan should support a Tulsa County scheme that shorts our city $153 million in funds for roads, parks, and other capital projects, a scheme that gives another government body a say in city-owned airport properties, a scheme that gives the Tulsa County Commission veto power over the City of Tulsa's list of projects.

I've put together a simple chart (PDF format) comparing the Tulsa County Commission's Vision2 tax scheme with a plan that spends the City of Tulsa's money to implement the City of Tulsa's vision. You may find it helpful to print out and share with His Honor and His Honor's staffers this evening as you ask him why he's backing a plan that puts the City of Tulsa at such a significant disadvantage. (More here on the math behind the numbers on the chart -- why the City of Tulsa would be better off going it alone and taking over the Vision 2025 0.6 cent tax as a city tax when the Vision 2025 tax expires at the end of 2016.)

BetterVisionForTulsa.png

A possible response to my earlier entry, Vision2 share vs. Tulsa County municipality population, is that it doesn't count the money in Proposition 1 to improve city-owned facilities and to provide "equipment and fixtures and other capital improvements" for businesses in the "Airport Industrial Complex" as part of Tulsa's share.

Even if that were a wise way to spend $254 million -- and it's not -- the City of Tulsa and its citizens would be far better off financially if the City opposed the Vision2 county tax and raised the city sales tax by the same amount.

There's precedent for the idea: Way back in 2008, when we were debating different approaches to fixing our streets, Councilor Bill Martinson proposed that the city take over county sales tax streams as they expired -- adding two-twelfths of a cent when the County's "4 to Fix the County, Part II" tax expired in 2011, and adding 0.6% when the County's Vision 2025 tax expired at the end of 2016. The overall sales tax would remain the same at 8.517%, but most of the county's share would be shifted to pay for city capital improvements that directly affect our quality of life. The plan ultimately adopted by the City Council and the voters captured the "4 to Fix" 2/12ths, but left the Vision 2025 tax untouched.

Over the last 12 months, the City of Tulsa has collected about $71 million per penny of sales tax revenue. Over 13 years at that level of sales tax collection, the 0.6% sales tax under discussion would generate $553.8 million in revenue for the City of Tulsa. Deduct the $254 million AA bailout from that number, and there'd still be almost $300 million that the City of Tulsa could spend on the priorities in its capital improvements process. Better still, that money would be spent under the tighter competitive bidding laws that apply to the city and the city's more transparent approach to picking projects for capital improvements sales tax packages, a process that has its roots in the Inhofe mayoralty and the original 3rd Penny.

So under the Vision2 plan adopted by the Tulsa County Board of Commissioners, the City of Tulsa would get a $400 million share -- if you count the American Airlines bailout in that amount. If instead the City of Tulsa adopted its own 0.6%, 13 year sales tax, the City of Tulsa would get $553.8 million. For the same overall sales tax level, City of Tulsa would be better off by $153.8 million, a nearly 40% increase in money available for capital improvements.

I can't imagine any rational, honest reason for any City of Tulsa official to go along with Tulsa County's sales tax scheme.

AND ANOTHER THING: Under the Tulsa County Vision2 scheme, the City of Tulsa has to get the County Commission's approval on how the city spends it's share of the Proposition 2 municipal pork barrel bribery fund.

Projects shall be identified by the governing body of each Political Subdivision following public hearing and input of public comment, in such form and process as determined by such governing body, and shall be submitted to the Board of County Commissioners of Tulsa County, Oklahoma to determine whether the sales tax collected pursuant to this Resolution may be properly expended for such Project.

This past week, Talk Radio 1170 KFAQ's Pat Campbell spoke to a Tulsa County commissioner, the Tulsa County assessor, the mayor, the chairman of the City Council, a former city councilor, and a Tulsa Metro Chamber official this last week about the proposed Tulsa County tax increase to fund airport improvements and to create a $75 million "Close the Deal" fund.

It was interesting to hear County Commissioner Fred Perry respond to County Assessor Ken Yazel's assertions about surplus county funds and Campbell's well-taken point that many of those funds are under the control of boards that have no direct accountability to the voters. Under firm questioning by Campbell, Perry ultimately acknowledged that these officials are mostly beyond the voters' reach.

The members of the Tulsa City-County Library Commission and the Tulsa City-County Board of Health are appointed by the Mayor of Tulsa (confirmed by the City Council) and the Tulsa County Board of Commissioners. The Tulsa Community College Board of Regents are appointed by the Governor of Oklahoma. The seven members of Tulsa Technology Center Board of Education are elected by the voters, but at the low-turnout February school elections, and with seven-year rotating terms, it would take four years to change a bare majority of the board.

Each of these four bodies has a dedicated millage -- a share of the property taxes you pay. The millage appears to be ample to meet each entity's operating needs and then some, even when sales-tax dependent city governments are hurting from economic downturns.

The good news is that each body is insulated from having their funds reallocated for other governmental purposes. When elected officials try to balance priorities across all the different ways government could be spending our tax dollars, the funds controlled by the libraries, the health department, the community college, and the vo-tech school are off limits.

The bad news is that each body is insulated from having their funds reallocated for other governmental purposes. So even if there's a crying need for more police detectives or funds to open the city swimming pools, the surplus for these entities can't be touched to help. Instead, the surplus might be used for facility expansion -- say, a new building.

When these entities run a perennial surplus, when they take in more than they can reasonably spend, it's worth asking the question: How would we go about adjusting the permanent millage for these entities, to make space in the total property tax burden for more pressing needs? Is the governing board (unelected in three of four cases) the only body that can put a millage rate reduction on the ballot? Can the County Commissioners do it? Can it be done by initiative petition?

Or maybe there's a way that these entities could donate surplus monies on a year-by-year basis into a rainy day fund available to level out the dips in revenue for sales-tax dependent cities and towns. Of course, that would likely just give the protected-millage entities the incentive to spend every mill to keep it from going into the fund.

Perry made an interesting point about the way the Vision 2025 ballot was split up, and that some of any Vision 2025 sales tax surplus might not be usable for the airport projects being discussed. But the ballot title categories for each of the three taxes that went into effect are broad enough that I imagine they can fit each proposed expenditure into one or another -- "TO FUND CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROMOTING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT", "TO FUND EDUCATIONAL, HEALTH CARE AND EVENTS FACILITIES FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROMOTING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT", "FOR THE PURPOSE OF CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS FOR COMMUNITY ENRICHMENT".

Perry used his last minute decrying a statement by Ken Yazel as "outrageous," "despicable," "irresponsible." According to Perry, Yazel "basically said that commissioners bring these kind of proposals forward -- first of all, we didn't bring this proposal forward, but -- commissioners have these bond issues and bond refinancing and put tax issues out there to benefit their friends, to benefit people that get the fees, that get the fees from the issuing." Perry said people ought to challenge Yazel to prove his allegation.

Here's what Yazel said the day before in a call to KFAQ:

What is driving this is how big can we make the bond issues so we get the bond fees generated so that people who really want to make money can make money, and it has nothing to do with the benefit of the taxpayers; it has more to do with generating these bonds. And by the way, follow the money, but follow the fees. If they go into an authority, they're one step removed from the taxpayers authority, and it's even worse once they do a contract for non-competitive bond fees. Do you know where they're going and who's benefitting? No. It can't be audited, and it's a shame, and they ought to get out of that business.These people, in my opinion, don't care about the project, they care about generating fees.

I raised similar concerns last week.

The Tulsa County Commissioners, as the board members of the Tulsa County Industrial Authority, could easily dispel the concerns Yazel expresses by publishing on the internet a full accounting of the money handled by TCIA, including the funds raised by the Vision 2025 and Four to Fix the County sales taxes, as well as conduit loans that aren't tied to tax revenue. Contracts between the TCIA and their vendors and advisers, etc., should also be disclosed online.

Every dollar has a destination. Some dollars went directly to program costs, for example, the annual payment to the Oklahoma Aquarium. Some dollars are repaying bondholders -- those can be further divided into principal, interest, and fees. The money received from the sale of bonds should likewise Some dollars may have been used to pay support contractors -- perhaps program managers, bond attorneys, bond advisers, bond underwriters. Some dollars may be sitting in an account in reserve -- those can be divided into reserves for specific projects or for future debt service. All of that should be spelled out, online, broken out by payee. And if a payee is an LLC, as taxpayers we deserve to have a list of owners of more than, say, a 5% share. Then let the taxpayers weigh that information for themselves.

MORE: I appreciate Pat Campbell's pursuit of this issue and his willingness to ask pointed questions of these elected officials. You can find all of Pat Campbell's interviews here; here are direct links to the specific interviews:

UPDATE 2012/05/04: The answer is no, by a 5-4 vote to approve the PUD "amendment" and close the street. Thanks to Councilors Blake Ewing, Karen Gilbert, Skip Steele, and G. T. Bynum for upholding the plan and the notion of public infrastructure for public use over the demands of a private business. I'm not surprised that David Patrick and Tom Mansur voted with the developer. I'm disappointed that Jack Henderson, who used to be a reliable supporter of neighborhood interests, and Jeannie Cue, whom I perceived to appreciate the concerns of homeowners, voted in favor of the street closing.

Phil Lakin's vote reinforced the golden rule in Tulsa politics -- he who has the gold makes the rules. For years, developers and INCOG staffers excused deviations to the comprehensive plan because the plan was so old and out of date. Now we have a plan adopted within the last two years and a specific small area plan adopted just seven years ago, and yet Lakin is willing to vote to set it aside. Why would any Tulsan want to take the time to participate in small-area planning without the confidence that the TMAPC and the City Council will follow the plans that they've already approved?

Several items on tonight's City Council agenda involve a proposal to expand the QuikTrip at 11th and Utica by closing 10th Street west of Utica. (Here (PDF format) is a link to the backup information for the QuikTrip street closing agenda item.)

QuikTrip is asking the City Council to surrender to them -- the technical term is "vacate" -- a section of 10th Street west of Utica, so they can build a store and gas station with a bigger footprint, to include what is now 10th Street and the lots to the north.

The City Council should deny the request and encourage QuikTrip to find a creative solution to build within the existing site, rather than surrender a public through street for private use. This issue is a test of whether this City Council is committed to protect public infrastructure and to ensure that its development decisions are consistent with the City's long-range transportation and development plans.

I am a frequent customer of QuikTrip, and I admire the way they've transformed the convenience store industry that they pioneered over 50 years ago. You can expect that a QT store will be clean, well-stocked with high-quality, reasonably priced items, with procedures in place to keep customers and employees safe, even late at night. It's always nice to find a bit of Tulsa in other regions, like St. Louis, Wichita, and Dallas/Ft. Worth, where QT operates. I'd love to see them expand into the Oklahoma City metro area and offer ethanol-free gasoline.

For all of QT's positive aspects, it's not right for city government to turn a through street into a dead end simply to satisfy the aims of a private enterprise. There ought to be a compelling public interest in closing the street before the City Council consents to vacating a through street.

Once upon a time, QuikTrip knew how to adapt itself to a variety of urban and suburban settings. In the '70s and '80s there was a QuikTrip on the Main Mall in downtown Tulsa -- no gas pumps, no vehicular access at all. Some QuikTrip stores were standalone, some anchored strip shopping centers.

Now it appears that QuikTrip is big enough they seem to think they should be able to install their cookie-cutter store plan everywhere, without regard to the impact on public infrastructure.

The advantages of a grid street pattern are well established. Traffic can distribute itself across multiple paths through the grid. If one path is blocked, say, by construction, an accident, or emergency vehicles, traffic can reroute to another path. Through access to the surrounding arterials means it's usually possible to avoid taking a difficult left turn across arterial traffic.

In suburbia, a single residential collector street becomes a choke point for traffic in and out of a neighborhood and a speedway for those who live along it, but in an urban neighborhood with a street grid, traffic in and out is distributed across a dozen or more intersections and no one street bears the brunt of "cut-through" traffic.

10th Street is one of only three streets connecting the neighborhood to Utica Avenue. Those three streets are through all the way to Peoria -- for now.

But the City's stormwater master drainage plan for the Elm Creek basin calls for a major detention pond in the neighborhood that will necessarily interrupt the street grid, interrupting 8th Street and possibly 7th Street as well, leaving 10th Street the only through east-west neighborhood street -- unless QuikTrip gets its way and 10th is closed as well.

In his letter objecting to the proposal, developer Jamie Jamieson points out that the 6th Street Plan, part of the City's Comprehensive Plan, calls for higher density redevelopment in the area northwest of this site, making it imperative to maintain as many access points as possible to the neighborhood. In her letter, neighborhood resident Teddi Allen explains the importance of 10th Street to neighborhood ingress and egress:

According to [INCOG] staff, closure of 10th street would have minimal effect and would not be detrimental to the neighborhood. They argue that residents could either use 11th Street, or weave down Troost to exit the neighborhood via 7th or 8th Streets. Both of these concepts completely disregard the safety of the driving public.

11th Street rises in elevation between Utica and Troost, making any effort to turn out left onto 11th from Troost or Trenton problematic at best, and outright dangerous at worst due to the lack of visibility of oncoming traffic. The situation is compounded by traffic entering and exiting 11th street from the Hillcrest parking garage during peak periods and shift changes. In addition there is a great deal of pedestrian traffic crossing from the south side to the north side of 11th which compounds the problem.

Diverting traffic onto Troost Avenue as well as 7th and 8th Streets is not a viable solution either. 7th and 8th Streets are short residential streets, each a block long and filled with rental properties whose tenants often park on both sides of the street. This makes safe implementation of two way traffic virtually impossible to guarantee. Moreover, Troost Avenue as well as 7th and 8th Streets are at the lowest elevations in the neighborhood, subject to street flooding during periods of heavy rain. The staff analysis appears to ignore the fact that areas of the Pearl District, including these particular streets, lie within the Elm Creek flood basin. In an effort to resolve flooding issues in the Elm Creek Basin, the city has already built one flood detention pond in Centennial park, and there are 3 more ponds planned. Preliminary plans approved by the City (and available on its website) show that one of those ponds will detain water at the level of lowest elevation, i.e., in the area of Troost between 7th and 8th. These streets will not be available long term to provide the access the planners allude to in the application.

As Teddi Allen notes, any proper analysis of the impact of this development on traffic flow must also include the impact of the street closings required for the City's planned detention pond. If city officials surrender 10th Street now and only later realize the negative interaction with the detention pond, they won't be able to get 10th Street reopened without condemnation and compensation to QuikTrip, which would be cost-prohibitive.

And speaking of stormwater, it appears that the new store with its expanded gas canopy and parking area will require converting a large currently vacant grassy area into an impermeable surface. And yet I see nothing in the proposal explaining how additional stormwater runoff will be contained. The store is in the Elm Creek watershed, which is one of the few stormwater basins in the city for which the mitigation plan has not been fully implemented.

In fact, this question was asked at the TMAPC Technical Advisory Committee meeting: "Please address the Environmental, Stormwater Quality, Issues involved with the
Stormwater Runoff flowing into the Stormwater Drainage System from the Vehicle Fueling Areas, and the Tank Excavation Area." Apparently no answer was given: Nothing in the proposal or the INCOG staff analysis addresses additional stormwater runoff at all, much less stormwater than may be carrying toxic, flammable liquids into Elm Creek, into Centennial Park Lake, and ultimately into Zink Lake and the Arkansas River at 21st Street.

As Pearl District Association president Dave Strader pointed out in his letter to the TMAPC, the existing footprint is adequate for QT to construct a Gen 3 (QT Kitchens) store. They have nearly as much space in their existing lot (68,092 sq. ft.) as the lot at 15th and Denver (70,008) where a Gen 3 store was recently built.

In the same letter (pp. 78-85 of the PDF), Strader details the long history of area plans for the neighborhood adopted by the City, the result of years of volunteer effort. The wrong decision here will deter residents and businesspeople from getting involved in developing small area plans for other neighborhoods.

Many of you may be aware that Patrick Fox with The City of Tulsa just announced three new Small Area Plans. Once completed they will be standing in front of you asking you for your support with their plans. Will you support them or will you only support them on the condition that no one complains? What happens when QuikTrip or some other business doesn't want to play by the rules in their neighborhood? Will you tell them that their plan doesn't matter?

You can't roll over every time someone asks you to.

The point is that there are much broader implications to your decisions concerning the 6Th Street Infill Plan and The QT PUD.

Why should people like us volunteer thousands of hours making plans if you aren't going to support us? Why should we make plans at all?

The QuikTrip PUD is contrary to our plan, contrary to the comprehensive plan and increases the risk of our public safety.

Strader goes on to point out that, in 2005, the City declined to vacate a street in another part of the Pearl District (west of the Indian Health Center), citing the clear language in the Pearl District Plan that calls for maintaining the street grid.3

Dear Councilors, please do the right thing tonight and deny QuikTrip's request to vacate 10th Street.

MORE:

My earlier entry, Keeping the Promise to the Pearl District, on why the City must honor the promises it has made over a 20-year period to this neighborhood.

It is possible to build a convenience store that fits into an urban context. Here are just a few examples:

7-11 in Stockholm

Photo of an urban 7-Eleven in Stockholm by meiburgin, Flickr attribution license

Random 7-11

Photo of an urban 7-Eleven in Singapore by Cimexus, Flickr attribution license

stunned at 7-11

Photo of an urban 7-Eleven in Hong Kong by kenyee, Flickr attribution license

The TEA Party folks say they're Taxed Enough Already, but several of them who might have run against a Democrat Tulsa County Commissioner (with plans to raise our county sales taxes once again) opted instead to run against Republican legislative incumbents who are working to reduce our state income tax burden. Oh, well.

The announcement waited until Commissioner Karen Keith was safely re-elected without opposition: The Tulsa Metro Chamber's "enVision Summit," to be held at Expo Square Central Park Hall, on April 27, 2012, 8:30 to noon, when normal people are at work.

power-grab.jpgThey say they have no preset agenda, but prominent mention of visits to Indianapolis and Louisville, the announcement of a former Nashville mayor as speaker, and a quote from one of the organizers saying "we are much stronger and can have greater impact if we operate as a region versus our independent cities and towns" suggests they plan to push for regional government and the end to the self-determination of those independent cities and towns.

Indianapolis, Louisville, and Nashville don't just have "cooperation" between local governments -- all three have merged city and county governments into a single entity.

And of course, they are already looking for a list of boondoggles they can use to justify a new Vision 2025 county sales tax, to keep the money flowing through the Tulsa County Industrial Authority (TCIA) and to its favored vendors.

Keith and Frank also said it is time to begin the discussion of life after Vision 2025, a county sales tax that ends in 2017 and has funded $530 million in area projects. What does an extension of a Vision initiative look like?

In 2003, they told us we had to "do something." Although the economy recovered long before the Vision 2025 projects were complete, we're to believe that Vision 2025 caused the recovery, which coincidentally happened everywhere else in the US at the same time. And of course, we're supposed to believe that the arena (voted for in 2003, opened in 2008) caused the Blue Dome District to start revitalizing in 2000.

We spent a half-billion dollars to "revitalize our region" and now they say we need to start planning to spend even more to "invigorate" our region. If you need to keep shocking a body back to life, at some point you have to acknowledge that it's actually dead, and "it wouldn't voom if you put 4000 volts through it."

In 2000 they told us they needed money to "fix" the county. In 2006 they needed even more money to "fix" the county. Either the county is fixed, and they don't need any more money, or they money we gave them didn't really fix anything, and the fix is in.

If city officials around the region really care about the good of the municipalities they're elected to represent, they need to show up on April 27 and tell the county to back off. Every penny the county takes for its pork barrel projects is a penny unavailable for each city and town to set its own priorities. This initiative is a threat to cities and towns having the means to fund basic services and infrastructure.

I would guess that Broken Arrow residents like spending their own sales tax dollars to fix their own streets and fund their own police department. I would further guess they'd be upset if Tulsa Money Belt types had the political means to redirect public funding from Broken Arrow's "parochial concerns" (driveable streets, low crime rate, pools open and parks mowed) to the Tulsa Money Belt's preferred projects.

If BA's council and other municipal officials ignore the real threat this initiative poses to local self-determination now, before it gets off the ground, they may find themselves in a year or two trying in vain to stop the idea once it gets buy-in from everyone who can make money or accrue power from consolidation. The only way to stop this foolishness is to follow Barney Fife's advice: Nip it in the bud.

Tulsa's city officials should take this seriously, too: City of Tulsa tax dollars are funding the Tulsa Metro Chamber, and the Chamber is turning around and spending money to promote a plan that would undermine the City of Tulsa's ability to fund local government and infrastructure. Money, don't forget, is fungible.

Maybe the TEA Partiers will stop searching the skies for black helicopters long enough to notice this local grab for taxes and power. I love what you say you stand for -- limited government, free enterprise, individual responsibility, local autonomy. The question is whether you'll stand up for those ideals when and where it really matters.

And wouldn't it be nice if Tulsa County Commissioners would content themselves to paving county roads, managing the finances of basic county government, and keeping their doggone hands out of our pockets?

(POWER GRAB parody image found here.)

Filing for November's Tulsa City Council elections ended at 5 Wednesday. Tulsa District 4 City Councilor Blake Ewing (a Republican) has been re-elected, having failed to draw an opponent. Long-time District 1 Democrat incumbent Jack Henderson is being challenged by fellow Democrat Twan T. Jones, while Republican District 7 freshman Tom Mansur faces a challenge from 25 year old Republican Arianna Rachelle Moore. Because only two candidates filed in Districts 1 and 7, those contests will appear on the November general election ballot.

Meanwhile, three Tulsa County incumbents -- Republican Sheriff Stanley Glanz, Democrat District 2 County Commissioner Karen Keith, Republican County Court Clerk Sally Howe Smith -- have filed for re-election, while deputy County Clerk Pat Key, a Republican, has filed to replace her longtime boss, incumbent Earlene Wilson. No opponents have yet to file.

It's time for a regime change at the County Clerk's office; it remains to be seen whether Key will offer the voters a significant change of direction from Wilson's policies, but we won't find out without a competitive election.

We need a Tulsa County Clerk who believes in the value of online access to public records. Because of Wilson's footdragging and unwillingness to work with fellow officials, we have a "stovepiped" county clerk database that doesn't mesh well with the assessor's and treasurer's databases, and doesn't seem to be accessible through the clerk's website. For many years, Wilson resisted even the current, minimal amount of online information, supporting instead a system that required a monthly fee and the county commission's permission for access. Meanwhile, Oklahoma County has had an integrated system, cross-linking assessor, treasurer, and clerk records, since 2004.

We also need a change in County Commission District 2 We need someone on the Commission who will shutdown efforts to raise or renew expiring special county sales taxes. We need a District 2 commissioner who will put someone sympathetic to homeowner's concerns back on the TMAPC, rather than trying to get rid of a neighborhood-friendly planning commissioner, as Keith did.

For both County Clerk and Commission District 2, we need officials who will work alongside County Assessor Ken Yazel in his often-lonely battle to increase accountability and scrutiny for county government spending. Notwithstanding publicized awards, There's still a problem with transparency at the County Courthouse.

One problem area is the Tulsa County Industrial Authority. While many county contracts are now online, you will look in vain for the TCIA's contracts with bond attorneys, bond advisers, and bond brokers. You won't be able to find out to whom the TCIA is lending money. Google turned up some TCIA audit documents, but these too are short on specifics, long on generalities.

Also not on the county website (as far as I can find): The county fair board's contract with Murphy Brothers for the Tulsa State Fair midway and the Big Splash contract.

County Commission District 2 includes Sand Springs, Berryhill, Jenks, west Tulsa, downtown Tulsa, and parts of midtown, east, and north Tulsa: Everything southwest of the river and north of 121st Street; everything north of the river and west of downtown; 31st to 81st, Riverside to Lewis; I-244 to Pine, Utica to US 169; I-244 to 31st, the River to US-169 & I-44. (Click here for a map of the new Tulsa County Commission boundaries, or click the image below to blow up the District 2 map.)

The voters deserve some competition. Will you run? Do you know someone who would?

TulsaCoCommissionerD2-2012.png

Today, April 11, 2012, is the final day of candidate filing for City of Tulsa elections and the first day for state and county filing.

Last year, councilors in Districts 1, 4, and 7 were elected to a one-year term and should have been up for a three-year term this year. But then Tulsans voted for the third change in election calendar in five years and switched the council to two-year terms in even years. That means Districts 1, 4, and 7 are up for two-year terms instead.

So far only the incumbents -- Democrat Jack Henderson, Republican Blake Ewing, and Republican Tom Mansur -- have filed. The filing period comes only five months after the last election, far too early to be thinking about yet another election.

And despite all of Tulsa's to-ing and fro-ing over election dates, we still couldn't manage to line up the filing periods.

The State of Oklahoma has backed up its filing period from June to April in order to put a full two months each between filing, primary, runoff, and general election, so as to accommodate overseas voters. For some reason, they chose the last half of the week instead of the traditional Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

This year each of Oklahoma's 77 counties will elect a sheriff, county clerk, court clerk, and District 2 commissioner. All five U. S. representatives, all 101 state representatives, and the 24 state senators with odd-numbered districts will be up for re-election as well. Two statewide offices, seats on the Corporation Commission, will be on the ballot: Bob Anthony is running for a fifth full six-year term in Seat 2; Patrice Douglas, appointed last year to replace Jeff Cloud, who resigned, will seek to remain on the commission for the remainder of the Seat 3 term that expires in 2014. Neither of our U. S. Senators face re-election this year; Inhofe's seat is next up 2014, Coburn's replacement (he says this term is his last) will be elected in 2016.

Tulsa County Sheriff Stanley Glanz, County Commissioner Karen Keith, County Clerk Earlene Wilson, and Court Clerk Sally Howe Smith are all up for re-election. As far as I am aware none have drawn an announced opponent, but you have until Friday at 5 to change that.

ThisLand-20120301.jpgThe March 1, 2012, issue of This Land includes my first foray into print in nearly two years. The story is about Government 2.0 and the Oklahomans who are using web and mobile technologies to work for more responsive and accountable state and local government.

It's a big topic and at one point my working draft was twice as long as what I ultimately submitted. There are so many interesting angles and individual stories, and I just managed to squeeze these into the space available:

  • The free mobile app used by Shawnee and Enid to make public info easily available to their citizens, and the former Haskell city councilor who's an evangelist for connecting small cities and towns with inexpensive web technology like this app.
  • The volunteer work a local group of web developers are doing to make it easier for Tulsans to get around, whether in their own vehicles or by Tulsa Transit bus.
  • The former BBS sysop turned legislative committee chairman trying to modernize state government's use of data and its availability to the public, and the think tank that provides an easy way for the public to search and analyze this newly public state government data.
  • The former big city newspaper app developer who used his data journalism skills to learn about the small Texas city to which he was moving.

At the moment the story is only available in print. You can find the latest issue of This Land available for $2 at coffeehouses, restaurants, specialty retailers, and other locations around Tulsa, or you can subscribe -- $40 a year.

eric_gomez_mugshot_20120219.jpg

From KJRH News, former Tulsa District 4 City Councilor Eric Gomez was arrested early Sunday morning, February 19, 2012:

Tulsa police arrested a former city councilor over the weekend for domestic abuse.

Forty-six-year-old Jason Eric Gomez was arrested at 1:05 a.m. Sunday.

According to the arrest report, Gomez was arrested for domestic assault and battery in the presence of a minor, interrupting or interfering with an emergency call and resisting arrest.

According to the county jail inmate record for Eric Gomez, he was released on $6,000 bond at 2:27 p.m. Sunday.

MORE: KRMG is also reporting the Eric Gomez arrest story. The News on 6 has more details about Eric Gomez's arrest:

Jail records show Gomez's wife told Tulsa Police that her husband had assaulted her and she showed officers her injuries.

She told police that when she tried to call 911, Gomez took the phone away from her. She said he then ran out of the house to a next door neighbor's home.

Tulsa Police say when they located Gomez, he resisted arrest and smelled of alcohol.

Gomez was booked into the Tulsa County jail on complaints of domestic assault and battery, resisting arrest and interfering with an emergency call.

He is set for a court appearance on February 28, 2012.


Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr is pushing for a policy change to Tulsa's local government cable channel that would hinder public transparency and accountability in city government.

Today, Monday, January 23, 2012, at 2 p.m., in City Hall room 411, the TGOV Coordinating Committee will meet to discuss:

Whether or not to continue broadcasting meetings of Authorities, Boards, and Committees, including recommending entities, such as Tulsa Metropolitan Planning Commission, Transportation Advisory Board, HUD grant committees. etc. 11.451-14

tgov_header.png

From KTUL's story, "TGOV Content Up For Debate":

The mayor's administration told News Channel 8, they're all for transparency but that concern arose when the Transportation Advisory Committee suddenly appeared on TGOV without going through the process of appearing before the TGOV committee, and that the administration wants to make sure everybody follows the same process.

I asked Council Administrator Drew Rees, via email, who and what prompted this agenda item. His response:

The issue arose when the Mayor's office requested that TGOV not broadcast the Transportation Advisory Board meetings, because they did not believe TGOV should broadcast committees which were purely "recommending bodies." (Other such recommending bodies are the TMAPC, and various CDBG committees.)

To answer your next question, it is my understanding the Mayor does not want these meetings filmed or broadcast in any manner by TGOV. And finally, the TGOV Coordinating Committee approves all policies and all major operating decisions. The Chairman of the TGOV Coordinating Committee makes all day-to-day operating decisions. (see Title 12, Chapter 7, section 703.)

I hope this helps. Monday is a public meeting and you are welcome to attend. If you cannot, you are welcome to send me an email and I will distribute it to the other Committee members at the meeting.

In reply, I wrote:

Much of the substantial discussion about a city decision takes place in the recommending body, with the decision maker (City Council or Mayor or both) often deferring to the recommending body's judgment without comment or discussion. For this reason, video recordings of Tulsa's authorities, boards, and commissions are central to the public understanding of the official actions of city government. TGOV should work to its maximum capacity to record these hearings, should make all of them available online, unedited in the original format, and should broadcast as many of them as the schedule allows. Not to record, post, and broadcast these meetings is a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of Oklahoma's Open Meetings and Open Records laws.

If there is a shortage of budget or personnel to record these meetings, I feel certain that many civic-minded Tulsans with video experience would volunteer to man the cameras.

TGOV exists for the same reason that C-SPAN does -- to let the sunlight of public awareness, which Justice Brandeis called the best disinfectant, illuminate city government's inner workings so that the citizens of Tulsa can intelligently exercise their rights to free speech, to petition the government, and to vote.

There are four members of the coordinating committee: Council Administrator Drew Rees, City Council Communications Director Matt Martin, Mayor Bartlett Jr's designee Lloyd Wright, and Information Technology director Tom Golliver (or his designee). Rees, as committee chairman, makes day-to-day decisions on TGOV content.

TGOV began its life as a dedicated cable channel for city government in 2004, but the local cable company (Tulsa Cable Television, now Cox Cable) had been broadcasting City Commission or City Council meetings for decades before that. Here's the 2004 resolution establishing the rules for TGOV.

A dedicated TGOV channel allows for broadcast of other meetings and events important to the citizens of Tulsa. TGOV regularly broadcasts the City Council's committee meetings, the meetings of the City of Tulsa Board of Adjustment (which handles zoning variances and special exceptions), the meetings of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission (which hears changes to the zoning map and the zoning code and approves subdivisions), and occasionally other boards like the Tulsa Authority for the Recovery of Energy (TARE, aka the trash board, which isn't in the energy recovery business any more).

TGOV isn't just a cable channel any more. In late 2009, TGOV began offering online streaming at tgovonline.org of the same content that Cox Cable customers see on channel 24 and on-demand access to previous meetings. This development means you don't have to wait for the replay to roll around on TGOV; you can watch when you want, and you can easily point others to key moments in meetings.

That's why it's silly for anyone to be concerned about eating up broadcast time with committee meetings. With the ability to serve video from its website, TGOV isn't limited to 168 hours of content a week.

In July of 2010, the City Council passed an ordinance (22305) codifying the policy for TGOV (now Title 12 Chapter 7 of Tulsa Revised Ordinances); Bartlett Jr vetoed the ordinance, and the Council overrode his veto.

Bartlett Jr wanted to use TGOV as an economic development tool, according to this KOTV story from 2010. Who does he think watches TGOV? You can't get it in Atlanta or Sacramento or Dallas. It's there to give Tulsans insight into the what is being done in their name by city government.

I can't shake the feeling that the mindset from the Mayor's Office is: "If we keep meetings off of TGOV, then people won't know hear about issues that would disturb them, and everyone will think everything is just fine."

If you can't attend the meeting at 2 today, send your comments by email to drees@tulsacouncil.org

Once in a while I come across a phrase that captures in 20 words what I've tried and failed to say in 2,000. It's an aphorism by cartoonist Hugh MacLeod (@gapingvoid @hughcards on Twitter), tweeted by former Louisiana Governor and dark-horse presidential candidate Buddy Roemer:

"Real success comes not from being invited into the yacht, but from being able to paddle one's own canoe." -- Hugh MacLeod

I replied to Roemer: "Tulsa has an entire subculture devoted to getting on the yacht and staying there. Boat-rockers aren't welcome."

The members of this subculture would utterly disagree with MacLeod's definition of success. Riding on the yacht is far more comfortable than paddling your own canoe, and all you have to do is to stay in the good graces of the yacht's owners.

Tatoosh Yacht

Paul Allen's yacht at Venice, by Anton Porsche, on Flickr (Creative Commons attribution)

MacLeod's metaphor of the yacht guest fills a gap in my description of Tulsa's power structures. I've written extensively about Tulsa's "Money Belt" -- a geographic pattern in voting that correlates strongly with wealth as measured by home value. I've written about the Cockroach Caucus, a coalition of various interests with a great deal of control over Tulsa, a group that has been working particularly hard to recapture lost power and hang on to it. But the very wealthy can't control Tulsa's city government and civic institutions on their own.

That's where the Yacht Guests come in. They staff the non-profits and the quangos, they run small service-oriented businesses that cater to the yacht owners, they're professionals who have the yacht owners as clients, they work as managers for the yacht owners' businesses. They may not be wealthy, but they're comfortable, and they have access to opportunities and perks that are out of financial reach for the folks who aren't on the yacht. Their main job is not to rock the boat, but from time to time, they're called upon to defend the yacht and its owners against perceived threats.

Imagine you're the executive director of a small non-profit. You have a big office with windows, an administrative assistant, and you oversee a staff of a dozen or so. A couple of times a year you represent your organization at a national conference in Las Vegas or New York or Orlando -- all expenses paid by your organization. The organization has season tickets for the Drillers and club seats at the BOK Center, purchased in the name of entertaining clients, donors, and business partners, but most of the time, you can use them for yourself. During the work day, you come and go as you please, taking long lunches, playing golf, and volunteering and serving on the boards of other non-profits, all of which you can justify as building goodwill for your organization. When 5 p.m. rolls around you're done for the day. You're not paying private school tuition -- your kids got into their first-choice public magnet school. You're invited to great parties and outings and get some great freebies.

Occasionally, like the undertaker in The Godfather, you will be asked to do a service -- serve as chairman of a charter change or recall committee, sign a petition, attack anyone seen as a threat to the yacht and its owners. Your job is to be a proxy when the yacht owners don't want their fingerprints on something. You may even have to be the scapegoat, but never fear -- you will be provided for; if you're sacked from one job, they'll find you another. You can even go through a training program to learn how to behave yourself politely on board the yacht.

Back in September, I was invited to the grand opening of Tulsa's Fab Lab. It's a very neat idea and has its origins at MIT. It's a place where anyone with an idea can come and use computerized design and fabrication equipment to make a prototype, rather than paying a fabricator or buying the equipment for yourself. The hope is to facilitate the efforts of Tulsa entrepreneurs and to inspire young people to pursue engineering, design, and manufacturing. It's a great place for the guy who's trying to paddle his own canoe to turn a dream into something tangible.

The grand opening was at 3 in the afternoon on a weekday. For me, that meant notifying my boss that I'd be out and using up a few hours from my accrued paid leave. When I got there, I saw many familiar faces -- each of whom could reasonably justify his or her presence at this event during the work day, drinking wine, eating hors d'oeuvres, and schmoozing, as a part of his or her job description. Nice work if you can get it, and if you get it, you're going to do all you can to hold onto it.

(I should add that only two or three of the guests that afternoon showed any interest in the fascinating machines available for use at the Fab Lab.)

It might have been that day that the friend who had invited me to the Fab Lab opening mentioned the organization needed to hire an executive director. Perhaps it was a hint that I should apply, but a glance at the list of major donors told me all I needed to know about my chances of being hired.

And if by some fluke I were hired? The thought had some appeal -- working out in the community, interacting with a variety of people every day, promoting a great new institution, being the boss, having my own office, and enjoying some of the other perks I mentioned above. But then it hit me: My livelihood, my family's daily bread, would be dependent on me maintaining the goodwill of the board of directors. The organization's well being would be dependent on me maintaining the goodwill of all current and potential donors. If I took such a job, for the sake of my family and the sake of the organization, I'd have to shut up completely about local politics.

I periodically hear from friends who are guests aboard the yacht. They complain, strictly off-the-record, about the bad decisions being made by the yacht owners, but they wouldn't dare speak publicly. I wrote about the phenomenon back in 2003, in a note to fellow TulsaNow board members about our stance on Vision 2025:

This may be a bit impolite to say, but it's there beneath the surface and ought to be dealt with openly. Some of our group work for organizations which are funded by supporters of this package. Others aren't personally dependent, but are involved with organizations that need the funds that the package supporters can offer. Others need the goodwill of city government to conduct business and make a living. Some of us have even been paid to facilitate and promote the vision process and to work for the "vote yes" campaign. Beyond the financial considerations, many members of our group move within a narrow circle of social and organizational connections -- a virtual "small town" within the city, focused on the arts and other non-profit organizations, centered around Utica Square and chronicled by Tulsa People and Danna Sue Walker. As in any small town, some opinions are acceptable and some are not, and speaking your mind risks ostracism.

Walt Kelly wrote about it back in 1955:

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I can think of a few other occasions when I may have been subtly invited to come aboard the yacht. I think I've made it abundantly clear that I wouldn't be interested. One of my friends, a founder of several successful small businesses, was recently given a very explicit invitation aboard: If he would lend his name in support of the Save Our Tulsa at-large council proposal, he would never have to worry about financing for his businesses. My friend declined the offer. He prefers to paddle his own canoe.

It's possible to be tossed off the yacht even if you never realized you were aboard. Another friend found himself unexpectedly out of a engineering job, some time after he led a successful effort to stop a sales tax increase. Turns out that the company's owner had some real estate interests that stood to benefit if the tax had passed.

The guests aboard the yacht are not bad people. For many, being on the yacht gives them a chance to spend their days working for causes about which they are passionate. Surrendering their personal political opinions is a small price to pay for that opportunity. As the saying goes, don't hate the player, hate the game.

And the game should be hated. Yacht-guest culture rewards sycophancy and penalizes innovation. It drives creative people away. It hurts our economy.

I write all this not to heap scorn on those who are sailing happily aboard the yacht, but rather to alert you to the reality of this subculture, so you understand the forces at work in Tulsa politics. The apparent unity of the great and the good on a certain issue may be nothing more than the yacht guests keeping their hosts happy.

MORE (2022/05/02): "The Inner Ring," C. S. Lewis's 1944 Memorial Lecture at King's College London, captures the spirit animating the yacht-guest subculture.

I believe that in all men's lives at certain periods, and in many men's lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside....

I have no right to make assumptions about the degree to which any of you may already be compromised. I must not assume that you have ever first neglected, and finally shaken off, friends whom you really loved and who might have lasted you a lifetime, in order to court the friendship of those who appeared to you more important, more esoteric. I must not ask whether you have derived actual pleasure from the loneliness and humiliation of the outsiders after you, yourself were in: whether you have talked to fellow members of the Ring in the presence of outsiders simply in order that the outsiders might envy; whether the means whereby, in your days of probation, you propitiated the Inner Ring, were always wholly admirable....

My main purpose in this address is simply to convince you that this desire is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action. It is one of the factors which go to make up the world as we know it--this whole pell-mell of struggle, competition, confusion, graft, disappointment and advertisement, and if it is one of the permanent mainsprings then you may be quite sure of this.... If you do nothing about it, if you drift with the stream, you will in fact be an "inner ringer." I don't say you'll be a successful one; that's as may be. But whether by pining and moping outside Rings that you can never enter, or by passing triumphantly further and further in--one way or the other you will be that kind of man....

And the prophecy I make is this. To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still--just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig--the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which "we"--and at the word "we" you try not to blush for mere pleasure--something "we always do."

And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man's face--that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face--turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.

Updated on 2023/09/23 to fix my misspelling of Hugh MacLeod's name and to update his Twitter handle.

KRMG ran a story recently contrasting the approach that outgoing and incoming members of the Tulsa City Council take to their jobs. The story features outgoing councilor Jim Mautino and incoming councilor Karen Gilbert.

When asked about controversy over the trash contract, Gilbert demurred:

"I'm not going to talk trash," Karen Gilbert quipped when KRMG began to ask her about ongoing issues.

"That's kind of a touchy subject right now," she added, and she says until the trash board finalizes its presentation to the council, she's not ready to state an opinion.

As for the water issue, Gilbert says she and the council will address that question when the trash question has been put to bed.

So despite the fact that the trash service issue has been under discussion for more than a year, during which time she was a candidate for office and presumably asked about the issue once or twice, despite the fact that radical changes are proposed to a system with which most Tulsans are quite pleased, Gilbert hasn't formed an opinion, at least not one she's willing to share, and won't until, apparently, the untouchable TARE board tells her what to think about the plan they devised.

Meanwhile Jim Mautino was proactively researching issues of concern to his constituents right up until the end of his term:

On the trash issue, he said it's a "done deal" and that the city will award a contract that will force residents to go to once-a-week service, which he says is less efficient and more expensive than the twice-a-week service which 80 percent of the city currently receives.

The other 20 percent of the city in the northwest part of town currently gets service only once a week and that service is provided by the city, Mautino says, not a private company.

And in that area, the city is losing money, he maintains, because the bins get overfilled, the trucks have to make more trips back and forth rather than staying on their routes because they get full so much faster and the workers tire more quickly.

Despite the evidence available right at hand, he maintains the city plans to award its contract to a company that will institute once-a-week service.

As for water treatment, Mautino is among several Tulsans who fear the city's plans to go to a chloramine-based treatment system is also a done deal, despite the fact that the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority has a meeting set for December 14th to hear arguments on the issue.

One of the things that seemed to annoy City Hall bureaucrats about the old council was their habit of raising new issues to be discussed, explored, and acted upon. From the bureaucrats' perspective, this meant more work and their own priorities displaced by the councilors' pet issues.

Nearly all of the outgoing councilors had certain priorities that were inconvenient or outright obnoxious to the administration, the authorities, and special interests. Jim Mautino was concerned about animal control, food truck sanitation, chloramines in water, and encouraging new, high quality development in east Tulsa. John Eagleton pushed for computerization of municipal citations and court records, limiting the growth of the city budget, and integrity in the Mayor's and City Attorney's office. Maria Barnes was particularly interested in protection of midtown neighborhoods from commercial encroachment and inappropriate redevelopment. Roscoe Turner's key issues included the impact of airport noise on nearby neighborhoods and possible pollutants from a burn facility at a cement plant. Fiscal matters, such as the rapid growth of the public safety budget, were a major focus for Rick Westcott. Bill Christiansen led a task force about improving communication between the city and neighborhoods in the zoning process. Chris Trail was concerned about prostitution and human trafficking that might be taking place in Tulsa's massage parlors.

(Trail's noble but ultimately futile attempt to require massage parlor owners to be accountable for criminal activities in their facilities is the topic of a news story by Jennie Lloyd in this week's Urban Tulsa Weekly.)

Although the specific issues varied, in each case these councilors were willing to spend time outside the scheduled meetings to read, to talk to citizens, to commission research from the council staff (and actually read it), and then to keep pushing for action. That's pretty much a recipe for annoying city officials.

It won't be necessary for Burt Holmes or Ben Latham to sit in the front row of the audience and hold up "YES" or "NO" signs to tell their city councilors how to vote. These councilors won't need to attend secret meetings with Chamber lobbyists.

WhatMeDewey.jpgIf Gilbert is representative of the new crop of councilors, they'll be content to be spoon-fed information from the mayor, the department heads, and the members and staffers of authorities, boards, and commissions. The string-pullers need only work behind the scenes to manipulate those who are generating the information that the councilors are consuming. The Complacent Councilors won't seek out alternative perspectives, and they'll be inclined to dismiss any alternative points of view that are brought to them by citizens, because those citizens aren't "experts." They'll vote the "right" way every time, and the department heads, authority members, and mayoral assistants won't have to answer any questions that make them uncomfortable. Never mind that the result may be uncontrollable spending and a decline in our quality of life -- at least those councilors won't be bickering!

And these new Complacent Councilors won't need to devote as many hours as the old Council did. Committee and council meetings will be shorter. There will be no need to read all the backup material, to meet with interested parties, to seek out in-depth research. All they'll need to read is the recommendation at the bottom of the "Request for Action" cover sheet and vote accordingly.

Despite the massive turnover on the City Council, I'm hopeful that the four members who weren't part of the Cockroach Caucus push to take over the Council -- two old, two new -- will continue to ask questions, seek alternative sources of information, look at practices in other cities, and bring new ideas to the table. But proactive councilors should expect to endure the same kind of strident pushback from the mayor, ABC members, bureaucrats, and the Cockroach Caucus that their despised predecessors suffered.

MORE on complacency:

An excellent article on strategies to overcome complacency on the Leadership and Management website identifies nine "forces that reinforce complacency and help maintain the status quo." Here are a few:

  • A lack of sufficient performance feedback from external sources.
  • A kill-the-messenger-of-bad-news, low-candor, low-confrontational culture.
  • Human nature, with its capacity for denial, especially if people are already busy or stressed.
  • Too much happy talk from management.
  • Internal measurement systems that focus on the wrong performance indexes, or no systems at all.

Tulsa certainly has a low-candor, low-confrontational culture, and the defenders of the status quo exploited that negative character quality in their campaign to paint the old City Council as a bunch of counterproductive bickerers. The councilors and their allies in the community (including me) did not succeed in countering the "bickering" meme. It was so universally accepted that two different colleagues congratulated me on the day after the city primary, assuming incorrectly that I would be happy with an outcome that fired four incumbents.

The Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority (TMUA) is working hard to rebut concerns that Tulsa citizens have about the addition of ammonia, in the form of chloramines, to our drinking water, in advance of the final discussion on the issue at today's (December 14, 2011) 2:30 pm TMUA meeting at Tulsa City Hall. Here are the some of the latest statements from TMUA chairman Rick Hudson, as reported by KRMG:

He told KRMG, "We have to do this," or else "we'll be subject to very severe fines."

He notes that the EPA has approved the use of chloramines and calls it "safe and effective." (See link below)

He also says studies by the city and an extensive study by the City of San Francisco "debunk" several objections that have been raised regarding health and environmental considerations.

The San Francisco chloramine "study", it appears, is not research specifically about the impact of chloramines on humans or the environment, but a bibliography of articles that may have some bearing on the topic. I found only two papers on the list that appeared to involve tests on human subjects, and it was limited to a particular kind of impact, as you'll see:

Wones RG, Deck CC, Stadler B, Roark S, Hogg E, Frohman LA. Effects of drinking water monochloramine on lipid and thyroid metabolism in healthy men. Environ Health Perspect. 1993 Mar;99:369-74.

Wones RG, Deck CC, Stadler B, Roark S, Hogg E, Frohman LA. Lack of effect of drinking water chlorine on lipid and thyroid metabolism in healthy humans. Environ Health Perspect. 1993 Mar;99:375-81.

The EPA penalties to which Hudson refers have to do with a relatively new EPA regulation governing disinfection byproducts (DBP), the Stage 2 Disinfectants and Disinfection Byproducts Rule, which was finalized in late 2005 and is tied to the passage of the 1996 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The aim of the rule is to reduce certain byproducts of chlorinated water -- trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids -- which may be linked to an elevated risk of bladder cancer and possible developmental and reproductive risks. The rule is expected to reduce the number of bladder cancer cases by 280 per year (of which 26% would be fatal), at a projected nationwide cost of $79 million for implementation. Opponents of the use of chloramines say that other disinfection methods, such as activated charcoal filters, would be safer and just as cost effective.

Tulsa has a Schedule I system (serving more than 100,000 people), and it must begin compliance monitoring of the Stage 2 DBP Rule by April 1, 2012.

Jeannine Kinney sent along an email from water system consultant Bob Bowcock, who will be speaking about chloramine risks and alternatives at the TMUA meeting this afternoon. Bowcock addresses the San Francisco study and his passionate concern about the use of chloramines. Bowcock says that we have information about chloramine DBPs today that was not available when he oversaw the chloramination of the Los Angeles water supply in the mid-1980s.

You are correct... [the San Francisco study] is not a study it is CYA. I will be bringing factual information about real studies; chloramine DBP are significantly more toxic than Chlorine DBPs.

That is a simple fact... accepted by USEPA, CDC and AWWA. They have the information... the big question everyone is struggling with is... now that they have the information what will they do with it? Drinking water regulations evolve... the regulation of DBPs has been an ongoing process since 1979. If Tulsa... armed with this new information chooses to add ammonia knowingly to their drinking water they do it with knowledge we didn't have last year, three, five ten or twenty years ago... they do it with the full and complete factual knowledge that they will be harming people and causing property damage. If they can do that and sleep at night... God Bless them.

Remember, I personally turned on the ammonia feed pump in Los Angeles, the largest chloraminated system in the United States in 1984. I did not know what I was doing then would cause the harm I know it does now. I will fight, not just today, but everyday to right the wrong I know I contributed to.

They know that what they are about to do is wrong; they can however make a choice to do what is right. A choice to add ammonia to the drinking water in Tulsa in 2011 is a sin beyond reproach.

Drinking TapTulsa's water authority is planning to replace chlorine with chloramine as primary disinfectant this coming February. In response to growing concern about the harmful effects of chloramine on people and plumbing, tomorrow, December 14, 2011, the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority (TMUA) will hear a presentation about the hazards of chloramine and better alternatives by Bob Bowcock of Integrated Resource Management.

If you're concerned about health, environmental, and plumbing problems caused by chloramine, tomorrow is the most effective opportunity to demonstrate that concern, by showing up at the TMUA meeting, Wednesday, December 14, 2011, 2:30 p.m., 10th floor of Tulsa City Hall, 175 S. Cincinnati.

Before founding IRM, Bowcock headed water utilities in Azusa and Huntington Park, California, worked for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and designed and built water treatment and distribution systems in South America and southeast Asia. Bowcock made a presentation on chloramine to the Tulsa City Council in October, at the invitation of Councilor Jim Mautino. You can watch that presentation online -- the item begins at 1:30:10 and ends at 3:02:00.) According to Jeanine Kinney, a citizen who has been watching this issue closely:

Mr. Bowcock is dedicated to help the TMUA realize that using Chloramine in Tulsa's water, as a secondary disinfectant, is not in the best interests for Tulsa's water consumer's. Mr. Bowcock is perplexed because Tulsa can use a safe alternative and DOES NOT need to go to Chloramine. Mr. Bowcock stated that Tulsa has by far some of the best water in the country and that it would be a shame for the TMUA to ruin it with Chloramine.

The contract for the conversion was awarded at the November 16, 2011, TMUA meeting, but it could still be cancelled.

It's my understanding that the chloramine conversion is being driven by new EPA mandates, but that there are safer alternatives that will meet the new mandates. I'm wondering why Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr. hasn't asked Senator Jim Inhofe, ranking Republican and soon to be chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, to push for the EPA to back off these new regulations that are forcing cities to make costly modifications to their water systems for no gain in water quality.

You can read more about chloramine and its hazards in this earlier BatesLine story,which has links to other web resources on the topic.

Photo, "Drinking Tap" by TounoTouji, on Flickr. Creative Commons license.

The Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority (TMUA), which operates the City of Tulsa's water system, will vote today whether to approve a contract for $925,600 with Crossland Heavy Contractors for "Chloramines Modifications" at Tulsa's two water treatment plants, A. B. Jewell and Mohawk.

(See the TMUA agenda here.)

The meeting will be held at 2:30 p.m., Wednesday, November 16, 2011, in Conference Room 10 South.

If you're concerned, as many are, about the health effects of chloramine in our drinking water, this meeting might be a good opportunity to express those concerns to the people entrusted with the stewardship of our water system.

MORE: The Tulsa City Council Urban and Economic Development Committee Meeting dealt briefly with the chloramine issue on Tuesday, at the request of Councilor Jim Mautino, who asked questions of city public works employee Clayton Edwards. The 20-minute video of the meeting begins at 10 minutes into the clip at this link.

The video includes an excerpt of TMUA vice chairman Rick Hudson at the October 27, 2011, City Council meeting, defending the choice of chloramine as a water disinfectant and informing the City Council that the TMUA has the final decision over the use of chloramine. Hudson said on October 27 that he'd be glad to have chloramine expert Bob Bowcock, a member of the American Water Works Association, at the next meeting.

You can watch the full October 27, 2011, City Council agenda item about chloramine here, including Bob Bowcock's presentation and comments from Hudson. The agenda item starts at 1:30:00.

At Tuesday's committee meeting, city director of environmental services Clayton Edwards said that Bowcock will be on TMUA's December 14 agenda. The TMUA board could opt, Edwards said, to delay the contract award until they hear from Bowcock, but once approved it would be binding.

Mautino noted an interesting article on the website of RL Hudson -- TMUA vice chairman Rick Hudson is the president and CEO of the company -- about the effects of chloramines in our water supply:

So how do chloramines affect the seals and other elastomeric parts within the water distribution chain? With anecdotal evidence suggesting that chloramines hasten elastomer failure in devices ranging from toilets to faucets to fire sprinklers, the American Water Works Association Research Foundation (AWWARF) conducted a study. The results indicate that chloramines do indeed pose a significant threat to many of the most widely used elastomeric materials, including natural and synthetic isoprenes, styrene butadiene (SBR), chloroprene (CR), and nitrile (NBR).

In side-by-side tests with chlorine, chloramines caused more material swell, deeper and denser cracking, faster loss of elasticity, and greater loss of tensile strength. In a susceptible material, chloramines appear to attack the polymer's cross-links, the connections that give the material a resilient, three-dimensional structure. Cracks develop and water flows in, swelling the material and resulting in a marked loss of other physical properties. Degradation becomes more pronounced as temperatures increase.

How to cope with this chemical that degrades the rubber and plastic parts in our plumbing systems? RL Hudson has a solution: "If your application requires it, we at RL Hudson can help you find compounds that will withstand chloramines."

Toward the end of the exchange between Mautino and Edwards, there's a discussion of elevated lead levels in the blood in Washington, D. C., related to the use of chloramines in their drinking water. Edwards acknowledged that that had been a problem but thought that Washington had taken steps to mitigate it.

It's evident that Councilor Mautino has done his homework on this issue. Tulsans should be grateful that Mautino is willing to continue to delve into this issue, despite being a lame duck since his defeat in September's primary. You may not miss him now, but you will in a few months.

A weird election season has come to an end. Tulsa voters have emptied out the City Council and turned down two radical plans to remake city government (while embracing two ill-considered modifications with bigger impact than voters appreciate).

After the polls closed, I collected results from precincts along the southern tier of District 4. Of the seven locations I personally checked, Ken Brune won only two -- 65 and 156 -- precincts in the heart of the Money Belt that pushed him over the top in the primary, but he won only by slim margins. It was apparent that Republican Blake Ewing would win by a handsome margin. I headed to the historic Church Studio at 3rd Street and Trenton Ave. for Blake Ewing's watch party.

During his victory speech Ewing explained why he chose the venue for his victory party:

"I chose to have it here, because this is one of those hidden gems in Tulsa. This place sat mostly empty for a very long time." He drew an analogy between the studio and Tulsa itself. "It's had this great, beautiful history, and then somewhere along the way it may have lost its way in some places. And the effort of creative, energetic people brought something special back to life again.... I appreciate what the Miller family has done with the Church, and I hope that on a much grander scale we can do that with our city, that we can see its potential and choose to raise the bar across the board, and that as a community we will work towards that together."

Blake surprised me with a very gracious shout-out for my work here at BatesLine during this election season. I found it especially touching because he gets why I do what I do, and one of the things I most appreciate about Blake is his commitment to honesty and transparency, exemplified by his willingness to talk about political machinations that are usually hidden from public view.

"Michael is an asset to our community in that he's a voice that continues to seek out the truth and continues to call things on the carpet for being unjust or for being vague or shady or anything other than transparent. And so I'm proud to call Michael a friend, proud to have had him on our team, and I hope that that same sort of attitude will start prevailing in our city -- that the things that happen behind closed doors or that happen because elite folks pull strings that the rest of us can't -- that we turn the tide as a city and that regular folks like you and I can trust in our government and trust in the future of our city."

(I've posted this here for my own sake, because once in a while, I can use a word of encouragement.)

I was happy to have a small part in helping Blake as a volunteer for the campaign. My five-year-old and I helped him on Saturday by knocking doors in our neighborhood, and from the beginning of the campaign, long before I endorsed him, Blake would call from time to time to use me as a sounding board (as did other candidates in the District 4 race).

The other result that greatly pleased me was the defeat of the at-large council proposal by a 3-to-1 margin. Hopefully that's driven a stake through the heart of a very bad idea.

The rest of the council races went about as planned, with the candidate of the dominant party winning by a 3-to-1 margin in each district, with one surprising exception: District 3, where Republican Dave Bell came within about 140 votes of beating off-and-on Councilor (and off-and-on Democrat) David Patrick. Perhaps the anti-incumbent sentiment damaged Patrick, too, although he took advantage of it in the primary.

I was sorry to see non-partisan elections pass. It was close enough that organized opposition might have been able to defeat it. In combination with the change in election dates, non-partisan ballots will add to the challenges that grassroots candidates face in getting their message to the voters.

The move to put elections in the fall of even numbered years won a bit more support, but one wonders if people understood the gist of the question. News outlets didn't seem to get it. Fox 23's results crawl described the proposition as "term limits" (not even close), while KOTV News on 6's story said it "reduces council terms to two years" and "restored the terms set out in the 1989 charter." That's partly true -- terms will end and elections will be held in even-numbered years, as in the 1989 charter, but in the fall, coincident with federal elections, not in the spring as was the case from 1990 through 2008. It seems that even the newsfolk did not grasp the salient feature of the proposition -- holding city elections with federal elections, rather than have a special time set aside to focus on and debate local issues.

Say Hello to Garfield:-)A number of guides, interviews, and videos have been posted to introduce voters to the candidates on the Tulsa City Council ballot tomorrow. In most cases, the winner of a hotly contested primary for the district's dominant party faces the nominee of the minority party, who either got a bye or faced minimal competition in the primary. District 4 is the exception -- an evenly-divided district in which both parties had strongly contested primaries.

OK-SAFE (Oklahomans for Sovereignty and Free Enterprise) is a non-partisan but conservative/libertarian organization that produces a lengthy questionnaire for City Council candidates. Only six general election candidates responded: Jeannie Cue in District 2, David Bell and David Patrict in 3, Blake Ewing in 4, Robert Gwin in 6, and William Suliburk in 8. Candidates give a short answer, reflected on a summary grid, but may also elaborate on their responses, and their responses are posted in full.

Steven Roemerman has video of the Tulsa Press Club forum for districts 2, 7, and 8. These forums were somewhat disappointing, as questions dealing with development and land use planning weren't included, but they were still revealing in places. Check out the responses to the question about the involvement in the election of the Tulsa Metro Chamber, a city vendor, keeping in mind that Lakin, Mansur, and Cue all received money from the Chamber's TulsaBizPac.

Also note the responses to the question about trash service. Everyone likes the current service, but no one even addresses Mayor Junior Bartlett's efforts to stymie the ability of the Council to shape the trash service to address the public's concerns. Half of the Tulsa Authority for the Recovery of Energy board (William Bowles, expired 2010/07/31, Beverly Anderson and Michael Pierce, expired 2011/07/31) continues to serve despite expired terms. Mayor Junior has refused to put them up for reappointment, avoiding a Council vote, in which the TARE board members could be held to account for the board's refusal to consider public concerns about their approach to the new trash contract.

Mayor Junior's City Attorney has issued an opinion that the charter provision giving the council the power to fill expired terms that the mayor refuses to fill doesn't apply to the TARE board, because the TARE board is authorized under state statute. (The City Attorney conveniently interprets conflicts and precedence between charter and state statute as suits Mayor Junior. Sometimes state law trumps charter, sometimes vice versa.) There's also an opinion that although the city legislature created TARE, they can't eliminate it without TARE's approval, and they can't strip it of its powers. A council effort to do just that was vetoed by Mayor Junior, and councilors were told they'd be sued personally if they overrode the veto. In a nutshell, Dewey Bartlett Jr is standing in the way of Tulsans getting the trash service they want, and these candidates for City Council don't understand that playing nice with the Mayor won't make him budge on this issue.

KOTV News on 6 has posted interviews with each of the 14 Council candidates on the News on 6 election coverage home page. Click on the map to pop up the two candidates for the district, or click the link below:

District 2:

Jeannie Cue (R)
Phillip Oyler (D)

District 3:

David Bell(R)
David Patrick (D)

District 4:

Blake Ewing (R)
Ken Brune (D)

District 6:

Byron Steele (R)
Robert Gwin Jr. (D)

District 7:

Tom Mansur (R)
Michael Rainwater (D)

District 8:

Phil Lakin (R)
William Suliburk (D)


District 9:

G. T. Bynum (R)
Mike Batman (D)

Democrat Ken Brune sent out a mailer to Republican voters in Tulsa District 4 with a list of 74 "Republicans for Ken Brune (1 MB PDF)."

Ken Brune seems to be liked only by an elite and elderly class of Republicans.

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A BatesLine analysis of the 74 names, using voter registration and county assessor records, shows that 67 of them live south of 21st Street in the Money Belt precincts that were recently moved from District 9 to District 4, 4 live north of 21st Street in the district, and 3 don't live in District 4 at all.

Median age of the names on the list is 66. The youngest, former City Councilor Eric Gomez (who threatened to sue his constituents), is 42. Only four of the 74 are under a half-century old.


The median value (as assigned by the Tulsa County Assessor) of the homes where they reside is $392,450, and the median home size is 3,473 sq. ft. Only six people on the list live in homes worth less than $200,000. (The median sales price for Tulsa is $135,000.)

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The list of Brune fans includes John Brock, leader of Save Our Tulsa, who believes that City Councilors should be seen and not heard; Joe Westervelt, a developer and former TMAPC chairman who believes citizens should not be heard and historic neighborhoods should not be protected; Frederic Dorwart, the BOK attorney, George Kaiser Family Foundation trustee who pushed through the legally-dubious ballpark assessment scheme; Bob Poe, the highway construction hothead and 2004 Tulsa Metro Chamber chairman, famed for his divisive and embarrassing rants against city councilors and state legislators (Poe was a Democrat as recently as 2009); and Gomez, who decided his constituents didn't need to know about a massive residential facility for the long-term homeless being planned for their neighborhood, then threatened to sue a constituent who complained about it.

What kind of Republican supports Ken Brune? The kind that doesn't want to protect our beautiful older neighborhoods. The kind that wants the council to be a silent rubber stamp. The kind that would rather tear apart the city charter than cooperate and compromise with city councilors who have different priorities. The kind that is well insulated by his wealth from the daily concerns that affect most Tulsans. The kind that wants higher taxes and more corporate welfare. The Cockroach Caucus type of Republican.

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As I wrote about the Cockroach Caucus back before the primary:

A small group of wealthy Tulsans want total control of city government. They don't want thoughtful citizens on the City Council who will ask direct questions or who will stand firm against special-interest manipulation. They want a City Council full of well-trained monkeys who will vote on command. They exist under various names -- TulsaBizPac, Coalition for Responsible Government, Tulsans for Better Government, Save Our Tulsa -- I call them the Cockroach Caucus. They've used unsubstantiated claims of "bickering" and "ward politics" to discredit the councilors we've elected to represent us.

These are the people, the Cockroach Caucus, who created a year of turmoil with their 2004-2005 attempt to recall two city councilors over policy differences. For all the whining and complaining they do about "Council bickering," they dragged the city through a divisive year of attacks and smears, all because they didn't like the results of an election, and they refused to work harmoniously with the councilors that the people of Tulsa had elected.

These are the people who led us into the Great Plains Airlines mess. They promised us openly that the taxpayers were at no financial risk, while they were secretly promising financiers that the taxpayers would pick up the tab if their wacky airline idea failed. It failed, state taxpayers coughed up $30 million in transferable tax credits with nothing to show for it, and Tulsa taxpayers got saddled with $7.1 million, which we're paying for with higher property taxes.

These are the Midtown Money Belt people who don't like the councilors that east and west and south and north Tulsa elect to represent our interests at City Hall. Middle-class and working-class Tulsans want more cops on the beat, city pools that open in the summer, streets that don't tear our cars to pieces, zoning that protects our neighborhoods against shoddy redevelopment, and economic policies that attract and keep growing businesses. The Midtown Money Belt types want taxpayers to subsidize their entertainment -- islands in the river, expensive concerts at the arena, WNBA. They want us to subsidize the success of their investments in suburban real estate, at the expense of growth within the city limits to help fund public safety and infrastructure.

So because they don't like the fact that the rest of us elect councilors focused on efficient basic city services, these people propose charter changes to dilute geographical representation on the City Council. They yearn for the days when you could drive a golf ball from the Mayor's midtown backyard into the yards of the other city commissioners. They want to pack the council with at-large councilors who have to be wealthy enough to afford a city-wide race or beholden to those who are.

That's the kind of Republican that backs Ken Brune.

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The Brune mailer makes a preposterous claim: "Partisan politics have hampered real progress for our great city." I can't think of a single example of national party affiliation being relevant to a major city government dispute. The divisions that have hurt us are those caused by the rich, old Money Belt coots of both parties who won't work cooperatively with the rest of the city.

When I was the Republican nominee for District 4 City Council, my opponent put out a robocall the day before the election. It was Scott Petty (also on Brune's list as Robert S. Petty), speaking on behalf of "Republicans for Tom Baker."

It was the same bunch then as now. They don't want a bright, independent, creative, and courageous man like Republican Blake Ewing on the City Council. They want a submissive milquetoast like Democrat Ken Brune.

This conservative Republican is proud to support my fellow Republican Blake Ewing for District 4 City Council.


Red-white-and-blue RINO logo courtesy the conservative blog with the tongue-in-cheek name AngryWhiteDude.com

Tonight the Tulsa City Council will vote on whether to annex a 300-foot fenceline running along the west side of the future alignment of the Gilcrease Expressway, parallel to 57th West Avenue. Other parcels within that fenceline belonging to owners who want their property in the city limits will be included in tonight's vote.

The proposal has been described as affecting Berryhill, but it runs to the east of the unincorporated community surrounding Berryhill schools, which would remain unclaimed territory between Sand Springs and Tulsa's fencelines. There's no threat here to the Berryhill community's semi-rural lifestyle. Berryhill would still be outside Tulsa's fenceline, any annexation move would require residents to vote their approval, and they would still have option, should they choose, to be taken into Sand Springs instead.

This is an important strategic move for Tulsa. City of Tulsa tax dollars are building the Gilcrease Expressway, and we need to make sure that future development along that expressway returns money to the city's coffers, rather than funding Sand Springs or Sapulpa. Tulsa fell asleep at the switch a few years ago, and Sapulpa reached an arm into Tulsa County to claim all the development on I-44 leading to the Turner Turnpike. We can't afford to have that sort of thing happen again.

Here's a map with the proposed parcels to be annexed in yellow, extracted from the City Council backup packet. I added annotations marking Berryhill Schools, certain subdivisions, and Chandler Park. Click the image for a full-size view.

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While Oklahoma voters have closed off most avenues for tax hikes without a vote, there remains one loophole: the sinking fund. As Tulsa County Assessor Ken Yazel explains in the news release below, each taxing entity (a city, for example) presents the county excise board an estimate of the property tax money it will need added to the sinking fund in the coming fiscal year to repay general obligation bonds and judgments against the taxing entity.

The excise board is supposed to analyze the request and determine its validity before approving it, but according to Yazel, the Tulsa County Excise Board has been rubber-stamping requests, resulting in a property tax increase for all Tulsa County property owners once again this year, without any vote of the people.

The property tax increase requested by the City of Tulsa includes money for the final payment of the Great Plains Airlines settlement, a settlement that was thrown out by the Oklahoma Supreme Court well before the Excise Board voted to approve Tulsa's request. Yazel called this to the Excise Board's attention at the meeting on October 19, 2011, but they rubber-stamped the request without any amendments. A motion by one board member, Ted Kachel (appointed by the district judges), to delay the decision until they could learn more about their prerogatives to review and amend requests from the taxing entities died for lack of a second.

Don Wyatt's Boondoggle Blog has a summary and audio of the Tulsa County Excise Board meeting. The apathy on the part of the board's majority (Oklahoma Tax Commission appointee Ruth B. Gaines and Tulsa County Commission appointee Warren G. Morris) is appalling. They don't want to exercise independent scrutiny and judgment to protect the taxpayer.

Wyatt makes an important point: Just because your property value declined doesn't mean that your tax will go down. If the decline in value reflects a general county-wide decline, the excise board will raise the millage rate to keep the same amount of revenue flowing in. It's as if an unelected body had the power to raise sales tax rates to compensate for economic slowdown and a decline in spending.

Here's Yazel's news release:

County Excise Board Raises Tax Rates in Spite of Concerns Expressed by Tulsa County Assessor

TULSA, OK.-- The Tulsa County Excise Board approved an increase in property taxes over concerns raised by Tulsa County Assessor Ken Yazel during its meeting held on October 19, 2011.

The county assessor's job is to appraise the fair market value of property in the county. It is the function of the county excise board to approve the amounts requested for property taxes that will be used in the calculation of the appropriate tax levies.

All of the entities receiving property taxes submit an estimate of needs for property taxes to the excise board each year. It is the board's responsibility to analyze those needs, approve the property tax requests, then apply the approved amounts to the certified property values furnished by the county assessor. It is from this process that the amount of taxes each property owner will pay is derived.

Yazel attempted to make the following points to the Excise Board on behalf of the taxpayers:

1. At its core, the county excise board has property tax oversight responsibility. The board has in fact historically voted on property tax rates with virtually no independent analysis of the various estimates of needs.

2. Instead of analyzing the requests as the statutes dictate, the board merely relies on a county employee to provide them with the millage rates. To properly exercise its oversight responsibility, the excise board needs its own independent analyst to help it fulfill this responsibility.

3. Statutes require the excise board to take into account (for all entities requesting property taxes) cash balances and revenues from all sources. The requirement is there so the excise board can determine whether the requesting entity actually "needs" what has been requested.

During the meeting, one excise board member characterized the board's activity over his eight year tenure as "rubber stamping" the millage rates presented to them. He expressed some regret for this and asked the assistant district attorney for a better understanding of the board's responsibilities. Another member stated bluntly that he is incapable of analyzing the requests.

Yazel's position is not that the excise board or the county employee are doing anything other than what has been the practice for years. Rather, he is trying to help the board understand that in an era where cumulative property values are going down and the demand for money and tax rates are increasing, they have broader obligations and authority to review and potentially modify these requests than they have been exercising.

"As an example, I attempted to point out the situation related to the City of Tulsa sinking fund and the Great Plains $7.1 million judgment," said Yazel. "The Oklahoma Supreme Court recently ruled that payment to be invalid. However, the City of Tulsa put the final portion of that payment into their current request for property taxes, having done so before the Supreme Court made its ruling. I was trying to get the board members to see that they were about to raise taxes on the citizens of the City of Tulsa for a payment that the Supreme Court had invalidated. In the end, they approved the request with no changes. This proves the point, that before raising taxes they need to be more deliberative and analytical and not merely accept what is put in front of them as accurate or complete."

Total property tax revenues collected in Tulsa County have risen over the past 10 years from $397 million to an estimated $621 million for the current year, even though in many communities the population and/or the cumulative property valuations are going down. An increasing number of residences are being converted to rentals, and there is some evidence that businesses are locating in neighboring counties because of the marked difference in tax rates.

"This is a trend that is unsustainable in the long run, and that is my concern on behalf of the taxpayers," Yazel said. "It is much easier for public officials to address it now. It will be exponentially more difficult to deal with in the future if this pattern continues."

Ken Yazel was elected Tulsa County Assessor in 2002 and was re-elected in 2006 and 2010. A retired Major, U.S. Marine Corps, Yazel was also a CPA for many years. During his time in county government he has continually fought to lower taxes and ensure that property values in Tulsa County are fair and equalized.

A couple of readers have emailed to express their concerns about the imminent introduction of chloramine into Tulsa's water supply. I am only beginning to study the issue, and it seems there may be reason to worry.

Rather than make you wait until I've thoroughly researched the matter, I've decided to present the concerns expressed by one of these readers, with her permission. I would be glad to post knowledgeable answers to her questions and other points of view on this issue.

Jeanine Kinney made the following remarks at the October 4, 2011, City Council committee meeting:

CHLORAMINE

The Health Department's, the Water Department's and The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) are claiming that Chloramine is safe for all everyday uses, drinking, bathing & cooking et cetera. Yet, the EPA itself admits that it has no Respiratory, Digestive, Skin & Epidemiological studies on the Human Health effects of Chloraminated water. The limited Cancer studies on Chloraminated water are so few that they are considered inadequate for assessment. Even though these studies show some evidence that Chloramine itself is a carcinogen, NO determination can be made from those handful of studies. The fact is there are not enough scientific data to know if Chloraminated water is safe for any uses for Human Beings.

Thousands of people all over the country and even in other countries have reported severe and life threatening respiratory, digestive and skin symptoms whenever they are exposed to Chloraminted water. These people have proven by avoidance and re-exposure that the Chloraminted water is the culprit for their symptoms. They do not have these symptoms when they are NOT exposed to Choramine and as soon as they are re-exposed their symptoms return. These symptoms fall into exactly the "gaps" in the scientific data about Chloramine's safety and the Respiratory, Digestive and Skin studies that DO NOT exist.

In addition to the immediate health effects that people are reporting from Chloraminated water is the grave concern about the emerging science in the very little known Disinfection By Products (DBP's) of Chloramine. These DBP's are NOT yet regulated, but are turning out to be many magnitudes more toxic than those of Chlorine. (THM's & HAA's)

Finally, Chloramine is much more corrosive to plumbing, lead pipes, copper pipes with lead solder and brass plumbing fixtures, which contain lead. Lead is being leached into drinking water because of the corrosive effects of Chloramine on combinations of these metals. Sometimes the level of lead leached into the drinking water is extremely high. Children from Chloraminated water districts are showing high levels of lead in their blood. And for those of us concerned about our environment, Chloramine is much more toxic to fish, frogs, amphibians and to other aquatic life. Water main breaks with water disinfected with Chlorine rarely does any damage unless the level of Chlorine is extremely high. But with Chloramine, however, even small traces from breaks and leaks, as well as from people washing their cars or watering their lawns can wipe out fish, frogs and amphibians in nearby ponds, streams and lakes. WHY RISK OUR FRAGILE ENVIRONMENT IF THERE ARE BETTER ALTERNATIVES????? And there are alternatives that are safer like:

Enhanced Membrane Pre-Filtration OR

Combinations of Alternative Disinfectants & Disinfection Techniques OR

Mixing well water with surface water to dilute the DBP's (Disinfection By Products) OR

Air Stripping of the THM's (Trihalomethane's), to name a few!

In closing today, I really want to believe in my heart that each of you 9 City Councilors took your position on the City Council in order to help, protect and look out for the best interest of the people of Tulsa. I plead with you to help protect the health of Tulsa's water consumer's. Please oppose the use of Chloramine as it has not been studied for the very health effects that people all over the country and all over the world are reporting.

A week later, on October 11, 2011, Kinney was at another City Council committee meeting to attempt to get answers to her questions about chloramine:

There was a Tulsa City Council meeting, Tuesday, October 11, where discussion with the Deputy Director for the Public Works Department, Clayton Edwards, & City of Tulsa Ammonia (Chloramine) conversion project leader, Joan Arthur took place. There was not one member of the TUMA (Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority) Board present for discussion. The meeting was set regarding the postponing the implementation of using Chloramines in the Tulsa public water system. The following concerns were attempted at being discussed, however, the meeting was terminated after a couple were asked and still yet unanswered.

Numerous email's & phone calls have been received regarding input and interest in Tulsa's conversion to Chloramine. Chloramine is to be used as a secondary disinfectant for Tulsa water utility consumers and those in surrounding areas, who do and will, purchase water from the City of Tulsa.

You state that Tulsa thoroughly researched the potential impact of the Stage 2 D/DBP rules and the alternatives available to meet the new regulations, for the last ten years. I would like to know exactly what treatment processes were evaluated and why these processes's were ruled out?

You state that the byproducts in some parts of the city, are projected to exceed or be very close to Stage 2 DBP standards. What data are these projections based on? Which parts of Tulsa are "problem" areas and/or areas where the levels of byproducts are projected to exceed standard levels? By how much are these areas expected to exceed the standards?

You state that a small amount of ammonia will be added to the water. Yet, no one, not even the EPA, knows if even a small amount of ammonia is safe since there is NO data regarding how much ammonia is safe in drinking water.

You state Chloramine is less reactive in the distribution system. Yet chloramine, forms many disinfection by products that are much more toxic than the currently regulated, THMs and HAAs. Some examples include iodo acetic acid, NDMA'S and nitrogen containing DBPs, according to the journal AWWA, February 2001. (NDMA is a probable carcinogen)

Using chloramine as a residual does not "adequately" protect people from re-contamination due to water line breaks, road work, construction with water lines and home plumbing leaks. It is also a greater hazard to the environment. Water main breaches and run off into storm sewers, lakes or ponds, kills fish, frogs and other aquatic life.

Chloramine is much more toxic to aquatic life than an equal dose of Chlorine. The edition of even small amounts of Chloramine to aquariums or fish ponds quickly results in death for fish as well as frogs, amphibians and other organisms. This has never happened with Chlorine unless unusually high concentrations of Chlorine were present in the tap water.
You state that trihalomethanes are linked to bladder cancer. The data shows that it takes 70 years of chronic exposure to trihalomethanes, to see a 1.7% increase in the incidence of bladder cancer. Bladder cancer is the easiest type of cancer to treat and has the lowest mortality rate.

You state that the maximum residual disinfectant level (MRDL) of 4 mg/ L is approved by the EPA. However, the EPA based this MRDL on studies that are incomplete. The EPA simply substituted data for chlorine, to fill in the "gaps" in the studies on chloramine, since the studies on chloramine were never completed. The EPA has ASSUMED that chlorine and chloramine have similar health effects, but studies from OSHA and NIOSH, prove otherwise.

Chloramine is a much more potent respiratory and dermal irritant than chlorine. It has different chemical properties and reactivity than chlorine.

CHLORINE IS NOT LIKE CHLORAMINE.

You state that you will be monitoring the lead levels in the distribution system for one year. Will you test water samples in homes, apartments, office buildings, schools and other building's in and around Tulsa? And if so how many residences & building's will be tested? How frequently will they be tested & in what manner will they be tested? (When samples are collected, will you take a first draw? Or will your flush/run the water to clear out the pipes? Flushing can miss the lead that may be present in the water, due to chloramine's corrosive effects on plumbing that contains combinations of copper, lead and brass).

You state that chloraminated water is safe for all everyday uses. However, there are NO skin, respiratory or digestive studies nor is there any epidemiological data to prove that statement. It is in fact your opinion. You can verify that these studies DO NOT EXIST, by looking chloramine up in the IRIS, published by the EPA. The EPA DID NOT study the dermal, respiratory, ocular, and digestive effects of chlorimanated water. The limited cancer studies on chloraminated water are considered inadequate for assessment. There is some evidence that chloramine itself is a carcinogen but, we do not know for sure if it causes cancer, what type and at what levels.

The truth is, that there is not enough data to know if chloraminated water is safe for ANY uses, for human beings. Until those studies are done, NO ONE can say that chloraminated water is safe. No studies = WE DO NOT KNOW!

Finally,

You state that currently 30% of all municipal water treatment systems rely on chloramine disinfection and that chloramine has been used for over 90 years. Still, ONLY studies will prove if chloramine is harmful to human health!

You state that neighboring cities like Oklahoma City, Norman, Sand Springs, Lawton, Dallas, Fort Worth, Denver, and St. Louis have converted their water disinfection process over to Chloramine. That DOES NOT PROVE THAT CHLORAMINE IS SAFE!

There are numerous cases in Pennsylvania, California, Washington DC, North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma, Dallas, Vermont, Massachusetts, Colorado, Maine, Arizona, Florida, Oregon, Colorado, in which citizens are reporting serious health effects as a direct result of using Chloraminated water for drinking, bathing, cooking and other everyday uses of their tap water.

Where is the data supporting the finding that the reported health effects from Chloramine are "isolated?" How do you know the similar symptoms have not occurred in any of the cities using Chloramine that Tulsa has contacted? Did you contact hospitals and clinics, to ask if there had been increased reports of skin, respiratory or digestive symptoms, since the addition of chloramine to their water? How many cities and how many consumer's and residents were contacted? Until you have that information, you DO NOT KNOW what effects Chloramine is having on those residents.

Please do not put Chloramine in our water at the expense of the health of Tulsan's. We are already going to be paying more for an unsafe disinfectant when we should be paying more for a safe alternative!

MORE:

The EPA collection of frequently asked questions about chloramine.

The website of Citizens Concerned About Chloramine (CCAC)

Wikipedia article on chloramine

UPDATED 2011/10/13 with links to further reaction and my interview with KRMG's Nicole Burgin. Just remember, though, BatesLine had the story first, thanks to an email from an alert reader.

This post is worthy of a flashing light, a flaming skull, and 72-point type. Tulsa's taxpayers get our $7 million back.

The Supreme Court of Oklahoma has thrown out the Great Plains Airlines settlement by a 5-4 vote with three of the four dissenters concurring in part. From the decision (emphasis added):

¶26 In the present matter, the settlement was not based on a contract, but rather under the equitable theory of unjust enrichment to the City of Tulsa. The City of Tulsa, at all times, presented the settlement issues to the District Court of Tulsa County. The Judgments Against Municipalities Act does not apply. Therefore, the sinking funds requirement also does not apply. However, since we find the unjust enrichment claim to be unviable and the Statute of Limitations would bar the unjust enrichment claim against the City, we remand the instant matter back to the District Court of Tulsa County to direct the repayment of the settlement funds from BOK back to the City of Tulsa.

See my July 2, 2008, column, The Great Plains Ripoff, for background.

The Supreme Court ruling, sadly, lets Kathy Taylor off the hook for triple damages payable to the taxpayers who brought the Qui Tam suit over the Great Plains settlement. I'd hope Taylor would feel ashamed of ripping off Tulsa's taxpayers as she did, but I don't expect any remorse. The taxpayers of the City of Tulsa weren't as important to Kathy Taylor as the legal and financial well-being of her cronies.

UPDATE: Here's a link to a more readable version of the Supreme Court decision. Thanks to UTW's Jennie Lloyd for the tip.

MORE REACTION (2011/10/13):

City Councilor John Eagleton called it back in 2008 and in 2010, he cited the Great Plains Settlement as one of eight instances demonstrating Deirdre Dexter's incompetence as City Attorney, in a letter urging Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr to replace her.

News Talk Radio KRMG's Nicole Burgin spoke to me Wednesday afternoon about the Great Plains settlement. You can listen to the full interview via that link. I discuss what should happen with the money repaid by BOK to the City of Tulsa, what lessons should be learned, and speculate about why the Supreme Court's vote was so close.

(My radio chops are very rusty. Way too many ums and ahs. I probably should have asked for a few minutes to gather my thoughts and mentally shift gears from engineering back to politics before doing the interview.)

The KRMG story has a statement from the City of Tulsa:

"The City of Tulsa and the Tulsa Airports Improvement Trust are currently reviewing the Opinion from the Oklahoma Supreme Court setting aside the settlement between the Bank of Oklahoma and the City and TAIT, and considering their options. The City is pleased the Court recognized the City entered into the settlement in good faith, but the ruling by the Court was a mixed result for the City. The ruling obviously will cause BOK to return to the City the $7.1 million the City paid to BOK under the terms of the settlement. The ruling also makes it clear that the City has no liability to BOK arising out of the Great Plains transaction. However, the settlement the court set aside was global in that it included all of the claims BOK had against both the City and the airport. The result is that although the City has no liability to BOK, BOK can now pursue its previous claim against the airport."

KJRH reports that BOK will be resuming its lawsuit against the Tulsa Airports Improvements Trust:

BOK issued a statement to 2NEWS saying, "The Supreme Court's invalidation of the settlement with the City has freed Bank of Oklahoma to assert its $12.5 million claim against the Airport Trust for not fulfilling its obligation to the bank. While we'd hoped this issue would have been put to rest with the settlement back in 2008, the court's decision now requires that it continue."

Here's an idea: BOK should pursue repayment from the investors in Great Plains Airlines, who stood to profit if the airline had succeeded. Or from the vendors who were paid for goods and services with money GPA borrowed from BOK. Or from the individuals and companies that bought GPA's transferable state tax credits. Of the city officials who -- it is claimed -- promised BOK that city would cover any default. If all of the above had an attack of conscience and each paid a bit, they could raise that money very quickly, I imagine.

KOTV's report includes extensive comments from City Councilor Rick Westcott:


"This loan should never have been made. There's nobody that's on the hook for this," said Tulsa City Councilor Rick Westcott....

"What is important is the Supreme Court has ruled that the City of Tulsa has no liability to the Bank of Oklahoma. And the Bank of Oklahoma has to give taxpayers back $7.1 million."...

And don't start looking for a property tax rebate check in the mail anytime soon. The money will likely go into an account to guard against future lawsuits.

"The $7.1 million could be used to pay off judgments in the future and not have to levy citizen's property taxes to pay for those small judgments," Westcott said.

Fox 23 seems to get a key point wrong in their brief report. (It's quite understandable.) Kathy Taylor did not say the settlement "was illegal and unfair to taxpayers because it was paid with property taxes." She and the City of Tulsa asked the district court to affirm that the settlement to which she agreed was lawful. The court action that she filed included the complaining taxpayers as defendants. Taylor was pursuing this action to protect herself against liability for treble damages as a result of the taxpayers' claim; Taylor did NOT agree with the taxpayers that her agreement to the settlement was unjust. (See sections 11 through 15 of the Supreme Court's decision.)

In today's Wall Street Journal's William McGurn explores Tulsa billionaire George Kaiser's motivations in his involvement in Solyndra. Some excerpts:

The George Kaiser Family Foundation in Tulsa, Okla., was the company's largest shareholder. The family foundation has attracted attention because it is set up as a "supporting organization" for the Tulsa Community Foundation. Supporting organizations provide donors with generous tax deductions while they are not required to give away the 5% of assets that, say, a private foundation must....

No doubt Mr. Kaiser's charitable giving has done some wonderful things for Tulsa. Unfortunately, when it came to a politically fashionable cause, Mr. Kaiser's concern for the taxpayer simply vanished. In its place was a much less appealing ethos, which he alluded to in the same Rotary speech where he spoke about "guilt."...

...As Mr. Kaiser appreciates, an oil man who denounces fossil fuels will be lionized even as he continues to make millions off them, in the same way that a billionaire such as Warren Buffet earns praise for calling for higher taxes. But if you are a businessman such as David and Charles Koch, and you use your wealth to try to preserve the economic freedom you believe will help others move up the ladder, you will soon find yourself branded as an enemy of the people.

"We're all familiar with the greedy businessman who pushes taxpayer subsidies to enrich himself," says Scott Walter, a former domestic policy adviser in the Bush administration who now writes for PhilanthropyDaily.com. "Solyndra tells us we might want to start paying more attention to the businessman who's already rich--but seeks to salve a guilty conscience by putting taxpayers on the hook for his pet causes."

(If you're not a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal, you can read McGurn's entire piece for free by entering the site via a Google search for the title, "Solyndra and a Billionaire's Guilt Trip.")

McGurn's last paragraph quotes Scott Walter's article on Philanthropy Daily, "The Other Solyndra Scandal," which is worth your attention. Walter goes deeper into the special nature of GKFF and the tax advantages of this arrangement vs. direct charitable giving or setting up a traditional foundation. Effectively, you can set aside money for charitable purposes and take the tax deduction now, but wait until much later to decide how to spend it, maintaining control over the money in the meantime. (Idle thought: If you needed the money at some future time, could you take it out? What would be the tax consequences? Penalties, or just taxable at the time you withdrew it?)

A couple of excerpts from Walker:

Kaiser explains that "there's never been more money shoved out of the government's door in world history and probably never will be again than in the last few months and the next 18 months, and our selfish, parochial goal is to get as much of it for Tulsa and Oklahoma as we possibly can."

Is this zealous grab for other people's money greed? The dollars at issue weren't voluntarily donated by generous fellow citizens, nor were they knowingly risked by venture capitalists gambling with their own money. No, the dollars Mr. Kaiser sought to get his "selfish" hands on were tax dollars that his fellow citizens were compelled to provide, supposedly for the common good....

Why isn't it greedy and improper when a billionaire with enormous charitable resources - $4 billion in the George Kaiser Family Foundation as of 2009 - manipulates tax dollars into a dubious hobbyhorse project of his? Especially when that hobbyhorse is a for-profit company in which the billionaire's foundation is the largest stockholder? And when the billionaire's foundation ends up, at bankruptcy time, ahead of the taxpayers in the line to recoup something from the cratered company's assets, even though federal law appears to make it illegal to put private investors ahead of taxpayers in such circumstances?

I am still trying to get my mind around the motivations and actions surrounding George Kaiser, GKFF, and TCF. Solyndra is just the latest episode in a long-running drama that includes -- on the negative side of the ledger -- Great Plains Airlines (and the taxpayers' ultimate payback of money we didn't owe to Kaiser's Bank of Oklahoma), the downtown baseball stadium (and the heavy-handed approach to its surrounding development), the mediocre candidates Kaiser has backed for public office in Tulsa, the county river tax, and -- on the positive side -- RiverParks trails improvements, supplemental funds for beautification for new public construction, financial support for the comprehensive plan process and the city government efficiency study, purchase and preservation of the Blair Mansion and grounds, support for the Tulsa Fab Lab, and financial support for countless worthy projects and programs.

It's a complex picture. I don't buy the idea that Kaiser is all about building his own wealth. I don't buy his explanation of his success as "dumb luck," and I don't think he does either. Some describe Kaiser as very hands-off when it comes to spending his money, and that he lets himself be driven by what the community wants, but that doesn't entirely square with the facts either. (And who has the standing to define what the community wants for him?) Even if his motivation is purely altruistic, his vision of the good may be entirely at odds with that of his intended beneficiaries. Potentially, he could be a kind of cultural imperialist, with Oklahoma as his mission field.

Leverage and control are two recurring themes. It's a commonplace in Tulsa that money from GKFF comes not with strings attached, but with chains.

Because of his connection to Solyndra, who George Kaiser is and what he wants is a matter of curiosity for the rest of the world. Because of his economic power and his focus on Tulsa, who George Kaiser is and what he wants is a matter of critical concern for Tulsans.

Terry Simonson resigns

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At a 4 p.m. news conference, Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr announced that his Chief of Staff, Terry Simonson, has resigned, according to News on 6 reporter Emory Bryan, who was live-tweeting the announcement.

MORE: Bartlett Jr sent an email to city employees at 4:32 pm:

Employees,

I have just announced to the news media that Chief of Staff Terry Simonson has submitted his resignation from this administration. Mr. Simonson has been an integral part of this organization's success and I appreciate his service, ideas, energy, dedication and hard work, and especially his friendship. The funding of our present and future police and fire academies are a direct result of his work.

The work of the external committee reviewing the ethics question of undue influence in the admittance of Ryan Simonson to the Fire Academy has not been completed. I do expect to receive some determination from that committee by the end of the week.

Terry will work in a transition capacity for approximately two weeks to conclude his multiple projects and assignments. We have a very talented staff that will take on the management of pending projects.

Regards,

Mayor Dewey F. Bartlett Jr.

MORE: Steven Roemerman's encounter with firefighter applicants at City Hall a few weeks ago puts the matter in perspective:

Sitting next to the two men who had made it so far into the process on their own made an impact on me. I could see in their eyes how important this was to them, everything about their demeanor, and their speech screamed, "I want to be a Tulsa Firefighter so bad I can taste it!" If they get through to the end everyone will know that they beat out hundreds of candidates to get there. They will feel the pride of being the best of the best. To start that process by cheating is dishonorable.

For a wonderful contrast between this scandal the right way to do things we need to look no further than Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer who refused a shot at FDNY because it would have required a special exception and special treatment. Meyer understands that a man can not attain honor by acting dishonorably.

You may ask yourself, what is the big deal? Why is this important? I'd say ask the hundreds of candidates that follow the rules if it is a big deal. Ask the people also tried and failed to call in that day but didn't have a father that works for the Mayor to help if this is a big deal. This is a big deal because it is a another alleged violation of the ethics ordinance from this administration, another investigation, and another controversy.

Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr has appointed two committees to look into allegations that Chief of Staff Terry Simonson used his position to get his son a slot in the Tulsa Fire Department applicant pool and to use the department's practice facility without authorization.

The list of names -- three on each committee -- is interesting, and one in particular stands out to me.

From Fox 23:

Sources in Mayor Bartlett's office say Bartlett will assemble an internal and external committee to determine two things: was there any undo influence used? And, can criteria for selection for testing for firefighter academies be improved?

Monday, the Mayor's office announced that the external committee will include Jody Parker, a Tulsa businessman; Robert Gardner, former city councilor; and Stanley Glanz, Tulsa County Sheriff. The internal committee will include Erica Felix-Warwick, Human Resources Personnel Director; Vickie Beyer, Management Review Office Director; and Doug Woods, Training Officer for Tulsa Fire Department.

Vickie Beyer is the head of the office tasked with implementation of the KPMG report. Her name turns up frequently in a large collection of emails to and from Terry Simonson, obtained in response to an Open Records Act request. (I do not know who made the original request. The response to the request was forwarded to me by a third party some months ago.)

The impression from the tone of the emails is that Beyer and Simonson have a great deal of regard for one another, purely professional respect, no doubt, but it raises the question: Can Beyer investigate a matter involving Terry Simonson with sufficient objectivity?

Here's one exchange from November 2010 (pages 199-203 of the PDF linked below). I've ordered the emails sequentially and formatted them for the web, but they are otherwise unedited from the versions as released by the open records custodian:

From: Beyer, Vickie
Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2010 7:49 PM
To: Simonson, Terry
Subject: Relationship with TMUA

Jim Cameron really wants to talk to the Mayor about the hiring of the Chief Technology Officer. I understand interviews are Monday, but Jim's meeting with the Mayor is not untilt Wednesday. It would be if the Mayor doesn't announce his decision until after he has met Jim.

From: Simonson, Terry [tsimonson@cityoftulsa.org]
Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2010 8:35 PM
To: Beyer, Vickie
Subject: RE: Relationship with TMUA

We know about their issue. Heard it from Sevenoaks and Hudson It was a perfect intro for me to ask them they why they don't try competition for IT services and how could anyone say there is nothing in their operations that needs improvement? I don't think Jim is seeing the full picture where our project can be m of help to them. He thinks things are fine yet has issues with the city support services. I don't think a decision will be made that quickly but he needs to starting thinking that maybe our project can answer his concerns

Guess you work like me.

From: Beyer, Vickie
Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2010 8:41 PM
To: Simonson, Terry
Subject: Re: Relationship with TMUA

I think we'll get there. I just want to guard the relationships until we do.

Not as prolific as you are - but always thinking!

From: Simonson, Terry [tsimonson@cityoftulsa.org]
Sent: Saturday, November 06,20108:46 PM
To: Beyer, Vickie
Subject: RE: Relationship with TMUA

I too want to keep the relationships. I think you are my countweight: because after 20 years being a courtroom lawyer and advocate, I take my cause or my client the whole distance and to the mat when I believe in them. That can be a little overwhelming to some folks who aren't used to a relentless advocate but I don't like to lose But there is a place for the kinder gentler approach which I can show at times. Just remind me once in awhile.

From: Beyer, Vickie
Sent: Sunday, November 07, 2010 8:37 PM
To: Simonson, Terry
Subject: Re: Relationship with TMUA

It's part of my job as president of the fan club!

From: Simonson, Terry [tsimonson@cityoftulsa.org)
Sent: Sunday, November 07,2010 6:19 PM
To: Beyer, Vickie
Subject: RE: Relationship with TMUA

Thank you Ms. President.

Simonson also holds Beyer in high regard, and this email from December 27, 2010, suggests that he may have had some influence in her obtaining her current position as head of the Management Review Office (page 34 of the PDF of emails linked below):

From: Simonson, Terry [tsimonson@cityoftulsa.org]
Sent: Monday, December 27,2010 1:30 PM
To: Doerflinger, Preston; Michael Brink
Cc: Jeff Stava
Subject: RE: Visit Schedule

Michael

This for this update. Since I sent to you the organization chart of the MRO which was established this past fall, we have discussed some possible personnel changes. The Mayor, Preston, and I believe we need to have a manager in charge of the MRO. At this point Preston and I do the best we can on a limited basis but its clear more day to day oversight is needed. We seem to be in agreement that the person currently on staff best fit for this role is Vickie Beyer. You met her when you were here. Vickie, who is a CPA, has 13 years of management experience with the city and truly grasps what we are trying to do. She is extremely competent and dedicated. One of the other staffers, Cathy Criswell, may be returning to direct our Risk Management Department. Cathy, who is also a CPA, was the risk manager before we moved her to the MRO. Cathy and I have discussed this change. These changes we would plan in January. That would leave, in the MRO, Vickie, Kelly Brader who moved to the MRO from Preston's internal auditing department and is fitting into the MRO very well and like Vickie is extremely competent, and Lydia Bracken.

Look forward to seeing you soon.

Terry

MORE:

Download the emails: Terry Simonson emails, November 1, 2010, through January 5, 2011, 232 page PDF file (5 MB)

KOTV: Two Tulsa city officials on paid leave over favoritism allegations

KJRH: Mayor puts city leaders on paid administrative leave

An interesting detail in the KJRH story:

2NEWS put in an open records request for the emails between fire administrators regarding Ryan Simonson almost three weeks ago. We only just received them Monday [September 26, 2011].

Simonson and son

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So Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr has placed Chief of Staff Terry Simonson and Fire Chief Allen LaCroix on paid leave pending an investigation into emails suggesting that Simonson's intervention with LaCroix allowed his son to jump ahead of the line to apply for a position as a Tulsa firefighter and Simonson and son's alleged unauthorized use of the Fire Department's training center.

The emails from Simonson to LaCroix were from late June. It's my understanding that the situation was well known around City Hall by August. The incident at the training center happened on September 3. So why did we only see news reports about this after the city primary election?

News about the appearance of impropriety on the part of Bartlett Jr's right-hand man might have reminded voters about the misinformation from the Mayor's Office to the Council about the Federal JAG grant, where correct information could have prevented police layoffs. It might have reminded voters that councilors had good reason not to trust Bartlett Jr or his staff, good reason to resist Bartlett Jr from time to time. It might have undercut the ignorant and widespread "bickering" meme that did such political damage to incumbent councilors.

UPDATE Monday, 2011/09/26: KRMG's April Hill spoke to me about this blog entry, and KRMG's Nicole Burgin spoke to City Councilor Bill Christiansen about the controversy.

Councilor Bill Christiansen says he requested internal emails within the Tulsa fire department that leads him to believe that influence was used to get Simonson's son into the pool for firefighter testing after it was full.

"After seeing the emails and seeing the comments made by some of the people in the process that kind of objected to doing what they were being asked to do, yeah, there were some things asked for that shouldn't have been asked for," says Christiansen.

There's been some uproar on the web over a video clip from George Kaiser's speech to the Rotary Club of Tulsa on July 8, 2009. Here's the video and the text of the clip, as transcribed by Reason Hit and Run:

The last major initiative is the federal Stimulus package. Jim East and Bev Anderson are working with us full-time for a while to reflect the fact that there's never been more money shoved out of the government's door in world history and probably never will be again than in the last few months and the next 18 months. And our selfish parochial goal is to get as much of it for Tulsa and Oklahoma as we possibly can.

[Applause]

So we've helped a number of entities try to make effective grant requests for this funding. We've secured more than $40 million extra for Tulsa so far. We've made multiple trips to Washington to tell the story in education and health care and energy to the respective cabinet secretaries in each of those areas and almost all the key players in the west wing of the White House. So that will be a strong effort going forward.

We're trying to get Tulsa selected as a pilot project in various programs like Promise Neighborhoods, Race To the Top, innovation initiatives, challenge grants for early childhood education and so forth. And we have the almost unique advantage in that we can say, "Whatever you do we'll match with private funding and we'll watch over it, because we don't want to be embarrassed with the way our money is spent and so we won't make you be embarrassed with the way your money is spent either."

This is plenty disturbing, but it's not some sort of smoking gun for the Solyndra scandal. Kaiser is clearly referring to assisting local non-profits to apply for federal grants.

Wouldn't it have been wonderful to hear Kaiser say something like this: "I've spoken to my friend President Obama, and I've been successful in persuading him that a massive expansion of government pork barrel spending is the worst thing we can do for our economy. Instead, the President will be pushing for a free-market-oriented reform of our health care industry, relieving employers of their worries about impact of health care reform on the cost of hiring and keeping employees on the payroll." But that didn't happen.

The most disturbing aspect of this clip is that Tulsa's business leaders applauded and cheered at the idea of robbing future generations to fund Kaiser-favored projects.

John Sexton of Verum Serum writes:

Frankly I can think of no better condemnation of the corruption and utter futility of the Obama stimulus then the fact that here you have one of the wealthiest philanthropists in America, a man with nearly $10 billion in personal assets, openly stating his intention to grab as much stimulus money as he possibly could, like every other pig at the trough. Is this the proper role of government, to take hard-earned dollars from tax payers (and their children and grandchildren) to fund the vanity projects of multi-billionaires, well-intentioned or not, who just so happen to have the right political connections?

A special event coming up in just a couple of hours: There are only a few competitive council races remaining for November, but the ballot will also feature charter amendments affecting the basic form of government. TulsaNow has gathered the former mayors of Oklahoma's two largest cities to talk about the respective forms of government. Rodger Randle led the effort to move from the at-large commission form of government to the strong mayor / council-by-district form in 1989, during his term as mayor.

City Manager? Strong Mayor? You decide!

Tulsans will be asked on November 8th whether to vote YES and change the city to a "city manager" style of government or vote NO to keep the City operating the way it is. Unfortunately, this is not a clear issue and the current city hall problems make it even cloudier.

Tonight, everyone can find clarity at TulsaNow's free public forum on this very issue. Former Tulsa Mayor Rodger Randle will speak on our current "Strong Mayor" system and why it works, while Former OKC Mayor Kirk Humphreys will speak on OKC's "City Manager" style and why it works.

You may never get an opportunity like this again. See you tonight!

Where: TCC Metro Campus Philips Auditorum. (Entrance on 9th St)
When: 5:30pm
Cost: Free!

(I hope I'm wrong, but, given some of his political connections in Tulsa, I have a funny feeling that Humphreys will wind up saying that city manager/council may be OK for OKC, but Tulsa really needs at-large councilors and the mayor as council chairman (in other words, the Save Our Tulsa for Our Kind, Dahling, proposals).

I received an email Monday containing an anonymous ethics complaint that had been filed against Tulsa District 9 City Councilor G. T. Bynum. The text of that complaint, with links to relevant documentation added by me, can be found on the jump page for this article.

(For your reference, here is a direct link to the City of Tulsa ethics ordinance.)

The complaint involves conflicts of interest connected with Bynum's participation in Council votes involving sole-source, non-competitive awards of city revenue bond business to the Bank of Oklahoma, of which Bynum's grandfather, former Mayor Robert J. LaFortune, is a director and shareholder of holding company BOK Financial Corporation, and involving clients of his lobbying firm, including the George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF) and Family and Children's Services (FCS), a CDBG fund recipient.

Despite the nearness of the election, I believe that these allegations deserve to be reported to and considered by the voters. (I had hoped to publish this within a day of receiving it, but researching and adding links is a time-consuming process.)

The facts alleged regarding specific Bynum council votes, Bynum's work as a lobbyist, and his grandfather's membership of the BOK board are all well documented. Matters of "the appearance of impropriety" are open to interpretation, and there are some subtle issues with the timeline presented in the complaint. Bynum voted on issues relating to GKFF shortly before and shortly after his 11 months as a registered lobbyist for GKFF. Alleged Violation 8, however, involves Bynum voting on a matter pertaining to the Tulsa Stadium Trust, in which GKFF has an interest as a donor, in March 2010, while Bynum was a registered GKFF lobbyist.

Allegation 11, regarding lobbying client Family and Children's Services, is the only allegation that seems weak, as Bynum appears to have recused himself from voting on the Community Development Block Grant allocations in August 2010 and July 2011. (During that same August 12, 2010, council meeting, however, Bynum voted on an item involving a gift to the city from Tulsa Community Foundation; at the time he was a lobbyist for GKFF. According to the GKFF website, the board of TCF appoints the GKFF Board of Directors.)

But a city councilor acting as a federal lobbyist for entities with interests before the City Council presents a clear conflict of interest in which an action by Bynum in the best interest of his constituents might not be in line with the aims of his lobbying clients and vice versa.

One of the alleged violations states that Bynum's work as a lobbyist is per se "a violation of Section 600, 'such individuals shall not use their public positions for personal gain nor should they act in such a way to give an appearance of any impropriety.'" Certainly, Bynum's lobbying practice is based in large part on his experience as a Washington staffer for Oklahoma U. S. Senators Don Nickles and Tom Coburn. But it could be argued that his status as a sitting Tulsa official adds to his appeal to potential clients, so that in and of itself, serving as a lobbyist while a councilor violates the ethics ordinance.

One allegation involves a promissory note for $7,825,000.00 from the City to the GKFF relating to the OSU Medical Center (formerly Oklahoma Osteopathic Hospital and Tulsa Regional Medical Center). The vote occurred on December 3, 2009, about 43 days before Bynum registered as a federal lobbyist for GKFF on January 12, 2010. "Expanded access to and improved health care in Oklahoma through the Oklahoma State University Medical Center" is listed as a lobbying issue in each of the four quarterly reports Bynum filed regarding his work for GKFF. (2010 Q1, 2010 Q2, 2010 Q3, 2010 Q4. The Bynum/GKFF lobbying relationship was terminated on December 1, 2010, according to Bynum's 2010 Q4 filing.)

On the House lobby disclosure search form, selecting Lobbyist Name as search field and Bynum as criteria will bring up G. T. Bynum's current lobbying work (under the registrant names Capitol Ventures Government Relations LLC, Capitol Ventures Government Relations LLC(AKA GT Bynum Cons), and G.T. Bynum Consulting, LLC) and his wife Susan Bynum's past work for Capitol Hill Consulting Group, headed by former Oklahoma Democrat Congressman Bill Brewster

Four of the eleven allegations involve Bynum failing to recuse himself when the Council voted to waive competitive bidding for revenue bond indenture with Bank of Oklahoma, in amounts ranging from $22,500.000.00 to $155,860,000.00.

Local governments and public trusts that look out for the taxpayers' best interest put bond issues up for competitive bidding in order to get the best possible interest rate and lowest bond fees. Just as a prospective or refinancing homeowner shops around for the best combination of interest rate, points, and closing costs, a city ought to shop around for the best bond financing deal. Publications like The Bond Buyer allow local governments to advertise their bond issues nationwide for the best deal. As the Lending Tree slogan goes, "When banks compete, you win."

Giving the city's bond business to the same bank without competition is a disservice to the taxpayer, but it does improve the bank's bottom line to the financial benefit of shareholders like G. T. Bynum's grandpa.

G. T. Bynum should have known to recuse himself on these votes; grandfather falls within the ethics ordinance's definition of immediate family. More than that, someone with Bynum's degree of financial savvy should have proposed an ordinance requiring competitive bidding for bond issues over a certain amount. There are plenty of firms in and around Tulsa and Oklahoma capable of handling the work.

This was a topic I followed closely in 2003, when Tulsa County commissioners chose to give sole-source Vision 2025 revenue bond contracts (borrowing money against future sales tax receipts rather than spending the money as it comes in) to politically connected firms. From the BatesLine archives on non-competitive bond issues:

Roemerman_Yard_Sign.jpgWe begin the BatesLine roundup of the 2011 Tulsa City Council primary races with an easy choice. I'm proud to endorse my friend, Steven Roemerman, for District 7 councilor. This endorsement is for both the primary and general election. While the other men running seem to be good folks, Steven Roemerman is the only candidate on the ballot who brings to the table nearly a decade of passionate and principled conservative involvement in local issues.

Shortly after graduating college in 1998, Steven came to Tulsa, his new bride's hometown, and went to work as a computer programmer for Avis/Budget, still his employer 13 years later. Interested in government since college, he began paying close attention to local politics in his adopted hometown, working as a Republican precinct official and volunteering for campaigns.

I've known Steven for at least eight years, and what follows are my personal observations of his character, energy, intelligence, and devotion to public service.

As Steven became more involved in local politics, he started a blog in 2005, Roemerman on Record, commenting on local, state, and national news and items of interest in the world of technology. Often, Steven would provide first-hand coverage of local news events, with photos, videos, summaries and analysis of public meetings, events that mattered to many Tulsans, but which mainstream media seemed to consider too complicated or insignificant to cover.

It's a testament to Steven's intelligence, temperament, and character that, although he had campaigned for fellow Republican Jim Mautino's 2006 reelection, the man who beat Mautino, Democrat Dennis Troyer, appointed Steven to the city's sales tax overview committee (STOC) in 2007. Steven was reappointed to the committee by Republican District 7 Councilor John Eagleton. (Eagleton is not running for re-election.)

Steven Roemerman is a careful student of local issues, applying the same gifts of analysis and problem-solving that he uses every day in his job as a computer programmer. His time on the STOC has made him familiar with the city budget process, capital improvements, Open Meetings and Open Records acts -- the nuts and bolts of the way the City of Tulsa spends and is held accountable for our tax dollars. As an active observer of politics citywide, he's also encountered non-financial issues -- zoning and planning, charter amendments, and neighborhood inspections, to name a few -- and he's gotten to know public officials and neighborhood leaders from every district. Few first-time candidates are as well-prepared as Steven Roemerman to be a great councilor from his first day on the job.

You can see that breadth of understanding on the issues page of his website. A solid fiscal and social conservative, Roemerman believes Tulsans are Taxed Enough Already and will oppose proposals that would raise our combined sales tax rate above its current level. He opposes the use of eminent domain for private gain, and supports a zoning process that is transparent, clear, protecting property owners without over-regulating. Noting the council's role in approving mayoral appointments to authorities, boards, and commissions, Roemerman pledges to "ensure that Tulsans from all districts are represented on these authorities, boards and commissions and to provide independent judgment on all nominees to these important boards and commissions."

As an IT professional and thirty-something, Steven would help to diversify the council in age and life experience.

Steven has three children in Union Public Schools, where his wife Stacey serves as a homeroom mother. The Roemermans are residents of Hampton South neighborhood; Stacey serves on the homeowners' association's board. They are members of Carbondale Assembly of God, where Steven and Stacey volunteer with Kindergarten through 5th Grade boys in the church's Wednesday night program.

Steven Roemerman has been endorsed by the Tulsa Area Republican Assembly and by the FOP. The FOP's endorsement states:

Among Republicans running for District 7, Steven Roemerman has the independence, knowledge of public safety and city budget issues. He is the only candidate for District 7 with first-hand knowledge of City finances because of his service on the City's Sales Tax Oversight Committee. We believe this combination makes Steve the best Republican candidate for City Council, District 7.

I agree wholeheartedly. I'm proud to call him my friend, and I'm proud to endorse Steven Roemerman for Tulsa District 7 City Councilor.

MORE:

Urban Tulsa Weekly's feature story on the District 7 race

From 2002, my take on the qualities of a good City Councilor, and why the City Council matters

Tulsa_City_Council_District_7-2011.png

Roemerman has two opponents in the primary: Tom Mansur, a civil engineer with SAIC (formerly the Benham Group), and Elliott Parker Sr., a retired military officer and civil magistrate from Chesapeake, Va. I met them both for the first time at KRMG's Council-rama on Tuesday. Both seem like reasonable, intelligent people, but both only now appear to be paying attention to local issues.

Mansur has, sadly, fallen in with the wrong crowd; Karl Ahlgren is a consultant and Jim East, a staffer for former Democrat Mayor Susan Savage (and a former co-worker of Mansur's at Benham Group), is an adviser to his campaign; he's been endorsed by the council-suer and SOT member who are working with Ahlgren, and he's been endorsed and provided with $2,500 in funding by the Tulsa Metro Chamber. Mansur has an impressive resume in the field of water resources; he might make a good pick for the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority, but he doesn't offer the breadth of knowledge of city issues or the track record of principled involvement that Steven Roemerman brings to the table.

Parker was a career Navy medic who also served as a court-certified mediator in Virginia before moving to Oklahoma in 2006. What brought him to Oklahoma? As a young man (one of 10 children), a childless Oklahoma couple "adopted" him, bringing him to the state for holidays and taking him along on their travels. When he was ready to retire and leave Virginia, he remembered Oklahoma and its people fondly. Parker seems like a sincere and devoted citizen, intelligent and well-spoken with a depth of life experience, but he's a novice when it comes to City of Tulsa issues.

Good men both, but not nearly as ready as Steven Roemerman is to be a great city councilor.

UPDATE: Tom Mansur is not such good guy after all. His campaign has sent out a smear postcard claiming that Roemerman's been endorsed by the AFL-CIO. The only city employee organization to endorse Roemerman is the Fraternal Order of Police. According to the FOP, Mansur also sought their endorsement, but the FOP was concerned by Mansur's choice of campaign consultant, Karl Ahlgren.

UPDATE 2011/08/25, 1 p.m.: ONG spokesman Don Sherry has posted a comment to this entry, linking to a media kit about the Tulsa ONG franchise election. He points out that there are approximately 1,400 ONG/ONEOK employees working in the Tulsa area.

Tom Quinn, a civic activist and longtime critic of Oklahoma Natural Gas, filed criminal complaints on August 16, 2011, with the Tulsa Police Department and the FBI regarding the recent City of Tulsa special election granting ONG a franchise to use city rights-of-way for the next 15-years.

Quinn notes at the end of his press release that there are more ONEOK/ONG employees than the number of votes in the election. The implication is that it's possible to arrange a low-turnout election in which the majority of voters have a financial interest in the outcome. ONG reimbursed the City of Tulsa for the cost of having a special election solely for the purpose of considering the franchise renewal.

Here's Quinn's press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 16, 2011
CONTACT: Tom Quinn - 918-605-9456 - MafiaBusters@gmail.com
REGARDING: Election Fraud - August 9th Vote on ONG's Franchise Agreement

RACKETEERING AND ELECTION FRAUD

Tulsa businessman Tom Quinn has filed racketeering and election fraud charges against Oklahoma Natural Gas Company, parent company ONEOK, Mayor Dewey Bartlett and all nine Members of Tulsa's City Council. Quinn accuses ONG, ONEOK and the City of Tulsa of conspiring to defraud ratepayers by holding a special election on August 9th where only those who were likely to vote YES were informed about the process. Quinn says the vote on ONG's New Franchise Agreement was the most blatant example of racketeering and election fraud he has ever seen, and that all those responsible for this despicable act should be fined, fired, removed from office and sent to prison. ONG has an abysmal approval rating among consumers and no one in their right mind would have voted for this Franchise Agreement had they known about the election. The results of the August 9th Special Election should be thrown out and public hearings should be held so voters can make an informed decision regarding this important issue. ONEOK, the parent company of ONG, should also be investigated for bribery, price fixing, market-manipulation, off-shore banking violations, selling assets that were paid for by ratepayers and charging for gas storage and other items and services that were not used but ended up being charged to consumers. A copy of this news release has been sent to the FBI, the Tulsa Police Department, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the City of Tulsa and several media outlets.

Questions that deserve an answer:


  • Who wrote the new ONG Franchise Agreement?

  • Was Mayor Dewey Bartlett or any of his staff involved?

  • How many City Councilors were involved in the process?

  • Was the new Franchise Agreement ever discussed during an open meeting?

  • When did the City Council vote to approve this new agreement?

  • When did the City Council approve and schedule the August 9th Special Election?

  • Why did the City Council call for and approve a Special Election on August 9th when Tulsa's General Election had already been scheduled for September 13, 2011?

  • Who paid for this special election and was the cost passed on to taxpayers and or ratepayers?

  • How many registered voters live in the City of Tulsa?

  • How many votes were cast in the August 9th Special Election?

  • How many employees work for ONG and ONEOK?

  • How many ONG and ONEOK employees voted in this Special Election?

  • Were ONG and ONEOK Employees informed of this Special Election?

  • Were any news releases issued or press conferences held before the August 9th Vote?

  • Did ONG, ONEOK or the City of Tulsa post any information regarding the election on their website?

  • Were Tulsa voters deliberately kept in the dark about this important election?

  • Did the so-called mainstream media ignore news releases or play any role in this cover up?

Election Results:

Number of Precincts Reporting: 215
Number of Precincts Counted: 215
Total Number of Registered Voters: 212,266
Total Number of Votes Cast: 3,425
Total Number of ONG / ONEOK Employees: 4,077
Total Number of Votes For: 2,546
Total Number of Votes Against: 864
Under Votes: 15
Percentage of Registered Voters Who Voted: 1.61%
Number of ONEOK / ONG Employees as of September 2010: 4077
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ONEOK

TulsaBizPac, the political action committee formed by Tulsa Metro Chamber, a city contractor, to influence the selection of the public officials who will decide whether those contracts will continue, has announced an odd assortment of full endorsements, partial endorsements, and non-endorsements that nevertheless come with a tidy sum of cash.

Strangely, TulsaBizPac hasn't made these endorsements and all-but-endorsements available on a website accessible to the general public. Although the Chamber announced in a June 27, 2011, website story that TulsaBizPac was accepting contributions, they haven't used that venue as yet to declare their endorsements and contributions to the public. None of the local TV stations appear to have the story, nor do the news/talk radio stations. My own requests for information about TulsaBizPac endorsements have gone unanswered.

So the Chamber's PAC must not be very proud of their endorsements, as it appears they only released the info to one friendly news outlet.

Candidates that were willing to participate were quizzed by Chamber leaders about their views on the Tulsa Metro Chamber's 2011 Issues Platform. Given the number of controversial statements therein, anyone accepting the Chamber's endorsement or contribution (which is tantamount to an endorsement), has some explaining to do, to set out clearly where he or she agrees and disagrees with the Chamber's positions on the issues

And one such candidate has explained himself. Blake Ewing, one of the candidates for the District 4 Republican nomination, and one of two (along with Liz Hunt), who will receive a $1,000 contribution, has set out on his blog, in great detail, his interaction with the Chamber and with Karl Ahlgren, in their evidently separate election efforts, and point-by-point, how he responded to questions about the Chamber's Issues Platform. There's a lot to digest, but I appreciate his candor. He goes into great detail about Ahlgren's recruiting efforts and the apparently associated group trying to solicit contributions to a slate of candidates, and the Chamber interview process. (I was intrigued to read that Liz Hunt, prior to deciding to run for City Council, offered to help direct resources to Ewing's campaign.)

Ewing has decided to accept the Chamber's contribution but to donate it to charity, rather than use it for his campaign, and is asking blog readers to suggest, in the comments to his entry, which non-profit should receive the Chamber's money.

I was surprised this week to see that TulsaPeople had dropped its glossy mag look for newsprint.

Then I looked more closely and saw that it was in fact Urban Tulsa Weekly that put a paper-airplane-tossing Kathy Taylor on the cover and a lengthy love song to the former Tulsa mayor (by Oklahoma City resident and Oklahoma Observer editor Arnold Hamilton) on the pages within.

Taylor mistakenly credits herself with starting the effort to revise Tulsa's comprehensive plan. In fact, that was launched in 2005, while Mayor Bill LaFortune was still in office, and it was the outcome of an initiative by then-Councilors Chris Medlock and Joe Williams for a "future growth task force" and a council-initiated study to identify the best locations for large retail developments in the City of Tulsa. It was the 2004-2006 Council, notorious for the "Gang of Four," that included funding a comprehensive plan update in the 2006 third-penny sales tax package.

As an antidote to the sweet treacle in Hamilton's story and by way of reminder, take a minute to re-read this Irritated Tulsa gem: Kathy Taylor's Un-Greatest Moments

And if you want more detail on those un-greatest moments, here are some links to past columns and blog entries:

Kathy Taylor voted in Oklahoma (in person) and Florida (absentee) in the 2000 presidential election, according to official state voter records.

Kathy Taylor's Clintonesque non-denial denials when confronted with the voter records

Kathy Taylor and Bill Lobeck get bill for back taxes and penalties from the Broward County Assessor for claiming homestead exemption in two states.

Kathy Taylor's husband's lawsuit against the Broward County assessor, over claiming a homestead exemption in both Oklahoma and Florida

Kathy Taylor keeps Council in the dark on police chief appointment, signs Tulsa up to the anti-gun-rights and global warming cause.

Kathy Taylor surrenders on a $7 million lawsuit, putting the burden of BOK's bad loan to Great Plains Airlines on Tulsa taxpayers.

Kathy Taylor's misuse of the assessment district to fund the new Drillers downtown ballpark

The Control Freaks' Squeeze Play -- the city pulling the football away from a private developer who had plans for residential and retail near the new ballpark.

Kathy Taylor, the ballpark assessment district, Will Wilkins' Lofts at 120 development, and lawsuits against the city.

Kathy Taylor refuses to confront looming budget problems

Kathy Taylor denounces city councilors on CNN for being cautious about strings attached to federal funds

The defeat of Councilor Bill Martinson funded by Kathy Taylor's husband and his business associates

Kathy Taylor pushes for the purchase of One Technology Center as the new City Hall, which winds up being more expensive to operate than she had claimed.

I heard an interesting rumor on Saturday from two different sources about City Council endorsements by TulsaBizPac, the Tulsa Metro Chamber-affiliated political action committee, so I sent an email to Shiela Curley, Vice President of Communications for the Tulsa Metro Chamber. Here's the text of the email:

Dear Ms. Curley,

I'm hearing reports that TulsaBizPac has made its endorsements. I'm writing to ask if you can confirm or deny each of the following assertions:

1. TulsaBizPac has endorsed three candidates
2. TulsaBizPac will give each endorsed candidate's campaign $2,500.
3. Endorsed candidates have been instructed not to disclose the endorsement until after the primary.
4. TulsaBizPac has endorsed Jack Henderson in District 1.
5. TulsaBizPac has endorsed Chris Trail in District 5.
6. TulsaBizPac has endorsed G. T. Bynum in District 9.
7. TulsaBizPac has made no endorsements in the other races

Thanks for your time,

Michael Bates

I'll let you know what she says.

There's one further piece to the rumor: That no endorsements have been made in some of the other races because they're "too close to call" based on polling data.

This is fascinating, if true. After all the talk about the "bickering" City Council, the only three rumored endorsees are sitting councilors.

I'm surprised not to see ANY of Karl Ahlgren's candidates -- Nancy Rothman, Liz Hunt, Karen Gilbert, or Phil Lakin -- on the rumored list.

And why would an organization want to keep its endorsements secret? In such a situation, it would suggest that the organization is aware of its lack of respect in the community, that the organization is not seen as a trusted civic voice, but just another special interest group, just another city vendor with its hand out for city dollars.

If you thought your endorsement would be well regarded, you'd jump right into a too-close-to-call race, in hopes that the endorsement would push your candidate over the finish line. But if you thought your endorsement would cause more harm than good, you'd quietly slip them the money just after the deadline for pre-primary reporting, and you'd pick candidates who were likely to win any way, in hopes of earning their gratitude and loyalty with your contribution.

Finally, wouldn't you want to give the maximum contribution of $5,000? And if you didn't, does that indicate that you just weren't able to raise the money you expected to raise?

I look forward to hearing a response from Ms. Curley, and I'll pass it along when I do.

Oklahoma Natural Gas is granted a franchise by the City of Tulsa to run its lines through the city's easements and rights-of-way. That franchise was last renewed in 1986 for a 25-year-term. The franchise renewal is on the ballot for a special election today, August 9, 2011. The proposed renewal period is for 15 years.

Today is also the first Tulsa County election under the new voter ID requirement approved by Oklahoma voters last November, so bring your drivers' license.

Here is the ballot text:

SHALL ORDINANCE NO. 22415, ADOPTED BY THE CITY COUNCIL AND APPROVED BY THE MAYOR OF THE CITY OF TULSA, OKLAHOMA, BE APPROVED BY THE PEOPLE, WHICH ORDINANCE GRANTS TO OKLAHOMA NATURAL GAS COMPANY (ONG), A DIVISION OF ONEOK, INC., A CORPORATION, ITS SUCCESSORS AND ASSIGNS, FOR A PERIOD OF FIFTEEN (15) YEARS, A NON-EXCLUSIVE FRANCHISE AND A RIGHT TO USE THE PUBLIC RIGHTS-OF-WAY FOR THE PURPOSE OF TRANSPORTING, DISTRIBUTING AND SELLING NATURAL GAS TO CONSUMERS AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC WITHIN THE CITY; DEFINES TERMS; REGULATES THE ASSIGNMENT, SALE OR LEASE OF THE FRANCHISE; GOVERNS THE USE AND REPAIR OF CITY RIGHTS-OF-WAY; ASSIGNS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE FRANCHISE; REQUIRES ONG TO OBTAIN RIGHTS-OF-WAY CONSTRUCTION PERMITS AND SETS FORTH THE REQUIREMENTS FOR SUCH PERMITS; ESTABLISHES AN APPEALS PROCESS; REGULATES ONG'S SERVICE; ESTABLISHES ENGINEERING STANDARDS; IMPOSES CERTAIN DUTIES TO REMOVE OR ALTER FACILITIES; REQUIRES INDEMNIFICATION OF THE CITY; ALLOWS ONG TO MAKE AND ENFORCE REASONABLE RULES AND REGULATIONS FOR THE CONDUCT OF ITS BUSINESS; REQUIRES ONG TO MAINTAIN RECORDS AND PERMITS THE CITY TO INSPECT THEM; REQUIRES ONG TO PAY A FRANCHISE FEE AND SETS OUT THE METHOD OF CALCULATING THAT FRANCHISE FEE; AUTHORIZES THE RIGHT TO RENEGOTIATE THE TERMS OF THE FRANCHISE IN CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES; PROVIDES THAT THE QUESTION OF APPROVAL OF THIS FRANCHISE SHALL BE SUBMITTED TO A VOTE OF THE PEOPLE AT A SPECIAL ELECTION; ALLOWS SEVERABILITY OF INVALID SECTIONS; PROVIDES FOR ONG'S ACCEPTANCE OF THE TERMS OF THIS FRANCHISE; REPEALS THE ORDINANCE GRANTING ONG ITS CURRENT FRANCHISE IN 1986; AND DECLARES AN EMERGENCY?

There is no mention of today's election on the home page of either cityoftulsa.org or tulsacouncil.org. The city elections page at cityoftulsa.org refers only to September's municipal primary and November's general. The proposed ordinance (No. 22415) doesn't show up in the list of ordinances passed since the ordinances were last codified, but that list does include ordinances higher in sequence number, as recent as June 23, 2011. No info about the election can be found on oklahomanaturalgas.com.

The TulsaCouncil.org website still lacks a keyword or free-text search option for its database of agendas. By searching one regular meeting agenda at a time, I was able to find the ordinance calling today's election, but not ordinance 22415, the legislation that the voters will approve or reject today.

I would like to tell you in detail about the pros and cons of this proposition, or even how the proposed franchise agreement differs from the current agreement, but I can't find those details where they should be, on a city government website. It's as if they want us to vote without knowing what we're voting on. Therefore I'm voting NO.

MORE:

Tom Quinn's ONGsucks.com, once advertised on a billboard on US 75 north of downtown, has been offline for a while, but here's the Wayback Machine's capture of Quinn's 2002 appeal to terminate ONG's franchise.

Tom Quinn's February 4, 2010, jeremiad against ONG

A PERSONAL NOTE:

In the early part of 2010, a SNAFU involving ONG's transition to a new online bill pay system nearly got our gas cut off. Although I had had automatic bill pay in place via choicepay.com for several years, suddenly nothing was getting paid. ONG would run a computer tape once a month of what everyone owed, and send it to choicepay. Apparently the tape was being run after my previous bill was paid but before ONG charged the next month's bill to my account. At that moment in time, I had a zero balance, so the automated payment plan took $0 out of my account, which meant my bill wasn't getting paid.

I assumed choicepay's system was broken, and when I went to ONG's website, I found that ONG had a new auto bill pay system, hosted on their own website, so I signed up for it, again assuming choicepay had been discontinued. The next month, I was double-billed -- choicepay's system started working again, and ONG's auto pay kicked in. Highest gas bill of the year, and they hit my checking account twice. It took another two months to straighten everything out between choicepay and ONG.

I'd like to tell you that ONG was helpful and efficient in solving the problem, but in fact they were clueless and slow. I went through six months of lengthy phone calls to both companies and several erroneous cutoff notices, all because I assumed automatic bill pay would automatically pay my bill.

UPDATE, 11 p.m.:

The ONG franchise renewal was approved by a three-to-one margin: 2,546 for and 864 against. 3,410 votes cast.

I finally found the ONG franchise ordinance itself attached as "backup documentation" to an item further down the May 19, 2011, agenda on the council website. But I was only able to find it once a reader sent me a copy he got from the City Clerk, with the date of approval on it -- there's no text or keyword search available, as there once was.

According to this budget document, opening all the polls in the City of Tulsa today cost $220,000, with the cost paid for by ONG (ultimately, no doubt, passed along to the ratepayers). Couldn't they have waited until the November general election?

After the jump, snapshots of city websites showing the absence of information about today's franchise election. (Clicking on thumbnails opens a pop-up with the full-sized image.)

Perhaps public notice laws should be changed to make this failure to post election information online cause for invalidating the election.

We're beginning to see components of Tulsa's establishment coalesce around certain candidates for City Council, the candidates they believe will best represent the establishment's interests at City Hall.

Burt Holmes and Ben Latham have selected a partial slate of candidates, according to an email from Latham soliciting contributions for their slate.

Holmes was a director of Great Plains Airlines, a Tulsa-based airline that failed at great cost to taxpayers in Tulsa (property taxpayers had to pay a $7 million debt that we didn't owe, a loan that Great Plains had defaulted on, despite earlier assurances that taxpayers would not be on the hook) and Oklahoma (transferable tax credits were used to fund the airline; the money for the credits came from the state coffers).

Holmes, a maximum donor to Barack Obama's primary and general election campaigns, was also a plaintiff, along with Nancy Rothman, in a lawsuit against all members of the current City Council for alleged violations of the Open Meeting Act, a lawsuit that was later dismissed, but not until each councilor had to hire his or her own attorney to defend the suit.

Ben Latham is head of GBR Properties and is listed as a committee member of Save Our Tulsa, the group that wants to return our city to the "good ol' days" when a small number of the well-heeled and well-connected made decisions for Tulsa without the bothersome and distracting input of the nearly 400,000 other citizens.

Given the backgrounds of the men who picked these six candidates -- David Patrick, Liz Hunt, Ken Brune, Karen Gilbert, Tom Mansur, and Phil Lakin -- it seems reasonable to suppose that these candidates may support massive taxpayer subsidies for crazy business schemes, suing city councilors, and SOT's anti-democracy "reforms" that would dilute geographical and minority representation and put Tulsa at risk for a Voting Rights Act lawsuit. If that's not the case, each candidate should speak up and publicly repudiate the Holmes/Latham endorsement.

Holmes and Latham's list of approved candidates is not too surprising. It includes three of the four publicly acknowledged clients of Karl Ahlgren (Hunt, Gilbert, and Lakin). It is somewhat surprising that Nancy Rothman, Holmes's fellow plaintiff and another Ahlgren client, is not on the list -- at least not yet. David Patrick is a long-time rubber stamp for the Cockroach Caucus. Ken Brune was attorney for Coalition for Responsible Government 2004, the group behind the unsuccessful attempt to recall Councilors Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock.

There's a disparaging mention of the "Gang of Five." Given Holmes's involvement in Great Plains Airlines, that's not surprising. Reformers on the City Council led the effort to investigate the Great Plains scheme and identify those responsible, and they resisted Bill LaFortune's 2005 effort to make the city's taxpayers cover the bad debt.

Latham says the "current city council is basically unchanged from the 'Gang of Five' that eisted when Bill LaFortune was mayor." But the Council has had quite a bit of turnover since 2006 when Bill LaFortune was voted out of office. Only three members (Henderson, Turner, Mautino) of the "Gang of Five" are still on the council, and two of them (Turner, Mautino) lost an election before successfully regaining their seats. Bill Christiansen, who was usually in opposition to the "gang's" initiatives, is the only other councilor still in office who was in office prior to the 2006 election, and he's not running for re-election. So Latham's diagnosis of the causes of City Hall disharmony and his proposed solution are ill-founded.

With all nine councilors -- representing a diverse range of personality types -- at odds with the current mayor, the heart of the problem is obvious, but it seems to have escaped Messrs. Holmes and Latham.

Here is Latham's email.

As you may know, I have been an advocate of electing an entirely new City Council with citizens who want to make a positive difference. The current city council is basically unchanged from the "Gang of Five" that existed when Bill LaFortune was mayor. They have demonstrated they cannot get along with any mayor, male or female, Democrat or Republican. It is time for them to all be voted out.

So far, Burt Holmes and I have met with most of the announced candidates. It doesn't matter what political party, gender, ethnic group, etc. that a person belongs to as long as he/she makes good decisions for our city as a whole. After interviewing the candidates we have selected the best person in each district and have 6 to recommend that we all back. Thus far, all six of these are running their campaigns in a manner we like. They all need financing, so your help is important in making a positive change to our city.

Our six so far are:

District 1: We will have no recommendation.

District 2: We are still evaluating the candidates and will have a recommendation shortly. Incumbent Rick Westcott is not running.

District 3: David Patrick (D); running against incumbent Roscoe Turner.

District 4: Liz Hunt (R) and Ken Brune (D); incumbent is Maria Barnes. Liz will be running against Blake Ewing and Ken against Maria Barnes in the primary.

District 5: Karen Gilbert (R); running against incumbent Chris Trail.

District 6: Incumbent is Jim Mautino. Anybody would be better, but we have no recommendation yet. It will be forthcoming.

District 7: Tom Mansur (R); incumbent John Eagleton is not running.

District 8: Phil Lakin (R); incumbent Bill Christiansen is not running.

District 9: We do not have a recommendation in this race, yet.

The main thrust of this effort is to find community leaders who want to get more engaged; the idea being we will all support a slate of candidates with contributions to ALL the supported candidates. We must go outside of our own districts this time, if we want to make a difference. We recommend you support the candidates directly, and not go through a PAC. This is financially more efficient, and you will be certain who you are supporting and get credit for your contribution.

At this time, I would like everyone to consider making the same contribution to all six of these candidates. Please consider $200 or more to each of these six. I am sure the candidates will appreciate whatever contribution you make. Also attached is a generic contribution form (required) that you can use to send in your contributions. I will keep you informed on the needs of the candidates.

[List of candidate addresses deleted.]

I also request you forward this email to your own mailing list. Let's make a difference! Thank you in advance for your participation.

UPDATE: An August 16 email from Latham adds a candidate to the list of endorsements:

All,

Goods gets good. Nothing gets nothing.

If you are unhappy with the city council and want a change, you must help now. We have recruited, interviewed, and vetted excellent candidates, listed below. The candidates need your contribution NOW for the September 13 primaries. By September 1 it will be too late for them to acquire signs and other campaign materials. NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT.

We all care about Tulsa. This election may be our last chance to change the council to progressive collaborators who can move us forward, faster. The primaries on September 13 will decide the general election because there will be no serious opposition in the November general election except for districts 4 and 5. To be successful, we must support the candidates now, so they can win their primaries. As business people, we all have a vested interest in this.

Hunt, Gilbert, Steele and Mansur are the most in need of money. They, and the others, are running good campaigns, including knocking on doors in 100 degree heat.

We know you care about Tulsa, so send your contributions this week so the seven endorsed candidates can make a strong finish to the September 13 election. Ideally, we all send the same contribution to each of the seven. It's up to you to decide how much and to whom. Please consider $200 or more to each of them. I know all of them will appreciate whatever contribution you make.

Our seven endorsements:

District 1: We will have no recommendation.

District 2: We will not have an endorsement in the primary.

District 3: David Patrick (D); running against incumbent Roscoe Turner.

District 4 Ken Brune (D) and Liz Hunt (R); incumbent is Maria Barnes. Liz will be running against Blake Ewing and Ken against Maria Barnes in the primary.

District 5: Karen Gilbert (R); running against incumbent Chris Trail.

District 6: Byron Steele (R); running against incumbent is Jim Mautino.

District 7: Tom Mansur (R); incumbent John Eagleton is not running.

District 8: Phil Lakin (R); incumbent Bill Christiansen is not running.

District 9: We will not oppose the incumbent in this race.

Below is a generic contribution form that you can use to send in your contributions. Addresses to send your contributions to:

[List of addresses redacted.]

We also request you forward this email to your own mailing list. Let's make a difference! Thank you in advance for your immediate participation.

Good Gets Good!

This email had been forwarded with support from Daryl Woodard, Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr's appointee to the city's redistricting commission. It's beginning to look like the redistricting commission's radical redrawing of the lines (the adopted plan shifted over 20% of the city's precincts into new districts) is working hand in glove with the Latham/Holmes/Ahlgren effort to replace the council with Bartlett Jr rubber-stamps.

Note too that their effort to find candidates in District 2 and District 9 failed. Ahlgren approached District 9 candidate Robert Pinney, offering support for his campaign, and sought to have him meet with Latham, but Pinney, an independent-minded neighborhood leader and well aware of Ahlgren's reputation and connections, rejected his overtures. This seems to explain the change from "We do not have a recommendation in this race, yet," to "We will not oppose the incumbent in this race." Was this group aiming to knock off a potential rival to Bartlett Jr's 2013 re-election bid? (District 2's rubric changed from "We are still evaluating the candidates and will have a recommendation shortly," to "We will not have an endorsement in the primary.")

In 2009, incumbent Councilor Bill Martinson was defeated by Chris Trail, a well-funded challenger, a newcomer to politics and to the city limits, funded and supported by forces that didn't like an intelligent skeptic on the Tulsa City Council scrutinizing their schemes.

I recently came across Martinson's response to the Tulsa Metro Chamber's 2009 candidate questionnaire. As a response to each question, Martinson referred forward to the following reply. Given the Chamber's involvement in this year's election -- hiring a PR consultant to recruit candidates, hiring a political consultant to "advise" them on redistricting, founding a political action committee -- Martinson's words are worth revisiting. (The only edit was to turn a URL in the text into an actual hyperlink.)

An e-mail for a July 20 fund raiser for Chris Trail was forwarded to me from several sources. The invitation and message from Susan Harris, a member of the Chamber staff, clearly validate the rumors that the Chamber supports my opponent, Chris Trail, as a candidate for the City Council. The hostess for the fund raiser has ties to Kathy Taylor and her husband, Bill Lobeck. Mr. Lobeck's attendance at the event substantiates Mr. Trail's claim that he was recruited and is being supported by the Mayor. The Chamber and Mayor Taylor have previously worked with AH Strategies (Karl Ahlgren and Fount Holland) and Mr. Trail credits her with arranging AH Strategies as his campaign advisor. As much as I appreciate receiving your candidate questionnaire, I see no need to provide detailed responses since you and your team have already decided where to direct your support.

I am a CPA with over thirty years of varied business experience and have successfully managed the same manufacturing company since 1996. In addition, I have represented the citizens of District 5 since 2005. My wife and I have owned and occupied our current home since 1981 and our kids, now grown, all attended Tulsa Public Schools. While those qualifications and credentials may fail to meet the Chamber's standards, I ran unopposed last time and my only challenger this year is your handpicked candidate who recently moved into Tulsa and rented a house in my district in order to run for the City Council. This scheme, clearly designed to influence representation on the Council, demonstrates an appalling level of contempt for the value and intelligence of the voters in District 5. Perhaps they will appreciate it is they, not you, that I hope to serve and represent.

Chamber leadership typically advocates and practices blind obedience, and this situation is no exception. You, and the Chamber you represent, are free to follow and support whomever you choose, however, your membership and visitors to your web site may learn some of Mr. Trail's history from an article, "Legal Woes Haunt Candidate", published in the Tulsa World on July 21, 2009. Mr. Trail's documented legal and integrity issues aside, I fail to see how his limited qualifications and recent relocation to the City comply with the statement in your July 20 letter that "The Tulsa Metro Chamber understands the importance of a strong, responsible city government...."; especially since the City of Tulsa is facing perhaps the most difficult financial time in its history. Your attempts to establish a shadow government may ultimately succeed, although I hope the voters prevail, for I remain enough of an idealist
to believe it is still their City.

Trail won but, having served the ends of Taylor and the Chamber to eliminate Martinson, has been cast aside in favor of Karen Gilbert, who is Ahlgren's client in the race this year. I feel sorry for Chris Trail, who seems like a nice person who didn't fully appreciate how he was being used as a tool of revenge. I feel worse for Tulsa, having to make do without Martinson's analytical and financial strengths on the Council.

tgg_9655_110x165.jpgOn July 17, 2011, the Tulsa World ran a story on the 2003 appeals court ruling that levied attorney's fees on Tulsa City Council District 2 candidate Nancy Rothman because of her contemptible attempts to alienate her sons from their father and to smear her ex-husband's reputation.

(The story ran four days after the BatesLine story on the district and appeals court determinations that Nancy Rothman had plotted to have child pornography planted on her ex-husband in order to eliminate his visitation rights entirely.)

The World story reported Rothman's comments about her financial problems:

She also told the World that the handful of financial issues that she has had - including her 2006 bankruptcy, the 2005 foreclosure on her home and a 2001 tax lien that was later released - were related to her divorce.

BatesLine research into District Court records, Bankruptcy Court filings, and County Clerk records involving the home Nancy Rothman lost in foreclosure reveal large amounts of credit card debt and an ever-increasing amount borrowed against the growing value of the home she won in the divorce.

In an October 26, 2001, hearing to determine whether Nancy Rothman would be required to pay attorney fees to her ex-husband, John Rothman, for the contempt and custody trial involving her involvement in a plot to plant child pornography on her husband, John Rothman's attorney Russell Carson quantified the divorce award to Nancy Rothman:

Now, Your Honor, the September 10th, 1999 decree awarded Mrs. Rothman approximately $1.2 million in both real and physical assets. The Vanguard account was in excess of 400,000. The home, according to Mrs. Rothman's own appraisal, was 650,000. The furnishings approximately 60,000. She's got an alimony judgment of $227,000. That's $1,387,000. She has the means and the ability to pay a judgment for attorney fees in a case where every dime of attorney fees incurred on behalf of my client were incurred because of her conduct and no other.

In her June 13, 2006, bankruptcy filing, downloaded today from the uscourts.gov website, Nancy Rothman listed assets of $918,375 (including the home she won in the divorce, valued at $900,000) and liabilities of $1,030,932.35 including

  • $850,000.00 first mortgage,
  • $40,000.00 second mortgage,
  • $35,904.46 in judicial liens,
  • $80,967.66 owed on seven credit cards,
  • $10,080.00 owed in child support,
  • $10,083.14 owed to the IRS from 2000.

In a mere seven years, including nearly five years living on her own without custody of her children, these records suggest that Nancy Rothman went from at least $1,259,850 in the black to $112,557.35 in the red, a drop of over $1.3 million. (In that $1,259,850 figure, the $127,150 mortgage filed in August 1998 has been deducted from the appraised value quoted by Carson above.)

Online county clerk records point to repeated refinancing of the home for ever-larger mortgages.

The 5,423 sq. ft. home on the northwest corner of 27th St. and Zunis Ave. was purchased by John and Nancy Rothman on November 17, 1995, for $530,000 and mortgaged for 80% of its value. The mortgage release was filed on February 25, 1998, apparently leaving the house free and clear at that point.

On March 20, 1998, the deed was transferred to a trust, listed as Nancy Troub Rothman, Trustee, and John D Rothman, Trustee. On August 21, 1998, the house was mortgaged to Harry Mtg Co for $127,150. John Rothman filed for divorce on October 19, 1998.

The divorce was final and a quit claim deed filed on September 10, 1999, leaving Nancy Rothman's trust as the sole owner. At this point, county clerk records appear to indicate that the 1998 $127,150 mortgage was the only secured debt against the property.

In the subsequent five years, another eight mortgages were filed against the property:

  • December 12, 2000: Wells Fargo Fin Okla Inc, $53.827.47
  • September 27, 2001: Popular Fin Services LLC, $350,000.00, followed on October 8, 2001, by a release of the Wells Fargo mortgage.
  • March 19, 2002: Federal Bankcentre, $250,475.09, followed by the June 13, 2002: Release of the 1998 mortgage.
  • March 31, 2003: Indymac Bk, $637,500.00, followed on April 21 and 28 by releases of the 2001 and 2002 mortgages.
  • October 29, 2003: Long Beach Mtg Co., $712,000.00.
  • November 13, 2003: Cit Groupp Consumer Finance Inc, $46,500.00, followed on November 24, 2003 by release of the 2003 Indymac mortgage.
  • June 29, 2004: MERS Inc, two mortgages totaling $841,500.00, followed on September 1 and 27, 2004 by releases of the two fall 2003 mortgages.

Taking into consideration the delay involved in releasing a mortgage following a refinance, the total mortgaged amount appears in County Clerk records to have jumped in six distinct leaps, the largest being nearly $400,000:

  • September 10, 1999: $127,150.00
  • December 12, 2000: $180,977.47
  • October 8, 2001: $477,150.00
  • June 13, 2002: $600,475.09
  • April 28, 2003: $637,500.00
  • November 24, 2003: $758,500.00
  • September 27, 2004: $841,500.00

The divorce decree ordered John Rothman to pay Nancy Rothman alimony of $6,500 per month for 35 months, for a total of $227,500, child support of $2,250 per month until the children reached the age of 18 and graduated from high school, private school tuition and books for the two children of up to $15,000 per year, and all medical and dental insurance and expenses for the children.

Two obligations were imposed by the court on Nancy Rothman following the 2001 decision that found her guilty of contempt of court and gave her ex-husband custody of the children: $140 per month child support and $70,376 in attorney's fees and costs. At the time that the court awarded attorney's fees (December 7, 2001), the court found that Nancy Rothman had a gross monthly income of $8,500.

I watched the entirety of the agenda item on Tulsa City Councilor Jim Mautino's proposed revision to the animal control ordinance, from the Tuesday, July 19, 2011, Public Works Committee meeting. I'm guessing that's more than the editorial board of the daily paper or their caricaturist bothered to do before portraying Mautino as a baby throwing a "hissy fit."

Here's the video of the committee meeting on the TGOVonline website. It's also embedded below, (after the jump if you're reading this on the home page).

The entire discussion lasted 50 minutes. Of that 50 minutes, there's about 30 seconds where Mautino raises his voice, and that came after mayoral aide Dwain Midget raised his voice, three times interrupting Mautino when Mautino had the floor. Twice Councilor Roscoe Turner gavelled down Midget's interruptions, the second time saying, "Mr Midget, I'm asking you one more time; I don't intend to ask again." After Midget's third interruption, Turner told someone in the room to "call Security."

The discussion went on peacefully and productively for another 30 minutes, at which point a meeting of all concerned parties was set for Friday. That aspect of the meeting didn't get much attention.

You'd think that Midget, whose outbursts interrupted the councilor who had the floor, ought to have been the subject of the editorial and cartoon, but it seems our entrenched city bureaucrats can do no wrong in the eyes of the daily paper, particularly when they can turn the story to further the inaccurate "bickering council" meme.

Since his return to the City Council in 2009, Mautino has been pursuing a revision to Tulsa's animal control ordinance, so that outrageously abusive situations can be effectively dealt with by city animal control officials and the city prosecutor. Mautino has met repeatedly with city officials involved in monitoring, licensing, and prosecuting cases of animal abuse.

After a year and a half of talk, Mautino is pushing forward with a revised ordinance that distinguishes between licenses for hobbyists and for rescuers and which requires someone seeking a license to engage the support of neighbors. The intent is to make the ordinance somewhat self-enforcing, important because of the city animal welfare department's inability (or perhaps unwillingness) to enforce the current ordinance.

In Tulsa, you can have up to three dogs and up to five total cats and dogs without any special exemption. To have more, you must have a hobbyist exemption from the city. You must also have a hobbyist exemption if you don't wish to spay or neuter your pets -- for example, if you show your dogs and are required to keep them intact for that purpose.

What I've heard is that the terms of the exemption are practically unenforceable, particularly in this time of budget shortfalls.

In addition, it's my understanding that animal control calls must now go through 911, rather than to a separate animal control dispatch number, and because of that, Tulsa police must respond first to any animal control issues, even though the police department is not equipped to deal with animal control incidents. The result is an added burden on an already overloaded 911 system and police department.

Jim Mautino's eastside District 6 is more vulnerable to animal control issues than many parts of town. Large undeveloped areas provide habitat for feral dogs and cats and are tempting spots for irresponsible owners to dump unwanted pets. The east side is home to many newcomers to Tulsa, who come from places, like rural Oklahoma or foreign lands, where animal control laws are non-existent or unenforced.

But rather than help find a solution to meet the concerns of Mautino's constituents, the city bureaucrats responsible for animal control are working to undermine his efforts. Mautino read from emails, obtained via an Open Records Act request, from Jean Letcher, manager of the city's animal welfare department, rallying citizens against Mautino's efforts.

Instead of berating Mautino, Mayor Bartlett Jr should have been calling some of his own employees on the carpet for their uncooperative attitude.

What I saw in that Tuesday meeting fit a pattern that I've seen often during 20 years of involvement in local politics. A city bureaucrat looks at the certificates on the wall and his years of service and assumes he is the authority not merely about how things are done but the authority on what ought to be done.

So a new city councilor or a new member of an authority, board, or commission comes into office with a concern that isn't being effectively addressed by city government. The first answer from the bureaucracy is rarely, "Gee, why didn't we think of that?" It's almost always, "Nothing can be done," or, "We've never done it that way." And that answer is supposed to be the end of it.

If the councilor (or commissioner) persists, the bureaucracy attempts to re-educate the councilor, in the most condescending manner possible, to understand that his ideas are impossible to implement. Rather than saying, "Let's see how we can meet your concerns," the bureaucracy delivers the message, "Your concerns are ignorant and illegitimate."

What happens next depends on how the councilor deals with the initial rebuff. Some simply back off and tackle another issue. Some, like Tom Tuttle from Tacoma, become fully assimilated to the point where they'll defend the status quo and attack any other councilor who challenges it.

Then you have the councilors who do their own research, who dig into ordinances and budgets and case law and what other cities are doing, and they persist in asking "why not?" and presenting alternatives. From a bureaucrat's point of view, such a councilor is a pain in the posterior, a threat to their comfortable, stable existence, and must be taken down. If you can use your lack of cooperation to provoke the councilor, passive-aggressively, to the point of expressing his irritation, you win.

Since this sort of inquisitive, pro-active councilor also poses a threat to other entrenched interests, the aggrieved bureaucrat can usually find a helping hand from the various organs of the Cockroach Caucus, who miss the days when all one had to do was pull on their strings to get the councilors to do their bidding. The obligatory unflattering photo, misleading headline, twisted caricature, and tut-tutting editorial follow in due course.

It's a misunderstanding of the nature of bureaucracy to think that bureaucrats will be supportive and encouraging of a councilor's ideas for new ways to solve a problem, if only the councilor will be polite and patient. (People seeking public office really should read Jim Boren's books first.) It's not that bureaucrats are bad people, but it's a profession that tends to attract the risk-averse. You don't climb in a bureaucracy by taking risks. The exceptions to the rule are there, and they're real treasures because they're rare. Too often, bureaucrats will try to wait the councilor out -- keep holding meetings, keep delaying a final plan, until the councilor gets interested in another project or gets voted out of office.

It's a pretty good indication that a city councilor is doing what he ought to be doing if he's getting shot at by the bureaucracy and the daily paper. Jim Mautino is a good councilor, and if District 6 voters want an advocate for their interests who won't be deterred by bureaucratic foot-dragging, they'll return Jim Mautino to office this fall.

We're off to a rough start.

Of the 16 candidates that filed on Monday, six filed improperly by not specifying their names as they appear in the voter registration record. The deviations are all minor -- using an initial or nothingat all instead of the middle name, using a nickname, dropping the generational suffix -- and none of the filing names will be difficult to match to the voter registration records. Article VI, Section 3.1 of the Tulsa City Charter states:

Any person who desires to be nominated by a political party as its candidate for a city office shall file with the Election Board of Tulsa County or its successor a Declaration of Candidacy which shall contain:

A. The name and residence street address of the person as it appears on the voter registration records;

And again in Section 3.2:

Any person who desires to be an independent candidate for a city office shall file with the Election Board of Tulsa County or its successor a Declaration of Candidacy which shall state:

A. The name and residence street address of the person as it appears on the voter registration records; and

Or as I paraphrased yesterday:

A candidate for city office must file using his name as it appears in his voter registration, no matter how silly his middle name may be.

If your middle name is especially silly, you can run under your initials if you had first changed your registration to use your initials. I have to wonder which is sillier though: G. T. Bynum's given first and middle names or listing his first name in the voter registration records as "G T" -- not first name G, middle name T, but first name Gee-Space-Tee, no middle name. Database engineers everywhere are softly weeping at the intrusion of a non-alpha character in the name field.

I think the strict interpretation of the charter language was first enforced in 2006, if I recall correctly. There's no such requirement in state law:

The name of any candidate for any office shall be printed on the official ballot as said candidate signed his Declaration of Candidacy; provided, however, that no candidate shall have any prefix, suffix or title placed before or after his name.

Prior to 2006, you could file for city office using nicknames, initials, dropping a JR or SR suffix, with or without your middle name -- they didn't enforce the requirement. When I filed in 1998 and 2002, I filed as MICHAEL D. BATES, although I'm registered to vote under my full middle name.

What of the six who filed under variants of the name on the registration record? i suppose they need to go down to the Tulsa County Election Board between now and 5 pm Wednesday and file an amended (notarized, of course) Declaration of Candidacy.

The filing period for the City of Tulsa's 2011 city election begins tomorrow, Monday, July 11, 2011, at the Tulsa County Election Board and runs through Wednesday, July 13, 2011, at 5 p.m.

For the last time (at least until the charter is amended again), all nine council seats will be up for election at the same time. Councilors for Districts 1, 4, and 7 will be up again in 2012; District 2, 5, and 8 councilors will have a two-year term, expiring with the mayoral election of 2013; and District 3, 6, and 9 councilors will serve three years. This is a transition to the staggered three-year-term charter amendment approved (foolishly) by voters in 2009.

Tulsans will also vote for a City Auditor. Preston Doerflinger was elected to a two-year term in 2009, but left for Oklahoma City to serve as Gov. Mary Fallin's Director of State Finance. The incumbent, appointed by the mayor and approved by the City Council, is Clift Richards. In the 2011 election, for the first time ever, a candidate for City Auditor must be either a Certified Internal Auditor or a Certified Public Accountant. The City Auditor will continue to serve two-year terms.

(NOTE: I'm not going to write "his or her" over and over again or use "their" incorrectly as a singular possessive adjective. "He," "him," and "his" are used below in its traditional, generic sense.)

A candidate for city office must file using his name as it appears in his voter registration, no matter how silly his middle name may be. A candidate for a party nomination must bring with his notarized filing form a deposit of $50, in the form of an official bank check, or a supporting petition signed by 300 registered voters in his district. The $50 is refunded if the candidate receives 15% of the vote or wins his party's nomination. A candidate running as an independent (and you can run as an independent even if you're a registered Republican or Democrat, as Mark Perkins did in 2009 and Patty Eaton in 1986) can only file by petition, but he gets a bye to the general election.

You may be wondering which district you're in. If you remember from the 2009 election, there's a good chance you're wrong. 42 precincts were moved by the Election District Commission from one district to another in order to hurt Roscoe Turner's chances of re-election and completely draw John Eagleton out of his district as punishment for Eagleton's conscience-driven effort to oust Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr from office for violating his oath of office and dereliction of duty. (Other precincts were moved between Districts 2 and 9 to try to hurt Rick Westcott's chances for re-election, but District 2's boundaries were restored after Westcott opted not to run again.)

The Tulsa County Election Board has several resources to help you find your district:

If you're interested enough in local politics to read this far, please keep an eye on the filings as they unfold on Monday and Tuesday. Perhaps you should consider throwing your own hat into the ring.

Tulsacitycouncil-Districts-2011.png

The Tulsa City Council is hosting a special town hall meeting tonight, July 7, 2011, 6 p.m., at City Hall, 2nd and Cincinnati, to discuss a proposal to switch to a city manager/council form of municipal government. Under the proposal, a mayor, elected citywide, would sit on the City Council and be able to cast an extra vote in the event of a tie. City Attorney, City Clerk, City Auditor, and City Manager would be appointed by the City Council and removable by the council with a 2/3rds vote.

You can read the current draft of the proposal and find a considerable amount of backup material on the Tulsa City Council website, including analyses of the structure and charter language of other city governments using the council/manager form.

The town hall will be held in the 2nd floor City Council meeting room. If you can't attend in person, you can watch on Cox Cable channel 24 or online at tgovonline.org.

The final public hearing on the proposed redrawing of City Council lines will be tonight (May 31, 2011) at 7 pm at the Central Center at Centennial Park, on 6th Street west of Peoria, just east of downtown. (Here is the Tulsa World story on the topic, and here is the graphic of the final proposal and an alternative.)

Although the final proposal had the support of the two Republicans on the Election District Commission, I believe that the alternative from the Democrat on the Commission is a better plan, for two reasons: The alternative plan is less radical -- moves fewer people to new districts -- and it somewhat limits the damage that can be done by pro-big-government, higher-tax Midtown "Money Belt" voters. The alternative is not perfect, but I believe it is an improvement over the official plan.

The final proposal moves central and southern Maple Ridge, Terwilliger Heights, Utica Square, and other upscale Midtown neighborhoods from District 9 to District 4. Based on past voting patterns, I believe this will make it less likely that a limited-government, anti-corporate-welfare conservative can be nominated in District 4, and that even if such a candidate were nominated, pro-high-tax, pro-corporate-welfare Republicans in the district would crossover to support the Democrat rather than the limited-government conservative.

There are rumors that the same political consultant who drew the ridiculous State Senate map was instrumental in drawing the final proposal for the City Council. Keep in mind that this same consultant has been involved in Mayor Bartlett's campaign, the Vision 2025 and river projects sales tax hike votes, and the effort to gut Tulsa's historic preservation ordinance via the State Legislature. It seems reasonable to speculate that the lines such a consultant would draw would tend to work for lines that help pro-tax candidates and work against pro-neighborhood-conservation candidates.

If you'd just as soon not have to fight yet another proposed tax increase for frivolities, I'd encourage you to show up tonight and support the alternative plan. Unfortunately, there's no apparent way to comment online.

An ethics investigation by the Tulsa City Auditor's office into Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr's acceptance of free legal services from a city contractor found that Bartlett Jr violated the city's ethics code.

DOWNLOAD (4.5 MB PDF): Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr Ethics Investigation

Although the services offered by attorney Joel Wohlgemuth were intended as a public service, Bartlett Jr's acceptance of them, rather than paying for his own attorney, could reasonably appear improper "due to personal benefit received and the Mayor's position to potentially approve future contracts between the City and the Contractor." The value of the services performed for the mayor is unknown, but almost certainly exceeds the threshold of $35 for gifts or favors to city officials. The report states, "There reasonably could be a perception of influence of performance of official duties due to the personal benefit received and the Mayor's position to potentially approve future contracts between the City and the Contractor."

Bartlett Jr had previously approved contract extensions for Wohlgemuth's firm, but not since entering into an attorney-client relationship with Wohlgemuth in July 2010.

The report recommends that before accepting free services intended as a public service from a city contractor, the Mayor should seek an opinion from the Ethics Advisory Committee and the services offered should be formally accepted by the City Council using the standard process for accepting donations to the city.

Another finding in the report deserves attention: The City should have a formal process in place for selecting and hiring outside legal services.

Statements during interviews determined selection and engagement of outside legal counsel by the City has varied by Mayoral administrations. Depending on the Mayor and type of case, sometimes Mayors have determined who they wanted and the process was to determine budget amounts, hourly rates and to prepare a contract. Other times the City Attorney and Legal Department staff may have discussions of who would be an appropriate attorney for a particular case and the rates. Previous administrations and City Attorneys have used a Request for Proposal (RFP) process and RFP's are still used for some unusual cases. Without established policy and procedures, the selection process could be subject to manipulation or abuse, inefficiency and higher cost to the City.

Recommendation:
The City should adopt and document policies and procedures for engagement of outside legal counsel.

As it stands, the Mayor could easily shovel lucrative city legal business to personal friends and campaign donors, whether or not the attorneys so blessed are the best choice for a particular case. Many other attorneys are willing and able to do legal work for the city; the opportunity shouldn't be limited to a small group of insiders.

According to the report, the city and its related trusts and authorities have paid Wohlgemuth's firm $1,064,661.58 since 1993.

The City Auditor's office is independent of the other two branches of city government. The auditor is directly elected by the voters, except when a vacancy occurs within a year of the next election. Preston Doerflinger, elected in 2009, resigned to accept a position in Gov. Mary Fallin's administration. His replacement, Clift Richards, was nominated by the Mayor and confirmed by the City Council.

Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr has sent out a mailing inviting the recipient to contribute at least $250 for a series of luncheons hosted by himself and (it is implied) by Senator Jim Inhofe, the former Mayor of Tulsa.

A source provided me with a copy of the contents of the mailing: a cover letter, a glossy four-color, eight-page booklet summarizing Bartlett Jr's accomplishments and policy goals, and a contribution response card. Click the link to see a PDF of the mailing's contents. (My source scanned the contents of the mailing but did so with the text oriented in all directions because of the way the booklet was laid out -- in a couple of cases, opposite orientations on the same page. I extracted the scanned images in the PDF to separate files, cropped and rotated the images so they all have the same orientation, and reassembled the result into a PDF. I then used Acrobat's built-in optical character recognition to scan for text. If you want to compare, here is the original scan I received, a 2.4 MB PDF.)

Here is the text of the letter:

"A SHINING CITY UPON A HILL... ...." MAYOR DEWEY BARTLETT'S LUNCHEON SERIES May 20, 2011

April 10, 2011

Dear Friend,

Over two thousand years ago, Jesus described a "city upon a hill" in his Sermon on the Mount. President-elect John Kennedy returned the phrase to prominence when he described "a city upon a hill-the eyes of all people are upon us". In our most recent recollection of the phrase, it was Ronald Reagan who often cited, "a shining city upon a hill ..... ", as he led our imaginations and delivered us the results of a country that could be restored ..... if we would fix our eyes on such a city!

These words have special significance to me as the mayor of your city. For too long, we allowed our past achievements to dictate our current and future endeavors. We would study, plan, study some more....and rarely act! We did not allow the forces of the marketplace to create the value to the taxpayer and the quality that Tulsan's had historically come to expect. I have spent all of my adult life in the private sector, where your ideas must quickly be moved to action ..and where your past performance is no guarantee of future results. Accordingly, when I entered office as your mayor, I met with a culture and skepticism that can only come from people that have lived in a static society, protected from market forces and continual improvement. With all of the noise in and around City Hall, I decided to take another idea from our hero, Ronald Reagan. He always went directly to the people, and did not allow his vision and results to be left to the interpretation of others....many of whom wished to preserve the status quo and poor results that come from unchallenged governmental performance.

So, I am coming to you, along with my mentor and dear friend, Senator Jim Inhofe, to hold a series of luncheons to share directly with you the many exciting results we are achieving in the use of successful and proven ideas in municipal performance. Senator Inhofe was the last mayor that truly used the Ronald Reagan approach to government, and he was often touted by Reagan as his "favorite" mayor! I have included with this invitation my list of focused action results that are implementing our shared vision of what it takes to return Tulsa to its former position.....one that we haven't seen since Mayor Inhofe was in this office. As you will see here in this publication "Tulsa 2020-Many Voices-One Vision" we are not studying, vacillating and massaging.....we are acting! And those actions have already led to national recognition for our applied solutions to our municipal challenges. Finally, we are leading again, and other cities are follOWing our lead....a true return to Tulsa's greatest days!

I hope you will join Senator Inhofe and me for this most important luncheon. All of this is being paid for privately, absolutely nothing is at taxpayer expense. It would be particularly helpful to me and my efforts if you would consider being a Sponsor ($1,000 per couple), Host ($500 per Couple) or Patron ($250 per Couple). I have included in this mailing the information you will need to provide for participation. We would like to mail general invitations later this month, so it is important that I can hear from you quickly, as we would like to show you on our broader invitation. We will only be able to seat 200 for our first event, so I encourage your prompt attention to this important and timely luncheon with Senator Inhofe and myself.

Should you wish for more information, simply contact Laura Huff at (918) 691-1744, or by email at Laura.Huff@cox.net

Warmest Regards,
Dewey Bartlett
Not Printed At Taxpayer's Expense

The letter was mailed from Dallas, Texas. The zip code on the prepaid return envelope, 75234, is in the Dallas area, and the bulk mail permit for the mailing is from Dallas as well.

The return address on the envelope, and the address on the response card, is

Bartlett for Mayor 11806 S. Pittsburg Ave Tulsa, OK 74137

a residence in the Wind River Subdivision belonging, according to county land records, to the aforementioned Laura Huff and her husband Dustin. (The couple are mentioned in news stories from 2003 as involved in the performance review developed at the beginning of Bill LaFortune's term of office, an effort led by Mrs. Huff's father, former City Auditor Ron Howell.)

I don't have time for a detailed analysis, but here are a few quick reactions to the letter:

The big question: What does he plan to do with all the money he is trying to raise? It's two years -- two long years -- before Bartlett is up for re-election.

I wonder what Bartlett Jr's mentor, Sen. Inhofe, thought of Bartlett Jr's endorsement of Democratic incumbent Mayor Kathy Taylor for re-election (before she dropped out). Taylor's refusal to face fiscal facts put Tulsa in a deep financial hole. Bartlett Jr seemed quite content with the way the city had been run by his predecessors until he actually got into office. Bartlett Jr endorsed and praised Taylor's decision to make City of Tulsa property owners pay for the failure of Great Plains Airlines, despite promises that the taxpayers would not be at risk.

During the 2009 mayoral primary campaign, I asked the candidates whether they would continue following the autocratic leadership style of Kathy Taylor. Sure enough, Bartlett Jr has followed closely in the footsteps of the predecessor he endorsed, building an even worse relationship with the City Council than she had done.

(By the way, in responding to that question back in 2009, Bartlett Jr denounced Chris Medlock's idea of hiring an experienced City Manager to work for the mayor and oversee city departments involved in day-to-day operations. In 2011, Bartlett Jr has named former Broken Arrow City Manager Jim Twombly to do just that.)

Ronald Reagan, whom Bartlett Jr claims as a hero, not only didn't endorse his predecessors, he ran against two sitting presidents, one of whom was a fellow Republican, because he believed that the policies of the Ford and Carter administrations were leading the country to financial and geopolitical disaster.

I see some good ideas in the booklet that came with the mailer, but it's hard for me to trust Bartlett Jr's sincerity. I have to wonder why he hadn't been promoting these ideas prior to his election.

American Majority will hold a day-long citizen activist training session on Saturday, April 23, 2011, at Tulsa Technology Center, focused on training activists to be effectively engaged with state and local government. As part of the event, I'll be joining Jamison Faught of Muskogee Politico and Peter J. Rudy of Oklahoma Watchdog on a local blogger panel. It should be a great program -- hope you can join us.

Here are the details:

Our nation was founded by ordinary citizen activists desiring a government that was accountable to the people. Today, ordinary citizens in every citizen and in every community are tired of the status quo and are ready to get involved like they never have before to demand accountability.

American Majority's purpose is to address these passions by providing education and resources to help you reach your goals.

To that end, American Majority desires to challenge concerned citizens to turn their focus to state and local issues with the first annual Tulsa Battlefield Training.

This event will provide those in attendance with two things:

First, the Tulsa Battlefield Training will give those in attendance a clear picture of what is happening at both the state level and local level with government spending, waste, and clear explanation regarding how all levels of government got into this mess.

Secondly, the Tulsa Battlefield Training will also provide tool, resources, and specific ways that attendees can get involved in the local government structure - whether as informed citizen activists or candidates for local office.

Confirmed Presenters Include:

  • Ned Ryun, President of American Majority
  • Michael Carnuccio, President of Oklahoma Council for Public Affairs
  • Matt Robbins, Executive Director of American Majority
  • A Local Blogger Panel Consisting of Michael Bates of Batesline.com; Jamison Faught of MuskogeePolitico.com; and Peter J. Rudy of OklahomaWatchdog.org
  • Plus Presentations by the American Majority Oklahoma Staff

The Tulsa Battlefield Training will take place on Saturday, April 23rd at Tulsa Technology Center located at 3420 S Memorial Dr. from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. Doors open at 8:30 am.

Registration is $20 per person (which includes lunch and all materials) - space is limited.

If you have any questions or would like additional information, call Seth Brown at 405-639-8896 or email him at seth@americanmajority.org

You do not want to miss this event!

American Majority is a non-profit and non-partisan political training organization whose mission is to train and equip a national network of leaders committed to individual freedom through limited government and the free market.

The City of Tulsa's Election District Commission has released five City Council redistricting plans (click to open the PDF) drawn up by Indian Nations Council of Government staff. The city must redraw the lines to produce districts of nearly equal population, based on the 2010 federal census.

Although the city's population didn't change significantly (it dropped by about 1000), the population did move around a good deal, with population losses in north and midtown Tulsa and growth in the south, continuing a 40-year trend.

To describe the five plans in words:

Plan I: Most stable for north and west Tulsa, radical changes in midtown. District 2 remains the same, District 1 adds downtown, District 3 adds Precinct 40. District 4 would add just about everything north of 31st, and District 9 would extend further east, as would District 7. This has the least population deviation, but 30 precincts move between districts.

Plan II: Most stable overall -- only 12 precincts and 21,725 people change districts. District 3 would lose two precincts that have been strong for Roscoe Turner over the years and gain some northeast Tulsa territory. District 4 would pick up the Owen Park and Crosbie Heights neighborhoods. District 8 would lose two precincts to 7 and 7 would lose two to 9. 2 would remain unchanged.

Plan III: This seems to produce more compact districts generally, but it does involve 36 precincts and 65,294 people changing districts. 4 would become long and skinny -- two miles wide and eight miles long, losing all territory south of 21st, and extending east to Memorial. 3 would lose three of Turner's best precincts on the western edge and gain territory as far south as 21st and Mingo. 2 would lose its territory south of 81st and gain three precincts around I-44 and Peoria.

Plan IV: The most radical plan of all, shifting 58 precincts and 110,917 people. District 4 would lose territory east of Yale, but extend as far south as 36th Street west of Lewis. 3 would lose its western precincts and gain everything east of Yale between 11th and Lynn Lane Rd. 7 and 8 would change from landscape to portrait orientation. 2 would gain precincts west of Peoria as far north as 36th Street, while losing its precincts northeast of 81st and Riverside.

Plan V: Identical to plan 2, except for Districts 7 and 8, which become north-south districts split at Sheridan. 8, which has always been the far-south district, would extend as far north as I-44.

At first glance, I'm inclined to back Plan II (pictured below), but I've got some thoughts on a better plan.

20110404-Tulsa_Council_District_Plans_Plan_2-500px.png

Thanks to Tulsa City Council aide Shannon Compton for sending me a copy of the plans so that I could make them available to the public for free. Previously, the plans had only been available online to subscribers to the daily paper. It seems to me that a citizen shouldn't have to go to a subscription-only website -- or to any privately-owned website, for that matter -- to view government documents. These plans and any future versions should be published on tulsacouncil.org and cityoftulsa.org, along with information on submitting comments about the draft plans to the commission. Shapefiles and datafiles for the maps and redistricting plans should be posted online as well.

Four public hearings on the proposals will be held around Tulsa:

Monday, April 11, 20117:00 p.m.Rudisill Regional (North) Library
Tuesday, April 12, 20117:00 p.m.Hardesty Regional (South) Library
Monday, April 18, 20117:00 p.m.Zarrow Regional (West) Library
Tuesday, April 19, 20117:00 p.m.Martin Regional (East) Library

The Save Our Tulsa charter amendment petitions -- pushing to add four at-large members to the City Council (including the Mayor), to eliminate partisan labels from city election ballots, and to hold city elections on the same ballot as national and statewide elections -- were certified by City Clerk Mike Kier earlier this week.

Attorney Greg Bledsoe, a leader of Tulsans Defending Democracy, the effort to stop the use of at-large council members to dilute geographical representation, has begun the process of examining the petitions, now that the City Clerk's office has finally complied with an open-records request he made on February 18, 2011.

The City Clerk's office finally let me look at the SOT petition documents on Tuesday, 4-5-11, despite my persistent request under the Open Records Act first made on 2-18-11 and despite being told that the documents had been digitally scanned and that with respect to petition 2010-1 (the at-large petition) the evaluation had been largely completed.

There are 7 volumes of scanned material each containing approximately 500 pages in each volume. I was able to review 100 page in Vol. 1 in about an hour. These pages contained less than 20 signers as most pages had only one or two voters and the signatures were only one page out of a four page pamphlet. The most signatures for one pamphlet was four.

11 of the circulators for these petitions were from out of state:

3 individuals from Fulton, MO, 2 from St. Louis, MO and one from each of the following: Miami, FL; Clifton Park, NY; Tampa, FL; Cincinnati, OH; Kansas City, KS; and McKees Rock, PA.

3 were from Oklahoma City and 7 were from Tulsa.

The circulators for these first 100 pages were verified by only three notaries--mostly by Linda Howard of Moore, OK (first got her comission in October of 2010) and Gregory Gray of Claremore, with one done by Rachel Fedor of Edmond, OK.

andy_griffith_show_otis_campbell.jpgAre there no underemployed people in Tulsa who could have been hired to gather signatures? Are there no notaries in Tulsa? Surely John Brock, Bob Poe, or one of the other SOTs have notaries who work for them who could have notarized the petitions. Why go to a brand-new notary who lives 100 miles from Tulsa? And did these out-of-town notaries come to Tulsa to meet with the circulators, or did the circulators drive to Moore, Edmond, and Claremore to get their petitions notarized? Were these petitions ever actually in Tulsa prior to their submission to the City Clerk?

It's strange too that no page had more than four signatures on it. If I were trying to get a petition certified by fraudulently having a few people sign over and over. Scattering the signatures over as many pages as possible would make it harder for anyone to spot multiple signatures with similar handwriting.

Yesterday, the 2011 Tulsa County Republican Convention unanimously approved the recommendation of the convention's platform committee to be the Tulsa County Republican Party's official platform. The platform includes clear stands on several current city and county issues. Here is the local section of the platform in its entirety:

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

1. We support strengthening protections for Real Estate owners against arbitrary zoning changes, which damage property values.

2. We oppose the use of eminent domain by any government for private benefit.

3. We believe that public safety - police and fire protection - should be a priority in the city budget, using existing sources of revenue. We oppose a special tax increase or Federal Grant to fund public safety.

4. We oppose any tax increase without demonstrated public need.

5. We oppose any public-private partnerships and also use of public powers such as eminent domain granting private for-profit entities the right to use public powers of eminent domain to build and operate toll roads and bridges.

6. We oppose the practice of "land-banking" by any government board within Tulsa County.

7. We support the repeal of Title 11, Section 22-104.1 of the Oklahoma Statutes which enables a municipal corporation to engage in any business it is authorized to license.

8. We do not support any sales tax, either municipal or county, levied for river development.

9. We do not support city non-partisan elections or the current movement to change the Tulsa City Charter to allow such.

10. We oppose the renewal of the "Four to Fix the County" sales tax.

11. We oppose all efforts to add a Charter Amendment which would add at-large Councilors, elected city wide, to the Tulsa City Council.

12. We support the Tulsa City Council having its own attorney, answerable only to the City Council and independent of any other branch of city government.

13. We oppose the use of City of Tulsa municipal tax dollars to fund the Tulsa Metro Chamber of Commerce.

I'll be interested to see if Tulsa County Democrats take equally clear, bold positions on these issues at their convention next weekend.

CORRECTION: I originally began this entry referring to a Steve Lackmeyer tweet about a Tulsa news story making his head hurt. Because the link he tweeted led to a "Latest News" page on the Tulsa Whirled's mobile website -- at least it did on the browser on my smart phone -- and the Tulsa County GOP convention was the top story at that time, I thought Steve was referring to that story. In fact, he was referring to a Whirled editorial about Tulsa mayor Dewey Bartlett's veto of a Council resolution rescinding the election for a charter amendment. My apologies for the misunderstanding, and here's the rest of the blog entry.

"This" was a web story by Whirled reporter Randy Krehbiel about Saturday's GOP convention. I'd love to give you my own report, but work prevented me from attending. Steven Roemerman was there, and I'm looking forward to a report on his blog at some point, but for now, all he had to say was that the 10-hour-long event gave him a headache.

John Tidwell, communications director for John Sullivan, tweeted the election results in real-time. To summarize (links lead to a tweet about the candidate or race):

Chairman: J. B. Alexander (stepping up from vice-chairman), by acclamation

Vice Chairman: Molly McKay (2010 nominee for HD 78, patent attorney), by acclamation
1st Congressional

District Committeeman: Don Wyatt over incumbent committeeman and former county chairman Jerry Buchanan, 180-145
1st Congressional

District Committeewoman: Donna Mills over Virginia Chrisco, 233-93

State Committeeman: Don Little over former State Committeeman Chris Medlock and Jeff Applekamp. First round was Medlock 113, Little 108, Applekamp 79; final result was Little 126, Medlock 121.

State Committeewoman: Sally Bell (stepping down as chairman) over Darla Williams, 221-79.

Many of the victorious candidates had the endorsement of Sally Bell. Bell's new job responsibilities wouldn't allow her to devote the time necessary to serving as chairman; state committeewoman involves quarterly meetings of the Republican State Committee in Oklahoma City and occasional meetings of the county party Central Committee and Executive Committee. (For what it's worth, I served as State Committeeman from 2003-2007.)

Krehbiel characterized the convention as a "move further to the right" and a defeat for the "moderate old guard." I don't think that's the case. The "moderate old guard" is pro-life (the pro-abortion Republicans left the local party 20 years ago), pro-2nd amendment rights, and (mostly) pro-limited government, and pro-lower taxes.

The real dispute is the role of the party organization with respect to elected Republican officials. The prevailing faction at the county convention believes that the party should hold Republican elected officials accountable for governing in accordance with the core conservative principles that they espoused when running for office.

The other side -- the "moderate old guard" -- takes the "stand by your man" approach. They don't disagree with the party's conservative core values, but in their view the party organization's job is to advocate for (or at least not to oppose) whatever policies a Republican elected official decides to pursue and should never publicly oppose something a Republican elected official or major Republican donor supports. For example, if the Republican members of the County Commission want to raise local taxes for a downtown arena or river development, the Republican Party shouldn't denounce them for promoting a tax increase, in their view, particularly if major donors support the tax increase too.

The dispute boils down to this: Principle vs. partisanship. Should the party organization back anyone with an R after his name, or should "protect the brand" by insisting that the R actually mean something?

Krehbiel's report mentions a resolution, to be presented at the state convention as an amendment to the state party rules, that would provide a means to censure Republican elected officials who deviate from the party's core principles. Here's the actual wording of the proposed state party rules amendment presented by newly elected Tulsa County GOP chairman J. B. Alexander:

Rule 10

(n) Party Support of Candidates and Elected Officials

In accordance with the framers original intent of the United States Constitution and in accordance with the Constitution of the state of Oklahoma, the core values of the Oklahoma Republican Party shall consist of:

* Life - Life is the result of an act between one man and one woman and begins at conception and concludes at natural death.

* Second Amendment - The right to keep and bear arms is an inalienable right of the individual citizen and government has no authority to regulate such right.

* Limited/Smaller Government - Government is instituted to oversee the general welfare of the citizens. Local, state and federal governments have reached well beyond that which is needed to carry out the basic functions of a constitutional government.

* Lower Taxes - Taxes and mandatory fees have grown to consume approximately fifty percent of an Oklahoma citizen's income. Drastic tax and fee reductions are needed at all levels of government.

Any member of the Oklahoma Republican Party State Committee shall have the right to present evidence of any elected Republican official who consistently works against and/or votes against these core values or publicly supports a candidate of another party.

After such evidence is presented, and a motion and second are made, the state committee shall take a vote of "NO CONFIDENCE" of said elected Republican official. A two-thirds majority vote of members present shall be required for a passing vote.

I might quibble with the selection of issues, the wording, or the proposed penalties (really should be more specific and concrete, I think), but I commend Alexander for focusing on a few key issues, rather than demanding allegiance by officials to every point of the party platform, as past resolutions have done.

Count me on the side of accountability. I've always believed it was an appropriate role for the party organization to play, but especially now that Republicans have supermajorities in the Oklahoma House and Senate and every statewide office, we've got to make sure our elected officials aren't led astray by lobbyists looking for special favors. Some organization needs to apply the pressure to ensure that GOP campaign rhetoric turns into reality.

I was not the least bit surprised at last Friday's announcement that Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin would not use her power to direct the Attorney General to investigate charges against Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr. Gov. Fallin is the play-it-safe type. (One indication of that during the general election campaign: The campaign's teleconference with conservative bloggers featured Q&A with two press aides, but not the candidate herself.)

Fallin-02.jpg

Okla. Gov. Mary Fallin, official portrait, Part 2 of 30

In her response to Tulsa City Councilor John Eagleton, Fallin scolded Tulsa leaders about the need to settle their disputes for the sake of economic development, even as she declined to do what is in her power to help them accomplish just that. If this dispute is " an obstacle to attracting new jobs to... the State of Oklahoma," then shouldn't a governor who promised to focus on jobs do what she can to eliminate this obstacle? Eagleton wrote Fallin precisely to ask her to move the problems with Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr toward resolution.

I don't know if Eagleton had this in mind when he wrote his letter to Gov. Fallin outlining Bartlett Jr's actions that warrant an Attorney General investigation, but I know Eagleton is a lifelong Presbyterian, and the idea of appealing disputes to a higher level of authority is deeply rooted in Presbyterianism, which in turn influenced the design of the American judicial system. In the Presbyterian form of government, if there's a dispute between the elders (the lay leadership of the congregation) and the pastor, it can be taken to the next level up -- the presbytery, a body made up of ministers and elders from churches throughout the area.

Taking the Mayor's alleged misdeeds to the Governor and the Attorney General is loosely analogous to appealing to presbytery. Theoretically it puts the dispute in the hands of officials who are somewhat removed from it. (Practically speaking, Bartlett Jr is much better known in statewide Republican circles than Eagleton, and Bartlett Jr was a $5,000 donor to Fallin's 2010 campaign for Governor.)

In her response, Gov. Fallin wrote, "Many, if not all, of your allegations involve violations of the Tulsa City Charter and Ordinances. I have been advised that Title 51 may only address potential state law violations." In fact, 51 O. S. 93 includes in its definition of official misconduct, "Any willful failure or neglect to diligently and faithfully perform any duty enjoined upon such officer by the laws of this state." It could be argued that, as all Oklahoma cities are creatures of the state, with powers defined and circumscribed by the Constitution and statutes of Oklahoma, an officer's failure to perform the duties required by a city's charter and ordinances constitutes a failure to perform the duties enjoined by the state's laws.

MORE: Mike Easterling of Urban Tulsa Weekly spoke to John Eagleton, several of his council colleagues, and GOP state chairman Matt Pinnell about Eagleton's motivations in pursuing the ouster of Bartlett Jr.

Eagleton, a Tulsa native and Oral Roberts University law school graduate, said there shouldn't be any doubt about why he's pursuing this course of action.

"The motivation is derived exclusively from the oath I took when I was sworn in to be a city councilor," he said. "If I had not taken that oath, I would not be doing this now. But I promised to defend the city charter, the city ordinances, the Constitution of Oklahoma, the statutes of Oklahoma, the Constitution of the U.S., the statutes of the U.S. against all comers. That includes elected officials who are not behaving in accordance with their oath of office. It breaks my heart to be on this evolution."...

"As I evolved in thought to reach the conclusions I've reached, it was really quite painful to realize that I was going to be going out on this and realize that there would be a collateral attack," he said. "Mistreating the messenger is always easier than defending the actions of the mayor. And I knew that I would be piñata-ed someway."...

[Oklahoma Republican Party Chairman Matt] Pinnell was careful to indicate he doesn't blame Eagleton for stirring up trouble.

"He's doing what he thinks is right, whether people agree with him or not," Pinnell said. "I respect him for that."...

"I think he's a good man. I don't have an issue with Councilor Eagleton," said District 4 Democrat Maria Barnes, who got to know Eagleton when they were both elected to the council in 2006. She described Eagleton as a very serious person and said she likes the fact that she always knows where she stands with him -- even if it's on the opposite side of an issue, as has often been the case.

[District 2 Republican Councilor Rick] Westcott shares that assessment.

"There's no guile in John Eagleton," he said. "He is what he is. Like him or not, there's no gray area in John Eagleton's personality, and I mean that as a compliment. He is what you see."...

When he first got to know Eagleton, [District 9 Republican Councilor G.T.] Bynum said, he developed the impression that he was bombastic, very certain of his views and fond of using a flamboyant approach to conveying them.

"What's changed over time is I've developed an appreciation for the kind of thought that goes into those beliefs," Bynum said, though he noted that many people who don't know Eagleton well probably view him inaccurately as a shoot-from-the-hip type.

"I'm a great admirer of Winston Churchill, and I can't help but think that serving on a legislative body with Winston Churchill was a lot like serving with John Eagleton," he said....

I've known John Eagleton for close to 10 years, and my impressions of John line up with those of his colleagues. There is no hidden agenda with John Eagleton. He is pursuing ouster -- a complicated process with a low probability of success -- because he feels it is his duty as a city official.

Out sick

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I was composing a couple of entries in my head for this morning, but my head is currently besieged by a howling sinus headache, so the entries were started but not finished. My apologies.

A couple of quick notes:

Tulsa City Councilor John Eagleton is slated to be on 1170 KFAQ Monday morning in the 8 o'clock hour to talk about the effort to oust Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr.

UPDATE: Here's a link to the Pat Campbell Show audio page and a direct link to the interview with John Eagleton.

Have you noticed? Not a single city councilor has voiced support for Bartlett Jr. Not a single city councilor has condemned the ouster effort. That's a significant difference between the current controversy and those of the past. Even Nixon had his supporters in Congress, until the "smoking gun" tape emerged, and Nixon had the grace to resign when that support dried up.

Since Thursday's announcement, the only public figure to speak up for Bartlett Jr -- as far as I've heard -- is his attorney -- you know, the one who is working for the mayor for free, the one whose law firm was granted increased limits of $70,000 total on two city contract amendments approved by Bartlett Jr, the one who serves as attorney for the private citizens who have named the city councilors individually in a suit over a ballot initiative.

Hear of anyone else speaking up for Bartlett Jr? Let me know in the comments.

At the Thursday, March 3, 2011, continuation of Tuesday's meeting of the Tulsa City Council's Urban and Economic Development Committee, Councilor John Eagleton made a public call for Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr's removal from office by ouster, a civil process initiated by complaint from registered voters, investigation and prosecution by the state's Attorney General, and concluded with a jury trial. That call was echoed by several of his colleagues, Democrats and Republicans alike, representing the length and breadth of the city.

Eagleton sets forth the case against Dewey Bartlett Jr on his website, a case that he presented during today's committee meeting. Eagleton's presentation constitutes about 23 minutes of the 46 minute video.

Following Eagleton's remarks, Council Chairman Rick Westcott (District 2) points out that there is an undeniable pattern of behavior on the part of Bartlett Jr and that none of the issues enumerated have been resolved. He says that "we need an independent third party... to make some legal determination if the actions do constitute violations of the law," referring to the Attorney General and to the jury that would ultimately hear the case. "Take it out of this arena, take it out of this political environment."

District 6 Councilor Jim Mautino talks about how he pushed to give Bartlett Jr the benefit of the doubt for six months, trying to work with the Mayor to get things done for his district, and how doing so hurt him with his fellow councilors and his constituents as they lost faith in Bartlett Jr. He mentions Bartlett Jr's apparent willingness to appoint an east Tulsa neighborhood leader to the TMAPC, to provide some geographical and neighborhood balance on the planning commission, only to back away, telling Mautino that his proposed commissioner was "toxic." (Mautino did not mention the name of the proposed commissioner, but I'm guessing he was speaking about Al Nichols, a long-time neighborhood leader, very familiar with Tulsa's zoning code and process. Presumably Nichols is too knowledgeable for the taste of someone with powerful influence over Bartlett Jr.)

District 1 Councilor Jack Henderson commended Eagleton for his courage: "John, I know you're going to receive some heat for it, a Republican going after another Republican, but I just want to take my hat off to you for being a man that stood up, is standing up for what's right, trying to make this city a better place." Henderson expressed hope that enough people would "do the right thing" and sign the affidavits so that the investigation by a third party can move forward.

District 3 Councilor Roscoe Turner said, "This is the first time, in all the years I've served on the Council, that there has been this kind of dialogue between a Mayor's Office and a Council. I've never in my life seen a Council that came together 9-0 against a Mayor.... When this Council first came together, the Mayor had a majority of the Council on his side. One by one, I guess he forced them off of his team....." Turner recalled a Council committee meeting at which Bartlett Jr got angry and asserted, "Last time I looked, I was still the boss." Turner said, "Why does anyone want to be the boss? We're here to work together to try to move the city forward."

District 4 Councilor Maria Barnes, wanting to end the meeting on a positive note, said that one of many good things to come out of this is that it has united the Council: "We all have been on the same page, working together."









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On his website, Eagleton has posted the presentation he made to the Council, over a hundred pages of backup material relating to the points of the complaint against the Mayor, and, most importantly, an "Affidavit for Ouster" which can be downloaded. This is a petition, requesting the Attorney General to pursue the charges against the Mayor. Approximately 1100 signatures are required. Each page details the charges and has a place for six signatures of City of Tulsa registered voters. The form can be attested by a notary, the Mayor, any city councilor, the City Clerk, or the City Attorney.

I've mostly avoided delving into the ongoing dispute between Tulsa Mayor Dewey F. Bartlett Jr and the Tulsa City Council. My main reason has been lack of time and energy. It's a valid reason -- my family and the job that pays the bills must come first -- but I'm sorry nevertheless because I feel I've let down BatesLine readers by not covering the issue and my many friends on the City Council by not speaking out in their defense.

When friends have asked about the conflict, I've pointed out that Bartlett Jr has accomplished what no previous mayor has done -- he has managed to alienate all nine members of the City Council. Of course, it's hard to maintain cordial relations with a group of people when you've allegedly recruited citizens to file lawsuits against them as a means of pursuing your political aims. While I won't defend every action by every councilor, I believe that they are more sinned against than sinning in their dispute with Bartlett Jr.

It's all coming to a head with Wednesday's news that Tulsa District 7 Councilor John Eagleton sent a letter to Governor Mary Fallin asking her to request that Attorney General Scott Pruitt investigate a list of charges against Bartlett Jr, with a view to his removal from office.

Eagleton cites 10 charges. To my mind, the most troubling is Bartlett Jr's acceptance of free legal services from Joel Wohlgemuth, whose law firm is also a city contractor. The documentation provided to Gov. Fallin includes two contract amendments with the firm of Norman Wohlgemuth Chandler and Dowdell, one for $25,000 and one for $45,000, both signed by Bartlett Jr.

Nearly as disturbing is the allegation that Bartlett Jr recruited citizens to file lawsuits against the City of Tulsa. From a December 23, 2010, news story:

However, Warren Blakney, the newly elected president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said he was asked to join the suit but declined because he needed to remain neutral even though he agrees with its claims.

Blakney said he met with Goodwin, Bartlett and Simonson. He said he thought they called him in because Bartlett doesn't have good standing with the black community and needed someone in the suit who is respected in that community.

John Eagleton is a friend of mine and has been for many years. He would not take so drastic a step unless he felt there were no alternative. He knows he will be charged with grandstanding and troublemaking. He knows that this step will kill any political future he may have had. He believes that because of Bartlett Jr's ongoing destructive behavior, his removal from the Mayor's office is the only way for our city to move forward.

While I applaud Bartlett Jr's support for the implementation of PLANiTULSA and hope for positive changes from the KPMG report, he has poisoned his relationship with city councilors and city employees who were ready to work with him for the betterment of Tulsa. He has squandered the trust, the political capital a mayor needs in order to implement difficult changes.

Bartlett Jr needs to go.

Rodger Randle, a Democrat, was the last Mayor of Tulsa under the old city commission form of government and the first under the mayor-council form of government. When he defeated incumbent Mayor Dick Crawford in 1988, a new city charter was a key plank in his platform. He has issued a two-page statement of his views on the proposed charter changes currently under discussion. Randle believes that the proposed changes will not fix the problems facing our city government and would actually make matters worse.

(If you're on the home page, you can read it via the "Continue reading" link; otherwise just scroll down.)

In reading his comments, keep in mind that the goal of those shaping the new charter back in 1989 was to produce a representative government in name only. We would have geographically-elected councilors but only with just enough power to avoid a federal Voting Rights Act lawsuit. As much power as possible would be concentrated in the mayor's office. Councilors were to be kept in line. That attitude seems to explain some of Randle's comments, e.g.:

The rationale in the 1990 charter placing council members up for re-election every even-numbered year was to provide the Mayor, who has a four year term, an opportunity to attempt any necessary housecleaning on the Council on the off-year when all the members of the Council were up but the Mayor was not....

Nine Council members are a lot for the mayor to try to look after already. Making that number bigger will only increase the amount of time that the Mayor will have to spend lobbying and politicking them....

In addition, the more counselors there are, the more difficult it will be for voters to keep track of who is who and who deserves to be reelected and who does not....

I had thought mayoral contempt for the City Council was a Susan Savage innovation, but evidently it was there from the beginning.

It seems to me that the more councilors there are, the fewer constituents per councilor, the more likely a constituent is to have regular, direct access to his councilor and the more likely he is to know whether his councilor deserves to be re-elected or not. Randle's comment makes more sense if you replace "voters" with "special interest groups like the Chamber and the homebuilders."

Randle worries that adding councilors would create the kind of dysfunctional legislative dynamics at work in Chicago city government. But Chicago has 50 aldermen, which is a far cry from 13, a number small enough to seat everyone around the same table. Care to guess how many members serve on the city council of Detroit, the poster child for urban dysfunction?

Although Randle's central concern -- protecting the mayor's power and prerogatives against legislative encroachment -- is misguided, he makes some good points. Randle is right that moving city elections to the state/federal dates would put a heavy burden on voters and reduce the scrutiny given to candidates for city office. He is right in saying that partisanship hasn't been a significant factor in City of Tulsa politics:

Since the adoption of the new form of government, on the other hand, we have not seen much mischief at City Hall that appears to have been purely produced by partisanship. Members of the City Council that form alliances seem to do so totally independently of partisan affiliation.

And, as he says, "we should be cautious of making permanent structural changes simply in response to temporary personality issues that may affect current relations between the Mayor and Council."

In general, and at every level of government, we should be cautious of making a structural change because it seems to solve a current political problem. In the 1970s and 1980s, when the Republicans dominated the White House but couldn't win a majority in Congress, Republicans wanted a more powerful executive branch. In the 1990s, when we had the majority in Congress but the Democrats had the presidency, we wanted to rein in the White House. Political types seem prone to think that today's circumstances will obtain forever.

Randle is also right that it's the mayor's job to lead, to work to gain the councilors' cooperation and support for his initiatives.

But the mayor shouldn't regard the City Council as a smelly flock of sheep in need of herding, but as peers and partners who can complement his strengths and weaknesses. A mayor is one person, with one set of friends and influences and experiences -- and blind spots. City councilors bring nine more sets of friends and influences and experiences to the table, and, if the mayor is wise, he'll make use of those resources to compensate for his weaknesses and blind spots.

(There is an area where the mayor does need more power than he currently has -- in the executive branch of government. The civil service rules make it difficult if not impossible for the mayor to appoint department heads and other key decision-makers in city government. I would support a charter change that would allow the mayor to hire and fire department heads, with new appointees to be approved by the council.)

That said, here are former Tulsa Mayor Rodger Randle's thoughts on the proposed charter amendments:

This week's Urban Tulsa Weekly cover story, by reporter Mike Easterling, is a look back at Dewey Bartlett Jr's first year as mayor of Tulsa. Easterling spoke to the Mayor himself, to chief of staff Terry Simonson, to several city councilors, to urbanist and developer Jamie Jamieson, and to me. What's striking is that only Bartlett and Simonson give good grades overall to the Bartlett-Simonson administration. Five of the nine councilors, all Republicans, were willing to speak on the record, and all were disappointed, on balance, particularly with his failure to treat the councilors as partners, rather than adversaries. These are councilors who had high hopes for his administration and who agree with his stated policy goal to make intelligent reductions in city spending. As I note for the article, he has managed to alienate all nine city councilors, an unprecedented feat for a mayor.

In his conversation with Easterling, Bartlett tells an anecdote about the literal nightmare he had the night after his swearing in, followed by the waking nightmare of learning the next morning from Finance Director Mike Kier of the depths of the city's financial crisis. What it reveals is that Bartlett had not been paying attention. Councilor Bill Martinson had called attention to the problem back during the budget process in the spring of 2009, noting the Taylor administration's overly optimistic expectation of a recovery by the end of calendar year 2009, an expectation that allowed them to postpone hard choices until after the election.

For his honesty and persistence, Martinson was targeted for defeat by Kathy Taylor. Bartlett did not back the fiscal conservatives on the Council in their effort to face facts; instead he endorsed Kathy Taylor for re-election and ignored the fiscal crisis during his campaign. In so doing, he entered the mayor's office without the mandate to do anything except not make political contributions to Barack Obama.

The Save Our Tulsa bunch -- SOTs for short -- see the conflict between mayor and council, and they think the solution is to pack the council with their kind of people and then maybe pass a tax for some new "visionary" project. They've misdiagnosed the problem, and they offer a remedy that will only make matters worse. The problem is in the mayor's office, and, short of resignation or removal, the way forward is for the mayor to call his SOT buddies and his supporters who are suing the councilors personally and tell them to back off. That's a minimum first step to get executive and legislature working together again.

It appears that the rich old SOTs, who seek to take Tulsa back from, well, Tulsans, are attempting to marshal the resources for gathering the necessary signatures to put their aristocratic propositions on the ballot. Word is that they aren't getting the kind of support and traction they may have expected, not even from their usual allies in Tulsa's Money Belt. But behind-the-scenes disapproval is not enough. Those who are informed enough to know that the Save Our Tulsa charter change proposal is bad for Tulsa need to speak out publicly and now, so that this mess can be quickly nipped in the bud.

Nick-Nolte-Mugshot.jpgTuesday was the first reported sighting of a petition circulator for the three Tulsa City Charter amendments proposed by Save Our Tulsa, Dahlink. The sighting occurred at Central Library, and according to my correspondent, the circulator bore a striking resemblance to Nick Nolte's infamous 2002 DUI mugshot, including the Hawaiian shirt.

On Wednesday, my wife spotted one in the supermarket parking lot. As the circulator approached a prospective signer, my wife intervened, giving a brief explanation of the key problem with the proposals -- you'd need to be a millionaire, or beloved by millionaires, to win a seat on the City Council. The circulator didn't get the voter's signature.

I would predict that a horde of circulators will be illegally roaming the parking lots of Tulsa polling places on November 2 in search of signatures. It would be wonderful if every petition-taker was shadowed by someone who could make the case against the SOT proposal. That might get ugly -- they usually get paid by the signature -- so the better course will be to call the sheriff's office if you spot a petition circulator near a polling place. I seem to recall that in November 2004 the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office shooed paid circulators away from polling places. The petition was for a gas tax increase, a proposal that was defeated 7-1 in a 2005 special election. Back during the 2004 election, at one northside polling place, a display promoting the tax was set up in the lobby of the school that hosted the precinct.

SOT leader John Brock has made a few public appearances to speak on behalf of at-large councilors (with the mayor serving as council chairman) and non-partisan city elections on the same day as statewide general elections, a set of propositions that would make the general election ballot longer and more confusing for voters and would make it more difficult to win a seat on the council with grassroots support. From his interviews with KOTV's Emory Bryan and KWGS's Rich Fisher, it seems that Brock has no idea that Tulsans from outside his social circle would find his proposals offensive. He certainly didn't take the time to run his idea past those who opposed his 2005 council-packing scheme.

I've heard from multiple sources that Tulsa Metro Chamber leadership thinks the push for the proposed charter amendments is bad for Tulsa. I've heard that those concerns are shared by other prominent Tulsans, every bit as wealthy and connected as the public members of the SOT steering committee. A few polite but firm denunciations of the proposals from the right people could quickly kill the petition effort, deter a divisive election, and allow Tulsa's leaders to focus on, e.g., applying KPMG's recommendations to the city's difficult budget situation.

So why haven't we heard anything negative about the SOT proposals out of, say, Chamber CEO Mike Neal? It's as if there's an unwritten code of silence among Tulsa's wealthiest and the individuals and organizations who depend upon their patronage. Mustn't quarrel in front of the help. Mustn't humiliate the folks who could make a few calls and get you fired from your cushy gig as head of the non-profit.

In my years of civic involvement in Tulsa, I've seen it time and time again: Those who belong to the Money Belt culture are unwilling to say publicly what they say privately about a bad idea supported by their peers. They leave it to outsiders to make the case against the bad idea, and then they stand aside when those who speak out are marginalized.

Way back in 2003, I wrote a long email, later published on this blog, to a number of people, some of whom had privately qualms about Vision 2025 privately -- the process that developed the final product, the structuring of the ballot, the lack of strategic thinking -- but were unwilling to express those reservations publicly.

To use the terms of the Pogo cartoon I sent earlier, let's speak our criticisms openly and plainly, not into a bag and disguised as praise. We don't live in the old USSR. We shouldn't be afraid to utter mild criticisms of Tulsa's politburo and nomenklatura. And yet fear is precisely what I detect beneath the surface: Fear of ostracism, fear of exclusion, fear of economic consequences.

This may be a bit impolite to say, but it's there beneath the surface and ought to be dealt with openly. Some of our group work for organizations which are funded by supporters of this package. Others aren't personally dependent, but are involved with organizations that need the funds that the package supporters can offer. Others need the goodwill of city government to conduct business and make a living. Some of us have even been paid to facilitate and promote the vision process and to work for the "vote yes" campaign. Beyond the financial considerations, many members of our group move within a narrow circle of social and organizational connections -- a virtual "small town" within the city, focused on the arts and other non-profit organizations, centered around Utica Square and chronicled by Tulsa People and Danna Sue Walker. As in any small town, some opinions are acceptable and some are not, and speaking your mind risks ostracism.

It's time for the big shots who think the SOT proposals are a bad idea -- unnecessarily divisive, a "solution" that fixes nothing -- to speak out. Nip the SOT plan in the bud, before yet another underfunded opposition group has to beat it -- and the hundreds of thousands of dollars that will back it -- at the polls.

FOOTNOTE: Not all who live in the Money Belt are part of the Money Belt culture. One such courageous dissident is attorney Greg Bledsoe, a leader of Tulsans Defending Democracy, which opposes diluting geographical representation with at-large councilors. The group formed in 2005 to oppose an earlier charter amendment petition seeking at-large councilors. Bledsoe was on the Thursday, October 21, 2010, edition of KWGS Studio Tulsa.

Who is backing the latest effort to dilute grassroots influence over City Hall?

I took the list of 23 names in the list of Save Our Tulsa steering committee members in John Brock's email and did some research.

According to recent voter registration records, the median age is of Save Our Tulsa is 75. According to the county assessor's records, the median property value of the residences of the named steering committee members is $586,350. Here's a map showing where they live, based on voter registration and county assessor records:


View Save Our Tulsa (SOT) in a larger map

You'll notice a dense cluster of SOTs live in the wealthy section of midtown, aka the Money Belt. The map correlates well with the PLANiTULSA / Collective Strength survey from 2008 that showed Midtowners feeling more understood by city leaders and more included in the city planning process than north, west, and east Tulsans. It would seem that the SOTs don't know very many Tulsans from other parts of the city.

Many of these same people supported Tulsans for Better Government, the earlier push for at-large councilors, and Coalition for Responsible Government, the group that unsuccessfully attempted to recall Councilors Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock.

There are a few outliers. That dot in far east Tulsa is Shane Fernandez, a former chairman of TYpros, the Tulsa Metro Chamber young professionals' organization that ran the grassroots ypTulsa out of business. But according to assessor's records he and his wife (also a former TYpros chair) are also the owners of a home near 29th and Cincinnati.

Way up north, you find a dot for Pleas Thompson in Gilcrease Hills. Thompson was (or is?) head of the local chapter of the NAACP. Given the NAACP's role in moving Tulsa to district representation, it's strange that Thompson would lend his name to an effort that would dilute geographical representation with at-large council members.

Two (possibly three) SOTs are not Tulsa residents.

The dot in far south Broken Arrow (not even close to Tulsa) is former Whirled editorial page editor Ken Neal. Having spent decades espousing bad ideas for Tulsa, most of which were enthusiastically adopted (e.g. urban renewal), he has retired to a city that was fortunate to escape his influence.

Way up north in Owasso, in one of the Bailey Ranch subdivisions, that's Bishop Donald O. Tyler, pastor of Greater Grace Apostolic Church. The bishop moves around: In 2008, Tyler and his wife Marcia were registered to vote at an address in the Greens at Cedar Ridge in Broken Arrow; assessor records show the Tylers sold the house in 2008. Through most of 2009, Donald O'Neil Tyler Sr. was registered to vote in precinct 182 in south Tulsa; his wife Marcia was still registered at that address as of August 2010.

The Tylers do at least own a piece of Tulsa: Assessor records indicate that they bought about 12 acres of undeveloped land just southwest of Mohawk Park in December 2008. (He seems to have been registered to vote for the first half of this year at an address intended to correspond to this piece of property. There's nothing on it except a mailbox with his name and the house number, but the Postal Service and the city say the address doesn't exist. The mystery of a seemingly bogus address in the voter record, corresponding to the city water treatment plant, and the confusion of two roads with similar names, took some effort to unravel; it deserves an entry of its own.)

There is a James Alfred Light registered to vote on W. College St in Broken Arrow, but there's also a James Light that claims homestead on a house in Florence Park. I placed his dot at the latter location. My guess is that he lives in Florence Park but hasn't yet changed his registration. Then again, they could be two different Lights.

MORE:

On Monday, October 11, 2010, KWGS aired a Studio Tulsa interview with John Brock. Again, he never cites a specific example of ward politics. Brock says that the Council should set policy and pass ordinances but not try to run the city. He also hopes that the elimination of party primaries will mean that more moderate candidates will be elected; primaries encourage extreme candidates to be nominated, according to Brock. Brock claims that having separate city elections puts the council under the control of "special interests," although he never says what those special interests are.

Rich Fisher seemed a bit confused about election dates under the current provisions of the charter, which is understandable. Currently, a city election cannot happen a week out of sync with a state election. That happened a few times in the past, usually when a spring city election was a week off from a school board election or presidential primary. But when we approved moving elections to the fall of odd-numbered years, we specified that the elections would be held on the dates authorized by state statute (26 O.S. 3-101) in September and November. In 2009, when voters approved the ill-conceived staggered council terms, a conflict was created -- no election date is authorized in September of even-numbered years. A further change on this year's ballot will fix that problem by moving the primary in even years to August.

I certainly hope that KWGS will allow an opponent of SOT's proposals to appear on Studio Tulsa. Tulsa voters should hear the downside of these amendments before they're asked to sign petitions; perhaps we can avoid an expensive and acrimonious election battle.

Also on Monday, KOTV's Emory Bryan spoke to John Brock, head of SOT. One aim seems pretty clear -- keep debate on public matters out of the public eye. (Video after the jump.)

Now the Council has been complaining, justifiably, that the Mayor will not talk to them. When he's on the Council as the Chairman, he will have to talk with them, and we believe that will create an environment where they will all hash things out before they get to the newspapers.

There they go again.

Many of the same people involved in the attempt to recall Tulsa City Councilors Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock, many of the same people involved in Tulsans for Better Government (the group promoting at-large councilors) -- they're on the list of named members of a group called Save Our Tulsa, which has filed three initiative petitions for city charter changes. Someone forwarded to me an email that he had apparently received from John Brock, head of SOT, in which he outlines the proposals, explains his misdiagnosis (in my opinion) of Tulsa's ills, and lists the members of the steering committee. Here's the whole thing:

Dear Concerned Tulsa Citizen,

This is a letter to people who love Tulsa and want it to remain the best place in the world to live. It is obvious that our city government has become ineffective. We believe that our form of government is basically flawed and must be changed to have our Tulsa Government work again.

As a result of this situation, several of us have joined together to present you with an option that we believe will improve our city government structure. We have no political agenda; in fact, our group represents all sides of the political spectrum; Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. The group includes the following steering committee members: former Tulsa Mayors Robert J. LaFortune and James Hewgley, Former City Councilor Robert Gardner, David Blankenship, John Brock, Leonard Eaton, Tom Hughes, Robert Poe, C.T. Thompson, Walt Helmerich, Pat Woodrum, Joe McGraw, Jim Light, Joe Cappy, Chester Cadieux, Pete Meinig, Nancy Meinig, Paula Marshall, Shane Fernandez, Darton Zink, Ken Neal, Pleas Thompson and Bishop Donald Tyler.

We plan to make the following charter changes:

1. Add three at-large members and the Mayor to the City Council and make the Mayor the Chairman. The four will represent the broad interest of the City and not just a council district. The three at large councilors will be elected by all the voters in Tulsa but to maintain geographic diversity they must be a resident of a super district. For example at-large councilor #1 will reside in districts 1, 3 or 4, #2 will reside in district 2, 8 or 9 and #3 will reside in district 5, 6 or 7. The nine council districts will remain unchanged. With the addition of the four at-large seats, the council will then be made up of 13 members (nine district representatives and four at-large). The Mayor will not vote except in case of a tie. The Mayor will appoint the Vice Chairman from the Council. This will improve the Mayor-Council communications and create Team Tulsa.

2. Have all City elections on the same day as State and Federal elections and return all district elections to a two year cycle. This will raise interest and turnout. Currently, Council members are elected with about 10% and sometimes less of the registered voters. Also, it will permit the voters to express their opinion on how the council is doing as a whole. The current system prevents the voters from changing the policies of the City in one election. It costs twice as much money to have an election every year. The money saved will more than pay for the four new at-large councilors.

3. Make City elections non-partisan. The candidates will be able to identify themselves as Democrats or Republicans or any other way but will run against all other candidates in a non-partisan primary. The top two in the primary will meet in the general election guaranteeing the best two candidates for the general election irrespective of party affiliation. This will again increase interest and turn out.

We have created, Save Our Tulsa Inc., a 501c4 corporation. Its sole purpose is to change the City Charter to make our city government more effective. Save Our Tulsa Inc. will not promote or oppose any candidate for public office.

The three initiative petitions will minimize the problems of "ward politics" and will make the transition of the council to a more workable legislative body. The successful accomplishment of the enactment of these petitions will cost an estimated $300,000. A 501c4 corporation is permitted to accept unlimited corporate, foundation, or individual contributions.

If you are interested in making Tulsa a better city, we need your support now. Respond to this e-mail and indicate: 1. if you will permit the use of your name in a similar newspaper ad to show the voters the extent of the support for our Charter amendments, 2. whether you will volunteer to circulate the petitions and 3. Send generous financial contributions to: Save Our Tulsa, 2021 S. Lewis Ave., Suite 415, Tulsa, OK 74104.

Tulsa is a unique City. It is the best place in the World to live and raise children and grandchildren. Let us pledge ourselves, our time and our treasure to keep it that way. Please pass this e-mail on to your friends. Encourage them to join us and to respond as above. Organize your own group for our newspaper ad.

The petitions are effective today. Watch for circulators and sign up. Our website will be coming soon.

Many thanks from all of us,

John Brock

The sight of so many familiar names told me all I needed to know about the group's intentions. Their previous efforts -- recall, at-large councilors, campaign contributions -- have all involved defeating grassroots influence in local politics. These proposals, much like their previous efforts, would make it more difficult for a neighborhood leader or grassroots activist to win a seat on the City Council, more difficult for grassroots candidates to hold a majority on the council.

I get the sense that you should pronounce the group's name with an accent on that second word: Save Our Tulsa. They want to go back to a time when they and their circle of friends decided Tulsa's priorities without any input from the rest of us. I believe it particularly bothers them that most of the councilors owe them nothing and owe everything to the voters in their districts. The SOT plan would make it more expensive to run a winning council campaign, even at the district level, as candidates would be competing for media attention, volunteer time, and small-donor contributions with every other race on the ballot. To win, you'd either need to be personally wealthy or beholden to the SOTs and their pals for sufficient campaign funds.

I don't believe these people are motivated by personal profit. Are they driven by a kind of paternalistic altruism for the rest of Tulsa? Perhaps in a couple of cases, but for the most part, I don't believe they give a thought for the rest of Tulsa. I suspect that they only care about Our Tulsa -- aka the Money Belt.

A follow-up entry will take a look at the list of people cited by John Brock as SOT steering committee members, but here are a few points about the proposals:

We should move back to two-year, uniform council terms, but we should return to the fall of odd-numbered years, as it was before last November's ill-considered charter change to staggered three-year terms. Moving elections to coincide with presidential and gubernatorial elections will deprive Tulsa of the opportunity to focus attention on our city's situation and the best course for its future. With the presidency or a hot U. S. Senate race on the ballot, municipal concerns will get short shrift from the voters. You may have more people voting in city races, but you will have fewer voters who are actually paying attention to city issues. I suspect that, in the minds of the SOTs, that's a feature, not a bug.

At-large is still at-large. In the new proposal, it means that two-thirds of the people picking your representative don't live in your district. The proposed division of districts would make it possible for all three supercouncilors to live in the Money Belt -- the southwest part of District 4, the wealthier sections of 9, 2, and 8, and the southwestern part of 7. Even if you drew a superdistrict with no Money Belt overlap (say 1, 3, and 6), it would still be possible for the SOTs and their allies to find an "acceptable" resident -- parachute them in, if necessary -- in that superdistrict to push in the citywide election.

Having four at-large members of the City Council (the mayor and three supercouncilors) is likely to heighten disagreements, not reduce them. The supercouncilors, having been elected citywide, will be natural rivals for the mayor.

The SOTs are fond of claiming that "ward" politics is the source of our city's problems. I've never seen them give a valid example. The issues that have caused the most strife at City Hall have been issues of citywide importance -- budgets, zoning philosophy, water sales to the suburbs, tax increases, airport shenanigans.

Non-partisan -- no party or descriptive information on the ballot, just a name -- is a bad idea made worse by holding the election with state and federal elections, when people are thinking in terms of Democrat and Republican. Oklahoma voters already have to wrangle both sides of a ballot the size of a bedsheet. Tulsa voters will get one more ballot with five or six races on it, with only names, no helps to remember which candidate was which. A voter so confused may just vote for whoever had the most yard signs or the most TV commercials; again, the SOTs probably consider this a feature, not a bug. A better way is the multi-partisan ballot I've suggested, where candidates could list national party affiliation if the choose, or some locally significant label. A multi-partisan ballot gives voters more information, a non-partisan ballot gives voters less.

The SOTs seem blind to the real source of dysfunction at City Hall: The wrong mayor. The one we have at the moment has alienated all nine members of the City Council, including his own. If the SOTs would help elect a mayor who is:

  • independent -- not likely to be pushed around by the Tulsa Metro Chamber, the homebuilders, or other special interest groups;
  • a collaborative leader -- someone who will work with the council and citizens and seek win-win solutions; not someone who runs roughshod over anyone who stands in her way;
  • someone focused on the priorities of ordinary Tulsans -- public safety, good streets -- not the entertainment needs of the idle rich;

Tulsa city government would be just fine.

The cover story in this week's Urban Tulsa Weekly is a profile of Tulsa District 9 City Councilor G. T. Bynum. Reporter Mike Easterling has written an interesting story about a significant figure in Tulsa politics, and he includes extensive quotes from Jack Henderson and Rick Westcott, Bynum's colleagues from Districts 1 and 2; former Sen. Don Nickles, Bynum's first boss in Washington; and me.

As the article noted, I like G. T. personally, but I've been disappointed with many of his decisions on the council. At the same time, as I told Mike Easterling, although the point didn't make it into the story, I appreciate G.T.'s leadership on the charter change that requires the council to sign off on large lawsuit settlements and the new proposal to require the city to save money when times are flush, rather than expanding government. (That said, I still wonder why he wasn't helping Bill Martinson when Martinson was trying to get Mayor Taylor to deal forthrightly with the city's fiscal crisis last summer.)

Another admirable aspect that came out in the story is Bynum's respect for the City Council as an institution, the city's legislative body. However you may feel about the current membership of the Council at any given time, it has an important role to play in representing Tulsa's diversity, crafting legislation, and providing oversight of our city government. In the early years under our current charter, a majority of councilors seemed to see themselves as mere rubber stamps or window dressing. 2004 and the advent of the Gang of Five began to change that outlook; Dewey Bartlett has cemented the City Council's identity as an independent co-equal branch of government:

One of the great ironies of the situation, he acknowledged, is that it has unified the council like never before.

"If you look back, every mayor's had problems with councilors," he said. "Mayor Taylor had problems with some councilors, Bill LaFortune did, Susan Savage did. But none of them have had unanimous problems before. I'm hopeful that the mayor'll take that as a sign that he needs to work in a more cooperative fashion with the council. And I say that as someone who worked on his campaign and grew up looking up to him."

Also worth pondering from the story was the quote from the late Sen. Paul Coverdell that Bynum has written where he'll see it often: "If you have been given a moment here, you should not let the dust grow under you."

(Coverdell, by the way, beat an incumbent senator, Wyche Fowler, thanks to a general election runoff. The Libertarian candidate split off some of the anti-incumbent vote, and Fowler finished first at the 1992 general election, but without a majority of the vote. Under Georgia law at the time, a runoff was held three weeks later, and Coverdell won narrowly.)

Conservative parents of politically-aware young people should also take to heart what Bynum had to say about his experience as a congressional staffer:

"It was wonderful," he said of that period in his life. "For a young person interested in government, there are few things you can do that give you so much access and opportunity as working on Capitol Hill. I do encourage any young Oklahomans who are interested in government to do it.

"I think that's one of the great secrets about our government that a lot of people aren't aware of is Capitol Hill is largely staffed by people under 30 years of age because they're the only ones who'll work that cheap and that hard. And so you get a tremendous amount of responsibility, and you learn a tremendous amount. That experience was really formative for me."

On the negative side of the ledger, it was interesting to read that Bynum's support for the defeated 2007 Tulsa County sales tax increase helped him decide to seek a seat on the Council:

But there were other, more worldly factors motivating him, as well. Bynum and his wife were big supporters of the 2007 Our River Yes! campaign for a sales tax increase that would have funded $282 million in improvements to the Arkansas River, and they were not happy to see it go down in defeat.

"When it failed, I was really disappointed in the response of the leaders of the city, which seemed to me to be, 'We'll wait 10 years and then try again,'" Bynum said. "Working in the Senate, I'd known that when we had a bill that was really important and it failed, we went back to the drawing board and found what things we needed to fix in order to get the votes to win. We didn't just say, 'Oh, well, it's over, we'll try again 10 years from now.' "

Bynum characterizes the river as the biggest untapped asset in the city and believes it has the capacity to become Tulsa's biggest economic driver. Earning himself a seat on the City Council, he believed, would provide him with the chance to champion that belief.

It's hard to believe that any intelligent person would believe in the river as "Tulsa's biggest economic driver." And while Bynum talks about his libertarian leanings, it's hard to see how having government taking a bigger share of everyone's money is consistent with a libertarian perspective.

And what was libertarian about the ballpark deal, which Bynum supported? Is it libertarian to take money by force from owners of distant property who will see negligible benefit from a facility built to house a private entertainment company?

It's also hard to see what's libertarian about a city policy that will be used to penalize people for a sort of thought crime. What Bynum's non-discrimination policy amounts to is a ban on taking any notice of a major component of a person's psyche and character. When Bynum says that sexual orientation "has nothing to do with job performance," he's effectively saying that it never has anything to do with job performance under any circumstances, a view that is not universally shared but which, thanks to Bynum's leadership, is now universally imposed.

(My blog entries at the time explain in more detail why I feel Bynum "didn't really understand the issue from a conservative perspective" and seemed to ignore the long-range consequences of the decision: G. T. Bynum's sexual orientation proposal, Bynum gay proposition on council agenda tonight.)

I seem to recall that, when he spoke to the conservative Tulsa Area Republican Assembly back in 2008, when he was running for office, he used the word conservative a lot, and talked about his work for Sen. Coburn. I don't recall him making any use of the word libertarian.

Regarding Bynum's new lobbying business, Easterling writes that I "described [the George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF)] as Bynum's biggest client." That's true, but I didn't leave it to opinion or speculation. I pointed the UTW reporter to the Senate Office of Public Responsibility's Lobbying Disclosure Act database, which shows that G. T. Bynum Consulting, LLC, reported $30,000 in lobbying income from GKFF for the first and second quarters of 2010, and $20,000 from Williams and Williams (Bynum's former employer) over the same period. (Over the entire length of Bynum's lobbying career, the two are currently tied; Bynum began lobbying for Williams and Williams in the 4th quarter of 2009.)

To clarify my concern about Bynum representing GKFF as a lobbyist and serving on the City Council: GKFF is actively engaged in civic and governmental issues here in Tulsa, as are closely related individuals and entities. George Kaiser is a significant political donor in local elections, as is the BOK Financial Political Action Committee. Kaiser and GKFF were heavily involved in the 2007 Tulsa County sales tax increase for river improvements and in the downtown Drillers stadium deal, to name two recent examples of their engagement in local political issues. I cannot think of another example of an elected official at one level of government simultaneously serving as a lobbyist at another level of government. It would be a different matter if Bynum limited his lobbying practice to organizations and businesses that had no interest in City Hall affairs.

By the way, Bynum's 2010 second quarter disclosure form reveals that the job he created -- the other lobbyist he hired -- is Stuart McCalman, who was Governmental Affairs Director under Mayor Kathy Taylor, and who continued in that role under Bartlett, until his involvement in the Mayor/Council dispute over the JAG grant and police layoffs.

FLASHBACK: G. T. Bynum's statements on the ballpark assessment district in 2008, with commentary by Steven Roemerman.

It's happened twice this week. I've written long blog entries -- long essays with links -- and then hesitated to click the "publish" button. Ironically, the essay arose from a story about a sociologist reluctant to publish his findings because they may give aid and comfort to the politically incorrect.

Rather than leave you completely deprived, while I decide what to do with this latest piece, which is about immigration, here are some of the articles I read while writing it.

First, the item that got me started, by John Leo, on Robert Putnam's five-year study showing "that immigration and ethnic diversity have a devastating short- and medium-term influence on the social capital, fabric of associations, trust, and neighborliness that create and sustain communities." Leo reports that Putnam (best known for his book Bowling Alone) has expressed reluctance to publish his research:

Putnam's study reveals that immigration and diversity not only reduce social capital between ethnic groups, but also within the groups themselves. Trust, even for members of one's own race, is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friendships fewer. The problem isn't ethnic conflict or troubled racial relations, but withdrawal and isolation. Putnam writes: "In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to 'hunker down'--that is, to pull in like a turtle."

That led me to Roger Axtell's collection of books on "Do's and Taboos around the World" and an essay on missionaries and culture stress.

And from there, I went looking for Francis Fukuyama's work on trust, social capital, and economic development:

Social Capital and Civil Society (1999)
Social Capital and Development (2001)

Then there's this McClatchy news story from January 2010 on the devastation wrought by Haiti's lack of construction codes:

Most buildings in Haiti go up without engineers, standards or inspections. The earthquake is only the latest, and worst, tragedy to expose the largely unregulated and slapdash construction long accepted on the island -- practices that structural engineers believe added to a staggering death toll that could reach 200,000....

It wasn't just humble shacks and turn-of-the-previous-century icons like the historic Roman Catholic Cathedral of Port-au-Prince, but new and newly renovated schools, police stations, bank branches, high-end hotels and hospitals. The U.S. Agency for International Development reported Thursday that 13 of 15 government ministry buildings had been destroyed.

"This was pseudo-engineering. It was terrible," said Eduardo Fierro, a California-based forensic and seismic engineer who was among the first experts to survey the damage....

Most Caribbean countries, Haiti included, have building laws based on the Caribbean Uniform Building Code, said Cletus Springs, director of the OAS' Department of Sustainable Development in Washington. But in many places, rules exist only on paper....

Haiti has taken stabs at beefing up building codes in the past. Ironically, said architect Magloire, one expert brought in recently to work on the code died in the collapse of the Hotel Montana.

You may recall Tulsa City Councilor Jim Mautino's remarks from March 2010 regarding "taco trucks" and zoning, health, and tax enforcement:

City Councilor Jim Mautino said he had received complaints from constituents regarding six mobile food trailers. He said he was concerned about food safety and the city's ability to collect sales taxes.

"This is Third World stuff," he said. "When people come here we assimilate them (new residents of the country) into our lifestyle and our politics; it's not the other way around.

"And it seems to me like what's happening is we're being assimilated."

Mautino expanded on those comments in an April 28 UTW story:

As for new residents assimilating to the U.S., Mautino said this statement stemmed from what he was taught as a child.

"My parents came from Italy and their opinion was when you're in Rome you do like the Romans, when you're in America you do like the Americans," he said. "You come to this country and you don't change this country. You can add things that come from your country, but you abide by our laws."

And here's another immigration-related item, although not part of my essay, on the topic of immigration enforcement, a report that U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have no confidence that the agency's leadership is committed to enforcing the laws:

On June 11, 2010, the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council and its constituent local representatives from around the nation, acting on behalf of approximately 7,000 ICE officers and employees from the ICE Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), cast a unanimous "Vote of No Confidence" in the Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), John Morton, and the Assistant Director of the ICE Office of Detention Policy and Planning, (ODPP), Phyllis Coven.

The letter from the president of the AFL-CIO-affiliated union that represents ICE agents explains that local law enforcement is really the only path to immigration enforcement at the moment:

  • While ICE reports internally that more than 90 percent of ICE detainees are first encountered in jails after they are arrested by local police for criminal charges, ICE senior leadership misrepresents this information publicly in order to portray ICE detainees as being non-criminal in nature to support the Administration's position on amnesty and relaxed security at ICE detention facilities.
  • The majority of ICE ERO Officers are prohibited from making street arrests or enforcing United States immigration laws outside of the institutional (jail) setting. This has effectively created "amnesty through policy" for anyone illegally in the United States who has not been arrested by another agency for a criminal violation.

I'm dealing with blog guilt. I look at my blog and feel guilty for not updating it. Then I start to write a blog post and feel guilty about all the non-blog things I should be doing instead.

I was at a candidate's volunteer event today and someone was surprised to learn that I don't blog for a living. He had assumed that, because of all the content I produce, I must be doing this full-time. (It doesn't seem to me that I produce all that much content these days.) I assured him that that was not the case. I have a full-time, mentally-demanding, private-sector job that pays the bills and doesn't leave me with much energy when I finally have time to sit down and write. The time I spend on this I really ought to be spending (1) asleep, (2) playing with my kids, (3) doing housework, or (4) doing yard work.

I am not a trust-fund baby. No foundation is paying me a stipend so I can research, think, and write full-time. The only income this blog brings in comes from readers hitting the tip jar or people buying ads. It's enough to cover the hosting and domain costs and some research expenses. I'm grateful for and encouraged by the five people who contributed in response to my appeal, but it's clear that I'm not going to be able to feed, clothe, house, and educate a family of five by blogging about local issues. I suppose I should be thankful there wasn't a bigger response; if there had been, I'd feel guilty for not blogging more.

All that said, I don't have anything new for you from my metaphorical pen, but I can offer you some interesting links elsewhere about the 2010 Oklahoma election:

Steven Roemerman lives in Tulsa County Commission District 3, and he's received mailings from two of the three Republican candidates for that seat, incumbent Commissioner Fred Perry and Tulsa City Council attorney Drew Rees, with an interesting contrast in endorsements. Roemerman writes of Rees's piece, "I've never had a piece of campaign lit so thoroughly convince me not to vote for someone before, while at the same time making me hungry for the sweet sweet combination of chocolate and peanut-butter." Click through, read the mailers, and see if you can spot the missed opportunities. Sad when a consultant's connections and preferences are allowed to override his candidate's best interests.

Mike Ford has the scoop on David Hanigar, "Republican" candidate for State Auditor. Hanigar only recently changed his party registration and was a significant donor to several Democratic state officials, including disgraced and convicted former State Auditor Jeff McMahan.

Jamison Faught has been scrolling out his endorsements for statewide candidates in the upcoming Republican primary.

Oklahomans for Life has posted their July 2010 newsletter which contains the responses to their candidate survey.

Mike McCarville has dueling commercials and dueling press releases from the campaigns, including the latest dust-up between Scott Pruitt and Ryan Leonard, Republican candidates for Attorney General.

And finally, Irritated Tulsan offers a "urinalysis" of the dispute between Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr and the Tulsa City Council.

UPDATE: G. T. Bynum tweets, regarding the charter amendments on the 6 p.m. agenda:

@BatesLine Staff error. Will be delayed yet another week for amdts to be online plenty of time.

This is a crazy-busy time in Tulsa politics. You'd think the City Hall folks would have the courtesy to settle things down while there are state and county primaries about to happen. But no....

There are four -- count them, four -- Tulsa City Council meetings today. At 2 p.m., a special meeting will be held to discuss amendments to the Tulsa City Charter proposed by Councilor Roscoe Turner:

01. Proposed Charter Amendment:Change of form of government to a Charter form of the Council / Manager form of government. (Turner) 10-446-3 02. Proposed Charter Amendment: Making the City Attorney an elected position. (Turner) 10-446-4 03. Proposed Charter Amendment: Establishing a Council Attorney. (Turner) 10-446-5 04. Proposed Charter Amendment: Having Fire Department assume EMSA's duties and responsibilities. (Turner) 10-446-6

The 3 p.m. special meeting will deal with the controversy surrounding Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr, Chief of Staff Terry Simonson, federal grants, and police layoffs.

01. Consider motion and enter executive session pursuant Title 25 O.S. Section 307(B)(1) to discuss potential disciplinary action by the Council with regard to the Mayor and/or Chief of Staff/General Counsel, based upon the recent investigation into statements made to the Tulsa City Council and to federal agencies regarding the use or repurposing of Justice Administration Grant funds for police officer salaries. 10-184-3 02. Leave executive session to possibly take appropriate disciplinary action with regard to the Mayor and/or Chief of Staff/General Counsel, based upon the recent investigation into statements made to the Tulsa City Council and to federal agencies regarding the use or repurposing of Justice Administration Grant funds for police officer salaries. 10-184-4 03. Adjournment 04. Discussion regarding the status of the investigation, report and effects of City Attorney's Office recusal, and possible administrative actions which the City Council may take with regard to the Mayor and/or Chief of Staff based upon the findings of the report. 10-184-5 05. Discussion and possible approval of a recommendation regarding the qualifications of Dafne Pharis for the position of Director of Grants Administrator. (Henderson) 10-536-1

Charter amendments will be back on the table at the 5 p.m. meeting. The first item deals with the amendments regarding independent candidates, an "independent primary" election, and primary runoff elections that emerged from G. T. Bynum's election reform task force. These items are also on the 6 p.m. agenda, and once again the text of the proposed charter amendments is not available on the City Council website.

There's another new amendment on the 5 p.m. agenda, brought forward by Council Chairman Rick Westcott. This would fix a problem with the ill-considered charter amendment approved last fall, which made council terms three years on a rotating cycle, so that three seats are up for election every year. The proposal (which IS on the Council website) would move the primary in even-numbered years to August to coincide with the state primary runoff election. The primary would remain on the second Tuesday in September in odd-numbered years. This would allow the City to use the resources of the Tulsa County Election Board to run the election. State law prohibits county election boards from servicing elections which are not held on election days authorized by state law (26 O. S. 13-103)

D. All municipal elections, including elections for municipalities with home rule charters, shall be held only on dates identified by subsection B of Section 3-101 of this title.

The authorized dates are established by 26 O. S. 3-101:

Except as otherwise provided by law, no special election shall be held by any county, school district, technology center school district, municipality or other entity authorized to call elections except on the second Tuesday of January, February, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December and the first Tuesday in March and April in odd-numbered years and the second Tuesday of January, February, May, and December, the first Tuesday in March and April, the last Tuesday in July, the fourth Tuesday in August, and the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of any even-numbered year; except in any year when a Presidential Preferential Primary Election is held in February, the date for the special elections shall be the same date as the Presidential Preferential Primary Election.

While this change is an improvement, staggered terms will still result in different election conditions every year on a 12-year-cycle: which councilors are up for election, which month for the primary, which Tuesday in November for the general, whether or not the Mayor is on the ballot, whether or not the Auditor is on the ballot, whether or not the President is on the ballot. In some years, council candidates will share the stage only with the auditor; in others, council candidates will compete with presidential, congressional, county, and legislative candidates for dollars, volunteers, and attention. The number of weeks between primary and general will oscillate between 8 and 11.

(And staggered terms, with or without the new amendment, play havoc with the number of signatures required to recall a councilor, which is based on the last time the seat was on the same ballot as the mayoral general election, an event that could be 11 years in the past.)

The best way to fix the staggered terms mess is to repeal it.

The 6 p.m. meeting brings back the aforementioned Bynum charter amendments for consideration for the November ballot and considers replacing the Existing Structures Code wholesale with a new "Property Maintenance Code." (Anyone looked at the impact on restoration and reuse of historic buildings?)

On top of everything else, the Council will consider adoption of PLANiTULSA as the City's comprehensive plan. As with the charter amendments, NO BACKUP DOCUMENTATION has been provided on the Council's website, so we can't see precisely what the Council may be adopting tonight.

Oh, and all the City Councilors are being sued by Burt Holmes, Nancy Rothman, and Henryetta McIntosh for allegedly violating the Open Meeting Act. Who paid the filing fee?

RECEIPT # 2010-1935441 ON 07/14/2010. PAYOR:FREDERIC DORWART TOTAL AMOUNT PAID: $128.00.

The Dorwart firm is the former employer of Tulsa City Attorney Deirdre Dexter and lists among its clients BOK Financial Corporation, George Kaiser Family Foundation, Kaiser-Francis Oil Company, Tulsa Community Foundation, and Tulsa Metro Chamber of Commerce. Dorwart was the attorney of record for the Tulsa Industrial Authority in its suit against the Tulsa Airports Improvement Trust and the City of Tulsa over the Great Plains Airlines loan default, which was settled by the City paying $7.1 million from property tax funds.

Fun times.

What are the odds? After protesting loudly during the mayoral campaign that he wasn't a member of Tulsans for Better Government and had no idea how his name got on that list, Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr is now talking sympathetically about the concepts -- at-large councilors and non-partisan elections -- that TfBG have circulated as initiative petitions for Tulsa City Charter amendments. From this week's UTW:

"I believe the members of the City Council, if they disapprove of the actions I'm taking, in three and a half years can help vote me out of office," [Bartlett Jr] said. "That's their right. I think if the council wants to look at changing the form of government, they should look at other forms of government, as well.

"I've heard people say they'd be more comfortable with a group of city councilors who are elected at-large. They'd still have to live in their district, but they'd be elected by people all across the city, and that would make them more beholden to the city of Tulsa instead of a particular area."...

Bartlett said he believes most cities the size of Tulsa operate under a strong-mayor form of government, while smaller cities operate well with a city manager style. A prominent exception to that, he pointed out, is Oklahoma City, which proponents of the city manager-style of government like to cite as an example.

"I agree with them that Oklahoma City is an example of a city that's run well," he said.

But Bartlett noted that hasn't been the case until recent years. For many years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the City Council there was split almost evenly between two factions, and whichever faction held power at any given time would hire its own city manager. The result was a revolving door in that office.

"They were having a terrible time keeping city managers and keeping the City Council engaged in a forward-thinking way," he said.

Bartlett said he has spoken to city officials there at length about what turned the situation around, and he said they told him it is their belief that two things make the situation in Oklahoma City different.

The first is the fact that the city holds nonpartisan elections, meaning candidates do not run under a party affiliation -- an idea strongly espoused by Mark Perkins, a Republican who ran as an independent in the mayoral campaign against Bartlett last fall, earning 18 percent of the vote....

Before last fall's city election, Stephen Roemerman wrote about his conversation with Bartlett Jr regarding Tulsans for Better Government and at-large councilors:

Last Sunday, I was a part of a small group who met with Mr. Bartlett to ask him questions (This will be another post). I told Mr. Bartlett that one of my primary concerns regarding his candidacy was his involvement with the Tulsans for Better Government. I told him that I found the idea for at-large councilors extremely concerning. The implication in my statement was that I could not support anyone who wanted to take control of the City Council in a way that would focus power in downtown and midtown, and disenfranchise the other parts of the city.

What he said, shocked and confused me. With regard to his involvement with Tulsans for Better Government, he said that he did not know about the at-large councilor push, that it was tendered without his knowledge. He suggested that he was asked to joined the group years ago but never really had anything to do with them, and certainly had nothing to do with the idea of at-large councilors. I asked him what he thought of at-large councilors and he said the he did not think it was a good idea, and that our form of government should not be changed.

In an October 2009 open letter to Republicans, then-nominee Dewey Bartlett Jr made a number of commitments to Republicans in an effort to win their support. Many Republicans felt that, however flawed Bartlett was as a candidate, they now had him making an on-record commitment on issues important to conservatives. The e-mail included a postscript that Bartlett Jr had signed the pledge opposing non-partisan elections.

That list of commitments is worth re-reading. It includes his pledge to "hire more police." And there's this gem (emphasis added:

We cannot ignore any part of town. We must improve our entire city and be sure that each part has proper investment and service. I will work with, not against, the city councilors to achieve this goal.

The at-large councilor proposal that Bartlett Jr mentions positively is even more radical than TfBG's original proposal to mix three at-large seats with six district seats. Even if the councilors lived in nine different districts, they would either have to be personally wealthy enough to sustain a city-wide campaign or be beholden to groups with a financial stake in manipulating city government. Grassroots campaigns to win a council seat would have a very slight chance of success, which I suspect is the whole point of the idea. Under at-large voting for the council, there would still be a District 1 councilor, but he'd be the sort of District 1 councilor that District 9 residents would find acceptable.

Question to the readers: Has Dewey Bartlett Jr turned out to be the kind of mayor you were led to believe he would be?

We're still waiting to see the actual text of the charter amendments proposed by the Tulsa City Council Election Reform Task Force, led by Councilor G. T. Bynum.

In the meantime, the Tulsa Whirled's Janet Pearson used her Sunday, July 4, 2010, column to renew the call for the Whirled's favorite reform idea: at-large councilors.

In 2005, a group called Tulsans for Better Government circulated an initiative petition for a charter change to reduce the number of City Council districts from 9 to 6 and adding three councilors who would be elected citywide. The obvious result (and apparent intention of the idea's supporters) would be to dilute geographical representation in city government and to give a greater voice to those with the money to fund a citywide race.

A grassroots group called Tulsans Defending Democracy, made up of Tulsans across the ideological spectrum and from around the city, emerged to oppose the TBG proposal. If you want to go into depth on the pros and cons of at-large council representation, you'll find plenty of information at the TDD website, including the report of the Citizens' Commission on City Government. The commission, convened by then-Mayor Bill LaFortune, emphatically rejected the at-large concept.

Pearson continues to try to sell the line that city council disputes are caused by councilors selfishly pushing for their wards' interests over the interests of the city as a whole. In reality, the current debate is over a citywide issue, just as the disputes of 2004 and 2005 were. Back then the debates had to do with land use and suburban development and Great Plains Airlines; today the dispute has to do with budget cuts and public safety unions. Ward politics has nothing to do with it.

More later.

Last night (July 1, 2010), the Tulsa City Council postponed consideration of three proposed charter amendments involving the city election process.

Following the meeting, District 9 City Councilor G. T. Bynum was kind enough to send me some background information on the proposed amendments, including a link to the page on the tulsacouncil.org website with information on the Election Reform Task Force and its recommendations. The task force materials include research by council staff on election practices regarding independent candidates in other cities. I sent him seven questions in reply, and he answered those as well. Here (with his permission) is his first email to me:

Michael:

Regarding the charter amendments that weren't posted online, as soon as Councilor Eagleton brought that to my attention I agreed we should delay two weeks to allow for public review. It was my understanding that they had been posted, but clearly not.

All of the documents compiled during the task force (including the final findings) can be found on the Council website here: http://www.tulsacouncil.org/research--policy/resources/other-reports.aspx

The intent of the amendments - and these come from the task force's work over a couple of months, not from my invention - is to make the election system more equitable between partisan and independent candidates: to allow for the same filing requirements (either signatures or filing fees for either group), the same primary system, and the same run-off system (also proposed in the amendments).

I do think it is important to note that representatives of both the Republican and Democrat County parties were present and offered insight at most of the meetings. Representatives from Tulsans for Better Government spoke and offered their thoughts on nonpartisan elections. This wasn't just a few city councilors sitting around a table shooting the breeze.

I also think, after reading Mike Easterling's story, that it needs to be pointed out that I offered Mark Perkins repeated opportunities to participate and offer his insight from running as an Independent but he declined. Lawrence Kirkpatrick (the other Independent candidate for Mayor in 2009) did accept our invitation and had a great deal of experience to share on Independent candidacies.

Best Regards,

GT

Here are Bynum's responses to my questions. For clarity of presentation, I'm interleaving my questions with his responses:

1. Currently anyone can file as an independent candidate regardless of party registration. Will that still be possible under the proposed amendments?

1. I don't have the election law before me but I can tell you we didn't discuss that topic and none of the proposed changes address that. I'm not certain existing law allows that, as I recall hearing complaints that Mark Perkins (a registered Republican) shouldn't have been allowed to file as an Independent but no one called him on it during the period immediately after filing when challenges can be made.

2. Do the proposed amendments provide for runoffs in general elections or special elections?

2. Only primary elections are addressed.

3. Who raised the concern regarding equity for independent candidates?

3. In our discussion with Independent Mayoral candidates (where Mr. Kirkpatrick showed up and Mr. Perkins declined the invite), Mr. Kirkpatrick made a strong case for allowing Independent candidates to pay a filing fee just like partisan candidates. He said he thought a primary for Independents would be fair if the filing requirements were the same for everyone (partisans and Indies). And, if my memory serves correct, some councilors felt that they would prefer to be able to assemble a petition rather than pay a filing fee - that this would open it up (particularly Council races) to more candidates

4. What specific examples of harm to particular candidates have occurred as a result of the current situation -- e.g. someone who intended to run as an independent but was deterred by the petition requirement?

4. No specific instances of harm were raised.

5. You mention representatives of Tulsans for Better Government. Who were the individuals who participated in the task force discussions on behalf of that organization?

5. Reuben Davis spoke on behalf of Tulsans for Better Government. Chris Medlock was there that day representing the GOP at Sally Bell's request. No Democrat Party representative was present, but several Democratic councilors (particularly Councilor Turner) offered their thoughts on the issue.

6. A group called Tulsans Defending Democracy was organized in 2005 to oppose Tulsans for Better Government's proposal for at-large councilors. A few representatives each from TDD and TBG were appointed by Bill LaFortune to his citizens' commission on city government. Were any representatives of TDD invited to participate in the Election Reform Task Force?

6. No. To be honest, I'm embarassed to say this is the first I've heard of TDD (I was in DC when all of that occurred) but did want to balance out TBG, which is why we originally invited both Party chairs. The Party input was very helpful so we ended up inviting them to each subsequent meeting. Mr. Medlock in particular had a lot of knowledge about how races are conducted around the country and historically in Tulsa.

7. Are there minutes or recordings of task force meetings?

7. I know Council staff was there taking notes, and each meeting was posted. I am copying my Council aide, Nick Doctor, who can assist in that regard. Also, League of Women Voters attended every meeting and took notes - not that this would count as minutes but they might have some info that our minutes don't cover.

I still haven't seen the actual amendments. If Bynum's answer to question 1 is accurate, the proposal could bring about non-partisan elections in all but name. The charter allows anyone, regardless of party registration, to run as an independent provided they can put together 300 signatures. Mark Perkins, a registered Republican, did this in 2009. In 1986, under the old City Charter, Patty Eaton, who had filed as a Democrat for reelection as Water and Sewer Commissioner, filed as an independent for Mayor after the primary defeat of incumbent Democrat Terry Young by Tom Quinn.

By allowing a filing fee (really a deposit, refundable if the candidate receives enough votes) in lieu of a petition, more candidates are likely to opt for an independent run, particularly if the proposal for an "independent primary" is not put before or approved by the voters.

Here's the current Tulsa City Charter language:

SECTION 3.2. FILING FOR OFFICE--INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES. Any person who desires to be an independent candidate for a city office shall file with the Election Board of Tulsa County or its successor a Declaration of Candidacy which shall state:

A. The name and residence street address of the person as it appears on the voter registration records; and

B. The name of the office sought.

The Declaration of Candidacy of the independent candidate shall have attached a supporting petition which shall be signed by at least three hundred (300) qualified electors from the city at large if the independent candidate seeks the office of Mayor or City Auditor or from the election district if the independent candidate seeks the office of Councilor from an election district.

There were similar provisions in the 1908 Tulsa City Charter (from the 1917 edition of Compiled Ordinances of Tulsa):

3. In case a primary election is held pursuant to the call or under the direction of any political party, or of any association of individuals for the nomination of candidates for the offices of Mayor and Commissioners and City Auditor, the candidates or persons voted for in said primary election shall be voted for at large by all of the legally qualified voters in said City according to and in the manner now or hereafter provided by the general election law of the State of Oklahoma.

Independent candidates for Mayor or for positions on said Board of Commissioners or for City Auditor shall be entitled to have their names placed on the official ballot to be used in the regular election by filing with the City Auditor, not less than ten days before such election, a written petition therefor , which shall be signed by such candidate and by at least one hundred qualified voters of said city.

(The 1908 charter also provided for a runoff ("second election") if no one received a majority of the vote in the "regular election". If someone has a version of the charter from the 1980s, just before the change, I'd love to have a copy.)

I do find it hard to believe that this push for charter amendments is at the behest of Lawrence Kirkpatrick, a perennial candidate without much of a constituency. The question remains: Who is pushing for this? Why now? Where is the problem that these amendments are supposed to solve?

The investigative report commissioned by the Tulsa City Council regarding Mayor Dewey F. Bartlett Jr. and Chief of Staff Terry Simonson is now online at the tulsacouncil.org website. The investigation concerned statements made by Bartlett Jr and Simonson regarding a particular Federal grant (JAG) that might be used to prevent or reduce the number of police layoffs. The Council forwarded the report to the city prosecutor without recommending for or against prosecution for the misdemeanor of making false statements to the City Council.

I have skimmed the report. I don't know if or when I'll have time to read and analyze this 90-page report in depth. From what I read, my sense is that the new administration was wrestling with the complex terms and conditions of this Federal program to ensure that Tulsa would not be penalized for applying the funds in violation of Federal law.

Compliance with Federal regs is a big deal. Recall that Tulsa was penalized to the tune of $1.5 million in 2008 by the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for the city's failure to supervise Tulsa Development Authority's use of Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds and scolded again by HUD in 2009. In 2004 the U. S. Department of Transportation's Inspector General labeled the plan to use passenger service fees to cover, indirectly, the default of Great Plains Airlines as a "misuse of airport funds". In a separate report, the DOT OIG also "found instances where the Tulsa Airport Authority's procurements of professional services, which were funded by the Airport Improvement Program, did not adhere to FAA's required competitive-selection procedures... conflicts of interest on the part of former authority officials, poor recordkeeping by the authority."

Thinking about this in moral, rather than legal, terms (because I haven't studied the specific terms of the JAG grant): If the purpose of a Federal grant is to increase the number of police officers, taking the grant and leaving the TPD headcount the same would amount to diverting the grant to fund other city departments, since money is fungible. It would make sense for the Federal grant to come with certain conditions to prevent that sort of misuse.

Deliberate deception by one branch of government of another is a serious matter and ought to result in some sort of penalty. I'm not convinced that that is what occurred in this case, although I am open to persuasion based on the facts presented in this report.

Lest anyone think I'm being spun by the Mayor's office or regurgitating their talking points, it should be obvious to long-time BatesLine readers that there's no love lost between me and the Bartlett Jr Administration. I've not been contacted by anyone in the Mayor's Office since Bartlett Jr's inauguration nor have I made any effort to contact anyone in the administration.

On tonight's (Thursday, July 1, 2010) Tulsa City Council agenda are three proposed amendments to the Tulsa City Charter:

8. COUNCIL ITEMS c. Proposed Charter Amendment: Independent candidates will have the same filing requirements as partisan candidates, allowing either a filing fee or a petition with the required number of signatures. (Bynum) [UED 6/29/10] 10-446-7
8. COUNCIL ITEMS d. Proposed Charter Amendment: Adopt the State of Oklahoma's practices for run-off elections, requiring a majority of votes for a primary election victory. (Bynum) [UED 6/29/10] 10-446-8
8. COUNCIL ITEMS e. Proposed Charter Amendment: The City should provide for primary elections for independent candidates, in addition to those held for partisan candidates. (Eagleton) [UED 6/29/10] 10-446-9

I would like to provide you with a detailed analysis of the proposals and the pros and cons of each, but I can't. The text of the proposed amendments is not available on the tulsacouncil.org website. Ordinarily, there's a link next to each agenda item which leads to "backup material," which in this case should be the text of the proposed amendment, the proposed ballot title, and the rationale behind the proposal, but that hasn't been provided, either on tonight's agenda or on last Tuesday's Urban and Economic Development committee agenda, when the items were previously discussed.

All I know of the proposals so far has been relayed to me over the phone. Late last week I spoke to Mike Easterling for his UTW story on the three proposals from G. T. Bynum's Election Reform Task Force. When Mike called, I couldn't talk at length at the moment, but I asked him if he had something in writing that he could forward to me, so that I could look at it before giving him my thoughts. He told me all he knew had been conveyed to him in a phone call.

I'm asking the City Council not to take action on these proposals tonight. The public has not been provided with the text or rationale for the changes. The report of Bynum's task force is not available on the Council website, either.

To borrow a phrase from the Sunlight Foundation, which promotes government transparency, "public equals online." If it's not online, it's not really public. The public should have a chance to read, digest, and comment on these proposals before they're considered for the November ballot.

If the aim is to get charter amendments on the November general election ballot, the City Council has two more months before the 60-day deadline. From what little I've been able to gather about the proposals, they seem half-baked, won't address genuine problems with our current system, and may create additional problems if approved. The problems may be even worse if only one or two of the three ideas are adopted.

We're already dealing with the unintended consequences of an ill-considered charter amendment approved last fall which will require the City of Tulsa to spend the money to develop its own election infrastructure. (Because the three-year staggered terms for councilors will result in fall elections in even-numbered years on dates not authorized by state statute for elections, Tulsa won't be able to use the Tulsa County Election Board's ballot scanners, personnel, and precinct organization.) Let's not rush to put another half-baked idea on the ballot.

UTW has an interesting cover story this week about Terry Simonson, chief of staff to Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr, written by Mike Easterling with photos by Michael Cooper.

The story begins with Simonson filing for mayor just before the deadline in 1998. I was there when it happened. I had gone to the County Election Board to file for the open District 4 City Council seat earlier in the afternoon, but learned I needed to have my declaration of candidacy notarized, so I drove over to Swinney's Hardware in Whittier Square, which had a notary in-house. When I returned to hand in my declaration, Terry was there with a couple of other people, at the other end of the counter, filling out his paper work.

Terry made a good run in 1998. He had solid grassroots support. He had been doing a good job as Republican Party chairman, taking over after a contentious period, bringing a degree of harmony and refocusing the party apparatus on the nuts and bolts of organizing volunteers and supporting candidates. In 1997, when Mayor Susan Savage and the Tulsa Metro Chamber proposed increasing sales taxes, hotel/motel taxes, and car rental taxes to build an arena, a natatorium, and a soccer stadium stadium downtown, Simonson, as GOP party chairman, was a leader of the opposition, debating Savage on TV. The measure -- known as the Tulsa Project -- was defeated resoundingly.

But by the time 2002 rolled around, Simonson had lost credibility with the grassroots. When arena supporters hijacked the Convention and Tourism Task Force in 2000, Simonson, who was co-chairman of the community outreach committee, raised no protest. Had he spoken out, we might have been able to keep the task force on track to produce a holistic approach to maximizing Tulsa's tourist appeal, rather than just a justification for yet another big-project tax package. When a near-repeat of the Tulsa Project was put on the ballot, with a more burdensome tax package than in 1997, Simonson didn't help to defeat it.

In general, the refreshing boldness that characterized Simonson in the 1990s seemed to be replaced by a cautious deference to the big players in local politics. I was one of a number of people who happily supported Simonson in 1998 who spent 2001 looking for a better candidate to back in 2002. The fact that Terry's most notable supporter was John Benjamin, one of my all-time least favorite city councilors and a prominent Chamberpot, only confirmed my gut feeling that Simonson was not the right man for the mayor's office. (My eventual pick, Bill LaFortune, turned out to be a disappointment, too. The first sign, within a couple of months of taking office, was his reappointment of Joe Westervelt to the TMAPC. The second was his allowing the city's vision summit, which had huge popular support and could have led to a PLANiTULSA-like process for a comprehensive vision for the city's future, to be diverted into a hodgepodge of unrelated public works projects.)

From the UTW profile it appears that some of Terry's boldness has returned. I believe he genuinely wants to address Tulsa's fiscal problems, but he and his boss have failed to build the kind of coalition needed to support radical change. The way you campaign affects the way you can govern. Bartlett Jr didn't talk about the fiscal mess that he needed to fix, because that meant attacking Kathy Taylor, whom he had endorsed for re-election. Instead he ran on a platform of not having contributed to Barack Obama's campaign. That didn't give him much of a mandate for the hard steps that needed to be taken. It appears that Bartlett Jr and Simonson have managed to alienate many of the leaders and officials who might otherwise have helped mobilize support for difficult reforms.

One last note: I don't really get the effort to investigate Simonson regarding the JAG grant. I wish there had been as much determination to hold decision-makers to account over the Great Plains Airlines fiasco or to pursue TDA's mistreatment of Will and Cecilia Wilkins. Those issues seem far more significant. I do, however, respect the Council's assertion of their rights as a coequal branch of government, and I'm happy that the councilors are united in defending their institutional prerogatives. It wasn't that many years ago that we had a significant number of councilors who felt that it wasn't their business to challenge the mayor on anything.

UPDATE 2010/06/18: It passed as expected, 6-3. Now it goes to Mayor Bartlett's desk, and we're about to find out whether he is the conservative he claimed to be during the campaign.

A month ago, I wrote about a proposal authored by Tulsa City Councilor G. T. Bynum adding "sexual orientation" to the city's human resources anti-discrimination policy. Tonight that proposal comes before the Tulsa City Council for approval, and six councilors -- the three Democrats plus Republicans Bynum, Bill Christiansen, and Chris Trail -- have voiced support. As I wrote last month, I thought we had a solid majority of conservatives on the council, but it appears I badly miscounted. Even the three councilors who voiced opposition were tentative in their remarks, as if they knew they should be against this, but couldn't articulate the reasons.

Bynum has presented this proposition as if it were a matter of "live and let live" -- not intruding into the private life of an employee or applicant. Bynum is either naive or disingenuous. The ultimate use to which these propositions are put is to silence those who hold traditional opinions of homosexual behavior. The only permitted opinion about homosexual behavior will be approval and celebration.

Today's (2010/06/17) edition of the comic strip "The Meaning of Lila" shows where all this is going. An employee complains to his company's HR manager about the comments of a coworker.

HR: I'm sorry, Boyd, but there are no laws protecting sexual orientation in Ohio. If Brittany made racist comments or sexually harassed you, we could take some action.

Boyd: You mean Brittany can say anything she wants about gays?

HR: Legally, yes.

Boyd: So there's nothing I can do?

HR: Come back when you're 40, and we can look into age discrimination.

What horrifying thing could Brittany have said to prompt Boyd to complain about her to HR?

She expressed opposition to gay marriage.

In Monday's strip, Brittany hears Boyd, her cube-mate, talking about attending a gay coworker's wedding in Iowa. She says, "Gays can't get married." When Boyd told her that Iowa allows it, she replied, "How did that sneak by?"

On Tuesday, Brittany says to Boyd, "Don't get me wrong. I'm totally cool about gays. I just don't think you should get married."

That was provocation enough to prompt Boyd's complaint to HR that Brittany was making "homophobic comments."

The company in the strip didn't have the kind of rule that G. T. Bynum is pushing, so the character that voiced her opposition, in very mild terms, to gay marriage couldn't be punished for her opinion.

Yes, I know it's only a comic strip, but it's a reflection of the real-world effort by those who want to tear down sexual morality to push aside those who stand in their way, however meekly.

And as I pointed out last month, these rules aren't just about silencing opinions in the workplace but are weapons that can be wielded against religious coworkers any time a homosexual employee feels slighted.

The real effect of Bynum's push to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation is to add another pretext for someone to sue the city. An unsuccessful job applicant, a city employee passed over for a promotion, someone demoted or dismissed for poor performance -- any of them could claim "it's because I'm gay" and file a formal complaint.

With such a complaint, the focus shifts from the performance, attitude, and capabilities of the disgruntled employee or applicant to the moral opinions of the manager or supervisor who made the decision. The supervisor would be hauled up before the Civil Rights Commission and Exhibit A in the hearing would be the paperback New Testament on her bookshelf or the poster on her cubicle wall of a basket of kittens with a verse of scripture beneath. The supervisor's membership in a church that teaches that homosexual behavior is sinful (e.g., Bynum's own Roman Catholic Church) would create a presumption of guilt that the supervisor's hiring decision or disciplinary action was based in bigotry.

After the system makes an example of a couple of city supervisors, they'll learn to cut their "out and proud" homosexual employees extra slack, just to avoid the hassle of justifying themselves to the Civil Rights Commission. This sort of thing is already happening in Europe and Canada. Ultimately, "anti-discrimination" laws to protect homosexuals are used to persecute those who hold to views of sexual morality which within living memory spanned all major religions and all civilized cultures and which are still held by the vast majority of Oklahomans.

It should also be said that the proposal backed by Bynum puts the city in the position of taking a moral and religious stand that makes abnormal sexual behavior morally equivalent to being born with a certain skin color or coming from a certain ethnic background.

It should be noted that, while the new rule would not affect private business in Tulsa -- yet -- it does set a precedent that will make it easier for activists to push for similar rules in private companies. Part of Bynum's justification for his proposal is that other cities and major companies are doing it.

If you object to our "conservative" city councilors moving Tulsa city government further toward socially liberal political correctness, please speak up today. Call your councilor at 918-596-192x, substituting your district number for x. So, for example, G. T. Bynum in District 9 may be reached at 918-596-1929; District 8's Bill Christiansen is at 918-596-1928; and District 5's Chris Trail is at 918-596-1925. You may also be able to reach councilors Christiansen and Trail through their businesses, Christiansen Aviation and Ike's Chili Parlor.

Bynum also has some budget proposals to bring forward tonight. I'm happy about that, but budgets come and go. What Bynum is doing with this sexual orientation proposal is unlikely to be undone -- public policy is like a ratchet, and once it moves in a liberal direction, it's very difficult and costly, if not impossible, to move it back.

MORE: If you're unfamiliar with the "ratchet effect," it's a phrase originated by Keith Joseph, Margaret Thatcher's political mentor, in reference to the seemingly inevitable shift toward socialism and away from economic freedom in Britain, but the term's use has been generalized to social policy by the observation that movement away from traditional values is almost never reversed. There's an excellent essay in the Red State archives on the ratchet effect and its application to morality and society. Here's an excerpt:

In addition to the skill of ratcheting the nation's policies continually leftward, the Left possesses a remarkable facility in permanently fixing their aims into place. Through the illegitimate exploitation of the courts, a multitude of important issues has been effectively eliminated from the public square of legislative discourse. The Left's success in removing critical social and cultural matters completely off the table and beyond the reach of `government by the people' is a perversely admirable achievement. Re-reading the Johnson and Ponnuru excerpts leaves one incredulous at the overwhelming nature of the Left's triumph. No matter how difficult the admission is for conservatives, the Left has run the table.

It is tempting to attribute the one-way street of social liberalization to the inevitable and uncontrollable forces of modernization and secularization. Others of a more suspicious cast of mind believe that resorting to explanations of invisible social forces is nothing more than a smoke screen to conceal the fingerprints of human agency in the Left's success. The latter is far closer to the mark as argued in The True and Only Heaven by Christopher Lasch and The Secular Revolution by Christian Smith. The dubious assumption that modernization equals secularization has been advanced and employed by "various interest groups...in the service of their own quest for power, usually at the expense of religion and religious institutions." [Quote courtesy of First Things]

Any councilor voting in support of this leftward shift is either not really a conservative or too naive to be trusted with higher office.

I was fairly stunned to see the following message, from Tulsa District 9 City Councilor G. T. Bynum, on my Facebook news feed Thursday afternoon:

Proud to see Civil Service Commission approve proposal by Councilor Barnes & me banning City HR discrimination based on sexual orientation.

(Bynum crossposted the same comment to Twitter.)

I wasn't surprised to see District 4 Councilor Maria Barnes's name in connection with the proposal. She's a social liberal, and when I endorsed her for City Council, I felt certain that there would be at least six socially conservative councilors to block any left-wing initiative or appointment. I'm wondering now if I counted wrong.

Amid hearty attaboys from Bynum's left-of-center Facebook friends, I asked the question, "Why did you feel this was an important issue to push at the moment?" My question was seen by one of Bynum's congratulators as an attack, and I was instructed to "get with the program" because "it's the 21st century" -- this from a Democratic ally on fiscal issues who surely knows me well enough to know I don't leap aboard bandwagons. In response I said I thought it was a fair question and one with interesting implications for Bynum's political future.

Bynum responded a few hours later:

Michael, I think it's a very fair question. I spoke at a council candidate forum put on by Oklahomans For Equality back during the campaign, and the issue was raised that gay and lesbian employees of the Tulsa City government don't enjoy the same protections as those in other cities. I was surprised, and agreed to do what I could to fix that situation. As a conservative who believes in keeping the government out of our private lives, I don't think an employee's sexual orientation is the City's business and shouldn't play a role in HR. As to my political future, an old mentor of mine wisely advised me after I got elected to the Council that if I made decisions based on my political future I'd be a lousy elected official. I try to keep that advice in mind.

(As I reread that quote, I thought, "Wouldn't it be nice if GT Bynum were as devoted to giving Tulsa's historic buildings, neighborhoods, and commercial districts the kind of protections that they enjoy in other cities?" His vote last Thursday night in support of Eric Gomez's nomination to the TMAPC isn't an encouraging sign.)

I would have thought that a conservative who worked for Senator Tom Coburn would be able to see through noble-sounding phrases like "Oklahomans for Equality" and "anti-discrimination" to the reality of the agenda or program underlying those words -- you know, the program I'm supposed to get with because it's the 21st century. I'd have thought a conservative would object to the term "sexual orientation," with its implication of the unscientific notion of the "gay gene" and its undermining of one's personal responsibility for one's sexual choices.

Most of all, I'd have thought a conservative who worked for Tom Coburn would get the idea of unintended consequences. The real effect of Bynum's push to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation is to add another pretext for someone to sue the city. An unsuccessful job applicant, a city employee passed over for a promotion, someone demoted or dismissed for poor performance -- any of them could claim "it's because I'm gay" and file a formal complaint.

With such a complaint, the focus shifts from the performance, attitude, and capabilities of the disgruntled employee or applicant to the moral opinions of the manager or supervisor who made the decision. The supervisor would be hauled up before the Civil Rights Commission and Exhibit A in the hearing would be the paperback New Testament on her bookshelf or the poster on her cubicle wall of a basket of kittens with a verse of scripture beneath. The supervisor's membership in a church that teaches that homosexual behavior is sinful (e.g., Bynum's own Roman Catholic Church) would be create a presumption of guilt that the supervisor's hiring decision or disciplinary action was based in bigotry.

After the system makes an example of a couple of city supervisors, they'll learn to cut their "out and proud" homosexual employees extra slack, just to avoid the hassle of justifying themselves to the Civil Rights Commission. This sort of thing is already happening in Europe and Canada. Ultimately, "anti-discrimination" laws to protect homosexuals are used to persecute those who hold to views of sexual morality which within living memory spanned all major religions and all civilized cultures and which are still held by the vast majority of Oklahomans.

It should also be said that the proposal backed by Bynum puts the city in the position of taking a moral and religious stand that makes abnormal sexual behavior morally equivalent to being born with a certain skin color or coming from a certain ethnic background.

I'm disappointed that a professed conservative like G. T. Bynum wouldn't understand all this. I'm hopeful that the conservatives on the City Council will use their power to overturn the proposal.

RELATED:

I was surprised to learn recently that G. T. Bynum was no longer with Williams & Williams but had set up his own Federal lobbying firm. GT Bynum Consulting has three clients listed with the Senate Office of Public Records as of April 25, 2010, according to OpenSecrets.org (fields are client, total, and industry):

  • George Kaiser Family Foundation, $20,000, Human Rights
  • Williams & Williams Marketing Services, $10,000, Unknown Business
  • City of Miami, FL, $0, Civil Servants

Last year, in 2009, GKFF gave all of its Washington lobbying business -- $150,000 -- to powerhouse law firm Akin Gump. So far in 2010, GKFF has spent $40,000, divided evenly between Akin Gump and G. T. Bynum.

MORE:

Here's an example of the use of "diversity" and "non-discrimination" policies to punish dissenting views of homosexuality: Crystal Dixon was fired by the University of Toledo for a letter to the local newspaper, as a private individual, objecting to the misappropriation of the legacy of the civil rights movement by homosexual rights activists. Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Professor Rob Gagnon wrote a letter supporting Dixon and citing studies in peer-reviewed journal that undercut claims that same-sex attraction is as ingrained as skin color.

Pete Vere, co-author with Kathy Shaidle of Tyranny of Nice, explains how "Canada's human rights commissions and tribunals, originally founded to help socially-disadvantaged minorities seek redress against racism in government housing and services, have now turned their sights on Christians and pro-lifers," citing several examples both north and south of the 49th Parallel, including the case of the Christian owner of a small Toronto print shop fined for refusing to print stationery for a homosexual organization and the case of a Georgia counselor who was fired because she referred a lesbian couple to another counselor in the same office, citing a conflict with her religious convictions.

In a 2007 Daily Telegraph op-ed, James Mackay, former Lord Chancellor under two Conservative prime ministers, considers the impact of an anti-discrimination regulation then proposed by the Labour government on those who object to homosexual behavior on religious grounds.

TO COMMENTERS:

I'm not really interested in hearing from people who want to attack those who hold to traditional views of sexual behavior, and I won't be approving any comments along those lines. I am interested in hearing from social conservatives who want to debate for or against Bynum's actions from a social conservative perspective.

Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr's nomination of ousted City Councilor Eric Gomez to the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission is on tonight's City Council agenda. The nomination is likely to be defeated by a supermajority, based on public statements by the councilors, but it's still worth expressing your concern to your councilor, particularly if your councilor has expressed support for Gomez's nomination. If you're wondering why you should be concerned, please read my earlier entry on Eric Gomez's TMAPC nomination, which links to earlier evaluations of his record on zoning and development issues.

By the way, I notice that the agenda for tonight's meeting includes no backup information on Eric Gomez or the other mayoral nominees being considered tonight. The Council usually gets a fact sheet on each nominee, with a resume. Certainly a prospective planning commissioner's sources of income would be a matter of public interest, and in this case there are rumors of a connection between Gomez and a developer who is notoriously hostile to homeowners; those rumors need to be either confirmed or dispelled.

Under Oklahoma's Open Meetings Act, public bodies like cities are required to post agendas for upcoming meetings, so that citizens will know what issues may be discussed and what action may be taken. At the old Tulsa City Hall, this was accomplished by means of a cork bulletin board, inside a glass case near the walkway between City Hall and the council chamber. You could drive by any hour of the day or night and see the agenda for the City Council, the housing authority, the sign advisory board, and any other authority, board, commission, or task force.

At Tulsa's new City Hall, One Technology Center, the old school cork board has been replaced with a high-tech electronic display. Last week, that display failed to show the agenda for Thursday night's meeting when it failed to reboot automatically. As a result, the regular City Council meeting had to be postponed to last night, Monday.

The electronic system was touted as foolproof, over the objection of skeptics, like Council administrator Don Cannon:

Council Administrator Don Cannon said he's frustrated because he and others warned city officials that something like this could easily happen.

"We told them that a hard-copy backup was needed just in case," he said.

Cannon said he intends to post paper copies of the council's agendas by the television screens until some other backup system is developed. Monday's agendas were physically posted Thursday afternoon.

"The risk is just not worth it," he said. "There's a lot of things that are uncontrollable, but this is controllable."

City Councilor John Eagleton, the only councilor to vote against the City's acquisition of One Technology Center, had a brief comment about the situation: "I told you so."

It's a story from February 1, 2010, but I just saw it this week, via Troy Sappington on Facebook: a story in the London (Ontario) Free Press that prominently featured comments from Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr on police salaries and layoffs. The story was part of a series entitled "Protection at What Cost?: An occasional series examining the soaring cost of emergency services.

Three years after they're sworn in on the force, in some cases with little more than the minimum high school diploma and 12 weeks' training, London police officers get a base salary that tops $80,000.

That wouldn't surprise other police and firefighters in Ontario, whose salaries are closely tethered by unions that demand it and police boards that often give in.

But south of the border, jaws drop.

In U.S. cities where there are more murders in a month than London has in a year, police are surprised when told how much police are paid here and how that has changed so quickly over time.

"It's really a death spiral," said Dewey Bartlett Jr., mayor of Tulsa, Okla., where senior officers max out at $62,783 US.

Bartlett, too, deals with police unions and did so last week without an arms-length police board or provincial arbitrator to get in his way.

With Tulsa facing a budget crisis and needing to cut $7 million from its police budget, Bartlett gave cops a choice: Agree to a 5% wage cut and rollbacks or he'd lay off 155 officers -- nearly 20% of the force.

The police association said no.

Last Friday, police administrators were preparing pink slips.

"In this part of the country, unions aren't a way of life. (The police association) was selfish and greedy, rather than what people expect of a police officer," Bartlett said.

What wasn't said in the story was that similar cuts were required from other city departments. The Firefighters Union made a different choice than the FOP, picking pay cuts over layoffs.

The story goes on to look at the pros and cons of high police salaries in London, where a "three-year officer is paid nearly 2 1/2 times more than a typical London adult," and the disconnect in Ontario between those who set police salaries and those responsible for setting municipal budget priorities.

MORE: Stephen Malanga in the Spring 2010 City Journal on the role of government employee unions (teachers', public safety, and SEIU) in California's budget crisis.

"He is either totally clueless or absolutely in your face, one of the two."

"I guess he wants everybody mad at him."

"He's appointing a councilor that threatened to sue one of his constituents over a planning issue to the planning commission?"

Eric Gomez, former Tulsa City CouncilorThose were the instantaneous reactions of my lovely bride to the news that Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr has nominated former Councilor Eric Gomez to the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission. ("He" meaning Mayor Bartlett Jr.)

At this moment, the TMAPC is considering whether to approve a new comprehensive plan, deciding whether to substantially approve the plan that came out of the two-year-long PLANiTULSA process or whether to remodel it to suit a couple of squeaky-wheel developers named John Bumgarner and Joe Westervelt -- developers who happen to have donated to Eric Gomez's recent unsuccessful campaign for City Council. Bartlett Jr's nomination of Gomez sends a clear message to the thousands of Tulsans who invested their hopes and energy into the PLANiTULSA process: It's going to be business as usual -- a continuation of the bad land use planning decisions of the past -- if Bartlett Jr gets his way.

Before last fall's election, I set out a long list of bad decisions by Eric Gomez during his brief, single term of office. One prime example: Approving Bumgarner's Folly -- a straight rezoning of most of a large, formerly residential block near Cherry Street, a block that is now vacant and apparently will be for a long time:

During his term of office, Eric Gomez has offered no resistance to bad development plans that set bad precedents. Now we're stuck with an ugly open lot at 14th and Utica where there used to be homes and sturdy brick apartment buildings. Gomez voted to rezone that land to OH -- Office High Intensity. It was a straight rezoning, not a PUD, so (under our outdated zoning code) there are no requirements to encourage compatibility with the investments of neighboring property owners. Gomez accepted the developer's proposal to put development conditions in a covenant, which could only be enforced by the city filing a lawsuit, rather than a PUD, which can be enforced by administrative action.

Gomez voted for the PUD for the Bomasada development on 39th east of Peoria, despite the project's violation of the very recently adopted Brookside Infill Plan, which is officially part of our Comprehensive Plan.

Both projects have been halted by the economy's decline, but we're stuck with the bad zoning decisions regardless, and the precedents they set to put development conditions in hard-to-enforce covenants and to ignore a recently crafted and adopted portion of the Comprehensive Plan.

As I wrote in endorsing Eric Gomez's defeat last November:

One of the key issues at this point in Tulsa's history, as we move toward adoption of a new Comprehensive Plan, is whether we have land use rules that are fair, clear, consistently applied, and that encourage compatible new development or whether we continue to allow developers to warp those rules and to build in ways that undermine the investments of neighboring property owners. Maria Barnes is on the right side of that issue. Eric Gomez is on the wrong side.

And as my wife noted, Eric Gomez is emphatically on the wrong side of the related issues of (a) keeping homeowners in the dark and (b) threatening to sue someone for criticizing his political actions.

While I supported Gomez in 2004, when he ran as a neighborhood advocate against the development lobby's pick -- incumbent Tom Baker -- he's changed since then. Now a developer himself, he's wholeheartedly adopted the agenda of the "build anything I want anywhere I want" development community, and he's attacked even mild, watered-down versions of the kinds of laws our peer cities use to allow change to occur in a predictable way that protects the stability and character of neighborhoods.

In answer to the question in the title of this post: No, I don't think Mayor Bartlett Jr is serious about his nomination of Eric Gomez. Gomez has at most three supporters on the council, and I suspect those three are mainly a matter of friendship rather than endorsement of his planning philosophy. This nomination is a delaying tactic, I believe, to reset the 60-day clock and prevent the City Council from appointing Al Nichols, a long-time neighborhood leader from east Tulsa who would bring both geographical and (as someone not involved in real estate or development) professional balance to the TMAPC.

A political friend of mine opined that Councilor Maria Barnes (who was beaten by Gomez in 2008 and beat him in 2009) would "show her [posterior]" over this appointment -- in other words, make a fool of herself by loudly opposing the nomination of her political rival. I disagreed. She doesn't have to say a word and likely won't. A majority of her colleagues are already well aware that Eric Gomez is the wrong choice for the TMAPC, particularly at this crucial time in the development of a Tulsa's first comprehensive plan in a generation.

MORE: Here's an example of Eric Gomez's philosophy of zoning from a 2008 candidate forum:

"Doesn't all zoning infringe on property rights, and if so, why is the idea of conservation district different from that? Why is it a further infringement on property rights that are already infringed by zoning?"

Gomez's verbatim reply: "We already regulate land use. We already regulate what you can and cannot do with your property. When people buy a property, they look at what the policies are, they understand what the zoning is, and if that should change, there has to be a--it's a fine line, I believe, between private property rights and zoning, and absent of covenants that are not easily enforceable, when you buy a property in an older neighborhood--I live in an older neighborhood--you do understand that these things may happen and it, um..." As his voice trailed off to a mumble, he sat down.

AND FINALLY: At a candidate forum last fall, Eric Gomez responded to a question (click for video) about public officials suing their constituents, as he threatened to do, but he wasn't too excited about his response being recorded for posterity.

Back in January, Tulsa City Councilor John Eagleton sent a 12-page letter to Mayor Dewey F. Bartlett Jr. expressing his concerns about City Attorney Deirdre Dexter's competence to continue serve in that capacity. Dexter, a former associate district judge, was appointed as interim city attorney in December 2006, as one of then-Mayor Kathy Taylor's at-will employees. Dexter became the permanent city attorney a year later.

Eagleton's letter to Bartlett included detailed, footnoted discussions of eight cases where Eagleton believes Dexter has failed to serve the best interests of her client, the City of Tulsa.

1. Failing to alert the Council to a conflict between state law and the election date specified by the charter amendment, adopted last fall, which calls for three-year staggered terms;
2. Issuing conflicting opinions, reversing years of precedent, on the extent to which and manner in which city employees could participate in partisan city elections;
3. Incorrectly identifying a low-turnout citywide special election as the basis for the number of signatures needed for the non-partisan election petition;
4. Failing to provide timely advice concerning an ordinance that would compel city employees to cooperate with a City Auditor investigation;
5. Failing to providing an accurate summary of (and apparently failing to research) the case law affecting a proposal to require permitted LED billboards to display public safety information during emergencies;
6. Allowing a collective bargaining agreement to include terms that violated the 2007 ordinance limiting take-home vehicles to city employees;
7. Failing to give timely and accurate advice to the City Council concerning the Owen vs. City of Tulsa settlement conference as to whether the case would be covered by the newly passed charter amendment requiring Council approval of settlements exceeding $1 million;
8. Failing to properly advise or defend the City of Tulsa regarding the Great Plains Airlines lawsuit and the settlement of the case for over $7 million.

Last week, there was a story about Eagleton's letter in the daily paper. Subsequently, Eagleton has released the text of the letter on his website with this introduction:

Recently the Tulsa World ran an article regarding a letter that I sent to Mayor Bartlett in January, detailing my concerns about City Attorney Deirdre Dexter's ability to adequately fulfill her role for the City. I would like to share that letter here so that you can read firsthand my reasons for thinking Ms. Dexter is unfit to serve in her current position. This was a letter I shared with the City Council and the Mayor. If you should read it and find within it something you believe to be a factual inaccuracy, I would appreciate it if you would share it with me.

To his credit, Eagleton sought to handle this quietly back in January. As a recently elected mayor, Bartlett could have replaced Dexter without surprising anyone, as she was an at-will employee of the previous mayor.

Eagleton's case against Dexter is a strong one. Here's his summary of the last case he cited, the settlement of the Great Plains Airlines lawsuit:

This issue arises out of Mrs. Dexter's failure to properly advise or defend her client regarding the legal defenses and issues surrounding a lawsuit. Due to lack of competent counsel, the City of Tulsa settled a lawsuit against it for over seven million dollars ($7,000,000.00).

Defenses for the City of Tulsa included statute of limitations, governmental tort claims act, and common law. These defenses were either not explained with sufficient clarity for the City to make a proper decision, not pursued with due diligence, or if explained to the Mayor (a recent board member of the de facto Plaintiff), Mrs Dexter was under an obligation to notify other elected officials of the Mayor's specific intent to pay the plaintiff regardless of the law on the issue.

Since Mayor LaFortune refused to agree to the same settlement, presumably because he believed it was an unlawful and completely defensible, Mrs. Dexter was under a duty to notify the Council of the Mayor's conflict of interest and receive their input as well, before settling a 7,000,000.00 case without a fight.

As a result, the day the plaintiff filed an amended petition naming the City of Tulsa as a defendant, the City submitted its Answer. The next day a joint motion for approval of settlement was submitted, parties appeared before the judge, and it was approved.

Mrs. Dexter's inability to properly advise the Mayor or the Council of the legal defenses and the weight to be given to each, caused the taxpayers of the City of Tulsa to pay a judgment they had little or no legal responsibility for. There is currently a qui tam action pending as an attempt by some taxpayers to recover the monies paid to the plaintiff.

Dexter may have been doing exactly what Mayor Taylor wanted, but she had a responsibility to serve the interests of the entire city, not just Taylor and her cronies.

(Here's my take on the Great Plains Airlines settlement from my July 2, 2008, column.)

The City Attorney is entrusted by charter to act as the chief legal authority for the City of Tulsa. Structurally, however, the City Attorney is accountable only to the Mayor. I have long advocated for a charter change to give the City Council the right to hire its own attorney independent of the City Attorney's office. (The City Council has been blessed with very good attorneys -- the latest being Drew Rees -- but they officially work for the City Attorney.) I also believe that mayors should be able to hire and fire department heads, just as the president can hire and fire cabinet members, but only with the advice and consent of the City Council.

In several of the cases cited by Eagleton, the errors and failures had the effect of serving the political interests of Mayor Taylor and her allies. Whatever ultimately happens to Deirdre Dexter, Tulsans need to address the bigger, structural problem with the way the City Attorney is appointed and with the office's powers and responsibilities.

It's opening day for the Tulsa Drillers at Oneok Field, and some of the downtown property owners who are forced to pay for its construction filed a petition today for summary judgment in their lawsuit to overturn the assessment for the Tulsa Stadium Improvement District.

The case against the ballpark assessment seems pretty solid. State law requires that an assessment be used to pay for improvements that provide a direct benefit to those subject to the assessment. In Oklahoma City, assessments for maintenance of Bricktown, the Bricktown Canal, and the Conncourse (the underground tunnel system connecting downtown buildings), pay assessments based on a formula. The more you benefit from the improvements and their maintenance, the more you pay. The same thing was true for the previous downtown assessment, which was in part proportional to proximity to the Main Mall. The current assessment is a flat rate per sq. ft. of land and sq. ft. of building, applied equally to properties across the street from the new ballpark to properties over a mile away.

More excerpts after the jump, but the point of law that jumped out on me was part III of the petition:

Oklahoma Const. Article 10 §26 protects the citizens from government run amuck. It protects the citizens from long term financial obligation without a vote of the people. A stadium is exactly the sort of municipal building project that should be paid for by all of the property owners in the city after approval by a three-fifths majority of the voters. The City of Tulsa cannot avoid this constitutional requirement by the legal legerdemain of labeling the project a local improvement, and decreeing that it shall be paid by assessment by a relatively small group of arbitrarily selected property owners. A ninety million dollar assessment, almost sixty million of which is to service debt incurred to build new ballpark and for which the people forced to pay receive nothing in return,--not even box seats or season tickets-- is a coercive use of government authority so unfair and oppressive as to shock the conscience, and in violation of clearly stated statutory and constitutional protections.

The point and purpose of the constitutional provision cited above is to protect the citizens from exactly what has happened here. Admittedly, the City itself theoretically escaped obligation through the artifice of creating a public trust, but the constitutional provision is there for the protection of the citizens who would ultimately be forced to pay the financial obligation. The fact that the City has essential laundered the obligation through a trust does not alter the essential constitutional principle at issue. Furthermore, the fact that rather than the cost of a new stadium being born evenly by the entire city, this 60 million dollar burden has been thrust upon the shoulders of a very few makes it all the more egregious, the damage more significant and all the more deserving of constitutional limitation. For the reason that the City of Tulsa may not evade the restrictions of Article 10 § 26 by engaging in the fiction that this is a local improvement, this assessment district is unconstitutional and should be declared unconstitutional, and null and void by the court.

That same constitutional provision should have protected Tulsans from getting stuck with the tab for Great Plains Airlines, should have prevented the pledging of a municipal trust's asset as collateral without a vote of the people.

A lot of my friends hail Kathy Taylor as a visionary mayor. However good her intentions may have been, her decision-making approach and her disregard for the constitutional and statutory limits on local government led her to choices that ultimately will prove very expensive for the citizens of Tulsa to clean up. Oneok Field is one example, the new City Hall purchase is another.

From a TPD press release Tuesday, reversing the February 4 decision not to respond to non-injury accidents:

Due to police layoffs, a temporary change in collision response was made on February 4, 2010, until a manpower re-distribution and re-structuring of the Department could be evaluated. Since that time, the Police Department has reviewed 911 call priorities and the decision of diverting non-injury collision calls to alternative reporting methods.

Effective immediately, Tulsa Police will respond to all collisions on public roadways in the Tulsa City limits. Some collisions on Private Property, i.e. shopping center parking lots, will be referred to alternative reporting (Operator Collision forms at local convenience stores and online).

We would like to thank the citizens of Tulsa for their patience and support during these difficult times. Additionally, we appreciate the Tulsa County Sheriff's office for volunteering to be on standby during that time of transition.

Tulsa District 7 City Councilor John Eagleton has posted a lengthy e-mail from an employee in the City of Tulsa's Information Technology Department responding to the concerns of several councilors that the department is overpaid and overstaffed. Click the link to read the whole thing, but here's the heart of the matter -- private-sector incentives for excellence don't work in a unionized environment where seniority trumps performance:

When I first started working at the City I was pleasantly surprised at the number of talented and dedicated I/T employees. At the same time I was dumbfounded at the number of employees, especially employees with a significant number of years with the City, that barely, or rarely met their job requirements. In over five years I have yet to see a project completed by its deadline. I have also yet to see consequences for not meeting a project deadline. The culture in the I/T department is no reward for exceptional work and no punishment for substandard work. The dedicated I/T employees are making things happen solely from a sense of duty and satisfaction from a job well done. At the end of the day everyone gets the same pay raise, no pay raise or same pay cut regardless of their effort. The list of I/T employees that could be let go without loss of service to customers is long. Unfortunately if there were layoffs those are the employees that would stay.

IT may be about the easiest government function to outsource. There are plenty of hungry application programmers, software toolsmiths, web designers, and number crunchers who would compete to do work for the city. The city would still need strategic planners and analysts to determine what IT work is needed, to define requirements, and to write specifications, acting as interpreters between the non-IT folk in city government and the IT contractors. And the city would need program managers to oversee and validate the work done by outside contractors. While there are overheads involved in soliciting bids and overseeing contracts, I still suspect there could be some substantial savings. It's worth a look.

It's always interesting to see the Money Belt make an appearance in unexpected ways. The latest manifestation is in a map of water usage by neighborhood generated by the Tulsa World from city utility records.

The neighborhoods with heaviest usage -- an average of 125,000 gallons per year and up -- fall along a narrow band from Maple Ridge through Utica Square through Southern Hills and to the gated communities of south Tulsa -- with a slight gap between I-44 and Joe Creek. Maps of the highest priced homes, of members of city boards and commissions, of precincts with the greatest percentage support for tax increases -- all follow a similar pattern. Correlation does not imply causation, but it's interesting nonetheless and together with the PLANiTULSA polling this pattern suggests a kind of subculture different from the rest of the city.

According to the World's story about water usage, the average annual use for single-family homes is about 83,000 gallons.

The Tulsa World has provided a way to search the Tulsa water use database, and I've been having a little fun with it. Our usage, for the record, about 10% higher than the average and higher than I'd like, but not bad with five people in the house, a large yard to water (occasionally) and a small fishpond to top off in summer.

Here's how our city elected officials measure up for annual water use in gallons, based on the address on their filing form:

Dewey Bartlett Jr.
Mayor           138,000
Preston Doerflinger
Auditor           327,000
Jack Henderson
Council District 1
            54,000
Rick Westcott
Council District 2
          124,000
Roscoe Turner
Council District 3
            90,000
Maria Barnes
Council District 4
            97,000
Chris Trail
Council District 5
            57,000
Jim Mautino
Council District 6
          148,000
John Eagleton
Council District 7
          116,000
Bill Christiansen
Council District 8
            87,000
G. T. Bynum
Council District 9
          178,000

Our current mayor looks pretty conservative compared to previous incumbents, especially his immediate predecessor.

J. M. Hewgley Jr.
          298,000
Bob LaFortune
          504,000
Jim Inhofe
188,000
Rodger Randle
          212,000
Bill LaFortune
          281,000
Kathy Taylor
        1,635,000
Dewey Bartlett Jr
          138,000

Former Mayors Richard C. Crawford and M. Susan Savage no longer live in Tulsa. I couldn't find former Mayor Terry Young in the database.

Bartlett's annual usage pales compared to his main mayoral rival (Tom Adelson, 412,000 gals/yr) but is about four times as much as independents Mark Perkins (32,000) and Lawrence Kirkpatrick (33,000).

What about big institutional users? A search for Southern Hills turned up four accounts that seemed connected to the country club: 26,813,000 gallons per year. But the Southern Hills Marriott Hotel uses 30,067,000. Philbrook and its beautiful gardens use 11,089,000.

St. Francis Hospital? 219,766,000 gallons. That's a lot of handwashing.

Walmarts are big users. Interestingly, the Woodland Hills Walmart (6.9 million) uses almost twice as much water as the Admiral and Memorial Walmart (3.5 million). Irritated Tulsan would not be surprised.

The thirstiest Quik Trip in Tulsa is the truck stop at Admiral and 165th East Ave -- 2,552,000. The least thirsty -- about a tenth of the water -- is at Gilcrease Museum Road and the Sand Springs Expressway.

Lortondale Pool, a privately-owned pool (but the public can join as members), used 376,000 gallons last year. That's a lot, but not bad when divided out among the number of families that belong. It's certainly more reasonable than the consumption involved if each of those families had a private pool, however small.

Big Splash? 13,983,000.

Hmmm: On average, the six board members of Sustainable Tulsa use 173,167 gals/yr, a bit more than twice the average for a single-family home.

Our municipal customers: Owasso, 886 million gallons; Bixby, 1 billion; Jenks, 989 million; Glenpool, 298 million; Catoosa, 126 million; Sperry, 61 million; Skiatook, 62 million.

Rural water districts: Sapulpa Rural, 147 million; Osage County #15, 40 million; Wagoner County #4, 60 million.

What about Charles Hardt, our longtime city director of Public Works? Not in the database; he lives in Bixby, near 121st and Mingo.

The World story mentions that there are 140 single-family residential water customers that used over one million gallons in 2009. It doesn't mention that its own publisher and its publisher emeritus are among that number, using (according to their database) 2,258,000 and 2,763,000 gallons respectively. Thanks to both of them for giving us the chance to explore this data on their website.

UPDATE: I heard from City Auditor Preston Doerflinger that he's having his home checked for leaks tomorrow.

MORE: Here's a similar story on Oklahoma City's biggest water users in the Oklahoma Gazette from last May. Their biggest home customer used 2.26 million gallons in 2008 -- and that doesn't count the water he draws from his own wells. Surprisingly, their biggest commercial user only used 152 million gallons. The highest hospital on the list was Baptist Medical Center with 77 million gallons.

And Tulsa District 9 Councilor G. T. Bynum tweets, "After reading your water usage breakdown, it can truly be said that I represent my district!"

Listening to last week's radio reports of slick roads brought to mind a commercial parody from back when Michael DelGiorno hosted the morning show on 1170 KFAQ, back during Tulsa's last budget crisis, early in the Bill LaFortune administration. A 911 caller with a police emergency was told by the dispatcher that because the city was on "Operation Slick Budget," an officer couldn't respond to the call.

It's not quite that bad, but police response to certain calls will decrease as a result of Tulsa Police Department layoffs, according to a TPD press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For More Information Contact
Officer Jason Willingham
February 4, 2010
918.596.1336

Due to the recent reductions in staffing, the Tulsa Police Department has been forced to evaluate ways to maintain the staffing levels in order to respond to priority 911 calls. As a result, the department has temporarily suspended responding to certain property crimes and report calls.

Officers will not respond to non-injury collisions, fraud and forgery reports, burglary from vehicle reports, larceny reports and other minor property crime reports. The exception to this new policy will be a non-injury collision involving an intoxicated driver, or a non-injury collision involving a disturbance or other crime. Officers will respond to calls for service if the crime is in progress or if a suspect is still at the location.

While we understand that this may not be a popular decision, it is important to continue to have adequate manpower to respond to higher priority calls and crimes against a person. This change will be revisited as the department recovers form these difficult times.

Crime Reports can be filed electronically at the Tulsa Police Department website www.tulsapolice.org or call the Non-emergency number at 596- 9222 for other reporting options.

I've been negligent in reminding you about an excellent source for information about current issues at Tulsa's City Hall. Tulsa District 7 City Councilor John Eagleton has a personal website, johneagleton.com, where he posts some of the data and analysis that inform his decisions as a councilor.

The latest article on the site features graphs comparing the growth of Tulsa's general fund spending compared to inflation. One graph reveals how increases in costs per person have driven overall growth of the budget. Between 2002 and 2010, police personal services budget per employee grew by 35%, compared to an increase in the cost of living of 19% over the same period. (The fire department personal services budget per employee grew by 23% over those years.)

Other recent articles feature a comparison of the cost of providing ambulance service through EMSA vs. through the Tulsa Fire Department, emails from Tulsans about the budget crisis, and a graph showing how Tulsa police ticket writing has dropped dramatically over the last three years, even more dramatically since last October.

For most entries, there's a PDF or spreadsheet you can download for more details.

There's also a blog, with links to articles (often from the Wall Street Journal) that Eagleton finds interesting.

Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr sent an email on Thursday to city employees regarding the poll of AFSCME members, preferring layoffs to salary and benefit cuts, and regarding the state of negotiations with the police and fire unions. Click over to Roemerman on Record for the full text of Bartlett's statement.

Late yesterday afternoon, I received an interesting e-mail from Fox 23 investigative reporter Emily Sinovic:

This youtube clip has been getting passed around quite a bit recently. Do you have anything you'd like to say about what's happened since you raised these concerns about the unnecessary decision to move into the new city hall and its effect on the budget?

The clip was my statement to the City Council on July 12, 2007, prior to their vote to purchase One Technology Center as the new City Hall.

My reply:

It's interesting to know that this is still being discussed.

The new City Hall is a beautiful building, but, as I said in my remarks to the City Council, the decision to move was made without a clear understanding of the impact on the city budget. Like so many other decisions made during the Kathy Taylor administration, the City Hall move was approved without regard to the bottom line for the taxpayers. Taylor was skilled politically at getting a majority on the City Council to follow her lead, but she wasn't leading the city in the right direction.

In addition to the City Hall deal, a decision biased by advice from a consultant with a financial interest in the deal going through, Taylor pushed for budget increases above the rate of inflation in good economic times, causing us to cut deeper now that times are bad. Taylor hurt the city by orchestrating the lawsuit settlement that forced taxpayers to pay $7.1 million that they didn't owe to cover the default of Great Plains Airlines. Taylor's ballpark assessment deal may ultimately be rejected by the courts, which would once again stick city taxpayers with millions of extra dollars to pay for the ballpark. And in the budget process for this fiscal year, Taylor used unreasonably rosy revenue projections to avoid making difficult decisions about pay cuts and layoffs. Those projections have had to be revised downward repeatedly, but Taylor managed to push the hard decisions onto her successor's plate.

Only Councilor John Eagleton was consistently opposed to these fiscally irresponsible moves, joined occasionally by former Councilor Bill Martinson and Councilor Rick Westcott.

Some people believe that Taylor's motives in all these cases were to solve problems for her political allies, regardless of the cost to the taxpayers. Whatever the motivation, Taylor's poor fiscal stewardship has forced today's mayor and council to make harder choices and deeper cuts.

A few minutes later I received a follow-up from Ms. Sinovic:

Thank you for your response. How much money do you think this move ultimately cost the city? Do you think staying in the old city hall building would have prevented, at least to some degree, the serious budget crisis we are now experiencing? Again, thank you for your comments.

My response:

I don't have the numbers handy, but we know that the operating expenses were $1.4 million greater than expected for the first year. There was also a substantial cost involved in relocating employees and in making alterations to the new building to meet the city's requirements.

By itself, the extra expenses for the new City Hall wouldn't make up this year's shortfall, but it has made the job of cutting the budget much harder.

I didn't see Emily Sinovic's televised report, but here's a link to the web version of the story City Warned: OTC May Cause Budget Problems. Attached to the story is an e-mail from the City of Tulsa -- doesn't say who sent it -- defending the decision to buy OTC.

(By the way, if you're wondering why Michael Bates in 2007 had more to say about the city budget than Michael Bates in 2010, it's a simple matter of time. The job that actually pays the bills is demanding more time and energy. At home, I want to be available to my kids while they're awake. There are homework problems to solve, laundry to be sorted, dishes to be put away, stories to be read, baths to be run. When the kids are finally in bed, there's still housework to be done and bills to be paid. That still used to leave me time to write, but I'm finding it harder than it used to be to get by on 5 hours of sleep a night. This past week has been a particular challenge, with two back-to-back trips, both of which involved graveyard-shift hours.)

MORE: Back in August, when news broke of the $1.4 million in unexpected maintenance expenses, I posted this summary of my coverage of the One Technology Center / Tulsa City Hall story from 2007.

I went to the new ballroom at the Tulsa Convention Center for today's swearing-in of our new mayor, auditor, and city councilors.

Events like this bring together the diverse cast of characters that take an interest in local politics. There were federal, state, and local politicians, both current and former, neighborhood activists, politicos, developers, small business owners. It's like a dysfunctional family reunion for political nerds, complete with a few implacable feuds.

It was a happy privilege to greet some of my friends who were sworn in today, particularly those coming back to the City Council after a few years away. (I missed saying hello to a few of them -- had to leave to go back to work before I made the rounds.) Two of those friends, Rick Westcott and Maria Barnes, were elected as chairman and vice chairman of the Council for the coming year. It was wonderful, too, to see many friends who had volunteered to get these good people in office. Carol Barrow, for example -- Carol and her husband, Jim, Dave and Donna Beekman, Nancy Turner, and I spent a Saturday knocking doors for Nancy's husband Roscoe.

Bartlett's speech was short and to the point. If he does indeed focus on the basics and bring real fiscal conservatism back to City Hall, he'll have plenty of support from the council. Tulsa will be well served If he governs in accordance with the conservative Republican principles he espoused in his general election campaign, rather than following the lead of the predecessor he endorsed for re-election.

Rick Brinkley served as emcee. He did an excellent job and was a welcome change from 2006, when John Erling presided over Kathy Taylor's swearing-in.

One thing that struck me as odd about the ceremony. Marlin Lavanhar, pastor of All Souls Unitarian Church, gave the invocation and Bill Scheer, pastor of Guts Church, gave the benediction. Given that the new mayor is a Roman Catholic, I'm surprised we didn't see Bishop Slattery or a priest involved in the service in some way.

It's ironic: During the primary campaign, Bartlett pooh-poohed Chris Medlock's proposal to use one of the mayor's at-will appointments to hire an experienced city manager to oversee all city operations. Now Bartlett has hired Jim Twombly, recently the city manager of Broken Arrow, and Bartlett has only one person reporting directly to him -- Terry Simonson, who will... oversee all city operations.

"I haven't been involved in city management, so [Twombly's] input will be highly regarded," Bartlett said.

It's interesting, too, that two of the four chiefs atop Bartlett's org chart, Jim Twombly and Jeff Mulder, are Broken Arrow residents.

Personnel is policy, as they said back in the Reagan administration, and you can tell more about the future course of an official's term by the people he hires than by the promises he made during the campaign. These are the people who will have the mayor's ear as the input is sifted and the decision is made. From that perspective, I'm very sorry to see that Bartlett is keeping on several members of the Taylor administration.

I'm particularly sorry to see that Susan Neal is staying on to oversee city planning and neighborhood issues. Neal was elected to the District 9 City Council seat in 2002 after winning the Republican primary by a narrow margin, thanks to a last-minute smear campaign targeting civic leader and neighborhood activist Bonnie Henke. I'm concerned that, under Neal's influence, PLANiTULSA's carefully crafted win-win balance between development and preservation will be tilted entirely to the development side.

(We saw something similar happen with the 1999 Infill Task Force, which I hoped at the time would address the concerns of developers seeking to build in already developed areas as well as the concerns of property owners about infill that would erode the character of their neighborhoods. Instead, after revisions by then-Mayor Susan Savage, the resulting document was almost entirely one-sided. A proposal for neighborhood conservation districts was watered down to infill studies -- full of good recommendations, but lacking any enforcement mechanism.)

On another note: Standing in Oklahoma's largest ballroom, I felt a certain amount of vindication. Back in 2003, I said that a vote on a tax for a new arena didn't need to be coupled to a vote on expanding and improving the convention center. I said we could use the block southeast of 3rd and Houston for a new ballroom and additional meeting space. We could give voters the ability to choose improved convention facilities without having to subsidize an expensive sports facility. The proponents insisted that the two had to be coupled, that the only way to accommodate this giant ballroom we desperately needed was to eliminate the old arena. In the end, they kept the old arena and built the additional convention facilities where I had suggested.

Congratulations to our new city leaders. You have our prayers and best wishes.

MORE: Irritated Tulsan says farewell to Kathy Taylor with a list of her top ten un-greatest moments. And Steven Roemerman offers a video tribute to Kathy Taylor's 44 months in office.

It's been a long wait, but TGOV, the City of Tulsa's government channel, is streaming video and offering archived video of city government meetings at tgovonline.org. You can read the city press release at Councilor John Eagleton's blog.

This will make it easier for people interested in city government to cut the cable. Until now TGOV was only available on Cox Cable channel 24, offered as part of its franchise agreement with the city (if I recall correctly). It's one of a small number of reasons we've continued to be cable subscribers.

What many of us suspected was confirmed by the post-primary ethics filing from Tulsa District 5 City Councilor-elect Chris Trail: Trail was Mayor Kathy Taylor's instrument of revenge against City Councilor Bill Martinson, who opposed her on the ballpark improvement district, raised concerns about the overly rosy revenue projections in her budget (and the actual numbers have vindicated his concerns), and provoked her to walk out of a meeting simply by insisting on a straight answer to his question about city financing of downtown services in the Tulsa Stadium Improvement District.

Councilor John Eagleton's website has an entry with copies of Trail's pre-primary and post-primary contribution reports. Trail raised $51,505. At least $24,100 of that money came from Bill Lobeck (Mr. Kathy Taylor) and associates connected with Vanguard Car Rental. Except for $500 from Lobeck, all of these contributions were made after the filing deadline for the pre-primary report, allowing Trail to avoid disclosing contributions that clearly marked him out as Taylor's tool.

A report on Edgar Online (a repository of SEC filings) from 2006 shows several names found on Chris Trail's contribution report. Below are the names, city of residence according to Trail's report, amount of contribution to Trail, and title according to the 8/2/2006 SEC report for Vanguard Car Rental Group or according to linked web documents:

  • Bill Lobeck, Tulsa, $5,000, President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
  • Jeff Parell, Edina, Mn., $5,000, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
  • Thomas Kennedy, Plantation, Fl., $5,000, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
  • Thomas J. Santorelli, Highland Beach, Fl., $500, Senior Vice President, Risk Management
  • Tyler Best, Plymouth, Mi., $2,500, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer
  • Dan Lynch, Owasso, Ok., $300, VP of FP&A
  • Barry Benoit, Tulsa, Ok, $800, VP of Fleet

In addition, Alvin Swanner of Kenner, La., gave $5,000 to Trail. Swanner shows up as a partner with Lobeck in several investments and acquisitions.

Trail also benefited from funds from public employee unions, angry at Martinson's scrutiny of the dramatic growth of public safety spending as a proportion of city revenues. The PACs of AFSCME, the firefighter's local, and the FOP lodge contributed a total of $7,140.23 to the campaign.

Trail received funds from several people connected with the downtown ballpark assessment. Frederic Dorwart, attorney for Bank of Oklahoma, spearheaded the scheme. He gave Trail $1,000. Dorwart firm associates John D. Clayman and H. Steven Walton gave Trail $250 and $1,000 respectively. Trail received $1,500 from BOK Financial PAC. Peter Boylan contributed $500. Francis Rooney, who lists an address on N. Elgin, although he isn't registered to vote in Oklahoma, gave $1,000.

I have to wonder: What compelled Lobeck's associates to contribute funds to a city council race in Tulsa? Did Lobeck call them? If so, what did he tell them about Trail and Martinson that would be compelling enough to convince them to give maximum contributions.

Parell, Kennedy, and Benoit all gave money to David Patrick's 2008 campaign to unseat Roscoe Turner.

The voters ought to be able to know about these sorts of contributions BEFORE the election.

I spent the last half of last week and all weekend at home dealing with a particularly nasty virus, and in the process missed a family gathering in Arkansas and what must have been an interesting political discussion. To compensate for the abnormal quiet in the house, I had the TV going all night, with the History Channel running endless repeats of an interesting two-hour documentary on the JFK assassination. I caught bits and pieces of it every time a coughing fit woke me up.

So nothing new from me, but here are some recent Tulsa blog entries of interest:

Tulsa City Councilor John Eagleton has the memo from Mayor Kathy Taylor announcing that September sales tax revenue is $1.2 million below her budget projections with this comment:

The numbers vindicate Councilor Bill Martinson's prediction that the Mayor's numbers were overly optimistic and would leave the incoming mayor and council with difficult budget choices.

Eagleton also was quoted in a story on the city's budget problems in the current issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly, reminding of his spurned efforts in earlier years to rein in spending increases to core inflation:

In 2006, he said, the economy was good, and sales tax receipts were high.

"And we spent every penny we earned," he said. "We gave raises all around that are now baked into the cake. So, it becomes harder and harder every time, with each budget cycle downturn, to meet our budget."

Eagleton favors a budget process based on the core inflation rate that sets aside revenue for the inevitable downturns of the future. Some smaller sacrifices today can help the city avoid having to make what he calls the "Draconian cuts" required in the current budget.

"If we had done that in 2007 and 2008, yes, we would still have to trim the edges, but we wouldn't have the eight furlough days we did have," he said.

Despite Tulsa's budget crisis, Meeciteewurkor reports that some city workers in the Human Resources Department may have received $2500 bonuses for "superb" participation in a city-run training program. The head of the local municipal employees' union says the interim HR director verbally confirmed that the "stipends" were paid and has submitted an open records request seeking written confirmation.

Fear an Iarthair offers some thoughts on Bible translations and reminds that the original preface to the King James Version "advised the reader to read the Scriptures in several translations."

Historic Tulsa has an entry on the Dawson schoolhouse, built in 1908, one of the few (perhaps only) Romanesque structures remaining in Tulsa.

PR consultant Mandy Vavrinak is now blogging on public relations for the Journal Record. According to a press release announcing the blog:

Vavrinak will anchor the newly-launched PR blog, dubbed "Public Relations > Beyond The Press Release" and will focus on the reality of good public relations.

"I want to share solid how-to info for businesses as well as stories from the trenches, good examples and bad examples, and also be a resource for PR information," Vavrinak said. The PR blog will feature contributions from other area PR pros as well, including Kristen Turley, an active member of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). New posts will be appearing weekly, and comments are encouraged.

Finally, please keep Brandon Dutcher's newborn daughter Anne Marie in your prayers (and her parents, siblings, and doctors, too).

100px-Seal_of_Tulsa,_OK.pngThe City of Tulsa's website presents the City Charter in PDF format, which makes it hard to link to a specific provision and hard to cut and paste text. Beau McElhattan has posted the Tulsa City Charter and the City of Tulsa Policies and Procedures online in HTML format, with one page for each section. Check it out!

It's rare that I say this, but I agree with the Tulsa Whirled editorial board. In a Wednesday editorial, they urged the defeat of a proposed charter amendment to have the City Council elected to staggered three-year terms, so that only a third of the council is up for re-election in any given year. The amendment will be on the November general election ballot.

Here are their objections:

First, it would perpetuate the current silliness of holding some municipal elections in odd-numbered years, when voter turnout will be low.

Further, it would shotgun the races over three years, meaning there will be less publicity about elections. Councilors will be able to run for re-election below the radar of public scrutiny.

And it would give councilors three-year terms instead of the current two years, making them less responsive to voters.

Finally, it would mean it would take three election cycles for voters to flush out a corrupt or inept council.

On the whole, it wouldn't be unreasonable to conclude that the change is designed to make the council more powerful and less accountable to voters.

I disagree with their disdain for municipal elections in odd-numbered years. Municipal issues deserve attention that they are unlikely to get in the midst of a presidential or gubernatorial campaign. Nevertheless, they are correct to point out that staggered terms make it harder to clean house and make it more difficult for voters and potential candidates to plan for the next opportunity to replace their councilor.

By the way, those very same factors are at work in our school board election process, but worse. In Tulsa, school board members serve four year terms, with two seats up each year, except for one year out of four when only one seat is on the ballot. In the suburbs, terms are five years, with only one seat open to change each year. The filing period, right after Thanksgiving, is in the midst of the Christmas season and always catches people unawares, a fact that likely explains the small number of candidates who file each year. Worse still, school board elections are non-partisan, which further depresses turnout; the lack of labels of any sort on the ballot is a deterrent to many voters. I look forward to the editorial board's endorsement of two-year terms for school board members, with all board members on the ballot at each election.

There's a theory that school administrators and bureaucrats like the staggered terms, because if a firebrand reformer should sneak through the defenses and get elected, the other members, having already been tamed and enculturated to The Way Things Have Always Been Done Around Here, will throw a wet blanket on his zeal. Staggered terms seem to have the same effect on authorities, boards, and commissions.

The same dynamic would be at work with staggered terms on the council. Far from making the council more powerful, it would make them less likely to challenge the Way Things Have Always Been Done at City Hall. From that perspective, it's surprising that the Whirled editorial writers would object to the idea.

The editorial goes on to note the legal problems with holding a September election in an even-numbered year, at a time when, it says, state law says "that during even-numbered years cities can't use the state voting system for elections in September." (Actually, state law -- 26 O.S. 13-101.1 -- says the county election board isn't required to run an election on a date other than those specified in 26 O. S. 3-101.) If the county election board wouldn't cooperate, as they probably wouldn't, given the expense, the city would have to staff polling places and either buy machines or else conduct a hand count of ballots.

On a related issue, a number of people have complained about this year's primary being the day after Labor Day. The city charter amendment that moved elections to the fall tied the primary and general election date to "the day specified by the laws of Oklahoma" in the months of September and November respectively. The relevant section of state law is 26 O.S. 3-101. This situation will occur two years out of every 28, when September begins on a Tuesday in an odd-numbered year. The next time is 2015, at which council and auditor are up for election, but not the mayor. After that, it won't happen until 2037, a mayoral election.

But to eliminate even those few occasions It would be a simple amendment to state law to change the September date from the second Tuesday to the Tuesday after the second Monday, thus avoiding the Labor Day problem altogether. The change would not only help Tulsa, but would benefit the whole state. No jurisdiction should be holding a special election the day after Labor Day.

From Rocky Frisco's Tulsa Metro Chamber questionnaire. Nail, meet hammerhead.

The more the city government has tried to "develop" the downtown, the worse it has become. I firmly believe that if had been allowed to develop naturally, without all the wild ideas for "development," it would still be an exciting, successful part of the city. I would like to see the city government stop meddling with the downtown area, re-synchronize the traffic lights and stop killing the area with excessive revenue generation based on parking tickets, fees and fines. The first fatal blow was the loss of the Ritz, Orpheum, Majestic and Rialto Theaters; the second was the ill-advised "Downtown Mall." It has gone downhill from there. The time to stop "fixing" a thing, even when it's broken, is when every attempt to fix it breaks it worse.

See my May 13, 2009, column for the 53-year-long list of attempted fixes and Downtown Tulsa Unlimited's role in promoting same.

RELATED: I have received a tip that the Tulsa Metro Chamber is seeking to take over DTU's former role handling downtown marketing in exchange for a share of the cash from the Tulsa Stadium Improvement District assessment. I was unable to find an RFP online, but if this treated as a personal services contract the City may be able to award the contract without a bid process. It should still, however, come through the City Council. The tipster speculated that the Chamber is trying to push this through quietly, before the advent of a new Mayor and City Council that may not be as friendly.

Mautino-20040814.jpgI grew up in far east Tulsa (and beyond, in Rolling Hills in what was then unincorporated Wagoner County). My parents still live out there in District 6, and they've got a Mautino sign in their yard.

In the 19 years we've had a Tulsa City Council, for only two years has far east Tulsa had a representative at City Hall who was devoted to the district's best interests. During his 2004 to 2006 term, Jim Mautino worked for improved infrastructure to make attractive new development possible. He fought against those who wanted to treat east Tulsa as a dumping ground, who refused to respect our zoning laws and stormwater regulations. His service on the council was a natural extension of his many years of volunteer service as a neighborhood advocate.

He also worked closely with councilors from north and west Tulsa to ensure that city government paid attention to the needs of these long-neglected areas. This too was an extension of his pre-council work in organizing a coalition of neighborhood associations from around the city. Cooperating with councilors from different parties, socioeconomic backgrounds, and parts of the city, he worked for more considerate treatment of homeowners in the zoning and planning process, for stronger ethics standards, and for identifying and developing major new retail centers -- trying to capture more suburban retail dollars within city boundaries.

Long before the bribery scandal in the Public Works Department came to light, Mautino pushed for a top-to-bottom audit of the department.

For his devotion to his job, his district, and his city, Mautino was vilified by the mainstream media and officials of the metro-wide chamber and homebuilders association, and he was the target of a recall effort in 2005. He beat the recall overwhelmingly and in 2006, won renomination, despite a primary challenge well-funded by the Money Belt establishment. But he fell short of re-election, as his Transport Workers Union brothers betrayed him and campaigned instead for Dennis Troyer.

Troyer, who considers Crocs to be appropriate footwear for City Council meetings, has been a cipher on the council -- a reliable vote for Mayor Kathy Taylor and the Money Belt establishment, a reliable vote for zoning changes to permit more haphazard, ugly industrial development along our city's eastern gateway.

While Mautino is a conservative Republican, his honesty and integrity have won him fans across the political spectrum. Here's what Greg Bledsoe wrote about Jim back in 2006:

A little over a year ago I had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know your City Councilor Jim Mautino. Since that time, it has become clear to me that Jim is the most hardworking, dedicated and selfless public servant I have ever known. He is the salt of the earth. His tireless commitment to the improvement of District 6 and the whole City of Tulsa is without limitation. He has worked long hours for better sewers and streets (including a dramatic increase in funding for District 6), balanced economic development and transparent government at City Hall.

Here's what I wrote about Jim Mautino back during his first run in 2004:

Jim Mautino... is by far the best choice for the District 6 seat. Jim has been a tireless advocate for his part of town, working on zoning and planning issues to protect property values and the quality of life. Jim has persisted and more often than not prevailed because he knows the rules and does his homework, and he won't give up without a fight.

Here's what Steven Roemerman wrote about Jim Mautino during his 2006 re-election campaign:

If you spend 5 minutes with Jim you'll hear a lot of sewer talk. Not foul language but talk of sanitary sewer lines, then you'll hear a lot of talk about water lines, followed by a lot of talk about improving streets. He is passionate about improving the infrastructure in East Tulsa because Jim knows that infrastructure spurs development, and development spurs economic growth. Despite stiff opposition Mautino's hard work has paid off. Jim has brought sewer lines to East Tulsa businesses that were threatening to leave because they were still operating on sewage lagoons. When Jim is not working on acquiring water or sewer he is working on our streets. Jim drives all over District 6 taking pictures of poor road conditions, dangerous intersections, and car wrecks.

All that hard work has paid off. It is Jim Mautino's tenacity that has brought 28 million dollars of new project dollars through the 2006 Third Penny Sales Tax.

There were several close votes where Jim's voice and vote would have been decisive in favor of good government and careful management of taxpayer dollars. There were several close votes where Jim's voice and vote would have been decisive in favor of good government and careful management of taxpayer dollars. East Tulsa and the city at large need Jim Mautino back on the Council. To make that possible, Jim Mautino first needs your vote in the Tuesday, September 8, 2009, Republican primary, and again in the November general election.

MORE: After the jump, a video (by David Schuttler) of a 2006 council speech by Jim Mautino on problems in the Public Works Department, and a second video about BOK's efforts to get the City of Tulsa to pay off the Great Plains Airlines loan. And here's my column from January 28, 2009, about his proposal for a SCARE audit of the city's largest department -- he learned this kind of wide-ranging, independent, well-funded, top-to-bottom audit during his years working for American Airlines.

The Whirled editorial board says, regarding the news that the new Tulsa City Hall at One Technology Center will cost $1.4 million more to operate than projected this year, draining Tulsa's general fund budget, that "the old I-told-you-so refrain isn't going to help anything."

On the contrary, a healthy dose of IToldYouSo Political Purgative is exactly what Tulsa politics needs. It might stimulate some needful skepticism in our city leaders. It might encourage councilors to ask more questions and to dig in their heels when the answers aren't forthcoming. It might act as a vaccine against the establishment's PR machine.

(Funny how the Whirled makes excuses for and warns against holding officials accountable for the bad decisions that they editorially encouraged. I seem to recall a similar editorial when the Great Plains deal came unraveled. Heaven forfend that those who encourage us to make expensively bad decisions should lose credibility when their folly comes to fruition.)

So here, in chronological order, is what I said about the City Hall move.

In my March 28, 2007, column, I praised the idea of relocating to One Technology Center as a planning concept, but with a big IF:

But as appealing as the move is, aesthetics and urban design aren't sufficient reasons to spend millions of public dollars. There has to be a net cost savings in the near term. City officials need a business plan that will give them a realistic picture of how much the current City Hall block and other city buildings would be worth.

(A business plan for the cost of operating the BOk Center might be a good idea, too. Before we go buying new buildings, we need to know if one we're already building is going to blow a massive hole in the city budget.)

They also need a conservative estimate of energy and maintenance cost savings. They shouldn't underestimate the monetary cost and lost productivity involved in a move, along with the need to support duplicate facilities for a time.

There ought to be a look at alternatives, too. A group of two or three of the historic buildings in Maurice Kanbar's inventory might serve well as a new City Hall.

Tulsans have already committed all our special projects money for the next six years; it's tied up in the Third Penny, Four to Fix the County and Vision 2025. Redirecting Third Penny funds away from existing projects to pay for a new City Hall would be possible, but politically hazardous. (The City might get away with diverting money for other downtown projects.)

It would be a good thing to do, but only if the move could be done without straining the already-constrained city budget. At the very least, it's worth the due diligence that city officials are now pursuing.

After some of that due diligence had been done -- from my June 20, 2007, column:

There are plenty of subjective reasons to like the idea of moving City Hall. The old building is ugly and sits in the middle of an ugly plaza. It was constructed in view of the projected needs of the City of Tulsa in 1985. The new location puts City Hall at the crossroads of streets that tie directly to the expressway system. It also puts City Hall closer to the center of new development activity on the east side of downtown. The newer building ought to be more energy-efficient.

None of that changes the fact that the move will cost $67.1 million, of which (according to the daily paper) $52.25 million is the purchase price of the building. That money has to come from somewhere, and we've already been told that the City budget won't allow for a net increase in the number of police officers, repairing and opening more pools than last summer, or operating the golf courses, even with an increase in utility rates....

In all the material that has been publicly released, there doesn't seem to be anything that says how the City will pay for the new building. It's one thing to claim, as the Staubauch report does, that moving to OTC will save the City $15.2 million over the first 10 years. That claim assumes operating costs to go up at a certain rate and that the City would have to fund $12 million in deferred maintenance costs that are currently unfunded.

(One of the charts that illustrates the asserted savings is a year-by-year graph comparing the costs of different scenarios. The first year estimate that the OTC option will cost less than $2 million vs. about $5 million for the status quo is clearly erroneous. The move to OTC has to be more expensive in year 1 than staying put because the City will be paying duplicate operating costs and additional one-time moving costs. One also has to wonder about the straight line on the graph estimating the cost of the status quo. Surely a thorough accounting of projected capital costs would show some variation from year to year.)

From Brian Ervin's story in the same issue:

Following the conclusion of the feasibility study, [Mayoral economic adviser Don] Himelfarb said operating out of OTC would save the city $15.2 million over the first 10 years by consuming 30 percent less energy and allowing for more efficient use of space.

"This is basically $15 million that is freed up that the city would not otherwise have to spend on police, roads and other services," he said.

The move would also get the city out from under $24 million in deferred maintenance costs to existing facilities, $12 million of which is unfunded.

Here on BatesLine, on the night of the vote, July 12, 2007 (emphasis added):

This deal should be measured by one standard: Will it leave the City with more money or less money available to fund the basic functions of city government?

Based on the numbers in the Staubach Company's report and the analysis of those numbers by Councilor Bill Martinson, there is a high risk that the move will leave the City of Tulsa with less money for police and parks and streets. If one of the current tenants leaves or even reduces its presence, if we are unable to find a replacement tenant who will pay the same price, if rental revenue is less than debt service on the loan, the City will have to make up the difference out of its operating budget. This deal would make the City of Tulsa a competitor in the commercial real estate industry, rolling the dice in a risky business, and using our mortgage money to place the bet.

To shift metaphors, this deal is a house of cards, and if any one of several contingencies fails to occur, the whole thing collapses.

The only facts that matter are these numbers -- how much it costs to operate our current facilities, how much it will cost to operate One Technology Center, how much it will cost to repay the loan on OTC, and how much we are likely to be paid in rent from third-party tenants.

The Council has not been given a full and detailed accounting of the cost of operating our current facilities. This information is surely available in our accounting system -- how much we pay custodial staff, how much we spend on utilities, the cost of repair projects -- based on actual expenditures over the last few fiscal years. Instead, Staubach prepared a sheet estimating cost per square foot for broad categories -- utilities, repairs, security, etc. -- and then multiplied by the sum of those per square feet numbers by the size of our buildings. The $24 million claimed as deferred maintenance costs are buried somewhere in Staubach's per-square-foot figures.

The Council has not been provided with a list of deferred maintenance items, the cost of each one, and the likelihood of needing to fund those items in the near future. Each such item should have a basis of estimate, explaining the work to be done and the manpower and material required. Instead, in response for their request for a detailed list, the Council was given the names of the items and a single number covering the cost of all of them.

With this lack of detail, it would be easy for Staubach to pick numbers for estimates that would make staying in the existing facilities seem to be more expensive than moving. And don't forget that Staubach gets paid more if the deal goes through, so they'd have an incentive to make the existing facilities look as expensive as possible.

The Council should not approve this deal without an accurate apples-to-apples comparison of costs showing that the move will be less expensive in the near term.

That night, here's what I told the City Council (thanks to David Schuttler for the video):

The morning after the eight-to-Eagleton vote, July 13, 2007:

Needless to say, I'm disappointed with last night's results, but I'm going to save most of my commentary for my column, and I've got some family-related entries I want to post. I'm not so much disappointed in the vote to buy OTC as in the reasons the councilors gave for voting yes. In the end, costs only mattered to one councilor: John Eagleton. In this vote, and in previous votes on the budget, he seems to be the only one who thinks through the full financial implications of his decisions. Councilor Cason Carter's solution only protects the City on the income side, and that not completely, as a master leaseholder could very well go bankrupt, leaving the City holding the bag. Councilor Bill Martinson's worse-case (not worst-case) estimate still uses Staubach's S.W.A.G. for the cost of current operations, not the City's actual expenditures, which would be a findable number that would have given them a firm basis for knowing the bottom-line impact on the City's general fund. It is disturbing that they would go ahead without those numbers.

From my column the following week -- Believe in the Cube:

Prior to the 8-1 vote to allow the Tulsa Public Facilities Authority (TPFA) to incur $79 million in debt to buy the shiny symbol of Tulsa's fall from high-tech glory, Taylor read a speech that appealed to anything but hard financial facts. Councilor John Eagleton was the only one able to resist the Mayor's siren song.

I'm not so disappointed that the eight councilors voted for the purchase (it may turn out to be a good deal) as I am in the reasons they gave for their decision. They switched off their B. S. detectors, set aside logic and any concern about cost, and set the City up for a repeat of the Great Plains Airlines debacle.

Although the Council made a show of reducing the risk involved in finding tenants to fill the Borg Cube's excess space, they proceeded to a vote without using the best available information to determine whether the move would leave the city with more money or less money for police, streets, and parks over the near term....

The decision to go into debt to buy OTC for a new City Hall should have come down to this question: Will this deal leave us with more money or less money to spend on government basics?

One would hope that that question would be uppermost in the minds of our city councilors, who had just been through a grueling budget process, unable to open more pools, unable to fund enough new police officers to outpace attrition.

What did the Whirled have to say? A commenter called TCB wrote this comment under their "don't say 'I told you so'" editorial (hyperlinks added):

Based on their recent track records, maybe editorial board and the Chamber of Commerce shouldn't be so quick to hurl insults at city councilors for asking questions about large, complex transactions involving taxpayer assets.

Editorial quotes:

Great Plains:

"There is no taxpayer money involved . . . ." (2-27-00) [actually 7-22-2000]

New City Hall:

"The new building, One Technology Center, would be a perfect fit for city offices. It would require little renovation . . . . the decision to go ahead should be a quick and easy one for the Council." (6-8-07)

Ballpark:

"The plan to fund a new baseball park . . . has the backing of . . . the owners of the majority of the property affected. Delaying the Thursday vote will accomplish nothing, other than stalling progress and driving up costs." (7-10-08)

Over on TulsaNow's Public Forum, there's a link to this front page feature story in the June 7, 2007 Whirled, which used big bold red type to call attention to the projected financial benefits. I think they would have made the ink on the page blink if it were possible. (The print version is even more dramatic.)

CITY COULD SAVE MONEY WITH NEW HOME

Relocating to downtown tower projected to cut costs by $15 million over 10 years


In other news, for possibly the first time ever, I laughed at a Bruce Plante cartoon. Queen Kathy's crown is a lovely touch. Bruce had better update his resume, maybe check into adult education classes for a career change. Wasn't he instructed always to draw Mayor Taylor in a serious and deferential manner?

ONE MORE THING: A friend phoned to wonder if the Whirled is playing up this issue now to try to hurt three councilors -- Westcott, Martinson, and Christiansen -- who voted the Whirled's way in 2007 but have since defied them and Mayor Taylor and now have well-funded (albeit, in two cases, troubled) opponents. The one councilor who voted the right way -- Eagleton -- is safely back in office whether they like it or not.

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Earlier today District Judge Jefferson Sellers ruled that an initiative petition seeking a charter amendment to make Tulsa city elections non-partisan is invalid.

The petition, circulated in 2008 by the group Tulsans for Better Government, was challenged by City Councilor John Eagleton on two grounds: That the petitions lacked a warning against false signatures that is required by state law to be on all initiative petitions, and that the number of signatures submitted fell short of the requirement of 25% of the vote in the last general election.

34 O.S. 3 requires (emphasis added):

Each initiative petition and each referendum petition shall be duplicated for the securing of signatures, and each sheet for signatures shall be attached to a copy of the petition. Each copy of the petition and sheets for signatures is hereinafter termed a pamphlet. On the outer page of each pamphlet shall be printed the word "Warning", and underneath this in ten-point type the words, "It is a felony for anyone to sign an initiative or referendum petition with any name other than his own, or knowingly to sign his name more than once for the measure, or to sign such petition when he is not a legal voter". A simple statement of the gist of the proposition shall be printed on the top margin of each signature sheet. Not more than twenty (20) signatures on one sheet on lines provided for the signatures shall be counted. Any signature sheet not in substantial compliance with this act shall be disqualified by the Secretary of State.

Only one of the signature sheets submitted to the Tulsa City Clerk had the copy of the petition attached and that copy lacked the required statutory language. There was no evidence that any of the other pamphlets had a copy of the petition with the required language. Eagleton, in his filing, cited Community Gas and Service Company v. Walbaum, 1965 OK 118 (case citations omitted):

The warning clause is just as essential to guard against and prevent fraud, deception or corruption of the initiative and referendum process as are such other indispensable requirements of the statute as (1) the pre-circulation filing of a copy of the petition required by 34 O.S. 1961 § 8 ; (2) timely post-circulation filing of the petition in compliance with 34 O.S. 1961 § 8 ; and (3) the execution of a circulator's verification prescribed by 34 O.S. 1961 § 6 .

Eagleton's second point, involving the number of signatures, is a bit complicated: City Clerk Mike Kier used the April 1, 2008, voter turnout as the basis for the required number of signatures, which he determined to be 3,427. 12,985 votes were cast for Prop. 1. 13,065 votes were cast for Prop. 2.

Eagleton argued that the last general election at which every voter in the city was allowed to vote was on April 4, 2006. 77,341 votes were cast in the mayor's race, so that an initiative petition would require 19,336 signatures to make it onto the ballot. Only 6,675 valid signatures were submitted by Tulsans for Better Government.

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While voters in every precinct could vote on two charter change proposals in 2008, that was a special election; only the voters in five city council districts had a general election. The distinction is backed up by the ballots distributed to voters: If you lived in council districts 1, 2, 5 or 7, your ballot was headed "SPECIAL MUNICIPAL ELECTION" and had only the two propositions. If you lived in districts 3, 4, 6, 8, or 9, your ballot was headed "GENERAL MUNICIPAL ELECTION" and had the city council race followed by the two propositions. (Click on the images above to see a full photographs of the ballots for districts with no council race and for District 3. These photos were taken of the ballots that are stored along with the certified results in the files of the Tulsa County Election Board. Many thanks to Patty Bryant and her great team at the Election Board for their assistance in accessing records of past elections.)

By contrast, on April 4, 2006, every voter in the city received a "GENERAL MUNICIPAL ELECTION" ballot. (Click the image below to see the ballot that was used for voters in council districts 1, 2, 7, and 8, where there was no council general election. There was a general election for mayor and auditor, as well as a special election to decide six charter change propositions.)

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Eagleton's arguments won the day. Eagleton's filing in the case cited Neidy v. City of Chickasha, a 2008 Oklahoma Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that special elections could not be used to determine the number of required signatures. (Emphasis in the original.)

The use of a special election to determine the sufficiency of signatures on a referendum petition offends the Oklahoma Constitution.

What constitutes a qualifying general municipal election was addressed by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in Belisle v. Crist, according to Eagleton's petition:

The Court also determined that a preceding general municipal election in which all voters were not eligible to participate should not be considered, only the last general municipal election where all qualified municipal voters could vote and only qualified municipal voters could vote. (Emphasis added.)

Rick Westcott responds

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Tulsa District 2 City Councilor Rick Westcott is using his blog to provide detailed rationales for his positions on some controversial issues, one of which resulted in him and other councilors being denounced by Mayor Kathy Taylor on a live CNN interview.

The latest entry addresses the concern that Westcott and other councilors have that accepting Federal money to hire police officers will cost the city money it can't afford. Taylor has accused these councilors of acting out of a desire for partisan advantage. Taylor claimed on the CNN interview that the City wouldn't be out any money by having to continue to fund the 18 positions in the fourth year, following the federal three year grant, because it would have to hire that many officers to replace retiring officers anyway.

Westcott has read through the Federal government's documentation for cities seeking the grant and finds that Kathy Taylor is wrong and gives chapter and verse to back up his finding:

One of the arguments in favor of accepting the grant money is that the City of Tulsa loses about 36 officers per year through normal attrition. Over the next three years, if we don't fill all of those positions, we will save enough money to pay the fourth year for the grant-funded officers.

But, the federal government's "Owner's Manual" says that we can't do that. If we do, we'd be in violation of the terms of the grant.

Section 5 of the "Owner's Manual" is called "Retention." The first paragraph says:

"At the time of grant application, your agency committed to retaining all sworn officer positions awarded under the CHRP grant with state and/or local funds for a minimum of 12 months following the conclusion of 36 months of federal funding for each position, over and above the number of locally-funded sworn officer positions that would have existed in the absence of the grant. Your agency cannot satisfy the retention requirement by using CHRP-funded positions to fill locally-funded vacancies resulting from attrition."

In earlier entries, Westcott has discussed his vote on the downtown ballpark assessment and his vote to delay the final vote on the city budget. (It wasn't a vote to layoff dozens of police officers and firefighters.)

To help you keep up with his latest entries, I've added Westcott's blog to my BatesLine Oklahoma headlines page.

If you missed it, CNN interviewed Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor live regarding the $3.5 million in federal stimulus money granted to the city to fund 18 police positions for three years.

The catch: Tulsa would have to provide funding for a fourth year and would also have to find $840,000 to provide equipment for the officers. Taylor is proposing to take the money from the Tulsa Authority for the Recovery of Energy, the trash trust that ran the now-defunct trash-to-energy plant. Taylor told CNN that "we" (the City, evidently) gave TARE $10 million "about 20 years ago."

Off the top of my head, I'd guess the City has given hundreds of millions, via the Third Penny, to fund capital projects for the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority. Maybe some of those funds now for general fund purposes.

Taylor says the fourth year of funding isn't an issues, as we'd have to fund replacements for retiring officers anyway. On the face of it, that doesn't seem like that would meet federal conditions. Wouldn't Tulsa need to maintain the current number of positions through the fourth year? She seems to be saying that it doesn't matter how many officers retire or are let go, as long as we hire 18 more and keep those 18 on staff through the fourth year.

When asked about City Council concerns over whether Tulsa could afford the strings attached to this money, Taylor replied, "I think a few councilors are playing politics with this money." This is Taylor's standard answer when a councilor doesn't bend to her will. But what political gain would come from refusing federal funds for police officers? Why would you risk the political hit from opposing the money unless you felt it was important? Anyway, didn't Taylor eliminate politics from the budget process when she decided not to run for re-election?

(Video posted at My Tulsa World.)

Kathy Taylor's decision to denounce city councilors on a national news network is just one more example of her contempt for the legislative branch of city government. It certainly would be welcome to have a mayor that treated the City Council with due respect, as partners instead of pests.

MORE: Here's Councilor Rick Westcott's interview from last Thursday's Pat Campbell show on why accepting the stimulus money is a bad idea for Tulsa.

Still too swamped for a detailed analytical post, but I must at least point out the misstatements at the end of last Friday's story in the daily about the initiative petition filed by Tulsans for Better Government in support of a charter change for non-partisan elections. The original web story was more accurate than the version published on July 31. Tulsans for Better Government existed before the Citizens' Commission on City Government was formed, and the City Council did not ignore all of the commission's recommendations -- one of the three recommendations (fall elections) has already been approved by the voters and a second (appointed city auditor) will be on November's ballot. The third -- non-partisan elections -- did not have the unanimous support of the commission.

Tulsans for Better Government was actually formed in 2005 to promote the idea of at-large councilors -- reducing the number of districts from nine to six and adding three at-large seats. The effort was a reaction to a City Council with a majority of councilors who actually sought to represent the interests of their districts. It was seen as an attempt to boost representation for the wealthier sections of Tulsa -- under the old at-large commission system, nearly all city officials came from the Money Belt -- and to strip political power from the north, east, and west Tulsa. Dewey Bartlett Jr. and Mayor Kathy Taylor lent their names to the cause as members of the advisory board. The group circulated an initiative petition in support of their proposal.

Tulsans for Better Government suspended its petition effort when Mayor Bill LaFortune announced the formation of a "Citizens' Commission on City Government," assigned to study the City Charter, including terms and number of councilors, partisanship, etc. In their final report, the commission strongly rejected Tulsans for Badder Government's at-large councilor idea. The report made three recommendations, two of which have already been sent to the voters by the City Council, as noted above.

The third recommendation, non-partisan elections, did not enjoy as strong a level of support:

It should be noted that this recommendation is not made unanimously. Some suggested that no change should be made while others embraced an idea advanced by local commentator Michael Bates, known as multi-partisan elections. Still others recommended that the system simply needed technical changes to enable higher participation levels. For example, one thoughtful suggestion was a response to the situation where candidates of only one party file for a council race in a particular district. In those situations, a few task force members recommended that such an election be converted from a primary election to a general election.

More info at the following links:

Tulsa City Councilor Bill Martinson has issued a response to Saturday's press release from Tulsa FOP president Philip Evans. Evans attacked Martinson's budget presentation from last Thursday night, a presentation that highlighted the growth and size of the Police and Fire departments' portion of the city's general fund revenues, characterizing Martinson's proposal as an "attempted coup."

(You can now view the Martinson presentation online on Councilor John Eagleton's website, without needing a copy of PowerPoint. You will need the free Adobe Flash player installed.)

Some highlights of Martinson's response:

As I stated to both Chief LaCroix and Chief Palmer on Thursday night, my intent was not to attack, but rather to prepare both departments for a drastic decline in funding dictated by economic reality. Since Police and Fire have managed to consume 100% of our sales tax operating revenue, I feel they must be prepared to adjust their operating structure to keep expenses in line with those revenues. My proposal Thursday night accomplished just that. The choices were theirs to make and, despite the budget approved by the Council and their hopes to the contrary, they may still face those choices and sooner than they think....

The public safety unions have done a masterful job of dictating policy. This needs to stop and elected officials must assume responsibility for the Citizens....

The unions, Administration, and certain City Councilors argue that the only option in reduced funding is to reduce staffing. This is true only if they wish it to be.... For example, it is not unusual for the City to re-negotiate contract terms, and while I have not been a party to any of the pending contract negotiations, prudent business practice would be to include language allowing for a revision in compensation structure, including perks, should conditions so dictate. If a relief provision is not incorporated in the agreements, one must wonder why, or one must ask why protecting certain union paychecks is more important than protecting the City....

Contrary to their persistent cries for more manpower, the Police and Fire unions have parlayed this unabated 35% increase in funding into fewer positions rather than more. Not only have the unions successfully negotiated with the Administration to utilize the additional funding to enrich their members rather than increase staffing to serve the City, but the Mayor, Chief Palmer, and the FOP have all ignored Tulsa's ordinance pertaining to take home vehicles....

Click the link to read the whole thing.

On Saturday, I received the following press release from Philip Evans, president of the Tulsa Lodge #93 of Fraternal Order of Police, in response to Tulsa City Councilor Bill Martinson's presentation during the Council's debate on Thursday, June 18, 2009, about the budget. Here is Evans's statement, verbatim:

The Fraternal Order of Police does not normally take an active roll in public theatrical politic, but in light of the attempted coup of Thursday evening's City Council meeting there is actually no choice. When four elected leaders, Counselors:
Westcott, Gomez, Eagleton, and Martinson, actively attempt to get rid of 20% of public safety officers from both the Police and Fire service, the public needs to take notice. There are two main misconceptions that need to be addressed.

The public generally has no idea of how police officers are paid, however, city counselors are not the general public and should be well versed on our system.
Many years ago the City established a "universe of comparable cities", ten cities much like Tulsa in size and population. The goal was to make our wage system comparable to
that of similar cities. The Fraternal Order of Police Negotiations Team struggles to bring Tulsa up to the average wage; but Tulsa currently remains near the bottom of the list. And even remaining low on the list requires spending over $100,000 a year on arbitration, lawyers and forensic accountants. The FOP has been contemplating changing the tactics to just comparing Oklahoma cities instead of a nation wide group. If such happens, Tulsa, being the second largest city in the state, would rank about fifth in wages.

As a result of the last city council meeting, the FOP dissected Mr. Martinson's presentation slide by slide in light of the most currently available data. The FOP believes that the data presented by Martinson was out of date and to the direct benefit of his budget proposal. The below link to the original budget proposal is: http://www.johneagleton.com/documents/20090618-C5-Budget-Presentation-v.2.ppt

There are some interesting points of data that were available, yet were "hidden" from his presentation. Most 2008 crime data was available, but Martinson chose not to present it since the outcomes were antithetical to his point.

For example, slide 48:
Violent crime, 1997: 4,596
Violent crime, 2007: 4,552

But in 2008, there were 4,992 violent crimes--from the data in Martinson's own presentation. That's an 8% INCREASE IN CRIME. Also, Martinson cites a "73% explainable variation" co-relation of unemployment and crimes on slide 30. Crime peaked when unemployment hit 6.5 in 2003.
The Tulsa World just reported that Tulsa's crime rate is now 6.3%.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/business/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20090
620_11_A1_Oklaho643816

If Martinson's historical perspective is true, then we should prepare for increased crime according to the same variation. On Martinson's own terms, the "historical variation" suggests about 31,500 crimes will occur--versus the 28,500 he portrayed in 2007.
So, that would portend a 10% CRIME INCREASE. According to Martinson's proposal we would have to fight 10% more crime--with 149 fewer officers. There are many issues with the actions of Thursday's night City Council Meeting. The Fraternal Order of Police believes the public needs to be aware of the course the four councilors were attempting to chart. If the Mr. Martinson would have received one more vote, the Citizens would have woken up July 1, 2009 with 149 fewer police officers, and approximately 120 fewer fire fighters.

Councilor G. T. Bynum, who voted for the Mayor's budget, wrote previously that "under our contracts [with police officers and firefighters] we can't reduce salaries/benefits so the result of [Martinson's] proposal would have been to lay off 20% of our police and firefighting forces.

Tonight the Tulsa City Council approved Mayor Kathy Taylor's budget by a vote of 5-4. The budget reflects deep cuts due to falling revenues and includes mandatory unpaid furloughs for city employees.

The four councilors who voted against Taylor's budget supported an alternative by Councilor Bill Martinson. Before your knee jerks and you assume Martinson was motivated by sheer partisanship, head over to Councilor John Eagleton's website and download Martinson's budget presentation. It's an 8 MB PowerPoint file, but it's eye-opening and worth the trouble. (For number crunchers, the raw numbers behind the charts and graphs are embedded in the PowerPoint file.)

The presentation highlights the growth of Police and Fire Departments' share of the budget over the last 40 years, during which time the police and fire budget has more than tripled in constant dollars, while land area and population have grown by 13% and 17% respectively. So even if you had expected the police and fire budget to grow proportionately to population and land area and in line with inflation, the current budget is two-and-a-half times bigger than you would expect based on those factors.

Over the same 40 year period, police and fire personnel have only grown from 1,151 to 1,612, only about a 50% increase, despite the inflation-adjusted tripling of the budget.

In 1968-9, police and fire (including capital equipment) made up 32% of the General Fund. In 2008-9, police and fire (excluding capital equipment, which is now paid for from the Third Penny fund) makes up 57% of the General Fund.

Here's another way to look at it: In the current fiscal year (2008-9), the first two cents of the sales tax, which goes to the General Fund, were budgeted to bring in $142.8 million in revenue. The Police and Fire Departments budget for 2008-9: $142.8 million.

The problem isn't payroll, evidently: From 1999-2000 to the budget for 2009-2010, the police and fire budget grew by 35% (not adjusted for inflation) while the number of employees shrank from 1660 to 1597.

What about the City's many other areas of responsibility -- neighborhood inspections, parks and recreation, internal auditing, the legal department, human resources? Martinson provides several examples where a department has increased its revenues while cutting expenses, effectively, as Martinson puts it, "donat[ing] revenue to the Police and Fire Departments."

According to Martinson, Taylor's budget, revised for new, lower revenue forecasts, would put the combined police and fire budget at 105.23% of the projected General Fund sales tax revenue. Martinson proposes cutting that number and restoring $3.9 million in funding for materials for keeping our roads drivable (salt, sand, concrete, and aggregate), nuisance abatement, animal welfare, mowing, security and recreation programs for public housing, and other basic purposes.

Go read the whole thing, and let me know what you think.

UPDATE: Via e-mail, Councilor G. T. Bynum provides some perspective on Martinson's presentation and his vote in favor of Taylor's budget:

I thought Bill's analysis was pretty powerful when it came to the increase in funding not equating to an increase in manpower. At the same time, under our contracts we can't reduce salaries/benefits so the result of his proposal would have been to lay off 20% of our police and firefighting forces. That was too much for me.

In a later e-mail, Bynum wrote, "Whomever negotiates our next round of contracts needs to do a better job of protecting the City's flexibility."

gtbynum-tulsacouncil.jpgTulsa City Councilor G. T. Bynum sent out an email today announcing his decision to run for re-election to his District 9 post, rather than running for the mayor's seat left open by Kathy Taylor's decision not to run for re-election.

Bynum's decision leaves five councilors who have not officially announced their intentions regarding the mayor's race. Rick Westcott (District 2) and Bill Christiansen (District 8) have both said they're considering the race.

Here is Bynum's announcement, posted with his permission.

Family, Friends & Neighbors:

In the week since Mayor Taylor's surprise announcement that she would not seek a second term, many of you have emailed and called me with your encouragement to run for mayor. I can not convey how much it means to me that, based on my work in a brief time on the Council, you would enthusiastically entrust me with what I honestly believe is a sacred duty: managing the day-to-day affairs of the city in which we live with the people we love.

That is what drew me to run for the Council: the people I love live here, and I want the place where they live to be the best it can be. That has guided all of my decisions on the Council.

But with a rambunctious 2-year-old at home and a baby due in September, the people I love the most - our young and growing family - need me right now as a husband and Dad. Those are more important jobs to me than being mayor. I am also not so full of myself as to think I don't have anything to learn before seeking such an important public office.

I am hopeful that someone with political courage will step forward in this race, because that is what our City needs: performance audits of all departments, utility rates in line with costs, a clearly-defined and strategic partnership with the County, a second streets proposal to finish the work of the first, river development, and a bipartisan approach to governance. All of these will be tough, some of them will be unpopular, but all of them are needed. These are the issues I would have focused on as a mayoral candidate, and these are the ones I will focus on in my re-election campaign for City Council District 9.

The City Council is a tremendous opportunity for citizens to play a part in the life of our City without the taxing impact on family life that comes with the job of mayor. I love my work on the Council, and am eager to seek another term.

For all of you who have encouraged me to run for mayor, I'm honored by your faith in me.

GT

Photo from the Tulsa City Council website.

HelenAlvarez1952-200.jpgI'm in the throes of a major effort at work and only have time to throw you a few links to good reading elsewhere:

For your viewing pleasure, Tulsa TV Memories links to the Life archive and photos from February 1952 of KOTV general manager Helen Alvarez. Besides photos of the lovely Mrs. Alvarez, the archive shows the Channel 6 news, weather, and sports sets of the day, plus photos from the Sun Refinery and of a powwow. (Does this qualify as a Rule 5 post?)

Irritated Tulsan discovers that the Boulder Ave. bridge is safe enough -- for the crane that's demolishing it.

Steve Roemerman has posted a new podcast, reacting to Councilor G. T. Bynum's comments during last week's ballpark assessment vote.


Chris Medlock has a new podcast up
, reacting to comments about city election "reform" made by former Mayor Susan Savage. And he talks to State Sen. Randy Brogdon about the legislative session and the gubernatorial campaign.

I've got some thoughts about the Council's 5-4 vote to approve the assessment roll of the Tulsa Stadium Improvement District -- the controversial funding mechanism for funding the Tulsa Drillers new downtown baseball stadium -- but no time right now. Watch for something Monday morning.

Steven Roemerman has posted some hard-hitting commentary about the vote. It has extra relevance as the mayoral race looms near. It's a hard thing to say, "wait," or "no," when everyone is shouting that we must act and must act now. It's even harder to do that from inside a baseball mascot costume. Steven's commentary:

An excerpt from the second of the three entries:

Aside from the citizens exercising their right to vote her out of office, the Council is the only check and balance to the Mayor. It is the Council's duty to flush out such things before passing something as weighty as a 64,900% increase on a downtown assessment on the citizens of Tulsa. To complain now is sad and pathetic. Moreover, the very idea that Councilor Christiansen is thinking about running for Mayor now after this fiasco is insulting and scary.

Tulsa's Mayor has a lot of power, and the person that sits behind that desk on the top floor of the One Technology Center needs to be a strong leader, one who makes the tough calls, and flushes out all the details before making important decisions. We do not need a follower that stands in the Council chambers complaining that they cannot see past the next action they will take.

ackbar.jpgI haven't been watching much TV lately, but I'm told that Mayor Kathy Taylor's valedictory ads, trumpeting her record as mayor, have already begun to run on local stations.

I spoke to someone this morning who has some direct, recent experience with advertising on local TV. He says there's no way you could decide on a Thursday not to run for re-election and the next day start running TV ads. It takes at least two weeks to line up air time. It also takes time -- days, not hours -- to write, shoot, and produce a minute-long commercial that is as well-done as Taylor's "I'm not running" ad. This suggests that the decision not to run was made at least two weeks ago.

His speculation is that the ads are intended to create a groundswell of support for her to reverse course and run for re-election. Taylor is benefiting from news stories reviewing her term of office as if she's already gone. Her fans on local message boards are shouting down any criticism of her performance. For the next month, she can pose as someone above the fray of politics, as her potential successors jockey for funding and support. Then she can file at the last minute for re-election, reluctantly submitting to a draft.

What's the benefit of such a scenario? Here's one possibility: Before Taylor announced her withdrawal, the question among Republicans was who would "draw the short straw," "take one for the team," and run an almost certainly futile campaign against someone able to spend a million dollars on her own re-election. You can't run for mayor and run at the same time for re-election as councilor, so it would be hard to convince more than one councilor to abandon easy re-election for a doomed effort.

But if she's out of the picture, it suddenly becomes conceivable that you could raise the funds for a successful race for an open seat. Two, maybe three Republican councilors throw their hats in the ring, thinking the odds are worth the risk. In this scenario, Taylor lines up her allies to run for those now-open council seats, then jumps back into the mayor's race at the last minute, after the councilors have already filed to run for mayor, too late to back out and run for re-election. Taylor gets back in for another term with a more compliant council that won't challenge her decisions.

Even if Taylor doesn't re-enter the race, it's almost certain that there is an anointed successor waiting in the wings, possibly someone capable of self-funding to the same degree as Taylor. This scenario could still serve as a trap, luring councilors away from seeking re-election to safe seats, putting together last minute citywide campaign teams, and finding themselves up against an experienced campaign organization ready to do battle.

In 2002, when J. C. Watts announced at the last minute that he wouldn't run for re-election to Congress, only one potential replacement wasn't caught flat-footed: His longtime political adviser Tom Cole, who went on to win the seat. Cole drew some primary opposition from Marc Nuttle, and with several months to raise money Nuttle, with his connections to national conservative organizations, could have been a formidable candidate. Instead, Nuttle had only six weeks from Watts' announcement to election day in which to decide to run, organize a campaign, raise money, and meet voters. On primary night, Cole had 60% to Nuttle's 33%.

The scenario presented by my friend was intriguing, but I'm still inclined to believe that Taylor is setting herself up to run against Congressman John Sullivan next year. It would look crass if she said anything now, while he's still in rehab, but if she waited until he returns -- beginning of July at the earliest -- it wouldn't leave much time before the city filing period for someone else to get ready to run. The "I'm rising above politics to take care of the city" approach would get her out of the mayor's race, make room for someone else to get in, without seeming insensitive.

You may wonder why I'm not taking her at face value. She can very easily run the city and run for mayor at the same time. It's not like a statewide race where you have to travel incessantly to campaign. And it's not as though she has to knock doors, call voters, and lick envelopes herself. As mayor, campaigning or not, she'll be out in the community. She could do her job and then pay her PR people and campaign advisers to spin her record and get her message to the voters. There's something else going on here, and the decision to run slickly-produced campaign ads after officially "ending" her campaign only solidifies that suspicion.

UPDATE: Rusty at the OKDemocrat forum notes media interest in the story.

Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor has issued a press release saying she will not be running for re-election. She will hold a press conference at 5:30 at the Tulsa Press Club.

More as it develops.

UPDATE 6:15 pm: Taylor spoke very briefly and did not answer questions. She spent a minute or two greeting well-wishers like Tulsa Metro Chamber head Mike Neal, Convention and Visitors Bureau head Suzanne Stewart, and Sharon King Davis.

Taylor began her remarks with a list of accomplishments: A hangar for American Airlines to keep maintenance jobs here, completing the BOK Center, coping with the ice storm of 2007, "amazing progress" on the river, the entrepreneurial spirit awards, finding mentors for 400 students, and finalizing plans for the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park before Franklin's death.

Taylor decried a focus on personalities and partisan politics and expressed hope that stepping down would help the Council do the right thing with regard to the ballpark. (Tonight is the final vote on the assessment roll for the Tulsa Stadium Improvement District.)

Taylor said the primary reason for not running was to ensure the economic viability of Tulsa. She claimed that "we've turned this city around." She said she needed to be running the city, not running a political campaign. As she makes tough budget decisions, she doesn't want a partisan political cloud over decision making.

Taylor said she had no plans for the future but would continue to pursue her passions: education, small business, and greening Tulsa.

MORE: Taylor's letter to city employees at 5:30 this evening:

Together, we have opened a world-class arena, moved city hall to a modern and high-tech new space, seen amazing progress on the revitalization of downtown, made a significant commitment to our streets infrastructure, created new education opportunities for our children and recruited hundreds of mentors for at-risk kids. We have promoted health programs, had success with our "biggest loser" wellness program and worked side by side with community leaders with the shared goal of making our neighborhoods safer.

We have launched new initiatives in the areas of energy efficiency and we have pulled resources together to honor the many veterans and military families in Tulsa. We have made city government more efficient because of your participation in High Performance Government and our green initiatives are saving energy costs in departments throughout the city. We have supported emerging businesses with our Entrepreneurship Week and Spirit Awards and thousands of Tulsans have given us their input through our city's comprehensive planning process.

All of these initiatives and many many more have culminated in a record of amazing progress for the city we love. It is a record you can be proud of and I want to personally thank you for all you have done to make it possible!

Because of the serious budget and economic challenges we are facing, the next 6 months are going to be pivotal and frankly, very difficult for our City. Tough decisions will have to be made that may not be popular, but they will be fiscally responsible- and they will help secure Tulsa's future.

I have been in public service now for 6 years -- first as Secretary of Commerce and Tourism for the State and these last years as your Mayor. Amazing things can be accomplished when private citizens get engaged in their community.

Thank you again for your hard work and for allowing me to be a part of this great team of city employees.

It is an honor I will value forever.

Sincerely,
Kathy Taylor,
Mayor

Tulsa City Councilor Rick Westcott emailed me a short time ago to point out the bind into which downtown property owners have been put by Mayor Kathy Taylor's administration's insistence that owners had only limited rights to protest the assessment for the new Tulsa Stadium Improvement District, which will finance a new ballpark for the Tulsa Drillers. Now that the Oklahoma Attorney General has contradicted the Taylor administration, it's too late for property owners to file a protest, according to Taylor's timetable for getting the assessment roll approved.

There are a couple of points that no one seems to be making about the ballpark assessment and the Attorney General's advisory letter.

Since last July, the Mayor and the City Attorney have repeatedly said that the assessment on a piece of property does not need to have a relationship to the benefit which the property will receive from the ballpark. They have said that all downtown property can be assessed at the same rate, no matter how near or far it is from the ballpark. I have disagreed with the Mayor and the City Attorney on that issue since last July. I believed that state law was clear, that there must be a relationship between the assessment rate and the benefit which a piece of property will receive. The less the benefit, the less the assessment rate.

Now, the AG's letter says the Mayor and the City Attorney are wrong. The AG says that the assessment rate for a piece of property must bear a relationship to the benefit which the property will receive. The further away a piece of property is from the ballpark, the less the benefit and the less the assessment rate. Or, if the County believes that the jail will not receive any benefit from the ballpark, then the jail should be assessed as a lesser rate.

In April, the City Council was preparing to conduct a hearing on the assessment roll and approve the assessment for all downtown property. The Mayor and the City Attorney told property owners that, if they had not objected last July at the formation of the assessment district, then they could not object at the hearing on the assessment on their property. In fact, the City Attorney provided a lengthy, written legal opinion justifying her position on that issue.

The AG's letter says they are wrong. The AG says that a property owner could object to the amount of the assessment on his or her property, even if they hadn't objected to the formation of the assessment district.

But, based upon the assurances by the Mayor and the legal opinions by the City Attorney, most property owners did not file objections in April. They were told that they couldn't object, so they relied on that advice and they didn't object.

Now, the AG says that the Mayor and the City Attorney were wrong. The AG says that the property owners could have objected at the April hearing. But, since they relied on the Mayor's statements and the City Attorney's opinion, they didn't object. Now, the deadline has passed and they can't object.

And, now, the assessment roll may proceed.

The Mayor and the City Attorney misinformed people as to what the law was and what their rights were. The property owners relied on that advice. Now, the time to file an objection has expired.

But, the Mayor is spinning this as, "The AG says there's nothing wrong and the assessment can go forward."

I am not against the ballpark. I have never been against the ballpark. But, I have a duty to protect the citizens of Tulsa and make sure that all aspects of it are done legally and properly.

The City of Tulsa has been scolded once more over its management of federal Community Development Block Grant funds. On April 30, the director of HUD's local Office of Community Planning and Development notified the City's grant administrator that Tulsa is not spending its federal grant in a timely manner. (Last August, the City of Tulsa was dinged by HUD for being unable to support $1.4 million in CDBG allocations for FY 2006 and FY 2007 and for another $115,215 spent on ineligible activities.)

April 30, 2009

Department of Grants Administration
City of Tulsa
175 East 2nd Street
Suite 15-051
Tulsa, OK 74103

Subject: CDBG Program Timeliness Notice


Dear Ms. Pharis:

The purpose of this letter is to remind you that as required by 24 CFR 570.902 of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) regulations, this office will review the City of Tulsa for compliance with the requirements for carrying out a CDBG program in a timely manner. A grantee is considered to be in compliance, if 60 days prior to the end of its program year, there is no more than 1.5 times its annual grant remaining in the line-of-credit. Tulsa has an October 1 program year start date. Pursuant to our letter to the city dated October 10, 2008, the last 60-day test was conducted on August 2, 2008, and it was then calculated that your community had a balance in its line-of-credit of 1.65 times its annual grant. Accordingly, the city was in non-compliance with the timeliness performance provision at 24 CFR 570.902. As of April 21, 2009, the city had a ratio of 3.13 times its annual grant plus program income.

As discussed in our monitoring letter dated August 29, 2008, it is apparent that the City will not be able to move forward with its $1.5M acquisition, relocation, and disposition project until it has developed its relocation plan pursuant to the Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Policies Act (URA). This delay has further hindered the City's ability to reduce its 1.65 ratio by the end of September 2008 as initially discussed with the office. Additionally, as a result of HUD returning the city's repayment of $1.49 Million in ineligible costs to the city's line of credit and Tulsa's apparent inability to thus far commit and disburse these and FY 2009 CDBG Program funds in a more timely manner, the city's drawdown ratio has further deteriorated.

The City of Tulsa should take all appropriate actions to improve the drawdown rate, including, but not limited to the development of a workout plan, timetables and schedules in order to comply with the timeliness standard. The workout plan should be submitted to HUD for review and approval within 30 days from the date of this letter.

For your information, you may download from HUD's web site a copy of the CDBG timeliness guidebook entitled, "Developing and Implementing a CDBG Workout Plan: Guidelines for Putting Your Community Devleopment Block Grant Program on the Road to Timeliness." The guidebook provides a detailed description of each element required to be included in the workout plan. The 14-page document can be downloaded from the following site:

(www.HUD.gov/offices/cpd/communitydevelopment/library/workoutplans.pdf)

Please submit your workout plan and any additional informatoin concerning the failure to comply with 570.902 to this office within 30 days from the date of this letter. My staff and I remain available to assist you in any way possible in your goal to reach the 1.5 threshold. Should you have any questions regarding thisletter or th eDepartment's timely performance policy, please feel free to contact Mr. Hillard Berry, CPD Representative at (405) 609-8568, Ms. Trina Tollett, Financial Analyst, at (405) 609-8426, or me at (405) 609-8569.

Sincerely,

David H. Long, Director
Office of Community Planning and Development

cc: Honorable Kathryn Taylor, Mayor, City of Tulsa
Mr. Ronald Miles, HUD, Tulsa Area Field Office Director
Amy Polenchek, Chief of Staff, City of Tulsa
Mike Bunny, Economic Development Officer, City of Tulsa

Two notes and some questions:

  • The whole point of the Feds giving you money is so that you'll spend it.
  • Evidently this problem is common enough that HUD made a booklet about it.
  • Why did HUD give Tulsa back the money Tulsa repaid for ineligible CDBG spending?
  • If they give us money back unexpectedly, why should we be scolded for not having spent it yet? Or is HUD giving it back to us with the command to spend it on eligible programs?
  • What is the "$1.5M acquisition, relocation, and disposition project" that the letter mentions? And is it just a coincidence that it's nearly the same amount that Tulsa paid back to HUD?

Last fall, Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor asked the International Downtown Association to send a team to study our downtown, and in particular to look at the city's arrangement with Tul-Center, Inc., the arm of Downtown Tulsa Unlimited (DTU) that has handled downtown services since the current business improvement district was established in 1981. (The DTU executive committee serves as the board of directors for Tul-Center, Inc.)

Here's what the City asked the IDA team to do:

The City of Tulsa seeks to create an organization that can coordinate, plan, direct and manage a wide range of downtown revitalization functions, including the integration and implementation of downtown plans, management of downtown public/private partnerships, support for downtown business groups, and support and management of programs as designated by the City. Possible functions include parking management, management of downtown business improvement district programs, event functions, and other downtown operations.

The IDA Advisory Panel will examine and assess the current organizations, agencies and programs focused on the revitalization of downtown Tulsa, including the relationship between the City of Tulsa, Downtown Tulsa Unlimited and various stakeholders; discuss and compare best practices and successful strategies employed by other similar business districts in terms of organizational structure, functions, and programs, particularly with regard to functions within the scope of a downtown management organization; review and make recommendations regarding any appropriate organizational development strategies; examine advantages and disadvantages of collaborative planning and funding strategies, especially in business improvement districts; and recommend ways that programs, if initiated, can be sustained.

The team of four, including Oklahoma City planning director Russell Claus, came to Tulsa, Nov. 15 to 18, 2008, right before the Tulsa Run. A 27-page report was released in February 2009. (Click here to read the IDA Advisory Panel Report on Tulsa (PDF format).

The IDA team's report begins:

A first-time visitor to downtown Tulsa may be somewhat mystified. Streets and sidewalks are clean and well-lighted. A collection of handsome, even extraordinary art deco buildings adorn the office core. A strikingly designed arena stands dramatically on the edge of downtown, complemented by perhaps the most attractive new City Hall in America. Here and there, a café or coffee house lights the street. And yet...where are the people?

As a visitor spends more time in downtown Tulsa, other impressions emerge. There are few street level establishments of a retail nature. Windows facing the street are far too often dark. The hustle and bustle that today characterizes many downtowns across North America is simply absent. It feels like a time warp - as if it's 1988 in downtown Tulsa, not 2008.

Here's the IDA report's description of the current arrangement:

According to the DTID (Downtown Tulsa Improvement District) Summary Sheet, the downtown Tulsa district "was created to provide public improvements and maintenance beyond normal City services to help sustain, increase, and re-attract businesses as well as entertainment activities to downtown." According to the Summary Sheet, the City is the governing body and Tul-Center, Inc., a non-profit organization of Downtown Tulsa Unlimited, manages the daily services provided by several subcontractors."

The 2008-2009 contract of approximately $952,000 between the City of Tulsa and Tul-Center, Inc. comes from two roughly equal sources: assessments on property owners in downtown and the City of Tulsa itself. The current contract, approved by the Tulsa City Council in 1999, is in effect through June 30, 2009.

Part of the report deals with criticisms of DTU:

With more than 50 years of history, DTU is one of the oldest downtown organizations in the US. It has a track record of accomplishments during its existence. It has a board of directors composed of some of Tulsa's most prominent corporate citizens. And, through Tul-Center Inc., it has managed the business improvement district since it was established.

Like many downtown organizations today, DTU relies on the BID assessment for its very existence. BID revenues constitute about 9 out every 11 dollars passing through DTU each year. With the BID assessment, DTU manages a fairly standard menu of "clean and safe" services, and also promotes downtown with events like Mayfest and by installing , removing and storing holiday decorations.

The recommendations and observations are well worth reading. One highlight is the strong interest among young people in downtown and their desire to protect buildings that may not be "architecturally or historically significant, [but they] represent adaptive re-use possibilities for residential development, office space for small companies, and street level space for restaurants, clubs, and retail shops."

DTU President Jim Norton responded to the team's visit in DTU's December 1, 2008 newsletter:

One of their first recommendations was that the current custodial responsibilities, which DTU performs, are done as good as or better than anyone in the country. That's very encouraging news for us, and it tells us that what we've been doing for the last 30 years has been a tremendous success. They were very impressed with the cleanliness of Downtown and with the efficiency of our operations. They made suggestions that DTU needs to reach out to the surrounding neighborhoods and to other interest groups to include them in creating a vision for Downtown that everyone buys into. They also made other recommendations regarding the marketing of our Central Business District in creating lively activities throughout the year. These are items which we have totally embraced and look forward to making the future better for everyone.

The Downtown Tulsa Improvement District expires on June 30 and is being replaced with the Tulsa Stadium Improvement District. The City of Tulsa has issued an invitation to bid (TAC 843) on providing the public property maintenance services (Microsoft Word document) currently being provided by DTU/Tul-Center. The deadline for submissions is 5 p.m. on May 20, 2009. The base bid includes maintaining 215 miles of sidewalk (daily), 18 miles of alleys, 1320 trees, and 80 trash containers. Bidders also have to quote a price for sidewalk cleaning per square yard, sidewalk snow and ice removal per mile, special event sidewalk sweeping per foot, brick sidewalk paver replacement per square foot, general labor per man hour, mowing/landscaping per square yard, and additional trash service per can per month.

The specification is precise in requiring particular fertilizers and lawn treatments, and there are some other interesting provisions:

Personnel must be fluent in English, as they will be expected to provide information, directions and help to the public.

All paved sidewalk and plaza surfaces must be swept daily (with a complete cycle each week) using mechanical sweepers and/or manually. Mechanical sweepers, blowers, or power vacuum equipment will not be operated during the lunch period or at other times when large crowds of people are present. The paved sidewalk surfaces shall be inspected weekly and specific trouble spots, INCLUDING CHEWING GUM, cleaned with a power scrubber, high pressure sprayer or other means as needed. The standard of maintenance for this service shall be to provide litter free, clean sidewalks and alleys.

Water usage specifically for this area will be metered and recorded by a portable water meter obtained by the landscape contractor from the City of Tulsa Water and Sewer Department. CONTRACTOR shall pay the required deposit and all other costs associated with obtaining such metering device.

Keep Michael Slankard

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UPDATE 2:00 p.m.: Mayor's office has delayed Rodolf nomination to next week.

UPDATE 5/1/2009: Council declined to approve postponement, then turned down the Rodolf nomination, 3-6 -- Patrick, Troyer, Bynum voting yes; Henderson, Westcott, Gomez, Martinson, Eagleton, Christiansen voting no.

Tonight (April 30, 2009) at the Tulsa City Council's regular meeting, the Council will consider Mayor Kathy Taylor's nomination of a replacement for Michael Slankard on the City's Ethics Advisory Committee (EAC). The Council should vote against the replacement nominee, which will leave Slankard in place, continuing his honorable and independent service on that committee.

Despite the urging of the chairman of the EAC and the desire of a majority on the Council, Taylor refused to reappoint Slankard. As the Council's resistance to a replacement solidified, suddenly some anonymous person brought an ethics complaint against Slankard, claiming a conflict of interest because he suggested and then participated in the investigation (and dismissal) of ethical issues surrounding Taylor giving Councilor David Patrick a ride back from Colorado on her Lear 31A, just in time to vote on Taylor's financing plan for the downtown. Slankard voted with the rest of the committee, finding no ethical violation by either Patrick or Taylor.

The complaint against Slankard was passed through City Attorney Dierdre Dexter, who is an at-will employee of Taylor. The complaint was investigated and rejected by the other members of the EAC, despite their long-standing policy against hearing anonymous complaints at all.

You can read a more detailed account of the tug of war between Taylor and the Council over Michael Slankard's reappointment in my April 15, 2009, UTW column.

This apparent attempt to use the ethics process for leverage in a political battle between the executive and legislative branches ought to make Slankard's supporters on the City Council even more determined to keep him on the EAC.

Taylor's proposed replacement for Slankard, Sandra Rodolf, was back before the Council at the Tuesday, April 28, Urban and Economic Development committee meeting. According to a couple of independent reports, Jack Henderson, Rick Westcott, Bill Martinson, and John Eagleton all indicated that they support Slankard and would be voting against Rodolf's appointment; David Patrick, Dennis Troyer, and G. T. Bynum expressed support for Rodolf; Bill Christiansen and Eric Gomez didn't say either way, but have expressed support for keeping Slankard on the committee.

Here is the summary of the discussion from the April 28, 2009, Urban and Economic Development Committee meeting. The summary appears to have been truncated by the database software:

Sandra Rodolf present. Westcott felt her qualifications were stellar; however, he feels the Mayor is using her as an attempt to get back at Micahel Slankard, and for that, he apologizes. Councilor Westcott gave the background history of the case involving Michael Slankard. Councilor Troyer commented that all the Council does is approve or disapprove the Mayor's recommendations. Councilor Eagleton echoed Westcott's comments. Councilor Patrick commented that Mrs. Rodolf was not involved with Michael Slankard and should be approved based on her qualifications only. Councilor Bynum thanked Ms. Rodolf for going through this appointment process. The Charter states what the role of the Council is during the appointment process. We should vote on her qualifications only. Councilor Henderson expressed concerned of having 3 members from District 9 on one committee. Nancy Siegel - don't believe everything you think. She was recommended solely based her background and qualifications. Mr. Slankard is being replaced due to his tenure on the board. Ethics will be highly called upon due to PW issues. This is speculation only. Henderson does not understand why the appointees have to have a legal background. Also, the City's position has been to keep the experienced appointees on the board. Councilor Martinson

Henderson raised an important point about diversity on the committee. Taylor's change would be a step backwards in terms of geographic diversity. Replacing Slankard with Rodolf would swap a resident of north Tulsa's District 3, which has few members of city authorities, boards, and commissions (known as ABCs for short) with a resident of the Midtown Money Belt, which historically is where most mayoral appointees live -- this is a long-term trend, not specific to Taylor). As last summer's PLANiTULSA survey showed, midtowners and north Tulsans have very different views about how fair city government is. Loading the EAC up with Midtown Money Belt residents would send the wrong signal to the rest of the city. There needs to be a balance.

With due respect to Councilor Bynum, he's reading something into the City Charter that isn't there. Article III, Section 1.4, paragraph G says regarding mayoral appointments to ABCs:

Appoint, subject to confirmation by a majority vote of the entire membership of the Council, the members of all boards, commissions, authorities, and agencies created by this amended Charter, ordinance, agreement, or pursuant to law, and exercise general control and supervision thereof, provided, all appointees shall, as a condition of their appointment and continued service, be qualified electors and maintain their principal residence within the city limits of the City of Tulsa

Nothing in the charter specifies the criteria a councilor must apply when voting on a mayoral ABC appointee. The councilors can apply whatever standards they deem prudent. The confirmation power is an important check on mayoral power. ABCs have significant power -- some more than others -- and in some cases, the vote on the appointment is the only input the councilors have into the way a given ABC sets policy.

When Mayor Bill LaFortune reappointed Jim Cameron and Lou Reynolds to the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority, a majority of the councilors objected, concerned about the TMUA's policies on water rates to the suburbs and whether the authority was putting the growth desires of the suburbs ahead of those of undeveloped parts of the City of Tulsa. I supported the "Gang of Five" in their effort to block the reappointment. (The effort failed when Sam Roop switched sides on the issue, shortly before LaFortune hired him to work in the Mayor's office.)

In August 2001, during the Susan Savage administration, the City Council voted against reappointing Kim Holland to the EMSA board. They were raked over the coals by the daily paper for doing so, but there was no question that they had the discretion and authority to say no to Savage's pick.

More recently, Taylor has quietly withdrawn the names of at least two of her appointees after it became clear that the Council would reject. There was speculation that the same thing would happen with the Rodolf nomination.

Once in a while the Council takes a vote that I regard as a key test of character, an indication of whether someone is willing to do the right thing in the face of pressure. These are the votes I remember and weigh when a city councilor seeks higher office. (If the persistent rumors that Taylor may be leaving for a position in the Obama administration are true, several of these councilors may be running for mayor sooner than they planned.)

The vote tonight on replacing Michael Slankard is such a test. The City Council should emphatically reject Kathy Taylor's efforts to kick an honorable, scrupulous man off of the Ethics Advisory Committee.

DOCUMENTS:

Last fall Novus Homes LLC, W3 Development LLC, and principals of the two companies filed suit against Tulsa Development Authority for breach of contract involving TDA's termination of the exclusive negotiating period with Novus Homes LLC for redevelopment of the vacant the half-block west of Elgin Avenue between Archer and Brady Streets. Novus Homes planned a lofts and retail development on the site, which is now part of the land the stadium donors plan to redevelop in connection with the new downtown stadium for the Tulsa Drillers. On Tuesday, the suit has been expanded to include the City of Tulsa as a defendant, citing actions by Mayor Kathy Taylor which, the plaintiffs allege, resulted in the early termination of the exclusive negotiating period for the land.

According to a story in today's Journal Record, "Through the discovery process, the developers said they learned of Taylor's alleged interference in TDA business and procedures, leading to termination of their exclusive deal in her quest to complete the ballpark deal."

Here's a link to the OSCN page on the suit, CJ-2008-5713. Here is the amended petition for the lawsuit (PDF). It includes the following allegation:

30. Beginning in late May, 2008, City of Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor began inserting herself into TDA operations related to this downtown Tulsa location, without TDA approval. The TDA viewed Mayor Taylor's interference as "irregular," and TDA Commissioners were "concerned" and "surprised" by her "irregular" interference in their operations. See, e.g., Transcript of Deposition of TDA Commissioner John Clayman, Tulsa County District Court Case No. CJ-2008-5713, at pp. 40-48 (November 11, 2008).

31. Mayor Taylor was, without consulting or obtaining approval from the TDA, personally renegotiating and amending existing TDA contracts, conveying TDA-owned properties in exchange for properties the City of Tulsa and the eventual Tulsa Stadium Trust desired, and influencing existing TDA relationships, all to enable the City of Tulsa and the Tulsa Stadium Trust to procure the real property necessary for the proposed new downtown baseball stadium and surrounding development.

32. Mayor Taylor's actions were in violation of O.S. §11 38-107, whereby powers of the Urban Renewal Authority (TDA) "shall be exercised by the commissioners thereof."

Here's the press release from Novus Homes:

DOWNTOWN DEVELOPERS SUE CITY OF TULSA
FOR MAYOR'S OBSTRUCTION WITH PROJECT

Two Tulsa development companies and their principals have filed a lawsuit against the City of Tulsa alleging that the City, and specifically Mayor Kathy Taylor, unlawfully interfered with their exclusive contractual rights to develop a downtown property. The developers allege that the City's interference was part of the Mayor's effort to relocate the Tulsa Drillers baseball stadium to the downtown Brady District.

On April 14, 2009, Novus Homes, LLC, W3 Development, LLC, Will Wilkins and Cecilia Wilkins added the City as a second defendant to their lawsuit originally brought against the Tulsa Development Authority (TDA). The developers sued the TDA on August 14, 2008, one week after the TDA prematurely terminated the developers' exclusive negotiating right on this property, situated on the half block west of Elgin between Archer and Brady, known as 120 Brady Village.

Since filing the original lawsuit, the developers learned through the discovery process that the City of Tulsa, and specifically Mayor Kathy Taylor, had irregularly interfered with TDA business and procedures in violation of Oklahoma statutes, which led to the TDA's unlawful termination of its exclusive deal with the developers. The developers allege Mayor Taylor unlawfully inserted herself into TDA operations in her quest to relocate the Drillers stadium to a site directly across the street from the property on which the developers had an exclusive right to negotiate.

As part of the stadium relocation effort, Mayor Taylor recruited a group of private donors which included herself and her husband through the Lobeck Taylor Foundation. These donors funded a significant portion of the project, and in return, were awarded the construction and financing of the ballpark project and the surrounding properties, including the property for which the developers had an exclusive right, under a self described "master plan."

Mayor Taylor's decision to rush this project through during the summer of 2008, bypassing normal process and due diligence, has resulted in multiple lawsuits and threatens to tie the City up in litigation for years to come.

Previous BatesLine entries and Urban Tulsa Weekly columns on this topic:

One of the stories that broke while I was focused on the day job involved Tulsa City Councilor Eric Gomez's threats to sue Julie Hall of Who Owns Tulsa? over her criticism of his actions as a councilor. You may have missed it, too, so here's the KOTV News on 6 video, from March 3, 2009:

In a March 2, 2009, e-mail, Hall wrote:

Attached is a letter from Councilor Gomez' attorney threatening to sue me for defamation and my attorney's response. The threat was prompted by my role in coordinating a recall petition against Councilor Gomez and related criticisms of his actions as a public official.

This release is in part a response to the threats against a citizen who reported a possible ethics violation regarding two city councilors. One of my concerns is that the initial response from the City Council included the implied threat of legal action. It would appear that the biggest mistake the citizen made was giving his name rather than reporting his concerns anonymously.

As citizens, we have First Amendment rights. These rights are so important that with respect to public officials and their acts, Oklahoma law protects these communications unless they falsely impute a crime to the officer criticized. Under federal law, speech concerning public officials is actionable only if it is false, defamatory, and made with actual malice.

The Gomez letter was issued after the recall was denied; after I had announced that another petition effort would not be pursued; and after Councilor Gomez stated publicly that he hoped we could put it behind us.

Although I was the direct recipient of the threat, it wasn't limited to me. Councilor Gomez threatened to sue "any and all persons acting in concert with me". This could include the officers of Who Owns Tulsa, anyone who has attended a meeting, or written a check. It could also include every citizen who signed the recall petition.

Lawsuits can financially devastate those involved, and the threat of such lawsuits has a chilling effect on free speech. Lawsuits designed to silence opposition on public issues are known nationally as SLAPP (strategic litigation against public participation) suits, and several states have passed legislation to protect their citizens from such threats. You rarely hear of threatened SLAPP suits because they are so effective, but they happen more often than you might think.

Councilor Gomez is gearing up for an election year. In my opinion, any Councilor who would sue or threaten to sue constituents for criticizing his official actions should not be re-elected. I encourage you to ask your Councilor if you too are at risk of a lawsuit if you criticize his official conduct.

No Tulsan should live in fear that the mere expression of an opinion and participation in public forums or processes is grounds for legal action. We will never agree on every issue, but free speech and the First Amendment belong to us all.

After the jump, the letter that Gomez's attorney sent to Hall, and the reply from Hall's attorney.

Steven Roemerman is not only a blogger, he's also a member of the City of Tulsa Sales Tax Overview Committee, which is charged with keeping tabs on how the city spends the "Third Penny" sales tax for capital improvement projects. In that role, he's had opportunity to hear representatives from the Finance Department and the Public Works Department speak about the federal indictments for fraud and bribery involving two now-former Public Works employees and several contractors that do business with the city.

Steven has collected his notes and reflections on the Tulsa Public Works indictments here.

One section raised several questions in my mind:

I sat in a meeting with Paul Zachary from Public Works and he said, "We do not award contracts over here, we advertise them from here." The awarding of contracts happens downtown at City Hall through the City Clerk's office with representatives from Finance, Legal, and the contract administrators.

In one allegation, there was money taken to influence the awarding of a contract, but the individual who took the money could not have influenced who won the contract. As previously stated, Public Works does not award construction contracts, they only advertise them.

The second allegation regarding bribes for contracts has to do with the professional services selection committee. In that committee, one of the decisions they make regards who will perform the inspection each project once it is complete. It is preferred that the firm that designs a project also performs the inspection. Money was given to influence the PSSC to award the designer of a particular project the inspection job. I asked what would have happened if no money had been exchanged? Would that firm still have gotten the inspection, would anything different have happened? The answer was no because in the preferred process, the designer does the inspection.

If this particular set of indictments did not make any sense to you that is probably because it does not make any sense. It was really pretty dumb for money to exchange hands because the person who took the money really did not have the power to make anything happen.

First, it surprises me that Public Works would have no involvement in the award decision. At the very least, wouldn't Public Works be involved in evaluating proposals for technical compliance? The City Clerk's office can tell who the low bidder is, but they wouldn't know whether the proposed low-bid solution will accomplish the task and whether the company has the competence to carry it out.

Second, even if a Public Works employee didn't have sole authority to award a contract or hire an inspector, it would be valuable for a contractor to "own" a trusted insider who would have influence over the selection. You wouldn't necessarily need to bribe the entire committee, just one person with a seat at the table where decisions are made and with the credibility to persuade the rest. If Public Works were involved in some way with evaluating proposals for compliance -- and I take it from Steven's report that this is not the case -- then it might be valuable to "own" a PW employee in a position to disqualify competing bids or to ensure that your bid wasn't disqualified.

Another possibility is that the bribes were offered based on a misunderstanding of the process by the bribers. Perhaps the contractors made assumptions on the City of Tulsa process based on the process in other cities. Or perhaps the recipient of the bribes depicted the process in a way that made himself seem more important and influential than he really was.

MORE: I wrote two columns related to the Public Works scandal: The February 4 column, about the value of an independent audit of Public Works, as advocated by former City Councilor Jim Mautino, and the February 11 column, about the role of and constraints on the City Auditor's office in acting as a fiscal watchdog.

Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor has included the controversial proposed bridge across the Arkansas River at Yale Ave. in a laundry list of city infrastructure projects that Taylor says are ready for immediate funding. Taylor's wish list is part of a collection of over 11,000 projects compiled by the U. S. Conference of Mayors in an effort to get a share of federal stimulus money. 1170 KFAQ had the story earlier today.

The USCM report, released on Monday, is called "Ready to Go" Jobs and Infrastructure Projects (click this link to download the report as a 4 MB PDF) From the introduction to the report:

Today The U.S. Conference of Mayors releases the second in its series of reports on infrastructure projects that are "ready to go" in cities across the nation - projects that can be started quickly after funding is received and generate the significant numbers of jobs that are needed to strengthen the economies of our metro areas and our nation as a whole.

Today we are reporting that in 427 cities of all sizes in all regions of the country, a total of 11,391 infrastructure projects are "ready to go." These projects represent an infrastructure investment of $73,163,299,303 that would be capable of producing an estimated 847,641 jobs in 2009 and 2010.

The Conference of Mayors MainStreet Economic Recovery plan, developed under the leadership of Miami Mayor Manual A. (Manny) Diaz, the President of the Conference, calls for federal investments in 10 sectors that will quickly create jobs in metro areas, improve the infrastructure that the private sector needs to succeed, help the small businesses of Main Street America, and produce lasting economic and environmental benefits for the nation....

In early November, cities across the nation provided the Conference of Mayors with examples of needed infrastructure projects that could be started quickly and completed in 2009 if additional federal funding were made available for them in any of the 10 MainStreet infrastructure investment sectors. For these projects, the cities gave us their estimates of the amount of funding that would be needed and the number of jobs that would be created.

A report describing more than 4,600 projects in 154 cities capable of creating well over a quarter-million jobs was released by the Conference in Washington on November 13.

A week after the release of this first report, President-elect Obama stated a goal of creating 2.5 million jobs in America by 2011 - a goal strongly supported by the nation's mayors. The President-elect described a two-year initiative to rebuild the nation's crumbling infrastructure. In response, the Conference invited cities to again submit information on infrastructure projects, this time on projects that could start quickly in 2009 and be completed by
the end of 2010.

Many of the cities included in the Conference's first report submitted additional projects, and many other cities submitted their projects, greatly increasing our total estimates of federal infrastructure funding that could be used and jobs that could be created.

This report combines the information on projects included in the first report and projects submitted in response to the Conference's second request.

Here are the two biggest items on Tulsa's list of 50 projects:

South Yale Avenue Bridge‐Construct bridge over Arkansas River at 121st and Yale Ave., $115,000,000; 600 jobs.

Roadway Improvements‐Improve 74 roadway segments thru pavement rehabilitation and lane widening to reduce congestion, and improve public safety; $200,731,000; 1,200 jobs.

Since the quoted cost of the bridge in the past has been far, far below $115 million, I would hope that that number includes the cost of needed improvements to the streets connecting to the bridge. Perhaps some of the $200 million for pavement rehab and widening would cover those areas as well.

The key thing to understand is that projects are on this list because the city believes they can be completed within the next two years if only the money were in hand. The point of this list is to say to the federal government, "give us the money and we can put hundreds of thousands of people to work right away." The list of projects implies that Tulsa could put nearly 4,000 people to work on construction over the next two years.

Other big-ticket items on the list:

Downtown Housing (on‐going stimulus package; Downtown Tulsa Master Plan Update; current C.I.P. funding list); $20,000,000; 200 jobs.

Property Acquisitions ‐ Federal Building and Post Office‐Strategic Property Acquisitions ‐ Federal Building and Post Office ( Downtown Master Plan Update; ongoing program & redevelopment efforts of Convention & BOK Centers; current C.I.P. funding); $54,000,000; 324 jobs.

Regional Training Center‐A regional fire training center to provide fire and homeland security training for Tulsa and surrounding communities. The center will also be used to train Tulsa Community College students in hospitality for hotel, motel operation; $40,000,000; 100 jobs

Facilities Improvement Projects‐Construct and rehabilitate 14 City of Tulsa facilities
improving Public Safety thru the elimination of safety and code voliations and to provide enhanced facilities which would allow for improved service delivery to the public; $34,376,000; 204 jobs.

Public Safety Information Technology Improvements‐Implement 20 information technology projects to improve the City of Tulsa's computer aided dispatch system, provide for backup 911 service, public safety automatic vehicle location, enhanced radio communications; $109,504,200; 318 jobs.

UPDATE 2008/12/11: Mayor says she's pulling the bridge from the list. And here's an easier way to look at the list of Tulsa's requests on the US Conference of Mayors website.

The Mental Health Association in Tulsa, an organization that is being used as a tool by the downtown NIMBYs in their (futile) efforts to clear the chronically homeless and mentally ill out of downtown, is threatening to sic Uncle Sam on homeowners who are protesting MHAT's plans to build a four-story apartment complex for the chronically homeless and mentally ill at Admiral and Yale.

The homeowners' group, Who Owns Tulsa?, attempted to negotiate with MHAT and the Tulsa Housing Authority to reach a compromise that would allow a facility to be built on the site, but on a smaller scale, comparable to similar facilities that already exist in neighborhoods. Negotiations broke down, and in order to keep their legal options open, Who Owns Tulsa? filed an appeal to the building permit for the 10 N. Yale site. The proposed facility has been classified as an apartment building, but if it is in fact an assisted living facility or community group home (as it clearly seems to be), there are limits in the zoning code on floor-area ratio that may render the proposed facility too large for the site.

These homeowners are clearly within their rights under Oklahoma law to seek a reversal of a BOA decision and under the U. S. Constitution's First Amendment to petition the government for redress of grievances. But MHAT is threatening a Strategic Lawsuit against Public Participation (SLAPP) -- trying to silence the homeowners by threatening them with prosecution under the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1988. This threat was made in a November 22 press release from MHAT's executive director Michael Brose:

"Past statements of Who Owns Tulsa? and the neighbors who have filed this appeal make clear that this is but one more attempt to block the construction of this building motivated by unreasonable fears of people with mental illness," said Brose. "Such efforts constitute a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act of 1988." In similar cases individuals including neighbors have been found to have violated that federal law when they have sought to exclude the people protected by the Fair Housing Act from their neighborhoods. The Mental Health Association will be contacting the federal authorities who enforce those rights as well as looking at its other options under the law.

This is not an idle threat. During the Clinton Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) went after citizen groups who opposed group homes in their neighborhoods. For example:

In 1994 HUD launched an investigation of the members of the Irving Place Community Coalition, a group of New York City citizens opposed to placing another home for the mentally ill in a neighborhood already saturated with such homes. HUD investigators decided that the residents' civic activism was a crime and demanded membership lists, written messages, and other documents from the members -- and even demanded to see the personal diaries of people involved in the opposition. Arlene Harrison, a member of the Irving Place Coalition, observed: "It was like Big Brother coming to your door with a hammer."

In Berkeley, California, HUD officials in late 1993 issued a subpoena to three residents who had complained about plans to convert a ratty-looking motel next to a liquor store into a home for alcoholics and mentally disabled AIDS patients. A federally funded fair-housing activist organization complained to HUD about the group's action, and HUD launched a full-scale investigation of the three. In November 1993, HUD demanded to see any letters they had written to public officials or newspapers, any petitions, names, addresses, and phone numbers of anyone who had indicated support for the group's efforts. John Deringer, who lived next to the soon-to-be shelter complained: "We didn't feel we had done anything wrong, but we were very, very intimidated. The threat was we could be fined $100,000 and jailed if we didn't give them the information they wanted. It was chilling."

With the Clinton Administration coming back to power in January under their community organizer Chief Executive, don't be surprised to see HUD once again ready to use heavy-handed intimidation on behalf of the left-leaning social work community. Ironically, a majority of voters in precinct 37, the neighborhood most prominent in the Who Owns Tulsa? effort, voted for the presidential candidate most likely to cause them trouble over this issue.

If Mr. Brose were serious about fairness and justice for the homeless and mentally ill, he should file a Fair Housing Act complaint against the downtown NIMBYs who are forcibly removing these downtown residents from their familiar surroundings. He could start with John Bolton of the BOK Center and Jim Norton of Downtown Tulsa Unlimited. They both spoke at a BOA hearing to protest the expansion of John 3:16 Mission's downtown facility. There was even a lawsuit to overturn the BOA ruling in favor of John 3:16 Mission.

Shouldn't Mr. Brose go after the real NIMBYs first?

Catching up with links -- I had two pieces in last week's Urban Tulsa Weekly.

My Cityscope column dealt with E-Tickets -- why the Tulsa Police Department needs the electronic citation system advocated by Councilor John Eagleton, and what's the hold up to getting it funded.

Here are some earlier stories about E-Tickets:

Also in last week's issue was a feature story with my post-election analysis, covering the Tulsa County Commission District 2 race, the Republican successes in the State Legislature and Corporation Commission, and the re-election of Sen. Jim Inhofe (while noting the strange undervote in the U. S. Senate race) and Congressman John Sullivan. I took a look at the swath of counties, stretching from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma, that gave more votes to the Republican presidential nominee this year than in 2004, and noted the connection to the lands of Ulster-Americans, aka the Scotch-Irish. I closed by suggesting that Republicans may want to adapt the British Conservative Party's Campaign North, their successful effort to rebuild their party in the north of England, where they had been nearly wiped out by the Labour Party.

A few links related to that last point:

Fix our mailer

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This came in the mail recently, urging a vote for the two City of Tulsa streets propositions on Tuesday's ballot. Click the image to see a bigger version.

FixOurStreetsFaceCollage.JPG

An open letter from Tulsa District 5 City Councilor Bill Martinson, explaining his decision to vote against the two streets propositions on Tuesday's ballot:

Dear Tulsa Voter,

November 4th is just around the corner, and the citizens of Tulsa will be voting on two street propositions. Councilors Henderson, Christiansen, Bynum, Patrick, and ultimately Troyer, voted to place these propositions on the ballot. I, along with Councilors Gomez, Eagleton and Westcott voted against these proposals because we supported a comprehensive approach that would actually fix the streets. Out of respect for the process, (i.e., respecting a majority vote of the Council) I have kept a low profile. To this point, my comments have been limited to direct responses to direct questions concerning my opinion of the ballot proposals.

However, as Election Day nears, I feel obligated to make my opinions better known. This is for two reasons, both based on the increasing calls, conversations, and e-mails I have been receiving. First, there seems to be a wide spread impression that my relative silence on the propositions is an unspoken endorsement. Not only do I NOT endorse the propositions, I intend to vote NO on both on November 4th. Second, the public has received limited information from those supporting the propositions as to the long-term impact their passage would have on Tulsa and its citizens. I hope that the following will help explain my position and provide a basis for those interested in making a fact-based decision at the polls.

As Chair of the City Council's Streets Sub-Committee, I was intimately involved in studying Tulsa's street deficiencies. We consulted with external experts, former elected officials, and the Public Works department. We found that years and decades of neglect have created a multi-billion dollar problem; the magnitude of which, no one disputes.

The Sub-Committee, working closely with Public Works and other City departments, spent months developing a comprehensive approach to address the problem. That effort led to a proposal that would have ensured the long term commitment necessary to restore and maintain our infrastructure. Unfortunately, that proposal is not on the ballot thanks to some last minute maneuvering by the Mayor and Chamber of Commerce.

In the early 1980's, Tulsa had over 220 employees assigned to street maintenance; today we have 69. Yet, we have doubled the number of lane miles in the City during that time. As a point of reference, there are enough lane miles in Tulsa to take you from New York City to Los Angeles and back to Tulsa with miles to spare (you would also encounter a signalized intersection every 10 miles along the way). Expecting 69 employees, 50 of which are actually in the field, to provide reactive maintenance (e.g., filling pot holes), much less routine and preventive maintenance, on that much pavement is absurd. The proposal that I supported provided restoring 100 of those positions over time. In addition to these positions that would have enabled us to effectively and efficiently extend the life of our streets, we also provided additional funding for right of way maintenance, graffiti abatement, and traffic engineering in order to address dangerous intersections and improve traffic flow. Furthermore, we had included $120 million for street widening in south Tulsa.

The Mayor in a matter of weeks, if not days, developed the propositions on the November 4th ballot. The propositions provide minimal resources for street maintenance, no additional funding for right of way maintenance, graffiti abatement or traffic engineering and have NO funding for widening. While the ballot propositions may hold the pavement condition relatively steady, the backlog of work will increase by $64 million. In addition to increasing the backlog, the limited funding for routine and preventive maintenance will mean that our streets will deteriorate more rapidly than necessary and ensure that our cost will be much higher in the end.

The Mayor and the Chamber of Commerce are promoting the propositions on the ballot as the first step in a master plan. Yet, no one has developed, or is developing, the next step, which means there is no plan. That burden will fall on a future Mayor and future City Councilors. Not only will those officials face a massive street need (even the advocates of the ballot propositions admit this), they will have to fund several years of deferred capital requirements that are being ignored in the current ballot propositions. If these propositions pass, the additional costs to the taxpayers once these ballot propositions expire will be enormous.

Some argue that the comprehensive approach would have tied up our funding sources for too long and that the current ballot proposals would provide Tulsa with flexibility to address future needs. I personally cannot envision a future need that would surpass our immediate need to fix our deteriorating streets (again, no one disputes the financial magnitude of the problem). As to the comprehensive approach tying up future funding sources, I believe the exact opposite is true. In order to reach the same pavement condition in the same timeframe as the longer comprehensive approach, two shorter initiatives will cost hundreds of millions dollars more - hundreds of millions of dollars going to streets that could have been saved and dedicated elsewhere.

Others argue that since Tulsa is updating its Comprehensive Plan and modes of transportation may change, a shorter plan makes sense. Regardless of any changes to the Comprehensive Plan, Tulsa will need adequate streets. People will live in houses and will need to get to work and go to stores. Unless we all begin walking or bicycling where we need to go, and expect visitors to Tulsa to do the same, I cannot see a fundamental shift away from needing a reliable street system, especially over the next twelve years.

Some have said that the comprehensive approach would never pass because it would cost too much money. To put things in perspective, the difference in cost to a taxpayer living in a $100,000 house between the comprehensive plan that I supported and the plan on the November 4 ballot is approximately $8 per year, less than a $1 per month.

I doubt that anyone in Tulsa wants to see our streets fixed more than I do. In my opinion, the street propositions on November 4th ballot will not fix the fundamental problems relating to our streets. Furthermore, they will ultimately cost the taxpayers of Tulsa hundreds of millions of dollars more than necessary. Accordingly, I will be voting NO on both propositions.

Some contend that the current ballot proposals are a start, or at least better than nothing. I disagree. I believe that kind of approach and mentality has put us where we are today. Until Tulsans and their elected officials acquire the courage and discipline to actually solve the problem, the streets in our City will continue to decline. The City Council's Streets Sub-Committee spent many months conducting a complete analysis and developing a comprehensive plan that would fix Tulsa's streets. If the ballot propositions fail, that plan can be placed on the first legally available ballot following November 4th election.

Bill Martinson
Tulsa City Councilor, District 5

There is so much happening and so little time to comment, so here are a few local links of interest:

Bubbaworld has questions about the $135 million in unspent funds from past City of Tulsa sales taxes and bond issues:

In what bank(s) are these surplus funds deposited?

Are the taxpayers of Tulsa earning a reasonable interest on these surplus tax revenues, some of which have apparently been "laying around" since the 1970's?

Who has ultimate control of this $135 million "slush fund"?

And most importantly, why when this much surplus tax revenue was available have Tulsans been asked time and again to approve new and additional tax increases for a variety of purposes?

We learn today that Tulsa County Commission candidate Karen Keith is indeed a member, as we suspected, of the JBS. That's the Jim Burdge Society. The campaign consultant is on Keith's payroll, along with former District 6 City Councilor Art Justis. As I wrote in last week's UTW:

Keith's decision to hire Jim Burdge as her campaign consultant further undercuts her squeaky-clean image. Burdge is renowned in political circles for his slimy, underhanded, and often clumsy attacks on his clients' opponents. As the consultant of choice to the development industry lobby, Burdge led the disastrous 2005 recall campaign against Councilors Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock and the even more disastrous opposition to the [zoning protest] petition charter amendment.

Keith's selection of Burdge, like her enthusiastic embrace of Bob Dick's endorsement, doesn't speak well of her judgment.

Keith also got two big checks from the development industry: $5,000 from the Realtors PAC and $2,000 from a group associated with the state home builders association.

Jenn at Green Country Values reports that a Gold Star mom named Angelia Phillips is upset at Andrew Rice, Democrat candidate for Senate. Rice has a "tribute" on his website to her son Michael Phillips and other Oklahomans killed in action in Iraq. Mrs. Phillips considers it an insult, not a tribute, because of Rice's stand against the war. She wrote:

My husband and I believe strongly that if you do not support the troops AND their mission then any "tribute" you might make on their behalf is hollow and nothing more than a scoreboard.

She has asked the Rice campaign to remove her son's name from the website, and the campaign has refused. She intended to ask Rice personally today at a scheduled campaign appearance, but he was a no-show.

Steven Roemerman does a fact check on U. S. Rep. John Sullivan's latest ad about his carpetbagging opponent and finds it factual.

As always, Mike McCarville is the go-to guy on Oklahoma politics. His latest stories include an item on all the money trial lawyers are dumping into Nancy Riley's SD 37 re-election campaign. A Riley win is needed for a continued Democratic majority, which in turn would mean no tort reform. McCarville also reports a last minute $100,000 surprise attack by the Democrats on State Sen. Jim Reynolds, who is being challenged by someone named David Boren (not the David Boren).

The Peregrine Falcon has three reports from the first Ice Oilers game at the BOK Center, one about the game, one about Mayor Kathy Taylor getting booed, and one about the frustration of buying tickets. After going downtown to try to avoid a $9 per ticket fee at Homeland:

So, I get downtown, I stand in line; of which there are only two. That's right, two-lines for the single largest venue in Tulsa; TWO LINES!!! While I am waiting the person operating my line, (1 of 2) walks away. Four minutes later, I find that the section that I want is not available for this game; BOK isn't selling cheap seats (cheap at $10.00 per seat - not that cheap). However, they are willing to sell me seats twice the price. Begrudgingly I bought the tickets. Again, a fee was attached. Two dollars per ticket, to have the privilege of paying for a center that I am already paying for.

The Peregrine Falcon also links to a debunking of Barack Obama's alleged middle-class tax cut, showing that Obama's plans include four tax increases for people earning less than $250,000.

Joe Kelley has a picture of the unspeakably cute new resident of the Oklahoma Aquarium.

(I was on air with Joe this morning, about my question, "Are we really about to elect a far-left president?")

Lynn reminds us that Oklahoma's favorite son, the Anti-Bunk Party nominee in 1928, was born on Election Day and his 129th birthday will fall on Election Day 2008.

Down the 'pike, Steve Lackmeyer checks the Bricktown parking situation during the OKC Thunder's first regular season game and finds plenty of spaces.

OCPA gets a salute from Illinois for their work to let the sun shine in on Oklahoma government expenditures.

Today I received via GT Bynum some responses from the Tulsa Public Works Department to the questions I asked in my October 15 column on the street sales tax and bond issue vote. It will take me some time to process all this, but in the meantime I wanted you to have the chance to read it. It's long, so you'll have to click below to read the whole thing. Here are the questions that were answered:

1) Question: Will the City aggressively advertise contracting opportunities to out-of-area firms so we can have a more robust competition for road work?

2) Question: Will the City do a better job of coordinating projects with ODOT, so the City doesn't snarl alternate routes while ODOT is working on a freeway?

3) Question: I see money in the package for rebuilding streets, as we've been doing. But where is the money for paving, crack sealing, milling and overlay? Is there adequate money in this package for the preventative maintenance we haven't been doing?

This week in Urban Tulsa Weekly, I return to the topic of the November 4 City of Tulsa street sales tax and bond issue vote, raising some questions I hope can be convincingly answered between now and election day.

In an extra op-ed, I explain why voters of all political orientations should choose the eminently qualified Dana Murphy for the two-year term seat on the Corporation Commission over appointed incumbent Jim Roth, whose personal connections and campaign finances indicate a far-too-cozy relationship with Chesapeake Energy, one of the businesses he regulates. For good measure, here's my editorial endorsing Dana Murphy in the Republican primary.

This afternoon at 2, City of Tulsa Finance Director Mike Kier, Assistant Public Works Director Paul Zachary, and City Councilor G. T. Bynum will be on the Chris Medlock show on 1170 KFAQ to talk about the sales tax and bond issue for street funding that will be on November's ballot. Earlier this week, the three were interviewed by KFAQ's Pat Campbell. (Click this link to listen to the podcast.)

Here's where I am: I would like to be able to support this package enthusiastically. I need to be persuaded, however, that this isn't just more money to spend on the same old failed approach to maintaining streets. I need to be convinced that Public Works is changing the way it does business.

Will the City aggressively advertise contracting opportunities to out-of-area firms so we can have a more robust competition for road work?

Will the City do a better job of coordinating projects with ODOT, so the City doesn't snarl alternate routes while ODOT is working on a freeway?

I see money in the package for rebuilding streets, as we've been doing. But where is the money for paving, crack sealing, milling and overlay? Is there adequate money in this package for the preventative maintenance we haven't been doing?

If I'm not persuaded, I'll vote yes on the sales tax proposition and no on the bond issue proposition. The overall sales tax rate doesn't go up if the sales tax proposition passes, and I want the city to call dibs on the 2/12ths tax when the County's Four-to-Fix sales tax expires. Also, allocation of the sales tax could be changed to spend money on paving and sealing, while a bond issue cannot be reallocated and cannot be spent on preventative maintenance.

Showdown at the county jail

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My latest article in Urban Tulsa Weekly is about the soon-to-expire agreement between the City of Tulsa and Tulsa County regarding jail operations. Under the existing contract, the county's jail system uses several city facilities rent-free -- including the old city jail, which provides holding cells for the adjacent county courthouse, and a property room -- in exchange for the city being allowed to hold up to 116 prisoners, in jail only on municipal charges, at no cost to the city.

The latest volley in the war of words between the two sides comes in a sharply-worded letter from Assistant City Attorney Christine Benediktson to County Commissioner John Smaligo, which accuses county officials of not negotiating in good faith and advises that the city is prepared to go it alone when the contract expires:

Over the last several months I have listened carefully to your issues, spent considerable time in researching issues and solutions and in meeting with City officials and employees in an effort to reach a compromise and, ultimately, to avoid a protracted legal dispute. Your response to these efforts makes a mockery of the negotiation process and constitutes bad faith. As a resident of Tulsa County, I am extremely disappointed in you as a public official. It is most unfortunate that you do not appear to respect or honor your fiduciary duty to the citizens of Tulsa - who comprise one of the largest communities within the County that you serve.

I have been authorized to inform you that if the County persists in refusing to negotiate properly, the City is prepared to change the way we conduct municipal court business. We will be prepared to deal with our municipal prisoners independently on October 1st. We will contemporaneously move forward to analyze our legal options against the County. Further, if this occurs, the Sheriff will be required to handle all administrative services previously provided by the City and to vacate all City owned premises, including the municipal court building, the holding cells and the sally port. Additionally, the County will need to make arrangements for the property located in the City Property Room currently held by the City on behalf of the County. Despite your representations to the contrary, approximately 80% of that property is being held in relation to cases currently pending in State Court.

The letter also advises that some misdemeanors that are both municipal offenses and state offenses -- assault and battery and DUI are specifically named -- will be booked as state violations, rather than municipal, as they routinely are booked today. This would allow Tulsa to avoid being billed for these prisoners, but it would move the case from Municipal to District Court, adding to the workload of the District Attorney and the District Court.

The jail sharing contract between the City of Tulsa and Tulsa County is due to expire in less than two weeks, and negotiations are stalled. Mayor Kathy Taylor issued a memo to the City Council last Friday reviewing the origins of the current contract, created in 1995, and the county promises that persuaded city officials to work with the county to pass the jail tax.

(Here is the memo from Mayor Taylor to the City Council and
the attachment to the memo, including documents and statements made when the original city/county jail contract was signed in 1995 (5 MB PDF).)

In a nutshell, Tulsa County had failed to pass a bond issue to replace the overcrowded jail on the top floor of the County Courthouse. One attempt to pass a sales tax for a new jail was blocked by District Judge Jane Wiseman, who said the proposal, which bundled funding for crime prevention programs with the cost of building and operating the jail, was unconstitutional logrolling. (Eight years later, Wiseman turned a blind eye to far more blatant logrolling on the Vision 2025 ballot. She now sits on the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals.)

In an effort to win the City of Tulsa's support for a new, properly divided sales tax vote, county officials agreed to house up to 116 purely municipal offenders -- people in jail on a city charge, but with no state charges pending -- in exchange for county's use of the city's municipal jail and booking area for housing prisoners appearing at the courthouse and the county's use of the city's adult detention center near Newblock Park. The county's argument to the city was that combining operations would save the city more than $2 million annually that it was spending to run its municipal jail. The city would reimburse the county at a rate of $16.44 per prisoner per day for any municipal prisoners in excess of 116.

The county's proposal for the new jail contract redefines what constitutes a municipal prisoner and triples the cost per municipal prisoner per day. Previously, prisoners counted against the city's allowance of 116 only if they were in jail solely on municipal charges. If they were in jail on state charges, they were the county's responsibility under state law, even if municipal charges were also pending. The county's new proposal would eliminate any allowance to the city -- charges would begin with the first municipal prisoner -- and the city would be billed for every prisoner with a municipal charge pending, even if the prisoner would have to be in jail anyway on state charges.

Taylor's memo includes the assertion that Sheriff Stanley Glanz has been able to operate the jail for $2 million a year less than the money generated by the 1/4-cent jail operation sales tax.

City officials are right to resist this contract and to explore alternatives, such as letting the agreement lapse using the adult detention center as the city lockup. It would be better if the county reconsidered its position and worked with the city on continuing combined operations. The county should agree to the old, sensible definition of municipal prisoner and should grant the city an allowance of purely municipal misdemeanor prisoners in consideration for the sheriff's use of city detention facilities.

Bill Kumpe, an attorney who lives near the site of the planned homeless facility at Admiral and Yale, has posted a long and eloquent exposition of the point of view of homeowners in the nearby neighborhoods.

(It's worth reminding: The White City neighborhood gets its name from the White City Dairy farm that preceded the subdivision on that site.)

The older, usually well built and well maintained homes in White City are one of the few places in Tulsa where blue collar, gray collar, white collar and professionals can live in an economically diverse neighborhood and all still stay within the economic goal of paying no more than a third of their total household income for housing including maintenance, utilities, necessary upgrades, etc. It is an old fashioned mixed class, mixed income neighborhood that should be the model for future developments instead of the dumping ground for city problems....

At its most basic, the proposed Admiral and Yale homeless shelter appears to be a giant rip off to the average White City resident. Joe Sixpack, Susan Secretary and Ernie Engineer see nothing more than an attempt to handle a downtown problem by exporting it to their neighborhood. Combine that with the fact that the proposed downtown "baseball" trust is aggressively trying to control the property values and development around THEIR investment and the whole deal appears profoundly hypocritical. The downtown elites are using all of their political and legal power to prevent the very type of development risk that THEY THEMSELVES are forcing down the throats of the White City residents. Taken at its most basic they are saying that their for-profit investment in a ball park deserves the city's protection while the White City residents investment in their homes does not....

Taking the homeless from a place where they were within walking distance of all their needed services and placing them in another where they are miles away on an infrequently served bus route doesn't make much sense at all. As a matter of fact, to Joe and Susan and Ernie it seems like a formula for having a lot of people walking through their neighborhoods and hanging around the neighborhood bus stops and parks....

We've been told that this facility is intended to help mainstream the mentally ill into normal society. Bill's neighborhood, bordering White City, has seen the impact of "mainstreaming" firsthand:

After several years, the "mainstreamed" neighbor is still there. But, the previously occupied homes on both sides of his are boarded up as is the previously occupied home one house down on one side. The home next to the boarded up home on the other side sold at one point on a contract for deed but the buyer cancelled after a few weeks because of the problems with the "mainstreamed" neighbor. It became a Section 8 rental unit. One of the houses across the street went vacant after the young couple who lived there couldn't take it anymore. They tried for months to sell their home with no luck. It is now a rental unit. That's five homes whose values have been severely degraded due to one property. The character of the whole neighborhood changed. And, it's not as though the homeowners were passive. Far from it. Over the years, there were at least fifty calls to the police. Many of them went unanswered. There were petitions to the police department and DA which resulted in no determinative action. The fire department answered dozens of calls about trash fires and made arrests for illegal burning more than once....

Unless their aim is to drive everyone who can afford it to move to the suburbs, our city leaders need to understand the perspective of residents of neighborhoods like those around Admiral and Yale.

I've been seeing e-mail traffic urging people to show up at tonight's City Council meeting in support of the Tulsa Stadium Trust. I understand that Bank of Oklahoma and other downtown employers are trying to pack the council chambers tonight. Those who show up should remember that the vote isn't about building a ballpark, it's about authorizing a public trust. I support putting the ballpark downtown, but I'm concerned what powers and scope of action this trust will have.

While the trust indenture has been improved significantly, there are still objectionable features, and there still appears to be some confusion, even among the trust's promoters, about what this trust will be authorized to do.

I am happy to see the the trust limited in its acquisitions to a geographical area, but the area (Detroit Ave., BNSF right of way, I-244) is too broad, and there is still the possibility of pressuring the City Council to allow them to make acquisitions outside that area. As I wrote previously:

Any stadium trust should be limited in the indenture to improvements to blocks 23, 24, and 45, and lots 4, 5, and 6 of block 46 of Tulsa's Original Townsite -- the area between I-244 and Archer, Elgin and the buildings on the west side of Greenwood which survived urban renewal.

There shouldn't be an escape clause. There should also be explicit language in the indenture forbidding the use of eminent domain to acquire property for the trust.

Here's the version of the Tulsa Stadium Trust indenture showing markups made following Tuesday's Council committee meeting:

2008-08-21 Trust Indenture (v39) (Marked).pdf

Here's the same version, but without the markups visible:

2008-08-21 Trust Indenture (v39).pdf

At Tuesday's council committee meeting, trust promoter Fred Dorwart claimed that the trust wouldn't just be building a ballpark:

Fred Dorwart, an attorney for the donors, said the trust also is charged with providing services within the Inner Dispersal Loop such as street cleaning. A portion of the downtown assessment fee helps fund the ballpark, and the rest pays for downtown services, he said.

(You can hear audio of an exchange between Bill Martinson and Fred Dorwart on Chris Medlock's Tuesday afternoon show, within the first 20 minutes of the first hour.)

I've looked through the trust indenture, and I can't find any reference to that in Article III -- Purpose and Powers of the Trust (or anywhere else). If that's true, it opens the door to replace the city's year-to-year contract with Downtown Tulsa Unlimited for downtown services -- which seems on the verge of being opened to competition -- with a trust's multiyear contract with Downtown Tulsa Unlimited.

No, TGOV hasn't figured out how to do this, but David Schuttler has. If you're away from a Cox Cable equipped TV and want to watch tonight's City Council debate over the Papa Bear ($2 billion) and Mama Bear ($451 million) street plans, tune into his live video feed page.

City administration officials declined to accept the recommendation of the City Auditor's office to use a process to select an economic development contractor, rather than continuing to renew the Tulsa Metro Chamber (officially the Metropolitan Tulsa Chamber of Commerce -- MTCC) automatically each year. The auditor's recommendation was one of six findings in this audit of the Chamber's compliance with their economic development contract with the city for Fiscal Year 2007.

It's unclear who wrote the administration's response to the audit, but the response sets up a vicious circle. First, here is audit finding 1:

SUMMARY:

It has been a long tradition, dating back to the early 1900's that the City has contracted with MTCC for economic development purposes. City management generally uses a contract awarding methodology prescribed by executive order for selected consultants. However, this type of methodology is not applied when awarding the economic development contract. Without exploring available options for the economic development contract or using the established contract methodology, there is less assurance the value of the services provided is equivalent to the amount of funding expended.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

Stakeholders should use an established contract methodology or contract selection criteria for selecting future economic development contractor(s). Continued funding of MTCC may be the best option available, but without exploring other options, stakeholders cannot be sure.

The administration's response:

Decline. While the processes outlined in the recommendation are sound, until potential alternate providers are identified the use of those processes will be ineffective.

The auditor points out the obvious in a response to the response:

AUDITOR COMMENT:

Decline of the recommendation accepts risk that alternative providers may not be identified and funding expended may not maximize service provided.

In other words, until the city sets criteria, issues a request for proposals, and indicates a willingness to look at other providers, it's unlikely that other providers would emerge to compete with the Chamber.

The auditor, in finding 2, also recommended adding quantifiable performance standards for the economic development contract -- to have a way to measure the outcomes achieved by the contractor.

In finding 3, we learn that the Chamber isn't reporting expenditures on a quarterly basis as required by its contract:

The MTCC contract requires performance reports be submitted 30 days after each calendar quarter and 60 days after the end of the fiscal year. MTCC submits performance reports and marketing plans timely and includes all of the required information, with the exception of budgetary versus actual expenditures data. MTCC senior management stated they did not include the actual expenditures versus budget because it was never required in prior contracts.

Finding 4 reveals that when the Chamber can't find private sponsors for a marketing activity, they just hit up the city for the difference:

MTCC prepares a marketing plan of City funding for proposed activities during the contract period. Some of the proposed activities also involve private funding obtained by MTCC. The marketing plan is provided to the City contract administrator who uses the marketing plan for review of reimbursement requests from MTCC. If MTCC is not successful in securing enough private funding for an activity, they may use funds from other projects to fund the activity. When these changes occur, the City's contract administrator only learns of the change when reimbursement requests for an event are received. For example, in the FY07 marketing plan, $10,000 was earmarked as the City's portion for the LPGA Tournament and $15,000 from private partners. MTCC was unsuccessful in securing sufficient funding from private partners, so the City paid $25,000.

Internal Auditing reviewed the marketing plan and discovered several mathematical errors and some activities listed twice. The contract administrator does not review or verify the plan for accuracy. The contract administrator uses the marketing plan for review of reimbursement requests from MTCC.

Finding 5: The Chamber didn't meet its goal of 300 new sales, contacts, and leads. They only made it to 260. (How hard is it to generate leads?)

Finding 6: The City needs someone with a background in economic development and convention and visitors services to oversee this contract. The auditor notes: "Although MTCC submits performance reports they are not reviewed to ensure performance measures are being met."

If we insist on making economic development a tax-funded activity, the City ought to follow the auditor's recommendations: objective performance measures, ongoing monitoring of performance throughout the year, and a process to allow competition for the economic development contract.

Some wise words in a letter from retired architect Bob Sober to the members of the Tulsa City Council, regarding the proposed Tulsa Stadium Improvement Trust indenture, on the Council's agenda for Thursday night:

Councilors,

The Mayor has asked you to approve the Trust Indenture in this Thursday's Council meeting in one more artificial self-created emergency. Once more you have been set up to overlook the obstacle, this time possibly depriving the public of a new ballpark, stalling the revitalization of downtown and possibly causing the Drillers to move to Jenks. Please, don't fall for it this time.

Take the time necessary to assure that the Tulsa Stadium Trust is really a Public Trust, designed to fairly represent the people. At this point, the Trust has the appearance of a private business disguised (in name only) to look like a Public Trust. The representation of the members and the length of the terms assure tight control of a small group of donors for the first twelve years of its life. This is very important when you consider that all of the decisions concerning the development of the property surrounding the ballpark will be made and committed to bricks and mortar during this period.

Please consider that the following scenario built on both fact and personal opinion:

Faced with the possibility of the Drillers moving to Jenks, the Mayor attempted to find a location in Downtown to keep the Drillers in Tulsa and use the ballpark in conjunction with the Arena to revitalize downtown and stimulate housing and retail growth. The City picked-up the options for the failed attempt to develop a Wal-Mart in the East Village and began negotiations with the Drillers to locate the ballpark in Downtown Tulsa. Frustrated by the sellers inability to establish a purchase price (due to internal lawsuits), the Mayor looked for alternative locations. Turning to her planning consultant for advice, the Mayor selected the current proposed site in the Brady/Greenwood districts. This location is well suited to support the aggressive Brady "Arts" District revitalization effort already underway by the George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF) and the conceptual plan to use light rail to solve transportation problems and stimulate high density growth nodes. Like any development deal there are a myriad of problems to solve. First is how do you assemble enough land to construct the ballpark and provide parking (assuming that a ballpark surrounded by parking is appropriate in a downtown location). The solution is to connect the ballpark to the proposed light rail (only one block south) so that existing parking around the city can be used to serve the ballpark. This allows the ballpark to be surrounded by mixed use development, instead of pavement, and furthers the revitalization of the area. This is a beautiful solution and a wonderful service to the citizens of Tulsa. Disappointed by the pace of redevelopment around the new Arena, the Mayor decides that the City should take responsibility for the development of the property around the Ballpark. Creating a special zoning district was inadequate for her vision, the City needed to own the property to assure that the development is family oriented and provides a proper connection to the proposed light rail. This creates two additional problems. First, it doubles the cost of the project from $30M to $60M, second, the property must be assembled (this was already accomplished at the East Village site).

My issues with the Trust Indenture begin here.

Evidence that the City and the donors took the task of assembling the property very seriously is the July 7 meeting of the Brady District Property owners where in the presence of high ranking members of the administration Mr. Boylan stated the eminent domain would be used to acquire property from owners not willing to sell. Possible additional evidence is the termination of the exclusive negotiation agreement between the Tulsa Development Authority (TDA) and Novus Homes, LLC (Novus) an action resulting in a lawsuit and allegations of violations of the City's Ethics Ordinance. Both of these acts are aggressive unfriendly acts of the City threatening the use of its authority to overpower the individual in "the best interest of the City" to assemble the property necessary to support the Mayor's vision. None of this heavy-handedness was required at the East Village location because the land was assemble by a private developer without the threatening power of the City. This property was assembled the "old fashioned way" with and interested buyer and a willing seller. Is it fair to assume that the ballpark in the East Village was to be a private development, the way it was in Jenks, since no trust proposal was considered and no public money was requested? If so, the authority to threaten property owners unwilling to sell came with the discussion of establishing a Public Trust. I don't believe a Public Trust, with 50% of its members not from the donors group, would endorse these actions.

Creating an assessment district including all property owners in the Inner Dispersal Loop (IDL) became necessary to fund acquisition of the property surrounding the ballpark and improving this property in preparation for family oriented mixed-use development. Leasing this property to developers is a very creative method of maintaining the ballpark and surrounding area and assure the vitality of the area for the next 30 years. My hat is off to the Mayor and donors.

Who will develop this property? Obviously, this will be determined by the Trust. Why should these decisions be limited to the Mayor, five donors committing at least $2M to the project and one IDL property owner? Why do the donors have 12 year terms? This has the appearance of a private business using the authority of a Public Trust to threaten and tax property owners. What is to prevent the donor controlled Trust from using Public money to purchase and enhance the value of the property surrounding the ballpark, then lease it back to them selves to develop projects to recover their donations (making the donations an investment not a gift)? This is an appropriate strategy for a private business not a Public Trust. If this is what the City and donors wish to accomplish then they should raise an additional $30M, assemble the property without the authority if City government and run this business as they wish. If the donors are truly making a gift to the City, then create a trust that is dominated by IDL property owners that are not donors nor at businesses dependent on members of the donors group. Please consider a Trust with 15 members (mayor, 7 donors and 7 IDL property owners that are not donors nor at businesses dependent on members of the donors group) with 3 year terms. This is very consistent with existing City Trusts, Commissions, Authorities, etc.

In the recent survey of Tulsa citizens conducted by Collective Strength as part of PLANiTULSA it was discovered that people in Tulsa are worried:

"That those with money have too much influence."

"That city leaders don't understand their needs."

and the key themes from in depth interviews were:

"Well intentioned 'oligarchy' is out of touch."

"Fatalism about lack of zoning and code enforcement and special favors for the wealthy".

The current Trust Indenture supports and perpetuates these concerns. Please reject this agreement and construct in its place one that fairly represents in word and spirit the intention of a PUBLIC Trust.

Thank you,

Bob Sober

Sober was appointed by Mayor Kathy Taylor to chair the PLANiTULSA Advisers and Partners, the steering and community outreach committees for the effort to create a new comprehensive plan for Tulsa. Public confidence in fairness and openness is crucial to the success of that effort. The manner of putting together the ballpark deal undermines that confidence.

Any stadium trust should be limited in the indenture to improvements to blocks 23, 24, and 45, and lots 4, 5, and 6 of block 46 of Tulsa's Original Townsite -- the area between I-244 and Archer, Elgin and the buildings on the west side of Greenwood which survived urban renewal.

It would be simpler just to put the downtown ballpark under the aegis of the existing Tulsa Public Facilities Authority, which manages the Maxwell Convention Center, build it with the assessment and lease funds, and let the donors do their own thing with their own money in the open real estate market.

From the Tulsa Preservation Commission blog:

Please join us Wednesday, August 27th for a Community Workshop to shape and evaluate Tulsa's Historic Preservation Strategy.

This public workshop will be from 5:30 - 7:30pm in the new City Hall, 175 E. 2nd Street, 10th Floor South conference room (map it). On-street parking at meters is free after business hours. Please use the 2nd Street entrance.

Your insights and vision for preserving and enhancing the historic character of Tulsa would be appreciated. We hope to see you there!

For more information, call 918-576-5669. Please feel free to share this invitation with your friends and colleagues.

With the comprehensive plan update underway and national attention on Tulsa's historic assets, thanks to the upcoming National Preservation Conference being held here in October, this may be the moment to make preservation a priority in Tulsa.

RELATED:

Steve Patterson reports that a subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation is joining the City of St. Louis and the State of Missouri in a SLAPP suit against two preservation activists who filed lawsuits in an effort to save a 100-year-old building in downtown St. Louis.

From "Floyd," on TulsaNow's public forum, regarding the Trust Indenture for the Tulsa Stadium Trust:

Sigh.

If they had just decided to build a stadium and then created a set of special design codes for the stadium district, they could be moving dirt soon. But they can't help themselves from overreaching, can they. And it always ends badly.

I want to know who drafted this thing and why they thought it would fly. I wonder if this was even a unique document or if it came from some kind of template that wasn't tailored to this kind of purpose. 12 yr terms? For the donors? Really?

After Mayor Taylor's confused, tearful performance in front of the TDA, I'm convinced she's not the one actually orchestrating this whole deal. Can anyone tell us who, ostensibly even, is the public face of the ballpark master plan?

I had the impression that BOK President Stan Lybarger was heading this up, but he hasn't really been a public face on the issue. It is interesting that no one showed up at that TDA meeting to speak on behalf of the ballpark donors (other than Mayor Taylor, of course -- and the three board members who didn't recuse themselves but should have).

Another example of the overreach is the TDA's premature termination of their exclusive negotiating period with Will Wilkins and Novus Homes, to which Floyd alluded. Late last week, carltonplace had this to say on TulsaNow's public forum about the frustration many downtown boosters and ballpark backers feel about the Novus Homes situation (reformatted slightly for readability):

The ballpark is not a done deal, the Novus project could have been had the TDA not changed their mind and pulled the offer to Novus in favor of reserving that property for the ball park donors. This action by the TDA whose members are comprised of volunteers that work for companies on the donor list rubs people the wrong way for the following reasons:

1. Frustrated Development: We are begging for downtown development but there is a perception that building in downtown (and dealing with the TDA) is too difficult. That perception now is now reality in many people's minds.

2. Ethical Concerns: Choosing one's employer over this developer whether real or imagined feels wrong.

3. Transparency: Why can't the ballpark and the development work together? Why won't anyone give a valid reason why they can't. Feels like back room politics

4. Treatment:Why did they leave Novus hanging so long and let them continue to spend money and jump through hoops if this final action was what they've intended since the ballpark announcement?

5. History:This isn't the first time that the TDA has acted this way toward a potential buyer. Its no wonder they can't sell and develop a downtown property. What are they holding onto them for? Why did they start empire building? What happened to Jones Lang Lassalle?

This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly is an expansion upon my blog entry from last weekend about the efforts by "not-in-my-back-yard" downtown interests to relocate the homeless and indigent away from downtown.

Coincidentally, in this same issue there's Brian Ervin's profile of Steve Whitaker, head of John 3:16 Mission. Here's how he describes the work of John 3:16 Mission.

"The people that I take care of live by the law of the streets, and the law of the streets is very much Darwinian in that it is the strongest that survive," said Whitaker. "But, the John 3:16 Mission is part of God's peaceful kingdom. We're here to love those people back to wellness--to create a loving, caring, nurturing environment for people that are addicted or mentally ill or homeless just by bad luck, to get back on their feet and find their life again."

John 3:16 Mission has had its own encounter with the downtown NIMBYs (emphasis added):

A pervasive attitude of "Not In My Back Yard" is behind efforts to derail his planned expansion of the 56-year-old Mission, he told UTW.

The city's Board of Adjustment granted permission for the expansion in February, but a group of downtown businesses and residents have appealed the decision in the courts.

Their position is that the Mission and other services in the area are attracting the homeless and drug-addicted and threatening the safety and success of ongoing downtown revitalization efforts.

But, Whitaker said it's downtown itself that's attracting them, and that without the Mission and other services to the needy, they would have nowhere else to go, and would be a much more visible problem than they are now (See "No Rest for the Weary" in our Jan. 24-30, 2008, issue at www.urbantulsa.com for some of the early details).

"There is an assumption that this clustering of services in downtown Tulsa is harmful, but people have forgotten history. They've forgotten what happened almost 20 years ago when there was a move afoot to put John 3:16 and the Day Center and the Salvation Army and the jail all in the same area," he said. Whitaker said downtown urban settings, and not services for the homeless, are what attract homeless people: the alleys provide places to sleep and hide and dumpsters to dig through for food or other salvageable items.

"A walkthrough of every city's downtown in America will prove that they are homes for homeless, and if this city's not proactive about treating its homeless population, then all of our dreams for an entertainment district are going to be spoiled, and homelessness will be a true blight then," he said.

(The profile is well worth reading -- covering Whitaker's background in North Tulsa, his martial arts training, how he came to be involved at John 3:16, and his thoughts on homelessness in Tulsa, racism, and the north/south divide.)

In my op-ed, I call attention to a New York City organization called Common Ground which helped reduce the homeless population in Times Square by 87% in two years, not by shipping them out to suburban subdivisions in Queens or Bergen County, but by providing "supportive housing" for them in a renovated hotel in the heart of the Theater District, where they have access to jobs and transportation:

Acquired by Common Ground in 1991, the Times Square is the largest permanent supportive housing project in the nation. A once-stately neighborhood fixture that had fallen into serious disrepair, Common Ground carefully preserved the building's historic character while redeveloping it into housing for 652 low-income and formerly homeless individuals and persons living with HIV/AIDS.

The Times Square combines permanent affordable housing with a range of on-site social services provided by Common Ground's social service partner, the Center for Urban Community Services. Individualized support services are designed to help tenants maintain their housing, address health issues, and pursue education and employment. On-site assistance with physical and mental health issues and substance abuse is available to all tenants, six days a week. Property management services, including 24-hour security, are provided by Common Ground's affiliated not-for-profit property management company, Common Ground Community.

Common Ground's Tenant Services staff offers programs and activities to enhance a sense of community, e.g., a six-week financial literacy workshop, a community health fair, and workshops covering topics such as portrait drawing and cooking. Common areas include a garden roof deck (available for rent to the public); a computer laboratory; a library; an art studio; a medical clinic; 24-hour laundry facilities; a rehearsal space featuring floor-to-ceiling dance mirrors and a piano; and an exercise room.

Richard L. Jones has posted a lengthy comment on my article from his perspective as a pastor who works with the homeless downtown. It's worth reading in its entirety. It includes this funny, pointed analogy:

And to the "powers that be" in Tulsa, when are you going to follow the lead of successful cities that have centralized services for the homeless, and begin to provide real solutions to the problem instead of trying to shuffle them around the city like spreading the peas out on your plate that you didn't want to eat so it that looks like you did?...

Instead of kicking the homeless when they are down, let's all work together to help bring them some dignity and assistance in getting the help they need to break free from the cycle of despair. Basic human services and health care in a more centralized environment would be a good place to start.

Who are the real NIMBYs?

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An edited version of this column was published in the August 14-20, 2008, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. It was a more polished version of a blog entry from the previous week (minus hyperlinks and blockquotes, which don't translate well to print). The published version is no longer available on the internet; it was originally at this URL. Here is a 2009 PDF capture of the web version. Here are photographs of the print version: Mention at top of cover page, editor's note on page 2, start of column on page 6, and end of column on page 7.

My blog entry linking to the story is here, with links to related articles about downtown and the homeless. Julie Hall, the attorney and White City (Braden Park) Neighborhood leader who led neighborhood opposition to the facility, described the August 7, 2008, City Council meeting as the catalyst for the Who Owns Tulsa movement. Bill Kumpe, also an attorney and homeowner near Admiral and Yale, wrote a report on the August 11, 2008, Tulsa Housing Authority meeting on this facility. Posted November 27, 2022.


Tulsa Straight Ahead
By Michael D. Bates

Who are the real NIMBYs?

Ruth Kaiser Nelson was, for all practical purposes, my first Latin teacher. When I was an eighth-grader and starting my first year of Latin, the regular teacher took a leave of absence shortly after the school year began, and Mrs. Nelson filled in for the rest of the semester.

Because the class occurred during the girls' Phys. Ed. period, it was an all-boy class, and Mrs. Nelson, the mother of three boys and a girl, did a fine job of keeping us in line, but also keeping us amused, and giving us a good start in the language. I have only happy memories of her class, which laid the foundation for a lifelong love of the language and literature of ancient Rome.

The Romans had a way with pithy proverbs. Mrs. Nelson is surely familiar with this one: Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi. Literally, it means, "What is permitted to Jupiter (the king of the gods) is not permitted to the ox."

The proverb justifies double standards for the wealthy and connected on the one hand and the hoi polloi on the other. The law that binds the commoner should not inconvenience the plutocrat. He who has the gold not only makes the rules, he's excused from obeying them.

At the August 7 [2008] City Council meeting, homeowners from nearby neighborhoods came to protest the location of a 76-unit multistory home for the chronically homeless, some of whom are currently housed at the downtown YMCA, some of whom are mentally ill.

Neighbors were asking the Council to rescind a resolution, passed the previous week, that opened the door for the project to receive $4 million in state funding.

The large apartment building, to be located at 10 S. Yale, between Admiral Pl. and I-244, is part of the Building Tulsa Building Lives (BTBL) initiative. The Ruth K. Nelson Revocable Trust is listed as one of the initiative's principal partners, along with the George Kaiser Family Foundation (Mr. Kaiser and Mrs. Nelson are siblings), and the Tulsa Housing Authority, a public trust of which Mrs. Nelson is the chairman.

At the City Council meeting, Mrs. Nelson characterized the concerns of neighboring homeowners as typical NIMBYism:

"If we were to move all of these facilities to places where no one would protest, they would be in the middle of nowhere....

"Isolated people would not have the opportunity to rebuild their lives and become productive members of society."

Mrs. Nelson told the Council that the Admiral and Yale site was chosen for its relative proximity to downtown, where many social service agencies are located, a bus route, and stores within walking distance.

But this plan will make the people she professes to serve more isolated than they are now. At the YMCA, they aren't just close to downtown, they are downtown and near the social service agencies. Her plan would move them four miles from those agencies.

At the Downtown YMCA, residents are a block away from a bus station that gives them access to 20 bus lines which will take them directly to shopping, jobs, doctors, parks, and services without needing to transfer. Four of those lines provide night-time service to hospitals and schools for shift work and night classes.

Mrs. Nelson wants the Y residents to move to where they'll have only a single, daytime bus line. Going anywhere that isn't on Admiral Pl. will require a long wait for a transfer at the downtown bus station. Going anywhere after 7 at night or on Sundays will be impossible.

At the Downtown Y, residents have the library and the County Courthouse across the street and the State Office Building and a hospital just a few blocks further west. Riverparks is about a mile to the south. There are eight churches within easy walking distance. Social service agencies are just a few blocks to the north.

There aren't any groceries nearby, but there are a few convenience stores not too far away and the bus provides non-stop service to a number of supermarkets.

They won't even have to walk far to see the Eagles or Celine Dion at the BOK Center, assuming arena management would let them in the door.

walkscore.com gives the Downtown YMCA a rating of 89 -- "very walkable."

The I-244 and Yale location gets a 45 - "car dependent." Sonic and QuikTrip are nearby, and it's about three-quarters of a mile to the Piggly Wiggly, just past a gun and ammo store. The nearest library is a mile away in Maxwell Park, a small branch in the middle of a neighborhood. There's a bar two blocks away, right across the street from a plasma center. That's about it.

Moving residents of the Downtown Y to I-244 and Yale will make them more isolated than they are now, not less.

So what's the real reason for moving mentally ill, indigent, and homeless people out of downtown? Because downtown property owners and the BOK Center management and Downtown Tulsa Unlimited are the real NIMBYs. They don't want these people in their backyard.

It says so plainly at www.buildingtulsabuildinglives.org/buildingtulsa/:

"The opening of the BOK Center and other Vision 2025 projects are important components in securing the economic future of downtown Tulsa. But before downtown can become the vibrant destination it has the potential to be, developers and investors must be assured of its inviting and family-friendly environment.

"Eliminating homelessness will attract further development and investment to downtown."

But it's OK for BOK executives and BOK Center management and downtown property interests to be NIMBYs. If your place cost $178 million, you're allowed to say, "There goes the neighborhood," even if that $178 million came mostly from the taxpayers.

You're not allowed to complain if you have only a little 1,000 sq. ft., $60,000 house that you paid for yourself.

You know: Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi.

What's funny is that the neighbors that the BOK Center regards as a problem were already there when site was selected for the arena. Many people (including this writer) pointed out back in 2003 that it wasn't very smart to put an arena in the midst of the jail, the bail bondsmen, the homeless shelters, the Y, the Sheriff's Office, and the Courthouse.
Is it fair for you to be a NIMBY about neighbors who were there before you moved in?
Of course, but only if you're wealthy or connected. Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi.

While the Council had no power to stop the Admiral and Yale facility last Thursday - Mrs. Nelson said private donors would fill the gap if the Council didn't pass the resolution allowing state funding - councilors didn't need to be rude and condescending to the citizens who came to express their concerns.

According to the daily paper, "After listening to the protests, Councilor John Eagleton said people can try to push such a project out of their neighborhood out of fear, but that doesn't make it right." Shouldn't he have been saying that to the downtown interests who want to clear the homeless out of downtown?

From what I gather from the City Council meeting, if you're a working-class homeowner, you deserve scorn for not wanting the homeless in your neighborhood. But if you want to shoo the homeless away from the $178 million arena, you're a progressive, civic-minded philanthropist.

Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi.

Neighbors were told that their fears were unfounded, abhorrent even, a sign of moral inferiority. They were told that the residents of this new facility will not pose a threat to their safety or their property values, thanks to new programs and new methods for helping these people become productive citizens again.

As anxious as downtown interests and BTBL leaders are to drive the homeless out of downtown, one has to wonder if they really believe these new methods work.

If you had a way to help the homeless to rebuild their lives, wouldn't it be just as effective in a remodeled facility downtown, with the added bonus of keeping the homeless and indigent in familiar surroundings and connected to job opportunities and services and transportation?

A support program that will work at Admiral and Yale will work even better at 6th and Denver.

In fact, there is a successful model for providing "supportive housing" for the chronically homeless in the midst of a popular entertainment, shopping, and tourism district.

In the early '90s, New York's Common Ground Community took the old Times Square Hotel at 8th Ave. and 43rd, then a squalid flophouse for hundreds of transients, and renovated the building into over 600 efficiency units.

Nearly 200 of the old residents were allowed to remain. The building's mix was to include former mental patients and the working poor, along with a staff of social workers to help residents learn the life skills needed to stay off the streets.

The program has been a great success. Common Ground's aggressive "Street to Home" program reached out to the toughest cases, those who had been on the streets the longest. The result was an 87% reduction in the number of homeless in Times Square in a two-year period, as these people have been given housing and a hand up.

The building's ground floor includes a Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream store which partners with Common Ground to provide training and job opportunities for residents. The rooftop terrace is rented out for catered corporate functions.

The Times Square is a good neighbor to expensive hotels and Broadway theaters. A block from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, gateway to New York for many low-income arrivals, it's right where it's needed.

Common Ground's success has been repeated in other buildings around New York and in other cities. They even bought and renovated the old YMCA residence in the Chelsea neighborhood.

It's claimed that Tulsa's YMCA residence has to be demolished because of the new sprinkler regulations. But don't you suppose the Y could be brought up to code for much less than building a new facility at I-244 and Yale?

But Building Tulsa Building Lives backers don't have to be consistent or logical or reasonable to get their way with city government.

Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi. They can be NIMBYs if they want to be, and no one will call them on it.

It seems that quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi applies to exclusive negotiating periods, too.

If you're Mayor Kathy Taylor, of course you should expect Tulsa Drillers owner Chuck Lamson to honor his exclusive negotiating period with the city, and even to extend it if need be. As teary as she was at last week's Tulsa Development Authority meeting, she'd have had a conniption if Lamson had terminated the exclusive negotiating period with Tulsa a month early so he could flirt with Jenks Mayor Vic Vreeland instead.

But how dare lowly entrepreneur Will Wilkins expect the TDA to honor their commitment to an exclusive negotiating period! How dare he rally public support to try to discourage the TDA from breaking their word! Only wealthy and connected and powerful people have a right to expect such commitments to be honored.

The daily wrote of the latest Drillers extension, without a hint of irony: "Exclusive negotiations preclude the team from entertaining other offers...."

Where the TDA is concerned, an "exclusive negotiating period" isn't exclusive, doesn't require negotiating in good faith, and doesn't have to last the full period.

The old pagans of Rome would have understood the double standard. Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi.

But Tulsans, the vast majority of whom profess to serve the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, should remember that He commands a single standard for all:

"You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor." (Leviticus 19:15.)

I had been planning on writing a column about the various streets proposals -- Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear -- but each week a bigger and more urgent issue cropped up.

I've got worries about all the packages, but especially about the big one -- a 12 year, $2 billion commitment. Supporters of the big package say that the other plans won't get the job done and won't bring our street conditions up as far and as fast as the big package.

I finally sat down tonight and looked at the project list and allocations for the $2 billion package. I'm bothered when I see a nine-digit dollar figure with no explanation for how that number was derived. For example: $221,500,000 for "street maintenance" to include "vegetation / mowing; snow and ice removal; graffiti abatement; pavement crack and joint sealing; permanent pavement patching (6 crews); special projects; street milling; street paving crews." There's another $128,100,000 for traffic engineering, $32.2 million for street-related administration, and $8.8 million for engineering services and inspection. That's just the operational part of the package -- a mere 20% of the total.

That's as far as the numbers are broken down -- the draft I have doesn't tell how much of that $221.5 million is for graffiti and how much is for "special projects" or what those special projects might be. Somewhere there must be a spreadsheet that has an estimate for each line item and a basis or formula that explains how each estimate was derived. How much of each number is for manpower and how much is for material? What inflation factors have been included? How many miles of street milling do we get for whatever share of $221.5 million is allocated to that purpose? Are general and administrative costs factored in?

Over the years in my day job, I've been involved from time to time in putting together proposals, including some for the DOD. Some of these have been "unsolicited" proposals, where the customer has expressed some need but hasn't laid out detailed requirements. It's similar to what city officials have done in response to the expressed concern about the condition of our streets. You develop a recommended solution and provide a price for that solution.

A big project will be split into major line items and sub-items, and each item is split out into many small tasks. You estimate man-hours for each of those small tasks as well as cost of the materials you'll need to do the job and any work you'll need to contract out to someone else. For each estimate of hours or other costs, there is usually some amount of backup material, a basis for the bid, such as a quote from a vendor or actual hours for a similar task on another project. All those little numbers are rolled up, weighted for projected inflation if the project is likely to stretch out over several years, and the project's fair share of the overhead costs for running the company (e.g., paying the salaries of the payroll clerk and the HR director and paying the electric bill).

Something like that kind of cost estimation must have been done for this package, and if it wasn't it should have been. If it exists, it ought to be made available for the public to see. Those are awfully big numbers for big tasks that are hard to estimate. It would be reassuring to see the little numbers for the little tasks that were rolled up into those big nine-figure numbers.

Bill Kumpe was at the THA meeting today regarding the proposed facility at I-244 and Yale to replace the Downtown YMCA residence and has an eyewitness report. Here's an excerpt:

The class distinction between the people supporting the project and the people was striking. Almost all of the people supporting the project are professionals or wealthy donors. There are no such facilities located in THEIR neighborhoods. When was planned at 10th and Utica, the homeowners there killed it. On the other hand, most of the people opposing the project don't have a lot of options. Everything they have is tied up in their home and any reduction in its value will simply mean that they have to live with the consequences or let it be foreclosed since nobody in his right mind is going to buy a home near a homeless shelter. In effect, the people with money to live in a neighborhood without this type of facility are telling them that they will live with this problem and take the resulting financial hit as well.

The sheer arrogance of these people is stunning. They may actually succeed in getting the facility built. But, it will not be the wealthy donors running for election next time around. There was recall talk all over the room. Every city councilman who supported this project will hear about it again. There are about twenty thousand people in the affected neighborhoods and given the turnout at today's meeting, I would estimate that about ten thousand of them are hopping mad at Mayor Kathy Taylor, Ruth Kaiser Nelson, the City Council and anyone else remotely associated with this project. This is the type of political affront that does not go away and somebody, probably the elected officials and city employees who made it possible, will pay the price since they are the only people the voters can access.

The agenda for tomorrow's Tulsa City Council Urban and Economic Development committee includes a discussion of a draft of the Tulsa Stadium Trust indenture, the Title 60 Trust that will get to spend the money raised by the downtown assessment district the Council approved last month. The proposal creates a self-perpetuating Board of Trustees, five members of which will be major donors to the ballpark. Trustees will serve 12 year terms and can only be removed by court action for malfeasance. (Three years is a standard term for members of public trusts.)

The City Council should demand full public disclosure of the entire ballpark development deal -- pledged revenues, planned expenditures, who has been promised what piece of land -- prior to taking any action on the trust, and the trust indenture should require shorter terms, nomination of all trustees by the Mayor, and a provision to remove trustees by action of the City Council.

I'm beginning to think the better way to handle the ballpark is to make it fully private. Let the ballpark donors come to the TDA with a development proposal for the proposed ballpark site and put the proposal through the standard process. They wouldn't get the downtown assessment district money, but they don't really need it. They have enough donations lined up to pay for a quality 6000-seat ballpark. Then they can own it and run it as they see fit.

Shahadi must go

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When a mayoral appointee to a city authority, board, or commission behaves badly, it's rare that our elected officials have an immediate opportunity for corrective action.

Tulsa Development Authority (TDA) board member George Shahadi has been nominated by Mayor Kathy Taylor for another term. His renomination comes before the City Council Urban and Economic Development Committee tomorrow (August 12) at 10 a.m., in Room 201 of old City Hall. (Here is a link to Shahadi's resume.)

Last Thursday, Shahadi voted to prematurely terminate the TDA's exclusive negotiating period with Novus Homes LLC concerning the half-block west of Elgin Ave. between Archer and Brady Streets. The exclusive negotiating period was set to expire on September 4. Instead, when the TDA tract across the street began being discussed as a ballpark location, TDA and city officials began stonewalling Novus Homes' attempts to move their negotiations forward.

Shahadi should have recused himself as soon as the agenda item. He is the director of real estate for the Williams Companies, and his employer is in the group of donors seeking to gain control of the land surrounding the proposed location of a new Drillers Stadium. Shahadi stated at the meeting that he had no obligation to recuse, since his employer was seeking this control for the public good and not for its own profit.

Nevertheless, there's a clear conflict of interest because Shahadi's employer has an interest in the same property about which TDA had promised good-faith negotiations with Novus Homes. Under the circumstances, Shahadi can't be expected to be impartial in weighing the TDA's interests and the public interest in fair dealing versus his employer's interest. The fact that he can't perceive an obvious conflict is reason enough for the City Council to deny his reappoinment.

There are more conflicts coming, because the biggest piece of property in the ballpark puzzle is also owned by the TDA. Employees of Williams and Bank of Oklahoma shouldn't be sitting on the TDA when decisions are made as to the contract terms for the land.

The City Council has an excellent opportunity to take a stand for fairness and openness in government. They have an immediate chance to redress the injustice done to Will Wilkins and Novus Homes at last Thursday's TDA meeting. They need to thank Mr. Shahadi for his service to date and ask Mayor Taylor to send them a replacement nominee.

MORE: Retired architect Bob Sober sent this letter to the City Council:

City Councilors,

On Tuesday morning you will consider the re-appointment of George Shahadi to the Tulsa Development Authority (TDA), please consider the following:

During the TDA meeting last Thursday the 120 Lofts project was discussed extensively. Mr. Shahadi was asked to recuse himself from the discussions and vote, to which he refused. Mr. Shahadi is the Director of Corporate Real Estate for Williams Companies. Williams is one of the listed donors to the ballpark stadium and the eventual public Trust. As you know, the George Kaiser Foundation is attempting to purchase the properties surrounding the ballpark for the yet to be formed "ballpark" trust. The property planned for the 120 Lofts development was identified as one of those desired by the trust. Since Mr. Shahadi's employer has an interest in the disposition in this property, Mr. Shahadi had a clear conflict of interest. Voting members of the TDA should recuse themselves when presented with a real or perceived conflict of interest.

It would be a disservice to the citizens of Tulsa to re-appoint an individual unwilling to take seriously the trust of this council and refrain from influencing the decisions of the TDA when he can not possibly be objective. With direct ties to a donor that will have significant impact on one of the largest public investments in downtown Tulsa and the disposition of surrounding lands for future development Mr. Shahadi can not possibly serve the TDA without impacting his employer. Furthermore, any redevelopment in this area will have a direct impact on the value of the surrounding property. The Williams Companies, being one of the largest property owners in the vicinity to the proposed ballpark, could gain significantly by influencing the decisions of the TDA through their Director of Corporate Real Estate, Mr. Shahadi. Please, do not re-appoint Mr. Shahadi.

Thank you,

Bob Sober


Ruth Kaiser Nelson was, for all practical purposes, my first Latin teacher. When I was an eighth-grader, our scheduled teacher, Bill Bippus, took a semester's leave of absence, and Mrs. Nelson taught us instead. Because the class occurred during the girls' PE period, it was an all-boy class, and Mrs. Nelson, the mother of three boys and a girl, did a fine job of keeping us in line, but also keeping us amused, and giving us a good start in the language.

I'm sure Mrs. Nelson is familiar with this sententia sapiens: Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi. Literally, it means, "What is permitted to Jupiter is not permitted to the ox." It is a justification for double standards for the wealthy and connected versus the hoi polloi. The standards which apply to the commoner should not bind the plutocrat.

At Thursday night's City Council meeting, homeowners from the neighborhoods near Admiral and Yale came to protest the location of a 76-unit home for the chronically homeless, some of whom are currently housed at the downtown YMCA, some of whom are mentally ill. The large apartment building is part of the Building Tulsa Building Lives (BTBL) initiative. The Ruth K. Nelson Revocable Trust is listed as one of the initiative's principal partners, along with the George Kaiser Family Foundation (Mr. Kaiser and Mrs. Nelson are siblings), and the Tulsa Housing Authority, a public trust of which Mrs. Nelson is the chairman.

According to the Tulsa World report, Mrs. Nelson characterized the concerns of neighboring homeowners as typical NIMBYism:

Neighbors typically have a "not in my backyard" response, she said.

"If we were to move all of these facilities to places where no one would protest, they would be in the middle of nowhere," she said.

"Isolated people would not have the opportunity to rebuild their lives and become productive members of society."

The site was selected because it is relatively close to downtown, where many social service agencies are located, is next to a bus route and has stores nearby that residents can walk to, Nelson said.

The concern for isolation is touching, but she is making these people more isolated than they already are. At the Y, they are downtown, "where many social service agencies are located." She's moving them four miles from those services on the west side of downtown.

At the Y, they live a block away from a bus station that gives them access to 20 bus lines which will take them directly to shopping, jobs, doctors, parks, and services without needing to transfer. Four of those lines provide night time service to hospitals and schools for shift work and night classes. She wants them to live where they'll have only a single bus line, and they'll have to wait around and transfer at the downtown bus station to get anywhere else in the city. They won't have any access to nighttime service.

At the Downtown Y, they have the library and the County Courthouse across the street and the State Office Building and a hospital just a few blocks further west. Riverparks is about a mile to the south. There are a half dozen churches downtown. Social service agencies are just a few blocks north. There aren't any groceries nearby, but there are a few convenience stores not too far away, there are many nearby places to eat, at least at breakfast and lunchtime, and the bus can take them to their choice of grocery stores. They won't even have to walk far to see the Eagles or Celine Dion at the BOK Center. walkscore.com gives the location a rating of 89 -- "very walkable."

At Yale and Admiral, there is a Sonic across the street, a nearby QuikTrip, and it's about three-quarters of a mile to the Piggly Wiggly. The nearest library is in Maxwell Park, about a mile away, and it's only a small branch in the middle of a neighborhood. There's a bar just two blocks away, right across the street from a plasma center. Dong's Gun Store is about six blocks away -- handy for those who are hearing voices in their heads.There are a few churches down Yale. 10 S. Yale has a walkscore.com rating of 45 -- "car dependent."

Moving residents of the Downtown Y to Admiral and Yale will make them more isolated than they are now, not less. So why are these mentally ill, semi-homeless people really being moved out of downtown? Because downtown property owners and the BOK Center management and Downtown Tulsa Unlimited are NIMBYs. They don't want these people in their backyard. They even say so on their "Building Tulsa, Building Lives" website:

The opening of the BOK Center and other Vision 2025 projects are important components in securing the economic future of downtown Tulsa. But before downtown can become the vibrant destination it has the potential to be, developers and investors must be assured of its inviting and family-friendly environment.

Eliminating homelessness will attract further development and investment to downtown.

But it's OK for George Kaiser and Jim Norton and Kathy Taylor and Twenty-First Properties and SMG to be NIMBYs. If your place cost $200 million, you're allowed to say, "There goes the neighborhood," even if that $200 million came mostly from the taxpayers. If you have a nice little 1,000 sq. ft., $60,000 house, that you paid for yourself you're not allowed to say that. You know: Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi.

(What's funny is that the neighbors that seem to be a problem for the BOK Center were there before the site was selected for the BOK Center. A number of us pointed out that between the jail, the bail bondsmen, the homeless shelters, the Y, the Sheriff's Office, and the Courthouse wasn't the smartest location for the arena -- maybe they should put it closer to existing entertainment districts on the other side of downtown -- but someone with influence has land along Denver just north of the south leg of the IDL, so that's where the arena went. Is it fair to be a NIMBY about neighbors who were there before you moved in?

According to the World, "After listening to the protests, Councilor John Eagleton said people can try to push such a project out of their neighborhood out of fear, but that doesn't make it right." Shouldn't he have been saying that to the downtown interests who want to clear the homeless out of downtown?)

The residents who spoke at the meeting were treated with a great deal of condescension. They were told that their fears were unfounded, abhorrent even, a sign of moral inferiority. The residents of this new facility will not pose a threat to their safety or their property values, thanks to new programs and new methods for helping these people become productive citizens again.

But if these new programs and methods are so effective, wouldn't they work just as well in a remodeled facility downtown, with the added bonus of keeping these people in familiar surroundings and connected to job opportunities and services and transportation? The fact that Mrs. Nelson and her brother and DTU and Mayor Taylor and SMG are so anxious to get these people away from downtown suggests that they don't really believe in the efficacy of their methods.

And the argument about having to demolish the Y residence doesn't hold any water. I suspect they could add sprinklers and remodel the building to meet fire code for much less than the $17 million in private pledges and state grants that they're spending on the Admiral and Yale facility.

But BTBL backers don't have to be consistent or logical or reasonable to get their way with city government, and they can be NIMBYs if they want to: Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi.

Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi works with exclusive negotiating periods, too.

If you're Kathy Taylor, of course you should expect Tulsa Drillers owner Chuck Lamson to honor his exclusive negotiating period with the city, and even to extend it if need be. I'm sure she'd be teary and outraged if Lamson had terminated the exclusive negotiations a month early to go flirt with Jenks Mayor Vic Vreeland again. But how dare lowly entrepreneur Will Wilkins expect the Tulsa Development Authority to honor their commitment to an exclusive negotiating period! How dare he rally public support to try to prevent the TDA from breaking their word! Only wealthy and connected and powerful people have a right to expect such commitments to be honored.

(From the World: "Exclusive negotiations preclude the team from entertaining other offers...." Not if you're the TDA, they don't.)

Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi.

But that's an ancient pagan thought. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob insists on a single standard for all:

You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.

MORE: David Schuttler says that Councilor Eric Gomez's comparison of the Treepoint Apartments in his neighborhood to the proposed I-244 and Yale facility is apples and oranges. (UPDATE 2022/12/16: The website is gone, but the article is available on a snapshot of the blog home page from August 12, 2008.)

What a day. We learned a lot.

We learned that when the Tulsa Development Authority approves an exclusive negotiating period, it's not necessarily exclusive -- they'll shove you aside if a more powerful suitor comes along -- they may not negotiate in good faith, and the period may be terminated at any time. (The TDA's exclusive negotiating periods are neither exclusive, nor negotiating, nor a period. Discuss.)

We learned that Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor is on the verge of a crackup, perhaps because of the pressure of holding together a crumbling behind-the-scenes ballpark financing deal by publicly screwing over a small businessman who is offering the very kind of creative, urban residential and retail development everyone says we want downtown. She knows full well how bad this looks, but I'm guessing that if she were to stand up for what's right, she'd have to renege on some secret promise that was made concerning the Lofts @ 120 parcel of land. One thing was clear from Taylor's teary appearance: Whoever's in charge of city government, it isn't her.

Taylor said she didn't have a vote, but she did have a voice. She used that voice to belittle Will Wilkins's attempt to rally public support as "bickering." She used it to justify booting the Wilkinses out of their exclusive negotiating petition in the name of "a beautifully woven fabric" of new development around the new ballpark.

They say they want lofts, restaurants, and off-street parking, and that's exactly what the Wilkinses had proposed for that corner long before the ballpark was announced for the other side of the street. The Wilkinses were willing to adjust their plans as necessary to be compatible with the design and use aims for the ballpark's environs. But I suspect their chief deficiency is that they aren't named Jay Helm, and their company isn't called American Residential Group.

We learned today that the TDA board isn't fond of public scrutiny, and they're a little fuzzy on what constitutes a conflict of interest and how to handle recusal. If you're a TDA board member and your employer is part of a group that wants control of the same piece of property that is the subject of this premature termination of an exclusive negotiating period, you have a conflict of interest. Saying that your employer doesn't stand to gain financially and is only acting in what it perceives to be the public interest isn't the point. It's still a conflict because your employer's aims don't necessarily line up with the TDA's best interest or the interest of fairness to all.

Also, if you do feel the need to recuse yourself, you're supposed to absent yourself from the entire discussion. Instead, board member John Clayman, employed by Frederic Dorwart Lawyers and someone who has often represented Bank of Oklahoma in court, not only sat through and participated in discussion (shaking his head rapidly during much of Will Wilkins' remarks -- I thought we were about to see the reenactment of a scene from Scanners), he seconded the motion to abort the exclusive negotiating period. Then after Wilkins reminded him that he recused himself during the April 17 vote to extend the contract, Klayman abstained when his name was called. Paula Bryant-Ellis, a BOK executive and the newest board member, recused herself right before the vote. George Shahadi, director of real estate for Williams, another company that is part of the group trying to control all the land around the ballpark, should have recused himself, but didn't.

Here are some links to help fill in the blanks. I thought the Tulsa World's Brian Barber did a fine job of capturing the mood and the substance of the meeting. (Don't be surprised if his piece is severely edited for the print version to make the Mayor look better.) I was pleased to see KOTV and KTUL there. KTUL's Bert Mummolo has followed the story closely -- here's his coverage from today and here's the video. But today I thought KOTV did a better job of telling the story of today's meeting with words and video, including some video from Mayor Taylor's speech. I'm just happy to see a couple of TV stations show such interest in covering an issue which is not very telegenic.

1170 KFAQ's Chris Medlock was at the meeting today and had audio from the meeting plus Will Wilkins as a guest in studio. (Here's hour 1; here's hour 2.) Also, Pat Campbell was asking questions about a secret meeting involving Councilor Eric Gomez and the ballpark donors. (His podcast from Thursday morning hasn't been posted yet for some reason.)

There's more to be said about this meeting, which architect Bob Sober, who counts himself a friend to both Mayor Taylor and the Wilkinses, said was like watching a "slow-motion train wreck." For now, check out those links.

And here are a few comments from around the web.

On TulsaNow's public forum, Floyd responds to Taylor's comments about wanting a "beautifully woven fabric" around the ballpark:

Wow.

Honestly? Get it together. How tone deaf can she be? It's not hard to see how this narrative has developed. At least counter the narrative with a prepared statement regarding the specific plans/intentions of this "trust" and perhaps an offer of inclusion. Don't cry about destruction and beautiful fabrics--give the entrepreneurs some credit for their vision. How about a multicolored quilt, instead of a "beautiful fabric?"

Me, later in the same thread, responding to Taylor's complaints about the environs of the BOK Center:

I recall a lengthy thread on this forum right after the Vision 2025 vote about the best location for the arena. Many people remarked about the drawbacks of the site that was chosen. I think someone even suggested the site now being discussed as the ballpark site, because it was close to existing entertainment areas and OSU-Tulsa.

The way to address the concern about nearby future development is first to pick a site that is already near the kind of development you want -- they've done that by picking the Archer/Elgin site -- and, second, to establish a special zoning district around the ballpark with design and development standards and a means for enforcement. Oklahoma City established such a district in and around Bricktown.

Design standards for downtown were part of the Downtown Tulsa CORE Recommendations:

District One of the City of Tulsa's Comprehensive Plan, the Central Business District (CBD), is a district that deserves special consideration; as such, we should develop District Standards for design review to ensure compatible, high-quality development and redevelopment. Recommendations of the existing Comprehensive Plan for District One (downtown) such as district design standards and review should be revisited for present use and coordinated with the Comprehensive Plan Update.

When the CORE Recommendations came under attack from a major downtown property owner and from DTU, Mayor Taylor might have supported the idea and helped to move it forward. Instead, her aide, Susan Neal, encouraged the recommendations to be shelved.


"The Artist":

I still dont get what they apparently expect is going to happen around the ballpark? What is it that the TDA thinks is going to be better that the Wilkinsons couldnt improve their development to be like or that could go in those other spaces nearby? This finely woven fabric, is that to be one huge developer? Many small ones? If its the former I can understand wanting a lot of land because thats one of the reasons previous developments have fallen through because they couldnt get all the property they needed. But here they are saying they will use eminent domain and there is other property by the 120 lofts site that can be used. If its small developments.... what are the criteria such that the 120 lofts are not a good fit anywhere in the development area? Cause surely the 120 loft people would have traded for another spot if it was deemed that the spot they have now is "needed" to make everything work.

Nothing the TDA or the Mayor is saying makes any sense. Sounds like they are grasping at straws or are just completely oblivious.

They are giving us this "Why cant we all get along and do whats best for everyone and the city." plea. But its been them who have shoved aside the hand the Wilkinsons had been extending in order to try to find a fair, sporting, "gentlemanly" solution. Someone should have said to the Wilkinsons... "Hey, we really feel like we need that spot in order for this project to work. Here is why.... We know you have done a lot of work so far, can we work together and (find another spot in the development, or make design changes, or collaborate on making it better to fit what we think is needed, etc. etc.) There are all kinds of possibilities that would have been the proper way to go.

I was brought up that if you make an agreement, say your going to do something. You abide by that, even if it becomes difficult to do so, even if you become hurt by doing so. You keep your word! Even if its not written, you do the right thing by people. These developers were there first, were doing the right things, and whether anyone else likes it or not, whether its convenient or not. You do the right thing by them, and for yourself. Not to mention in this case there are plenty of opportunities to work this out for the benefit of everyone. Not just blow them off and treat them like dirt.

"Stick61" in a couple of comments on the Tulsa World story:

One of the problems here is that TDA risks losing credibility with the modest-scale element of the development community by treating one of its members shabbily. Mr. Bracy lacks credibility when he says that he is not "bound by politics." Of course, he is bound by politics. This ballpark proposal is a political freight train and he's trying to clear a path for it. In the process, he's asking Mr. Wilkins to shut up and be happy about losing $15,000. If I were in Mr. Wilkins' shoes (I don't know him), I would never do business with TDA again because I would consider its behavior in this matter dishonorable.

I believe that the Mayor does very badly want to see positive development downtown. And she is correct to lend the energy of her office to constructive proposals, including a proposal to build a new ballpark to keep the Drillers in Tulsa. However, she should spare us the tears and make a commitment to treating people with more consideration than Mr. Wilkins has been treated. The gentleman may not have worded his inflammatory email as artfully as he should have, but that doesn't excuse the fact that he appears to have been given the bum's rush. Bickering ceases, or at least decreases, when people are shown due respect. The mayor must do a better job of building consensus.

Tonight (Thursday, August 7) the Tulsa City Council will reconsider a resolution it passed last week. The resolution, jointly issued with the Tulsa Housing Authority dealt with four lots on the west side of Yale between Admiral Place and I-244, declaring it to be "in the public interest" for TDA to develop the property as part of the "Building Tulsa Building Lives" initiative. Here's the text:

JOINT RESOLUTION

A JOINT RESOLUTION OF THE CITY OF TULSA AND THE HOUSING AUTHORITY OF THE CITY OF TULSA (THA), DECLARING THE DEVELOPMENT OF 10 SOUTH YALE, TULSA, OKLAHOMA, BY THA AS PART OF THE "BUILDING TULSA BUILDING LIVES" INITIATIVE TO BE IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST.

WHEREAS, pursuant to 63 O.S., § 1061(b), a joint public hearing was held on July 31, 2008, by the Housing Authority of the City of Tulsa (THA) and the City Council of the City of Tulsa, Oklahoma, to consider new development on the collective properties known as 10 South Yale, Tulsa, Oklahoma; and

WHEREAS, at such public hearing it was determined by a majority of the members of both THA and the City Council that such development is in the public interest.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the City of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the Housing Authority of the City of Tulsa that it is in the public interest for the Housing Authority of the City of Tulsa, as part of the "Building Tulsa Building Lives" initiative, to develop the collective properties known as 10 South Yale, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Building Tulsa, Building Lives is an initiative to address homelessness. The website's home page says this:

When homelessness became an issue in the late '70s, the accepted treatments were shelters and meals. And Tulsa provided. But new research points to a new approach - one that manages the symptoms of homelessness more effectively and may be the answer to virtually ending chronic homelessness altogether.

Note the word "chronic" -- this isn't about people who are temporarily in straitened circumstances, but troubled people -- mostly men -- who by reason of mental illness or addiction can't function in a society that requires a degree of personal responsibility. Some of these people want to be helped, and organizations like John 3:16 Mission work to rebuild their lives. Other organizations simply provide food and shelter without no strings attached. Some homeless people aren't allowed in the shelters because they won't follow rules or because they may be a danger to others.

Some of the people we're talking about aren't really homeless. They're what an earlier time called transients. They have a home, but they don't need or want something that they have to take care of. They just need an inexpensive place to sleep and keep their things. There used to be accommodations that catered to them -- bedsits, single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels -- a cheap place to sleep, maybe a sink in the room, and a bathroom down the hall. Such places used to be plentiful in downtown. The Downtown YMCA is about the only place left like that, and it's inconveniently close to the BOK Center. It's slated to close by 2010, in part because of new fire regulations that would require expensive renovations to the building. Here's what will replace the Y:

The program would provide a basic housing unit to each chronically homeless person and then surround that person with support services to work on personal issues. Housing would be provided with no strings attached.

The 52-year-old downtown YMCA, 515 S. Denver Ave., has 168 housing units. About 140 men, many of whom have been homeless or trapped in a cycle of chronic homelessness, now live there.

The Zarrow Families Foundation has provided funding for a full-time caseworker at the YMCA to locate housing options for the residents.

The Mental Health Association in Tulsa has been leasing a floor at the YMCA building to provide 25 units in its Safe Haven housing program.

Executive Director Mike Brose said the association is looking for other housing options, adding that "the closing provides the community an opportunity.

"That opportunity means finding ways to replace those units with housing that is not overly congregated -- more scattered sites and that will work much better and be more appropriate for individuals who stay there," he said.

The "Building Tulsa" page reveals a key piece of the agenda:

The opening of the BOK Center and other Vision 2025 projects are important components in securing the economic future of downtown Tulsa. But before downtown can become the vibrant destination it has the potential to be, developers and investors must be assured of its inviting and family-friendly environment.

Eliminating homelessness will attract further development and investment to downtown.

In other words, get the aggressive panhandlers and other unsightly vagrants out of sight, so that people won't be deterred from coming downtown.

I'm not sure what Tulsa Housing Authority plans for I-244 and Yale, except that it's intended to serve the "chronic homeless." I'm not sure the City Council knew what they were being asked to vote on last week.

Because there was no zoning change, there was no public notice to surrounding property owners. I understand the desire to clear vagrants out of downtown, but putting them next to three residential neighborhoods isn't good for the surrounding neighborhoods or for the vagrants, who need access to social services and the bus network. It also seems to be a non-strategic use of one of the interstate gateways to Expo Square -- visitors coming to Expo Square from east and north of Tulsa or from the airport take I-244 to Yale.

We need to support those who are providing help to those who can't cope with daily life, but when a public body like THA is involved, we need to have full public disclosure and debate of what help is provided and where.

This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly is about developers Will Wilkins and Cecilia Wilkins and how they're being squeezed out of their their exclusive deal with the Tulsa Development Authority to develop a parcel at Archer and Elgin. All was well when no one wanted the land back in January, but now it's across the street from the site of the new ballpark for the Tulsa Drillers. The ballpark donors want to control all of the land around the ballpark site, and the Wilkinses' deal with TDA gets in the way of that.

At City Councilor Rick Westcott's invitation, Wilkins appeared at yesterday's Urban and Economic Development committee meeting. KTUL's Burt Mummolo has the story, which will give you a brief overview of the situation:

[KTUL's embed code wasn't working, so I removed it. Click here to watch the video.]

Here's a link to the story transcript.

I was surprised to see Mayor Kathy Taylor tell KTUL, "I have not seen anything that leads me to believe the TDA is opposed to the Wilkins development."

Hey, Mayor Taylor, have you seen this letter from the TDA chairman? I know you have because you issued a response to it last week:

July 29, 2008

Stephen A. Schuller, Esq.
GABLE & GOTWALS
1100 ONEOK Plaza
One West Fifth Street
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74103-4217

Re: Tulsa Development Authority Resolution 5423

Dear Mr. Schuller:

We are in receipt of your correspondence dated July 18, 2008. As you know, the City of Tulsa, and several private donors contributing more than $30 million to a public trust, are developing a master plan for a national class Double A baseball park and associated amenities in the Greenwood and Brady Districts. This master plan incorporates the property in which your clients have expressed an interest. The city believes that the development of a coordinated high-quality, arts, entertainment, educational, and mixed-use development surrounding the ballpark is vital.

At the present time, the land under contract with the Greenwood Community Development Corporation has been set aside as a prospective site of the ball park. We have not seen any plans yet that specify the precise limits and any data concerning the proposals comprising the Master Plan. We therefore have no knowledge of what other properties may be affected or included in the Plan. The ball park may require a larger site or a complete change of land use may be recommended.

After further review and conferring with our attorney, Darven Brown, it is my personal feeling that the Tulsa Development Authority should proceed no further in connection with the marketing activities of any of the property in the vicinity of the baseball site location until we have full information concerning the finalized plans adopted by the city. While the Tulsa Development Authority is a separate entity from the city we have always conducted our business in a manner that we consider to be in the city's best interest. That being the case, it would seem to be unwise for the Tulsa Development Authority to proceed further with any negotiations with your client at this time. After all, the city has the right of eminent domain and can take whatever properties become necessary for its municipal purposes.

Because of the foregoing, I feel that it would be in the best interest of the public and the City of Tulsa to terminate any negotiations and cancel the Resolution now in place. I have asked that this item be placed on the agenda for the regular meeting of the Tulsa Development Authority to be held at 8:30 o'clock a.m., on August 7, at which time you may wish to appear.

Yours truly,

S/Carl Bracy, Chairman

xc: Mr. Leon Davis
Mr. Hurst Swiggart
Mr. George Shahadi
Mr. John D. Clayman
Mr. Melvin R. Gilliam
Ms. Paula Bryant-Ellis

Sounds like opposition to me, and he says he's doing it in the "city's best interest."

(Taylor's discomfort in that interview reminds me of Nathan Thurm, Martin Short's shifty lawyer character.)

Here is Taylor's response to Bracy's memo, issued after the issue hit the airwaves last week:

TULSA (KFAQ) - Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor has released a statement today reacting to a story in the Tulsa World regarding the possible use of eminent domain to acquire property near the future site of a proposed new downtown ballpark.

Taylor said, "The land on which the ballpark is to be located is currently owned by the Tulsa Development Authority. I am not aware of any request to use condemnation powers to build the ballpark. The rules upon which those powers may be used are very limited in Oklahoma.

The goal of the ballpark is to continue to facilitate private downtown development and further encourage the development of business owners, like Michael Sager, Mary Beth Babcock, Elliot Nelson and others who continue to expand on Tulsa's unique nature.

I neither reviewed nor was I consulted on the draft letter sent by the Tulsa Development Authority to Mr. Schuller. I understand the property that was the subject of the letter would have no issue regarding condemnation as the property is currently owned by the Tulsa Development Authority."

Taylor's statement neatly danced around the central issue raised by Bracy's letter: Whether she will stand idly by while the TDA shreds the exclusive negotiating agreement they had with Cecilia and Will Wilkins.

If you care about fairness and openness in government, this story will make you angry. Read the whole thing, then tune in to 1170 KFAQ this afternoon at 3, when I'll be on Chris Medlock's show to discuss the Wilkinses' situation.

And if you can, you might show up tomorrow morning at the Tulsa Development Authority board meeting, August 7, 8:30 am, on the 15th Floor of One Technology Center (new City Hall, 2nd & Cincinnati), when the TDA will "discuss" their exclusive negotiating agreement with the Wilkinses.

When city employees have their travel to conferences and meetings covered by a third-party -- e.g., a foundation or the Tulsa Metro Chamber -- there has to be a vote by the council to accept the travel donation. Steve Roemerman wonders why the same wouldn't be true of Mayor Kathy Taylor donating a ride to a City Councilor on N227KT, her Learjet 31A -- the most recent example being Taylor giving a lift to Councilor David Patrick so he could vote for her downtown ballpark assessment district.

Instead of being more open about the use of her personal aircraft to further her political goals, Taylor has made it harder to track where her jet has been. I can't think of any security or safety reason to withhold that information, particularly if it were delayed by, say, a day. Taylor is a public figure. In the interest of transparency in government,Taylor ought to release monthly flight logs -- where her plane has been, who was on it, and what was the purpose of the trip.

MORE: Chris Medlock learns that the jet belongs not to Kathy Taylor as an individual, but to a Nevada corporation and considers the ethical implications:

The actual owner of the jet is 1132 Investment Co. As the graphic below shows, this is apparently not an Oklahoma corporation, but rather one from Nevada....

Let us further assume that, as the name implies, the company is a for-profit venture. What then makes the use of this jet to fetch loyal councilors any different than if American Airlines had sent a jet up to get Patrick? In both instances, you would have a jet owned and operated by a out-of-state corporation, flying across state lines for the express purpose of bringing a vacationing elected official back home for a key vote.

When I was a city councilor, we were not allowed to accept gifts in excess, if memory serves me right, of $50. By her own admission, Taylor gave Patrick something [a quick and timely trip home] that was far in excess of $50, unless you don't think $4,500 in jet fuel and hours on the road don't rate....

Patrick was not in Colorado on official business. He was there on a semi-vacation tending to private property he owns there. It cost him his own money to get to Colorado, so any expense saved in getting back from private activities is a net benefit to his personal wealth, hence a gift! Or are they telling us that Taylor then spent an additional $4,500 to fly him BACK to Colorado after the meeting?

In a later entry, delving further into this Nevada corporation, Medlock congratulates Taylor on structuring her assets and income to avoid taxes.

Medlock also provides us with the State of Arkansas's policy on a public official accepting a ride on a private jet.

MORE: Steve, a member of the City of Tulsa's Sales Tax Overview Committee, shares the highlights from the July 2008 report.

Tulsa City Councilor Rick Westcott sent his District 2 constituents an explanation of the legal situation in which the councilors found themselves Thursday night, when they voted to appropriate money from the sinking fund to pay the settlement in the Tulsa Industrial Authority / Tulsa Airport Improvements Trust lawsuit (money that will ultimately go to the Bank of Oklahoma):

There's some misunderstanding about the Council's vote regarding the settlement of the Great Plains lawsuit. We probably should have made it more clear at the meeting.

The City Council did not vote to approve the settlement. We had no authority to either approve or reject the settlement. It had already been done and it was totally out of our hands. The Mayor had already approved the settlement and, on Thursday, it was submitted to the Judge and he approved it. On Thursday afternoon the settlement was filed as a judgment against the City of Tulsa. All of that was done by the Mayor, under her authority as chief administrative officer of the City. The settlement was approved and entered as a judgment before the Council even met on Thursday evening.

The only thing which we did on Thursday was state whether there is sufficient money in the Sinking Fund to pay the settlement. The Finance Department informed us that there is and, based upon that, we had to vote to say, "yes, there is sufficient money."

Legally, we had no choice but to vote 'yes'.

After the Finance Department informed us that there is sufficient money in the Sinking Fund to pay the judgment, if we had voted 'no', we would have been sued, just for voting 'no'.

We had no vote, no say whatsoever, regarding the settlement. The Mayor entered into the settlement agreement without Council approval and it was approved by the Judge before the Council met last night.

The article in the Tulsa World is a little bit confusing. But, the subject is a little confusing.

It says that the Council voted to "have property taxpayers pay the BOK." That's more or less accurate, but it doesn't tell the whole story.

The City's Sinking Fund is used to pay judgments against the City. Once the settlement was filed as a judgment, then, by law, the Sinking Fund had to be used to pay the judgment Money is paid into the Sinking Fund from the City's portion of property taxes. So, it's true that property taxpayers' money will be used to pay the settlement. But, that's because the settlement was filed as a judgment against the City, and the Sinking Fund has to be used to pay judgments, and property taxes are used to put money into the Sinking Fund.

The article also says that the Council voted on "whether to appropriate the money from the sinking fund." Again, that's more or less accurate, but it doesn't tell the whole story, either. By law, the Council had to vote on whether there is sufficient money in the Sinking Fund to pay the judgment. At the meeting on Thursday, the City Finance Department informed the Council that there is enough money in the Sinking Fund. Once the Finance Department told us that, we had no choice but to vote, "yes" and approve paying the judgment out of the Sinking Fund. We had no choice in whether to 'appropriate money from the sinking fund.'

We didn't vote on whether to use money from the Sinking Fund to pay the judgment. By law, that's where the money has to come from. All we did was say that there is enough money in the Sinking Fund to pay it.

If we had voted "no", then the Bank of Oklahoma, or the Tulsa Airports Improvement Trust, or one of the other parties to the lawsuit, would have filed a separate law suit against the City Council, seeking a Write of Mandamus. That's an Order from the Couettlert which commands a public body or a public officer to do something that they have a legal duty to do. In this case, they would have won and the City would also have had to pay their attorney fees which they incurred in pursuing a Writ of Mandamus.

Last night, I explained my misgivings about the settlement. I am against the settlement at this point in time.

As I said, naming the City of Tulsa as a defendant in the lawsuit was just an expedience to put the City in a position where we could legally settle the lawsuit. Previously, when the City wasn't a defendant, there were attempts to persuade City officials to pay for the settlement. That would have been illegal, because we weren't a defendant. Naming the City as a defendant was just a method to put the City in a position to pay for the settlement.

But setting that aside and just looking at it as a straight-up lawsuit, settlement at this time is far, far premature.

I don't think the lawsuit and the claim of "unjust enrichment" against the City had any merit. I would never advise a client to settle immediately after being named in a lawsuit. I'd have gone through the discovery phase and, hopefully, reduced the settlement amount by showing that my client had the stronger case.

But, we weren't given that opportunity.

I hope this explanation helps. If you still have questions, please give me a call or send me an e-mail.

RDW

I appreciate Councilor Westcott's perspective and am glad to know he opposes the settlement. The question now is whether he and the other councilors will do anything to halt the settlement or, failing that, to impose some penalty on Mayor Kathy Taylor for her rash action against the best interests of Tulsa's taxpayers.

The council should also seek full public disclosure of the decision-making process -- why the rush, who stood to suffer if the June 30 deadline wasn't met, who met with whom? And the financial and contractual arrangements between the parties should be fully disclosed as well. Why was a BOk attorney acting as the attorney for the Tulsa Industrial Authority in this lawsuit? Has TIA already repaid BOk, or will they now repay the bank? Was there legal action by BOk against TIA?

In the long run, we probably need a charter change to require council approval on legal settlements or contracts above a certain dollar value. No one should be committing that much city money unilaterally.

Comments from elsewhere on the web about the City of Tulsa's payment of a $7.1 million Great Plains Airlines debt it did not owe:

KFAQ's Chris Medlock was a City Councilor the last time someone tried to get the City to pay for the Great Plains mess. Here's what he had to say when the news of the bogus lawsuit and settlement emerged on Wednesday:

Word is that Friday morning she will meet with the Tulsa City Council in a special meeting to inform them of the deal. She will be using her full authority to bind the city to a contract, so she can act without the approval of the City Council.

On Thursday Medlock spelled out whythe Council's hands were tied

This surveying of the Sinking Fund is considered to be a "ministerial" action which a previous City Attorney, Alan Jackere told the Council when I was a member, that the council is duty bound to certify the figures, if they are true....

The last time the council voted down a "ministerial" action was when it voted not to approve the plat for the F&M Bank that was eventually built at 71st and Harvard. When the Council took that action, F&M filed suit against the councilors individually, threatening their personal assets. Since it took a majority of councilors to deny the plat, a majority of the council were named in the suit. As such, no majority of the council could be mustered to vote to give the councilors [me included] the legal services of City Legal. As such, each councilor was forced to hire their own counsel.

On his Thursday show, Medlock played audio from that morning's TAIT board meeting in which board member Dewey Bartlett credited Mayor Kathy Taylor with working out a settlement with the Bank of Oklahoma. In other words, she wasn't responding to someone suing the City; she was the driving force behind adding the City to the lawsuit.

Steve Roemerman attended Thursday's Council meeting and has photos. He reports that Taylor was unwilling, as she has been throughout her term of office, to face the public or the Council and answer for her decisions:

That leads us to last night's Council meeting. Mayor Taylor showed up for her Mayor's Report, and gave a quick explanation of why Tulsa had to pay this money. She said "This lawsuit has been following Tulsa for years." This is not entirely true because Tulsa was not part of this suit until recently...June 25 recently! Unless 1 day = over a year somehow, "years" is not how I'd put it...The truth is that Tulsa, and the Mayor's office in particular, have been following this suit for years, eager to give BOK money that we don't owe.

When she was finished, Taylor abruptly left, basically telling the Council that a lawyer would answer any further questions they had when it came time to vote on the release of the funds. She did not stick around and listen to the gallery of concerned citizens who went to the trouble of coming down to the council, she left!

Taylor, BOK, TAIT, and their lawyers say this is a good deal for Tulsa. I'm not entirely sure I buy that. If it were, this deal would have been made in the light of day, and there would have been no rush to push it through, in just 3...THREE short little days. I call Shenanigans!

Given the rush to get this done right before the end of a quarter and the end of the City's fiscal year, you have to think some executive at the Bank of Oklahoma would have been in legal jeopardy without this settlement.

Dave Schuttler provides a refresher course on Great Plains with video from the last push to settle this in 2005. In one video, Medlock said instead of preemptively bailing things out, we should let it go to court and have people testify under oath. He mentions handwritten notes from then City Attorney Martha Rupp Carter about the lien on the "collateral" -- Air Force Plant No. 3 -- when the VP of BOk asked for the original paperwork, she wrote that all she had was a forgery.

In another video on that same entry, Jim Mautino mentions being called to the office of Stan Lybarger, president of BOk. Mautino took city attorneys Larry Simmons and Drew Rees with him to the meeting. Lybarger told them that he had twice turned down the Great Plains loan, but relented because then Mayor Susan Savage gave him "assurances." This would be the same Savage who gave "assurances" to the City Council at the time that transfering AFP3 to the Tulsa Industrial Authority would not expose the City to any liability in the Great Plains financing deal.

(Related to that, following Thursday's pre-meeting, Councilor Bill Christiansen -- who, as an airport tenant, recused himself -- pointed out to me that we don't know to what degree BOk may be culpable in this loan default.)

In another video from 2005, Medlock talks about then-Mayor Bill LaFortune relenting from his push to pay off BOk. He also talked about the odd legal arrangements in the TIA-TAIT lawsuit.

And here is video from last night, featuring north Tulsa businesswoman Sharla Walker, who speaks about the immorality of give BOk $7.1 million when north Tulsa needs police, pools, groceries; Jack Henderson explaining why he could not with clear conscience vote for this giveaway. Henderson said he was sick and tired of people being afraid to go to court.

Schuttler writes:

There was plenty of upset citizens attending the council meeting and plenty of other worthy statements and I'll get more out into the internet with time. I think the best way for everyone to voice the opinions now is to cancel your Bank of Oklahoma account. Don't worry they can afford it and it won't hurt them much and you might not get that dirty look the next time you pull out your BOK card. Mayor Taylor will hopefully disappear soon now that this deal is done. Then again she might have more deals ahead but Mr. Baker leaving this week might be a sign of something but then again who knows until the day before.

I hope Mr Turner was correct about the OIG [FAA Office of Inspector General] coming back with tonights deal. Especially since the city still owes 70 plus homeowners their easements after the FAA decision about the money spent by Cinnabar, after the airport officials told them to stop working on those houses when funding ran out. Time will tell and much more money will be spent.

Schuttler also announced a Mayor Taylor sign contest. Steve Roemerman has Taylor holding a $7 million check made out to BOk. That's XonOFF's entry up above.

Finally, here's an analysis of the situation by
Friendly Bear on TulsaNow's public forum:

The promoters of Great Plains Airlines, who have all left town by now, had pitched their "Direct Flights to the Coasts" deal to 2nd tier cities like Wichita and Tulsa.

All the other cities had the sense to turn them down.

Then, the promoters used a network of gifted grifters to garner $30 million in State Tax Credits courtesy of their lobbyist Martha Erling Frette.

Then, got TAIT to pledge 22 acres of land right in the heart of the airport to the bank.

Then, in exchange for $600K in free advertising, they made World Publishing Co. the largest equity owner of GPA, despite today's Tulsa World's repeated Half-Truth that World Publishing only owned 3% of the shares.

PREFERRED shares are not counted the same way as the common stock.

Repeat: The World Publishing company was the single largest equity owner of the airlines. And, that ownership interest bought GPA many, many favorable "news" articles right up to the point when the airline crashed.

WHY didn't anyone exercise some adult leadership over the promoters when the first planes they acquired, they leased two airplanes that were incapable of flying non-stop to either coast.

THAT was a serious RED FLAG.

In a Banana Republic like Tulsa, a few immensely rich families like the Lortons, the Helmerichs, the Kaisers, the Warrens, the Siegfrieds, the Flints, the Rooneys, and the Schusterman's have an influence far, far in excess of what is healthy for what we mistakenly persist in calling our "democracy".

It isn't really a democracy.

It is a Banana Republic.

It only has the edifices of a democracy:

Elections.

Courts.

Judges.

These ruling Oligarch families select our political leaders, the Mayor and a majority of our city councilors.

Their paid paladins like Cameron and Reynolds populate our city boards, commisions and authorities (like TAIT, TMUA, TARE, TIA, TDA, etc.), doing their bidding, and breaking our backs with bad, bad deals like the Trash-to- Energy Plant, clean water piped at cost to subsidize development of our suburbs, Great Plains Airlines, an arena sole-sourced to the Flint-Rooney Oligarchia Familias, etc., etc., etc.

Very scarily, they also select our District and Federal Court judges.

Newly appointed Federal judge Gregory Frizzell is Senator Inhofe's "dear" friend.

Really scary if you are foolish enough or unlucky enough to have a legal tangle with the local Oligarchia Familias.

Their wholly-owned District Judge Jane Wiseman, took all of FIVE minutes to rule that a log-rolled 2003 Vision 2025 ballot, that figuratively sugar-coated voter rat poison, was actually not a log-rolled ballot.

Don't believe your eyes. Believe the judge.

Dear Judge Wiseman's reward:

Shortly thereafter, rewarded with a state Appellant Judgeship.

Welcome to the Banana Republic of Tulsa.

I hope Tulsans will show up at tonight's City Council meetings (at 5 in room 201 of the City Hall tower and 6 in the Council chamber) to voice their objections to Mayor Kathy Taylor's capitulation in the Great Plains Airlines lawsuit and to urge councilors to reject payment of the $7.1 million settlement to Bank of Oklahoma.

You know how think-tanks and political action committees put out report cards? They base their "grades" of legislators on certain key votes, which are usually announced in advance.

I'm announcing today that tonight's vote on authorizing payment of $7.1 million from the sinking fund is a report-card vote. I consider this vote a test of a councilor's integrity and political courage. I will weigh this vote heavily when considering whether to endorse that councilor's ambitions for re-election or higher office. I won't say a "yes" vote is an automatic disqualification, but a councilor who votes "yes" will have to redeem himself in some spectacular and sacrificial way in the future to earn my support. I prefer to support only those candidates who have demonstrated backbone and a willingness to do the right thing in the face of pressure from the wealthy and powerful.

It was illegal three years ago for the City to intervene and pay off the debt which is not owed by the city, but by a bankrupt airline and secured by a trust; the City was not a part of the lawsuit. Adding the City to the lawsuit on a bogus equitable claim of "unjust enrichment," a claim easily defeated because the City of Tulsa was not enriched, unjustly or otherwise, doesn't make paying that $7.1 million any more legal. It only adds conspiracy to misappropriation of funds.

The City of Tulsa doesn't owe this money to BOk, and paying it is against the law. The Mayor and the City Attorney and any councilor that votes in favor of tonight's resolution will be personally exposed to a qui tam action filed by taxpayers under 62 O.S. §372 and §373.

The law provides for a triple penalty. For authorizing the unlawful transfer of $7.1 million, Mayor Taylor would have to pay $21.3 million. She might have to sell her house and park her Bentley at a trailer park for a place to live. Or perhaps she can camp out in her Learjet.

If you're having trouble understanding why this payment is immoral and illegal, follow me in this thought experiment.

Imagine I'm having coffee with Mayor Taylor one day, and she remarks, "You seem sad, Michael. What's wrong?"

"I lent someone $7,000 to help start a new business. The business went broke. I sued the guy, but he doesn't have any money. Another guy cosigned the loan and pledged some collateral, but it turns out he doesn't really own the property, so he can't cover the loan either. I should have known the collateral wasn't his, but I didn't think about it before I lent him the money. Anyway, looks like I'm out seven grand."

"I think I can help you, Michael. Just add the City as a defendant to your lawsuit."

"But the City isn't involved...."

"Doesn't matter. You're my friend, and I can help you. Just file an amended petition against the city, cite any old grounds -- make something up. I'll direct the City Attorney to settle out of court for the full amount. The Council will have to approve taking the money out of the sinking fund, but they're pushovers. They don't like to give the newspaper an excuse to call them bickering obstructionists."

"Won't that raise our property taxes?"

"You know, Michael, it's just pennies per taxpayer, and you're such a valuable asset to our community, you deserve it."

Do you believe that would happen for someone like me? Would it be just? Would it be legal? Of course not. But that's exactly what Kathy Taylor is doing for the Bank of Oklahoma, but for $7,100,000 instead of $7,000.

Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor appears to be colluding in a lawsuit against the financial interests of the citizens of Tulsa. She is probably doing this to cover the posterior of the BOk executives responsible for making this bad loan. (As bond trustees for TAIT, BOk was well aware -- or should have been -- of the covenants and restrictions on TAIT's assets and income.)

Tulsa taxpayers have already suffered financially from Great Plains. The transferable tax credits used to finance the airline were repaid to the state treasury through our gasoline taxes, meaning less money to fix our roads and bridges. BOk purchased $18 million worth of those tax credits from Great Plains for $15 million. $3 million in free money -- sweet.

Most councilors will find it very hard to vote no. That's why I consider this vote a measure of integrity and political courage.

David Patrick, Bill Martinson, Dennis Troyer, Bill Christiansen, and G. T. Bynum all received contributions from BOk officers this cycle. Those who were on the ballot in 2006 (all but Bynum) also received BOk backing then. Jack Henderson received $1,000 support from George Kaiser and BOk Financial Corp. PAC during the 2006 cycle, but BOk VP Dan Ellinor backed Henderson's opponent Emanuel Lewis this time around. Only Rick Westcott, John Eagleton, and Eric Gomez do not appear to have received any BOk-related contributions, and in fact, Kaiser and BOKF PAC backed Eagleton's and Westcott's opponents in 2006, and Kaiser contributed to Gomez's opponent this year.

UPDATE: Mayor Taylor was present at the beginning of the meeting, but scrammed before this item came up. The resolution passed by a 5-2 vote. Eagleton, Westcott, Martinson, Patrick, and Gomez voted yes. Henderson and Troyer voted no. Christiansen, as an airport tenant, recused himself. Bynum recused himself, I presume because his grandfather, Robert J. LaFortune, is on the board of BOk. (A grandfather is within two degrees of consanguinity, the standard for the City of Tulsa ethics ordinance.) The "emergency clause," which would cause the payment to be authorized immediately rather than in 30 days, received a 5-2 vote as well, but needed 6 votes to pass.

Eagleton and Westcott objected to the settlement that the Mayor had reached, but they had been advised by the City Council's attorney, Drew Rees, that authorizing payment of the settlement from the sinking fund was a "ministerial" duty, and they had no discretion in the matter. Voting no could subject them to personal liability. (This two-page document from Pennsylvania has a good, brief explanation of ministerial act.)

Rees told me after the pre-meeting that the councilors were not putting themselves at risk of a qui tam action by voting for this, because they had no discretion. Only the official who had the discretion to agree to a settlement involving an unlawful disbursement of funds would be subject to qui tam.

I still would have voted no, despite the risk, and would have asked my fellow councilors for a resolution to seek an injunction against the Mayor's settlement. I don't know if it is possible to enjoin payment of the settlement at this point, but the Council ought at least to express their disapproval formally, perhaps with a censure resolution.

See below for updates, including audio from my interview on KFAQ today and the request for action and the resolution that the City Council will consider tomorrow night.

You may have thought the Great Plains Airlines fiasco was far behind us. Three years ago, then-Mayor Bill LaFortune tried to convince the City Council to pay the Bank of Oklahoma the $7 million (plus) owed by the Tulsa Airport Improvements Trust as a result of their complicated (and illegal) financing deal for the bankrupt airline. LaFortune backed down because of a City Attorney's opinion that the City was not liable for the money and paying a settlement would expose the City's elected officials to a qui tam suit from taxpayers, making them personally liable for misappropriation of funds and subject to removal from office. (My Urban Tulsa Column from November 17, 2005, goes into all the gory details.)

But BOk is coming after your tax dollars once again. Today in District Court, the Tulsa Industrial Authority filed an amended petition in its lawsuit CJ-2004-6124, adding the City of Tulsa as a defendant on the grounds of "unjust enrichment." This equitable claim, I am told, creates an excuse for Mayor Kathy Taylor to say that the City is at legal risk for this debt and therefore the City could legitimately pay it. Rather than vigorously defend against this claim and see if it will hold up in court, Taylor wants to short-circuit the legal process, wave the white flag, and hand over the money. Our money, to be specific.

In 2005, the request to the City Council to repay the debt was preceded by a PR campaign, including an op-ed by John Brock in the Tulsa World. This time, they're trying to sneak it through. Here's what's on the agenda for tomorrow, at the Thursday, June 26, 5 p.m., pre-meeting of the Tulsa City Council:

1. Resolution authorizing payment in full of a judgment settlement, from surplus monies in the Sinking Fund for Case No. CJ-2004-6124: Tulsa Industrial Authority (TIA) vs. Tulsa Airports Improvement Trust (TAIT), City of Tulsa, et al. (Emergency Clause) 05-916-10

And on the 6 p.m. regular meeting agenda:

3. b. [Mayor's Items] Resolution authorizing payment in full of a judgment settlement, from surplus monies in the Sinking Fund for Case No. CJ-2004-6124: Tulsa Industrial Authority (TIA) vs. Tulsa Airports Improvement Trust (TAIT), City of Tulsa, et al. (Emergency Clause) 05-916-10

There had to have been a lot of coordination between the Mayor, the TIA, and the BOk to make all this happen so quickly. The resolution authorizing payment couldn't go forward until the City was added as a defendant to the lawsuit. Isn't it nice to know our Mayor is assiduously looking for ways to give our tax dollars away to private interests?

"Surplus monies in the Sinking Fund" doesn't mean we have extra cash laying around. It means your property taxes will go up to pay for this, as is the case for all judgments against the City.

Reading the definition of unjust enrichment, it's hard to see how the City could be found liable:

1. Was the defendant enriched?
2. Was the enrichment at the expense of the claimant?
3. Was the enrichment unjust?
4. Does the defendant have a defense?
5. What remedies are available to the claimant?

The City wasn't enriched. That should end the matter right there.

In a nutshell, here's what is happening: BOk made a bad loan to finance Great Plains Airlines. GPA went bankrupt, but BOk still wants to recover its money. On August 7, 2006, BOk sued PriceWaterhouseCoopers, for professional negligence. The case was settled out of court within the month.

TAIT doesn't have to resources to pay back BOk, nor does TIA, so BOk is hunting around for someone with deep pockets to hold liable. That would be the City of Tulsa.

Why won't BOk just write this off as a bad lending decision on their part? It may be because the corporation and its officers would be liable under FIRREA, federal lending regulations put in place following the collapse of the Savings and Loan industry. S&Ls used federally-insured funds to make bad loans to insiders. When the borrowers defaulted and the S&Ls folded, the taxpayer was left holding the bag.

Even though it appears that BOk officials ignored plenty of warning signs, they approved the loan and did not call it when GPA's financial problems surfaced. Nevertheless, they want the taxpayer to wind up holding the bag.

One more thing: Shouldn't the public have time to examine this deal before the Council approves it? And shouldn't we know how much of the loan BOk has recovered through the bankruptcy court, the PriceWaterhouseCoopers lawsuit, or other means?

MORE: I've found some web references to laches as a defense against claims in equity, a category that includes a claim of unjust enrichment. Wouldn't waiting four years after filing the initial lawsuit constitute laches?

More on equitable remedies from Wikipedia:

Equitable principles can also limit the granting of equitable remedies. This includes "he who comes to equity must come with clean hands" (ie the court will not assist a claimant who is himself in the wrong or acting for improper motives), laches (equitable remedies will not be granted if the claimant has delayed unduly in seeking them), "equity will not assist a volunteer" (meaning that a person cannot litigate against a settlor without providing the appropriate consideration e.g Money) and that equitable remedies will not normally be granted where damages would be an adequate remedy.

AUDIO: I was on KFAQ's Chris Medlock Show this afternoon, along with Medlock's fellow former councilors Roscoe Turner and Jim Mautino. All three were on the City Council in 2005 the last time a mayor tried to pay off BOk. Here's Hour 1 and here's Hour 2.

DOCUMENTS:

Here is the backup material for the item on the Council's agenda. First, the Request for Action from interim City Attorney Dierdre Dexter to pay $7.1 million from the sinking fund :

REQUEST FOR ACTION: RESOLUTION

DEPARTMENT: LEGAL
CONTACT NAME: Deirdre O. Dexter (ga)
ADDRESS: City Hall, Room 316
TELE: 596-7717

[...]

SUMMARY:

Re: Tulsa Industrial Authority v. Tulsa Airports Improvement Trust, City of Tulsa, et al. CJ-2004-6124

The Tulsa Airports Improvement Trust and City have agreed to settle the above case. In the lawsuit, Plaintiff TIA, by and through Bank of Oklahoma as attorney-in-fact, alleged that TAIT breached an obligation to purchase property from TIA and alleged a claim of unjust enrichment against the City of Tulsa. Plaintiff's Second Amended Petition seeks, as of March 31, 2008, the amount of $11,648,294.00 plus additional accrued and accruing interest and costs. It is anticipated that the parties' settlement will be approved and a Journal Entry of Judgment will be filed on Thursday, June 26, 2008. At that time, a copy of the Judgment will be provided. Attached for Council and Mayoral approval is a resolution authorizing payment from the sinking fund. If the Judgment is not entered, no action will be requested.

BUDGET: FINANCE DIRECTOR APPROVAL:

FUNDING SOURCE: $7,100,000.00 Sinking Fund

It is the recommendation of the Legal Department that the Finance Department be directed to make a wire transfer
from funds available in the Sinking Fund in payment of this judgment.

REQUEST FOR ACTION: All department items requiring Council approval must be submitted through Mayor's Office.

Council review and approve the Resolution authorizing payment from the sinking fund. Mayor approve and direct that Finance to make a wire transfer in the amount of $7,100,000.00 to the Bank of Oklahoma, attorney-in-fact for Tulsa Industrial Authority.

Dexter was previously employed by Frederic Dorwart Lawyers. The firm is the legal counsel for Bank of Oklahoma Financial Corporation. Dorwart is also the attorney of record for the Tulsa Industrial Authority for this lawsuit.

And here is the

resolution the City Council will be asked to approve tomorrow night:

RESOLUTION

A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING PAYMENT IN FULL OF A JUDGMENT SETTLEMENT, FROM SURPLUS MONIES IN THE SINKING FUND; AND DECLARING AN EMERGENCY.

WHEREAS, on the 25th day of June, 2008, in Case No. CJ-2004-06124, filed in the District Court in and for Tulsa County, State of Oklahoma, the Tulsa Industrial Authority, Plaintiff, and the City of Tulsa and the Tulsa Airports Improvement Trust, Defendants, agreed to a settlement in the sum of Seven Million One Hundred Thousand
Dollars and No Cents ($7,100,000.00), representing principal judgment, interest, and costs, which settlement has been approved by the court; and

WHEREAS, it appears from a survey of the Sinking Fund that there is a surplus of cash and investments in said fund, over and above accrued liabilities and statutory obligations, which would allow the City of Tulsa to pay said judgment in full, including court costs and interest thereon; and

WHEREAS, it is desirable and in the best interest of the City of Tulsa to make such present payment out of the Sinking Fund, and thereafter reimburse the Sinking Fund from subsequent tax levies, as provided by 62 O.S. § 435.

BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF TULSA, OKLAHOMA:

Section 1. That the City Clerk and the City Treasurer of the City of Tulsa be, and the same hereby are, authorized to consummate and complete the payment of said judgment by making a wire transfer from the Sinking Fund: To the BANK OF OKLAHOMA, NA, Attorney in fact for Plaintiff, in the sum of Seven Million One Hundred Thousand
Dollars and No Cents ($7,100,000.00), the same representing the full amount of the judgment, interest, and
costs now due and owing to the Plaintiff in the lawsuit identified above.

Section 2. That the City Clerk and the City Treasurer of the City of Tulsa be, and the same hereby are, authorized and directed to properly advise the Tulsa County Excise Board by appropriate reports, of the prepayment of said judgment in order that said Board may include said prepaid judgment as a necessary and lawful expense of
the Sinking Fund of the City of Tulsa, Oklahoma, for which appropriate tax levies may be made to replenish said Sinking Fund, as provided by the provisions of Title 62 of the Statutes of the State of Oklahoma.

Section 3. That an emergency exists for the preservation of the public peace, health and safety, by reason whereof this Resolution shall take effect immediately upon its adoption, approval, and publication.

Note the assertion that the settlement has already been agreed to. Note also that the money we spend out of the sinking fund is replenished by increasing property taxes on City of Tulsa property owners.

And what's the emergency? What is the danger to the public peace, health, and safety if the City Council votes no? Does it have to do with the end of the financial quarter and the end of the fiscal year?

I hear these stories all the time -- stories about minor disasters and expensive mistakes at the City of Tulsa Public Works Department. The stories don't reflect badly on the citeewurkors but on the managers and policy makers further up the hierarchy.

I haven't had time to chase any of these stories down, but I hear them over and over again. At the very least, they are widely believed, and if they are local urban legends, it's probably in the TPWD's interest to provide documentation to debunk them.

The story I heard tonight involved a manhole cover on N. Sheridan near King St. Heavy rains were causing a sanitary sewer backup, actually lifting the cover up and allowing raw sewage to run out. The brilliant solution to this problem was to weld the cover to the manhole. So instead of the overflow pressure lifting the cover above the street, the pressure broke the street.

I have heard about the collapse of a city water storage tank on the hill west of the Port of Catoosa. I have heard about a pump station failing catastrophically because it was pushed beyond its rating to get water up the hill to the storage facility on Turkey Mountain.

I have heard of streets sinking several inches due to subsurface voids; the problem is "corrected" by topping up the resulting sinkhole with paving material.

I've heard about lousy water pressure from many people in the area around the Fairgrounds. The topological divide separating the Arkansas River drainage basin from the Verdigris River basin runs roughly northwest to southeast through the Fairgrounds, making it a logical site for a water tower. The city used to have a big water tower at 21st and Louisville. What tower is serving the higher elevations of midtown these days? Could that explain the lousy water pressure?

I keep hearing rumors that, despite a consent decree to fix our sanitary sewage system in the 1980s, we still have overflows and backups that can contaminate homes, parks, and streams. The people who tell me this think maybe we need the EPA to come back to Tulsa and check into the health of our sewer system.

The common theme seems to be planning and engineering failures. As I said, I haven't confirmed any of these stories, but they're out there, and they raise doubts about trusting the TPWD with a couple billion dollars. This is why we need a top-to-bottom audit of the department, with whistleblower protection, whether Director Charles Hardt wants it or not.

Blogger Steve Roemerman receives regular updates on the city's finances and the state of the local economy in his role as a member of the City of Tulsa Sales Tax Oversight Committee. Today he has posted Tulsa's sales tax stats and economic indicators for the most June 2008, showing sales tax revenues up 3.8% over the previous year. Good news, but the Consumer Price Index has gone up 4% over the last year. Visit Steve's blog for more info.

UPDATE: 5:28 PM: Brian Barber's comments (a second one explained that copy editors write the headlines, not the reporters) have vanished from the website.

The headline read "Public works audit angers councilors".

The headline doesn't seem to fit Brian Barber's story, and in fact, Barber objected to it by posting a comment on the web version of the article:

Tulsa World Staff Writer Brian Barber, (6/5/2008 8:27:36 AM)

I disagree with the headline that was placed above my story. While comments at the meeting were direct, no one was angry.

Good for Brian. Writers need to speak up when headlines distort the reader's perception of the story. Given the Whirled editorial board's disdain for the City Council, it's easy to suspect a deliberate decision to use the headline to cast the Council in a bad light, when it's Public Works director Charles Hardt who comes across in the story as defensive and shifty.

Barber wrote a solid story that explained to the reader not only what was said, but the dynamics of the discussion between the councilors and Hardt.

Hardt had told the Council that the long-awaited audit of his department would be a self-audit.

The self audit will start in July and last about a year, with the organization's representatives on site to oversee the process.

The areas to be examined include service delivery, effectiveness and accountability, management and administration, teamwork, staff pride, interdepartmental coordination and planning for the future.

Several councilors are quoted in the story expressing concern about Hardt's announcement:

"I disagree with us calling this an audit," Councilor G.T. Bynum said during this week's committee meetings. "In my opinion, an audit necessitates some form of independence.

"I think what's planned will have great benefit, but I do think we need an independent audit of the Public Works Department."

Councilor Jack Henderson said that over the years he's been in office, many people have called for a public works audit.

"But I know this isn't what they had in mind," he said.

There are stories out there about a collapsed and unusable water reservoir tank, about pump stations destroyed because of overpressure required by a poorly planned system, about favoritism toward certain developers in the planning of water and sewer projects, about collusion among local contractors resulting in higher prices. I've been told that Public Works has ways of "hiding" money -- not for personal enrichment, necessarily, but to be able to shunt funds between projects without getting the politicians involved.

Many people have been calling for a full and independent financial audit and a full and independent performance audit of the Public Works department, chief among them former Councilor Jim Mautino. An internal self-audit will not provide the degree of scrutiny needed to find and correct problems and build public confidence in the department.

Hardt's reaction to the councilors' concerns:

Hardt grew somewhat defensive with the talk of an independent audit.

"If you want an audit that looks at the books and financial transactions, that's not what this is," he said.

"This is more of a performance audit that looks at how we deliver service, whether we're effective and whether there are ways we can improve.

"But if you really want to know whether we did something wrong, I think you need to hire a head hunter or a witch hunter and get on with it."

Bynum said he doesn't think an independent audit should be viewed as something to expose "any perceived wrongdoings."

"I simply think there would be some value in it," he said.

Hardt said he's been through such audits before that were wastes of time.

"I've found that you have auditors who have no knowledge or understanding of what the engineering world does and no clue as to what our objectives are," he said.

"This is a far more meaningful process than having an audit firm that doesn't understand one thing about constructing something but tells us how we should have done it. That's awfully irritating."

A member of the city Auditor's Office stepped forward during the meeting and suggested that the process should be called a quality assurance review, rather than an audit.

Exactly right. A quality assurance review measures performance against the department's own rules, procedures, and goals, but it doesn't examine whether the rules, procedures, and goals are appropriate or effective.

A real audit process needs to create a secure environment for employees to speak out about problems they've observed. A citeewurkor needs to be able to say, "We've always done it that way, but { it's always seemed fishy, it never made sense, it seems wrong } to me," without fear of retribution. PW is a big department, and it would be easy for someone to shape rules and procedures in a self-serving way without being obvious about it. (Self-serving doesn't necessarily mean lining one's own pockets. It could also involve power or personal comfort.)

Over the transom late last week, I received a copy of a scathing letter, dated May 23, written by Tulsa City Councilor Bill Martinson to Stan Lybarger and Mike Neal, Chairman and CEO, respectively, of the Tulsa Metro Chamber. Martinson, who has headed up the Council's effort to develop a financial package for fixing our streets, was responding to a May 22 letter from Lybarger and Neal to the City Council, urging them not to set a streets funding election for July 29, the date of the Oklahoma primary election.

In the extended entry, you'll find the text of the Chamber's letter (the part I have at least -- from Martinson's reply, there seems to be at least one page missing from the copy of the Chamber's letter I received), followed by Martinson's reply.

A few highlights from Martinson's letter:

Setting aside the condescending tone of your letter for a moment, it conveyed a serious lack of understanding as to the development and status of the Council's proposal to fix Tulsa's streets....

Your contempt for Tulsa's City Council was apparent in your comments. To assume that the Council and City staff would advance an initiative of this magnitude to the voters and ignore fundamental due diligence and statutory requirements is arrogant and absurd. Several of your other bullet points revealed an appalling level of ignorance....

I must admit that I found your comment about ROI on campaigns rather amusing considering your recent track record. Your temerity to condescend to the Council on voter behavior, when by definition, each City Councilor has a better record with the voters than the Chamber, again demonstrates an incredible level of arrogance. We have scheduled public meetings and will have programs on TGOV and information available on our web site to share the results of our research and present our plan. The process has been, and will remain, transparent. I have great faith in the voters, if they are given the facts and have an opportunity to make an informed decision. You may consider it a novel approach, but I would rather tell the citizens the truth and let them decide rather than attempting to manipulate the outcome.

Congratulations on your success in Oklahoma City to secure $25 million in funding for low water dams on the river. I believe we all support river development and welcome the day when you feel the same passion to convince the Tulsa delegation to support our transportation system....

The Chamber appears fixated on glamour and glitz to enhance economic development....

I had hoped that this initiative to fix our streets would be an opportunity to heal the community. I believe the Council, administration, and citizens are prepared to face the issue and am disappointed that the Chamber feels threatened with that initiative....

It's my understanding that there has been some conciliation between Martinson and the Chamber. Hopefully, the Chamber understands that a well-designed package focused on infrastructure rather than a glitzy, expensive campaign, is what will win over the voters, regardless of when the package is on the ballot.

I admire Martinson for standing up to the Chamber's arrogant attitude. That's the kind of leadership that the Gang of Five demonstrated and that we still need from the City Council.

(UPDATE: I received the missing bits of the Chamber letter and have incorporated them below.)

Friday afternoon, my daughter and I attended a brief reception at City Hall to honor the three departing members of the Tulsa City Council: Roscoe Turner, Maria Barnes, and Cason Carter. They were each presented with a plaque honoring their service. The plaques were read and presented by their colleagues. They were also presented with their nameplates from the Council dais, and Turner, as a former Council Chairman, was presented with a gavel plaque.

Councilor Jack Henderson presented the following plaque to outgoing Chairman and District 3 Councilor Roscoe Turner:

IN SINCERE APPRECIATION

This very special award is presented to ROSCOE TURNER. Throughout his years of distinguished public service, Roscoe Turner has lived by those insightful words of Martin Luther King, Jr., "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

During his multiple terms on the City Council, Roscoe Turner led the effort to establish a code of ethics for public officials, identify and implement alternative energy sources, explore alternative methods for governmental funding, establish a government access television channel for Tulsa, and support the concerns of neighborhoods bordering the airport. He has always been a staunch advocate of the citizens of Tulsa's north community. Throughout his years of service to the citizens of Council District 3, Roscoe Turner consistently demonstrated an abiding passion for fairness, openness, and candid public disclosure.

The City of Tulsa, Tulsa City Council, City Council Staff and all the citizens of Tulsa deeply appreciate Roscoe Turner for his dedicated and distinguished service. Tulsa will genuinely miss his voice of inquiry on the City Council.

Councilor John Eagleton presented the following plaque to outgoing District 4 Councilor Maria Barnes:

IN SINCERE APPRECIATION

This very special award is presented to MARIA BARNES. Throughout her years of distinguished community and public service, Maria Barnes has lived by those insightful words of Alan Autry, "The key to truly rebuilding out central city on a vital and sustainable foundation is people."

During her tenure on the City Council, Maria Barnes led the effort to update the community's comprehensive plan, institute the conservation district approach to neighborhood development and rejuvenate mid-town Tulsa. She has always been a staunch advocate of responsible and responsive government. Throughout her years of service to the citizens of Council District 4, Maria Barnes consistently demonstrated an abiding passion for civility, rational thought, and fairness over political convenience.

The City of Tulsa, Tulsa City Council, City Council Staff and all the citizens of Tulsa deeply appreciate Maria Barnes for her dedicated and distinguished service. Tulsa will genuinely miss her voice of compassion on the City Council.

Councilor Rick Westcott presented the following plaque to outgoing District 9 Councilor Cason Carter:

IN SINCERE APPRECIATION

This very special award is presented to CASON CARTER. Throughout his years of distinguished public service, Cason Carter has lived by those insightful words of Abraham Lincoln, "Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm."

During his tenure on the City Council, Cason Carter led the effort to revitalize the Brookside district, was a staunch supporter of Tulsa's Tree Advisory Committee, was instrumental in seeing the Camelot Hotel site readied for redevelopment and the adoption of the Mayo Hotel tax increment financing project. He has always been a devoted advocate of rational and fiscally responsible government. Throughout his years of service to the citizens of Council District 9, Cason Carter consistently took the lead in objectivity, right reason and compassion towards the citizens of Tulsa.

The City of Tulsa, Tulsa City Council, City Council Staff and all the citizens of Tulsa deeply appreciate Cason Carter for his dedicated and distinguished service. Tulsa will genuinely miss his voice of reason on the City Council.

In addition to the aforementioned councilors, Councilor Bill Christiansen was present and said a few words, mentioning how he and Maria Barnes would crack each other up during committee meetings to the point of tears or having to leave the room to compose themselves. New Councilor G. T. Bynum was also in attendance.

Liotta back to school

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The current issue of the O'Collegian, Oklahoma State University's student news paper, has a nice feature story about former State Rep. Mark Liotta's return to college. After 10 years in the Legislature, Liotta is getting a Master's degree in political science.

Mark rLiotta eally ought to be the teacher, rather than the student. After a couple of failed attempts, he beat an incumbent Democrat in a majority Democratic district and held the seat for five terms, fending off several well-funded attempts to defeat him. While in the Legislature, Liotta led the effort to reprioritize spending to double Oklahoma's budget for fixing our roads and bridges, without raising taxes.

Not only does he have experience to draw upon, he has the ability to teach. Liotta has given many lectures on the nuts and bolts of grassroots campaigning to Republican Party classes for candidates and volunteers. I've been in some of those lectures; he's very good at breaking the topic down and getting his points across, often using his experience in the Army, as he does in the following quote from the story:

Liotta gained much of his leadership experience away from the classroom, however, for he served in the military as an infantry officer years before he ran for an office. The two positions, Liotta said, had a lot in common.

"A lot of what you learn as an infantry officer applies to campaigning. You take limited personnel, limited time, limited funds and target an area."

OSU would do well to bring him on as an adjunct professor.

Liotta lost the race for what would have been his final term in the State House. Since then, County Commissioner Fred Perry (to Perry's great credit) appointed Liotta as superintendent of Tulsa County Highway District 3, responsible for maintaining county roads throughout the south part of the county.

Regarding future political possibilities, Liotta says, "You never say never." I can't help but notice that he lives in a County Commission district which has an election this year, and his experience in the Legislature and at the county highway department would certainly be impressive on a pushcard....

Streets forum

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Our local Unitarians at All Souls Church at 30th & Peoria have an interesting approach to Sunday School. In place of Alongside Bible study or theological discussion, they present public forums on issues of civic importance. It might not be the most spiritually profitable way to spend Sunday morning, but it's often the only place that both sides of an issue get aired in an evenhanded town hall atmosphere. I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to speak last October before the river sales tax election in a forum moderated by Clayton Vaughn with Kevin Stubbs of U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Jenks Mayor Vic Vreeland, and Ken Neal editorial page editor emeritus of the Tulsa Whirled.

This Sunday, they're featuring the issue of Tulsa's streets and how best to fix them. Two members of Mayor Taylor's blue ribbon tax force, former Councilor Dewey Bartlett, Jr., and former Water and Sewer Commissioner Patty Eaton, will be there to argue for their plan to increase taxes by $1.5 billion. Councilor Bill Martinson has his own plan, reprioritizing existing revenue streams as much as possible. Former Streets Commissioner Jim Hewgley III emphasizes the need for short-term action in the form of a paving program.

The public is invited to attend. Here are the details:

Public Forum: Tulsa Roads

Sunday, April 13
10:00-10:50 a.m.

All Souls Unitarian Church
2952 South Peoria Ave.

This Sunday, All Souls Unitarian Church will host a public forum on the issue of Tulsa's crumbling streets. The Complete Our Streets Advisory Council recently delivered its report, and the public debate now turns to specific proposals for addressing this urgent problem. Come hear a distinguished panel of community leaders discuss the state of our city's streets and how to pay for their rehabilitation.

Our panel:

  • Dewey Bartlett, Jr.--Former Tulsa City Councilor and member of the Complete Our Streets Advisory Council
  • Patty Eaton, Former Tulsa Waterworks Commissioner and member of the Complete Our Streets Advisory Council
  • James Hewgley, III--Former Tulsa Street Commissioner
  • Bill Martinson--Tulsa City Councilor, District 5

This event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Brian Cross, adult religious education coordinator, at 743-2805, ext. 503.

(Modified in response to a comment from RecycleMichael. Modified again -- changed "listen in" to "attend" -- in response to a comment from Don Singleton.)

Isn't it nice to have a few city councilors who will speak the truth without sugarcoating it?

Only an idiot would sign the county's initial contract proposal covering municipal inmates at the Tulsa Jail, City Councilor John Eagleton said Monday.

The county has proposed that the city begin paying $54.13 per day for each municipal inmate, as well as certain medical and transportation costs.

"It's insane math," said Eagleton, a member of an informal committee that is charged with reviewing the county's proposal.

The kicker is the new definition of what constitutes a municipal inmate. In the past, a municipal inmate was one who was being held solely for city offenses. Someone who had been charged with or convicted of a state or federal crime wouldn't count against the city's numbers, even if he also had a city charge pending. Under Tulsa County's proposal, someone would count as a municipal inmate as long as a city charge was pending, even if he would have been in jail anyway for state or federal offenses.

Kevin Canfield's story in the Whirled contains a serious inaccuracy about the current jail contract between the City of Tulsa and Tulsa County, which is about to expire. He writes:

Under the terms of the current con tract, the city pays no direct fee to house its inmates at the jail.

Instead, the city leases to the county for $1 the former city jail, on the third floor of the Tulsa Police and Municipal Courts Building, and the former Adult Detention Center, 1727 Charles Page Blvd.

At the time the agreement was signed 10 years ago, the two entities agreed that the properties' annual rental value was $349,500.

In addition, the city agreed to equip and maintain, at an annual cost to the city of more than $400,000, a fully staffed evidence property room.

In fact, the City is charged for a daily rate for each municipal prisoner being held in the county jail. But what the City owes is offset by the agreed-upon value of letting Tulsa County use city-owned facilities rent-free. If the cost of housing the City inmates (according to the old contract) ever exceeded the value of the City's properties being used by Tulsa County, the City would pay the excess to Tulsa County.

Tulsa taxpayers ought to be happy that John Eagleton is looking out for the City's financial interests.

An edited version of this column appeared in the March 5, 2008, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is available on the Internet Archive. Posted on August 4, 2018.

Neighborhood conservation districts: A proposal on the table
By Michael D. Bates

"CALL YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE AND TELL THEM YOU ARE AGAINST MIDTOWN TULSA."

So wrote Realtor Martha Thomas Cobb in a mass e-mail protesting the idea of neighborhood conservation districts (NCDs), a zoning idea currently under discussion for Tulsa. An NCD, as we've noted in this space several times, customizes land use regulations for a particular neighborhood, with the intent of allowing new development in an established neighborhood while preserving the essential character of the neighborhood.

To read Ms. Cobb's upper-case-laden e-mail, you'd think that the Communists had infiltrated City Hall:

"Please beware of what is going on with the small minority of disgruntled citizens who want to police midtown by writing an ordinance to tell you what to do with your property.

"IT IS DESIGNED TO TAKE AWAY OUR PROPERTY RIGHTS. BEWARE....
"PRESERVE MIDTOWN WANTS TO PUT AN ORDINANCE IN PLACE POLICING EVERYONES RIGHT TO DO WHAT THEY WANT TO. BAD IDEA."

I've heard the phrase, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law," but I didn't realize it was in the City of Tulsa zoning code.

Ms. Cobb isn't the only fear-monger out there. Back on Feb. 15, the daily paper used this misleading headline over a story about NCDs: "City officials join to fight infill building." (Infill refers to new construction in an already developed area.)

The officials involved, City Councilor Maria Barnes, whose photo appeared above the headline, and Planning Commissioner Michelle Cantrell, aren't trying to fight infill at all. They're trying to come up with a way to accommodate infill while mitigating its impact on the very characteristics that make a neighborhood attractive to new development.
That's not anti-growth or anti-infill. That's anti-killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
Until recently, it was easy for NCD opponents to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Now, however, there's a draft NCD ordinance, presented during the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission's (TMAPC) Feb. 27 work session. The four-page document, weighing in at just under a thousand words, is quick to read and apprehend. Here are some of the key features:

  • An NCD overlay could only be used in areas zoned single-family residential (RS). It could not be applied to any other kind of development or to areas already under a Historic Preservation (HP) overlay.
  • 75% of the existing houses within the proposed NCD must have been built prior to July 1, 1970.
  • The proposal for an NCD can be initiated by the TMAPC, the City's Planning Department, the City Council, or a petition signed by 50% of the property owners in the proposed NCD.
  • An NCD must be contiguous, containing at least 30 single-family dwellings, with distinctive or unifying features. (Neighborhoods on the National Register of Historic Places would automatically satisfy the definition.) Examples of distinctive features include scale, size, type of construction, setbacks, and street layout.
  • NCD guidelines could address four categories of criteria: "density and/or intensity of land use...; area and bulk restrictions...; accessory structures and yard utilization regulations...; exterior building wall materials."
  • Specific NCD guidelines could include placement, size, and orientation of garages, roof pitch, setbacks, floor area, lot size, number of stories, and height.
  • NCD guidelines must be consistent with the predominant features of the district.

This is a very modest proposal, limited in scope. What it doesn't do is as important as what it does do.

An NCD can't regulate paint color, window style, or any interior modification. It treats houses like roofed boxes, and it's all about how big those boxes are and where they sit on the lot. Building wall material - e.g. brick or wood siding - is the only criterion that deals with appearance.

The proposed NCD ordinance doesn't modify the process of getting a building permit, a variance or special exception, or a zoning change. It doesn't have a group of neighbors applying subjective judgment over every new home design.

An NCD would simply have special rules customized for that district. No additional red tape would be added to the development process.

To put the current proposal into perspective, let's compare it to an earlier attempt at establishing a protective zoning overlay.

Accompanying the draft in the TMAPC's backup material was a 17-page memo by City Council policy administrator Jack Blair, written last Nov. 20. Blair did his usual thorough job, comparing ordinances establishing NCDs (or similar districts with different names) in Albuquerque, Austin, Dallas, Oklahoma City, Omaha, and Wichita with an ordinance that had been proposed for Tulsa in 1995.

Blair's memo reveals that the NCD concept has been kicked around Tulsa since 1992, when TMAPC staff began researching the issue. Staff put a recommended ordinance before the TMAPC in 1995, but no action was taken on it. From Blair's description, the current proposal appears to be similar in scope to the 1995 draft.

A few years later, a more ambitious proposal gained brief attention.

In 1998, the Infill Task Force was convened by Mayor Susan Savage and TMAPC chairman Gary Boyle. Scott Swearingen, then president of Renaissance Neighborhood Association and founding father of the Midtown Coalition of Neighborhood Associations, was a mayoral appointee to the task force. He designated me as his alternate, and I participated along with him on the zoning subcommittee, a group that included zoning code author and attorney Charles Norman.

At that time, teardowns - the practice of scraping the lot in an older neighborhood to build a new and often much larger home - were not yet prevalent in Tulsa. The greater concern was inappropriate redevelopment of pedestrian-friendly commercial areas bordering residential areas. The core issue was the same, however - preserving the character of a neighborhood.

INCOG staffers presented the subcommittee with a draft enabling ordinance for something they called "Renaissance Neighborhoods" (RN). RNs could include not only single-family residential, as the current NCD proposal does, but also multi-family and non-residential uses.

In that regard, RN zoning would have respected the interrelatedness of midtown residential areas and the traditional neighborhood commercial districts that adjoin them - for example, the commercial and residential sections of Brookside, or Swan Lake neighborhood and Cherry Street.

The proposed RN ordinance never saw the light of day, beyond our subcommittee's discussions. The final report from the task force, issued in May 1999, did recommend the adoption of design guidelines in areas where "higher intensity nonresidential uses are located near residential uses" and "in the older pedestrian-oriented commercial areas."
As a first step, the report suggested a "test case" neighborhood plan, "prepared with broad-based citizen participation, including both residential and nonresidential interests."

The test case idea evolved into $50,000 in initial funding for three pilot infill studies in the Brady Arts District, the 6th Street corridor (now known as the Pearl District), and in Brookside. For each study, a task force was convened involving a variety of neighborhood stakeholders and facilitated by city Urban Development staffers. Work was completed on the Brady and Brookside infill plans in 2002; the Pearl District effort wrapped up in 2005.

These infill plans have been incorporated by the TMAPC and the City Council into the Comprehensive Plan, and the design guidelines have been consulted in evaluating variances, special exceptions, and zoning changes.

But a decade after the Infill Task Force was convened, the goal of these pilot programs - incorporating neighborhood-specific design guidelines into the zoning code - has not yet been achieved. And only a handful of neighborhoods have developed infill guidelines.

Blair's report notes: "A conservation district overlay would be intended to address the 'one-size-fits-all' nature of our current approach to land use regulation. Our current zoning code does not distinguish, for example, between an RS-3 zoning district at 26th & Yale and an RS-3 district at 86th & Sheridan." A three-car-garage "snout house" would fit in perfectly in the latter subdivision, but would be completely inappropriate in the former neighborhood.

Blair continues: "The unique aggregation of small mid-50s-modern homes in Lortondale enhances the property values of each individual home. In other words, the sum is greater than its parts. The coherence of the neighborhood is, in itself, of value."

The NCD proposal now under discussion is a very modest step toward protecting that kind of coherence while also protecting property rights and opportunities for new development. While the details may need fine-tuning, the concept deserves widespread support from homeowners and developers alike. The TMAPC should act promptly and forward a draft ordinance to the Council as soon as possible.

Pave review

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This week in Urban Tulsa Weekly, I review Councilor Bill Martinson's proposal for funding $1.6 billion in street repair, rehabilitation, and reconstruction, and show how it dovetails with former Streets Commissioner Jim Hewgley's proposal for funding an aggressive street repaving program.

Also, UTW has several new, young columnists: Arts writer Nathaniel McKnight made his debut last week. Josh Kline joins G. K. Hizer on the music beat. And Isaac Farley, from Chattanooga by way of Belize, is new to Tulsa and is out to help us see our own city through a newcomer's eyes. Welcome aboard to all three.

Congratulations to City Auditor Phil Wood and City Councilors Rick Westcott, Bill Martinson, and John Eagleton on their re-election. Filing for city office has closed and no opponents filed in those races.

There will be four primaries in three districts -- Democrats in Districts 1, 4, and 8, and Republicans in District 4. The winner of the District 1 primary will be elected. There will be five general elections -- Districts 3, 4, 6, 8, and 9. For your reference, here's a handy-dandy printable tournament bracket in PDF format (73 KB).

Here's the official list from the Tulsa County Election Board website:

CITY AUDITOR

Phil Wood
3622 South Yorktown Place
Tulsa, OK 74105
12-29-24
Democrat

COUNCILOR, ELECTION DISTRICT ONE (1)

Jack Ross Henderson
2014 N Rosedale
Tulsa, OK 74127
04-22-50
Democrat

Emanuel Bernard Lewis
527 East Seminole Street
Tulsa, OK 74106
07-08-71
Democrat

Mike McConnell
2455 N. Boston Ave.
Tulsa, OK 74106
10-06-66
Democrat

COUNCILOR, ELECTION DISTRICT TWO (2)

Rick Dalton Westcott
2508 W 68 Pl
Tulsa, OK 74136
10-15-54
Republican

COUNCILOR, ELECTION DISTRICT THREE (3)

Roscoe Harry Turner Sr.
3415 E Haskell St
Tulsa, OK 74115
02-16-32
Democrat

David Edward Patrick
5712 E. Tecumseh
Tulsa, OK 74115
04-22-51
Independent

COUNCILOR, ELECTION DISTRICT FOUR (4)

Rocky R. Frisco
1332 S. Florence Place.
Tulsa, OK 74104
07-26-37
Republican

Maria Veliz Barnes
1319 S Terrace Dr
Amended 01/15/08 Tulsa, OK 74104
07-28-60
Democrat

Jason Eric Gomez
2716 East 13th St
Tulsa, OK 74104
07-18-69
Republican

Jay M. Matlock
1124 S. Columbia Ave.
Tulsa, OK 74104
04-10-78
Republican

John Lee Nidiffer
4731 E. 22nd Pl.
Tulsa, OK 74114
09-01-40
Democrat

COUNCILOR, ELECTION DISTRICT FIVE (5)

William Edward Martinson, Jr.
3521 S. Darlington Ave
Tulsa, OK 74135
07-08-55
Republican

COUNCILOR, ELECTION DISTRICT SIX (6)

Dennis K. Troyer
12811 E. 13th Place
Tulsa, OK 74128
08-14-40
Democrat

Kevin Leroy Boggs
1127 S. 157th East Ave.
Tulsa, OK 74108
08-19-58
Republican

COUNCILOR, ELECTION DISTRICT SEVEN (7)

John M. Eagleton
5748 E. 62nd St.
Tulsa, OK 74136
02-09-59
Republican

COUNCILOR, ELECTION DISTRICT EIGHT (8)

William L. Christiansen
5106 E 86th Place
Tulsa, OK 74137
12-23-47
Republican

Austin Hansen
10081 S. Sheridan Rd. #817
Tulsa, OK 74133
05-04-59
Democrat

COUNCILOR, ELECTION DISTRICT NINE (9)

G. T. Bynum
3607 S. Florence Avenue
Tulsa, OK 74105
08-28-77
Republican

Paul Tay
4004 S Toledo
Tulsa, OK 74135
09-01-62
Independent

Philip Morgan Kates
4604 E 32nd ST
Tulsa, OK 74135
05-28-48
Democrat

Roger Lowry
4623 S St Louis Ave
Tulsa, OK 74105
07-16-56
Democrat

Former City of Tulsa Street Commissioner Jim Hewgley III was on 1170 KFAQ Thursday morning (MP3) talking about the report issued by Mayor Kathy Taylor's "Complete Our Streets" task force. He has some words of praise but also some reservations, and he provides some historical perspective on how our streets got into the shape they're in.

Tulsa City Councilor John Eagleton got a lot of grief over his proposal to put more police resources toward traffic enforcement. He reasoned that increased enforcement would not divert funds from other police functions, but would pay for itself, with money left over to help other areas of law enforcement, and in the process it would prevent injuries and save lives. Eagleton was right, according to the head of Tulsa's emergency medical service. EMSA chief Steve Williamson compares the first 10.5 months of 2006 (before the change in policy prompted by Eagleton) and the same 10.5 months of 2007 (after the change).

Crashes requiring EMSA's presence dropped by 6.6%. 9.6% fewer motorists involved in a crash required transport to a hospital. That works out to about 435 fewer crashes and about 300 fewer serious injuries. Williamson credits Eagleton's initiative, with follow through by Mayor Kathy Taylor and the Tulsa Police Department, for this dramatic decline, at a time when total EMSA calls have been rising by 10% a year.

November 19, 2007

Councilor John Eagleton
Tulsa City Council
200 Civic Center
Tulsa, OK 74103

Dear Councilor Eagleton,

Over the past four years, emergency medical call volume in Tulsa has been steadily increasing. EMSA has realized 10% jumps in volume each year for the past four years. Therefore, I was quite surprised to discover that emergency calls and transports related to motor vehicle accidents recently has declined. You, Councilor Eagleton, along with Mayor Kathy Taylor and the Tulsa Police Department, are likely responsible for this phenomenal turnaround.

From January 1 - November 15, 2006, EMSA responded to 6,595 motor vehicle crashes in the Tulsa metropolitan area. Nearly 3,000 individuals suffered crash-related injuries serious enough to require ambulance transport to a hospital. In mid-November 2006, on the heels of your proposal to boost traffic enforcement, Mayor Taylor announced that police officers would beef up patrols along some of Tulsa's most heavily traveled streets. The result has been nothing short of amazing. From January 1 - November 15, 2007, EMSA responded to 6.6% fewer crashes than during the same period of the previous year. The number of motorists suffering injuries serious enough to require hospital care declined by 9.6%. That translates into nearly 300 lives directly, positively impacted.

Thank you for working to make Tulsa a safer place to live and a more attractive place to visit and conduct business. Your advocacy on behalf of law enforcement and emergency medical service initiatives is valued. EMSA's statistics suggest that your work has led to a significant reduction in the number of crash-related injuries suffered by Tulsans. Quite possibly, your efforts have saved lives.

Sincerely,

Stephen Williamson
EMSA President and Chief Executive Officer

This Thursday night the City Charter amendment process comes to its biennial conclusion Thursday as the City Council votes on whether to send seven proposed amendments to the voters at next April's general city election.

Here in a nutshell are the changes -- links will bring up a PDF of the proposed amendment from the Tulsa City Council website:

  1. Specify state law as the basis for determining whether someone is a "qualified elector" for the purpose of running or voting for city office
  2. Four-year councilor terms, coinciding with mayoral terms
  3. Moving city elections to the fall of odd-numbered years
  4. Three-year staggered terms for city councilors
  5. Appointive City Auditor
  6. Non-partisan elections
  7. Pegging councilor salaries to one-half of the mayor's salary

I've been a supporter of fall elections in odd numbered years for a long time. It puts the vote when people expect an election, it gives candidates longer days and better weather for going door-to-door to meet the voters, and it puts newly elected officials in office with six months to find their feet before a budget is due, rather than one month.

The only other proposal that should be sent to the voters is clarifying the definition of qualified elector to match state law.

Although I like the idea of Minneapolis-style multipartisan elections with instant runoff voting, the current proposal for non-partisan elections creates as many problems as it fixes. It should and probably will be defeated on Thursday.

Council terms should be kept to two years for the sake of accountability to the voters. And while I'm sympathetic to the amount of hours councilors put into their jobs, and I think some of our best councilors have been those who were either retired or self-employed and could devote almost full time to being a councilor, I suspect that something would change for the worse if we paid full-time salaries.

Our city auditor should remain an elective office. Right now, the auditor is independent of all other officials and is directly accountable to the voters. The proposed change would make the auditor unaccountable to the voters and at least indirectly dependent on the mayor, who would appoint all members of the committee that would choose the auditor.

UPDATE 2007/11/30: The City Councilors agreed with me -- or at least a majority did on each issue. They approved the fall elections and the clarification of the definition of qualified elector.

Steve Roemerman has posted a first-hand report from one of the Tulsa City Council's town hall meetings about street maintenance and how to pay for it. (The City Council meetings are not in any way connected to the Sharon King Davis - Dewey Bartlett, Jr., headed committee appointed by Mayor Kathy Taylor.)

Steve is a member of the city's Sales Tax Overview Committee, which is responsible for overseeing the expenditure of the "third penny" fund for capital improvements, including streets. In addition to a summary of the presentation (based on the Powerpoint I linked to a while ago), with a selection of the slides that he found most compelling, Steve relates an exchange between himself and assistant Public Works director Paul Zachary regarding city contracting policies that might cause a scarcity of qualified contractors to complete the needed work.

Steve's report is good perspective and well worth reading if you're concerned about the condition of Tulsa's streets.

Last week, Tulsa City Council researcher Jack Blair gave a presentation on Tulsa's streets and how we could fund their ongoing maintenance. The presentation puts the cost of street maintenance in the context of Tulsa's decline from one of America's most densely populated cities to one of the least densely populated, the fiscal constraints on the city, and the city's historical spending patterns on streets. One of the most interesting sections had to with the $615 million from third-penny and general obligation bond issue funds used to pay for utility projects. The utility projects (water, sewers, stormwater, solid waste) might have been funded with revenue from those utilities instead, freeing up that $615 million for street improvement.

The Tulsa World has Blair's 122-page PowerPoint presentation on Tulsa Streets on its website. It's in PDF format and about 22 MB. If for nothing else, it's worth a download to see the historic and present day photos of what were country crossroads and are now high-traffic intersections.

The hive-mind that writes the unsigned editorials from its Totalitarian-Moderne bunker on Main Street had this to say today about a suggestion made Tulsa Councilor John Eagleton regarding a proposal to make city elections non-partisan:

OK, this one is simply too easy so we're going to let you fill in the blanks with the joke of your choice. And we rarely, if ever, pass up the opportunity for a cheap joke.

In the debate over changes to the city charter, in particular making elections nonpartisan, City Councilor John Eagleton, while supporting the nonpartisan issue, also wants each candidate to be able to add a word or phrase to the ballot that would describe each candidate's political philosophy.

Now, this is where you add your joke. We'll wait a second.

There.

At best, whichever drone wrote this editorial on behalf of the Whirled Collective decided to "phone it in," rather than exert the effort to lampoon Eagleton's suggestion effectively.

But I think it's more likely that the AverillDelCourJonesNealPearson doesn't understand the idea well enough to explain why the hive-mind doesn't like it. Otherwise, they would have set out a cogent argument against it.

The Whirled editorial puts me in mind of a type of adolescent ridicule. The ringleader of the popular bunch points at poor, unpopular Poindexter and says, "What a loser! Poindexter is wearing a black belt on a Thursday!" The ringleader begins laughing. All of his toadies have no idea why wearing a black belt on a Thursday is ridiculous, but they know to take their cue from the ringleader, so they point and laugh, too. The Whirled knows there is a certain constituency (declining in number) that will laugh if they say "laugh." (These are the same people that believed the Whirled when it claimed that non-Councilor Randy Sullivan was intelligent.)

Eagleton's suggestion is similar to one I made in my column in the April 6-12, 2006, edition of Urban Tulsa Weekly:

Would stripping party labels entirely be helpful to voters? In fact, it gives voters even less information to work with. Labels are helpful aids to memory. You may have trouble remembering the name of the candidates you plan to support, and knowing that you decided to vote with your party in the mayor's race and with the other party in the council race gives you an extra hook to recall your decision....

So how do we change Tulsa's system to expand both choice and information for voters?

Instead of non-partisan city elections, let's have multi-partisan elections. Put all candidates for a city office on the ballot, but instead of stripping away the party labels, let's let candidates apply the label or labels of their choosing. Maybe that would be a major party label, maybe that would be the name of a political action committee (PAC), or even both.

There are a couple of different ways to implement this. In the column I suggested that parties and PACs could register with the city and endorse candidates, and then each candidate could choose which endorsements to note next to his name on the ballot, in place of or alongside national party names. The least complicated method, suggested by Eagleton, would allow each candidate to supply his or her own description, up to some number of lines, words, or characters.

That description wouldn't have to be "liberal" or "conservative" as the Whirled editorial hive-mind seems to believe. It could identify the candidate's position on a current issue or describe the candidate's approach to city government. A citywide group might run a slate of candidates, all using the same ballot description. It might just be a catchy slogan. Councilor Roscoe Turner, for example, might use, "Voted Tulsa's Most Believable Councilor." Since candidates are required by charter to use their full legal names on the ballot, a candidate might use the description to identify his nickname to the voters. Some possibilities, in 40 characters or less (about one line on the ballot):

  • Back to Basics: Cops, Streets, Parks
  • Conservative Republican
  • Progressive Democrat
  • Endorsed by Republican Assembly
  • Endorsed by Just Progress
  • No New Taxes
  • Higher Taxes Coalition
  • Preserve Midtown
  • I love surface parking lots
  • Citizens for Responsible Government
  • Tulsa Alliance for Neighborhoods
  • Homeowners for Fair Zoning
  • Tulsa Real Estate Coalition
  • Pimp This Town
  • By George, It's Nigh Time
  • Official Monster Raving Loony Party

Some descriptions would be sensible, some would be frivolous, all would add some color to an otherwise antiseptic non-partisan ballot. (Requiring all candidates to submit a nominating petition, as independent candidates are already required to do, would keep the frivolity within reasonable bounds.)

There's another possible explanation for why the Whirled didn't defend their opposition to Eagleton's idea: They oppose it for selfish reasons which they don't wish to reveal to the reader. A candidate's brief self-description on the ballot constitutes a media bypass. Without depending on the favor of the monopoly daily newspaper, without needing a pile of campaign cash, a candidate would be able to communicate something about himself, albeit very briefly, to every voter, in words of his own choosing.

If the Whirled editorial hive-mind gets its collective way, a city election ballot would comprise lists of bare names, with no other identifying information. As the still-dominant media outlet in Tulsa, the Whirled would define for many voters what emotions and opinions they should hold about each of those names. No wonder they don't care for Councilor Eagleton's suggestion.

One of the proposed Tulsa City Charter amendments on tonight's City Council agenda would eliminate party primaries and put all candidates on a non-partisan ballot. If no one receives 50% of the vote, the top two vote-getters in the primary would face off in the general election.

I wrote a column in March 2006 explaining the flaw in a two-candidate runoff, particularly in a non-partisan election or Louisiana-style all-party primary, using historical examples. It's too easy in such a system to wind up with a winner who is unacceptable to the majority of the voters. (That same column explains why Instant Runoff Voting is a better system.)

I've been trying to come up with a simple way to explain the problem, an explanation that doesn't involve real-world political loyalties. Here's my latest effort. I'd appreciate your suggestions for improvement:

In Council District 10, the most important concern among voters is having a city councilor who supports their favorite college football team.

Polling has shown that, of the 1000 voters in District 10:

550 are rabid OU Sooner fans
250 are diehard OSU Cowboy fans
200 wear hog hats on their heads and holler "woo, pig, sooie!"

City Council elections are non-partisan, with a primary, followed by a runoff between the top two vote getters.

Because there's such a strong base of support for the Sooners in the district, five Sooner fans filed for the seat, but only one Cowboy fan and one Razorback fan filed. (These fans are so fanatical, they've changed their names to match famous head coaches.)

Here's the primary result:

candidate
affiliation
votes
Jimmy Johnson
OSU 250
Lou Holtz
U of A
200
Bud Wilkinson OU
185
Bob Stoops OU
160
Barry Switzer OU
145
Chuck Fairbanks OU
50
Gomer Jones OU
10


If Chuck Fairbanks and Gomer Jones hadn't entered the race, any of the other three OU candidates could have had enough votes to make the runoff by beating Lou Holtz for second place. In a head-to-head runoff, an OU candidate would have no trouble winning in District 10. But because the OU vote was split five ways, there won't be an OU candidate in the runoff.

Instead, in the runoff, the 550 voters who voted for OU candidates -- the majority of those voting -- will be forced to hold their noses and pick between Jimmy Johnson and Lou Holtz.

In a party primary system, the OU voters would have chosen one candidate to represent them in a general election, and given that OU fans are a majority in the district, the OU nominee would likely have won the general. The OSU and U of A voters in the district, despite constituting a significant minority, would ultimately have no influence on the outcome.

In an instant runoff system, where all voters cast a preferential ballot ranking all the candidates, one of the OU candidates would win the election, but each voter, regardless of affiliation, would have an equal opportunity to influence the final result.

UPDATE: XonOFF asked me to elaborate on how instant runoff voting would solve this problem. I've done so in the extended entry, after the jump.

More later, but for now just a brief note: Tonight's Tulsa City Council agenda includes a vote on whether to move forward with nine proposed amendments to the Tulsa City Charter. Many of the amendments came from the work of the Citizens' Commission on City Government in 2006.

Here's a quick description of the items being proposed:

Non-partisan elections
Council attorney
Appointed city auditor
Three-year staggered terms for city councilors
Four-year terms for city councilors, with elections during the non-mayoral year
Fall elections
Setting Councilor salaries to half the mayor's salary
Clarifying the term "qualified elector" to refer to the definition under state law

Tulsa City Charter proposed amendments (3 MB PDF)


I'm fully supportive of moving city elections to the fall of odd-numbered years.

I'm utterly opposed to doing away with electing the city auditor, to non-partisan elections as proposed (but I support multi-partisan elections with instant runoff voting), and to longer terms for councilors, particularly the three-year staggered terms, which would prevent the voters from cleaning house in a single election. (Staggered terms are used for school boards, and they don't work well for keeping the elected officials accountable to the public.)

On the other proposals, I need to know more.

Tomorrow morning from 6:40 to 8:00 on 1170 KFAQ, former City Councilor Chris Medlock will host four of his former colleagues and allies on the City Council: Councilors Jack Henderson and Roscoe Turner, and former Councilors Jim Mautino and Sam Roop. Should be worth hearing their perspective on the river tax, the new/old police chief, the new City Hall, and other city issues.

Not Tulsa, of course; Kitsap County, Washington:

Authorities are looking for a burglary suspect they said was identified through DNA left on a beer can at a crime scene in 2005.

Prosecutors in Kitsap County have charged Curtis Kees Napoleon, a 20-year-old North Kitsap man, in thefts of over $30,000 in missing appliances, boat motors and other items that disappeared around Dec. 20, 2005 from four residences.

Deputies found a can of Miller Lite beer and later asked Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribal Police to request people of interest in the case to submit voluntary saliva samples.

The State Patrol Crime Lab eventually made a match, deputies said.

(Hat tip to reader S. Lee.)

The Tulsa Police Department doesn't investigate burglaries as a matter of policy. It may not be an official policy, but it seems to be a de facto policy. They regard burglaries as an insurance matter and their role as one of documenting the loss. You might call the approach "no-fault burglary." It's a force of nature, apparently: Sometimes the hail damages your roof, sometimes a stranger enters your house and takes your stuff.

In 1999, our old home was burglarized while my wife and son were at our new house for inspections. They came home to find a girl's bicycle in the driveway and the front door open. They were afraid to go in for fear that someone was still in there. I came to the house, and we called the police. It took a few hours for them to show up. One officer checked the house to be sure no one was in side.

The burglar had apparently come in a back window. My wife had been in a hurry to get to the inspection and had forgotten to set the alarm. He had been after easily portable valuables. He dumped my wife's earring box and rummaged through drawers. He stole a camcorder and 35mm camera (with photos and video of my son's 3rd birthday party), a portable CD player and CDs, some house keys on a ring inside the house, and a checkbook.

Other officers came a bit later and talked to us. We left things in their state of disarray, not wanting to disturb any physical evidence. We asked about the girl's bike. Probably was taken from a burglary earlier in the day. "Do you need it for evidence?" No, keep it for your kid or give it away. "Aren't you going to dust for fingerprints?" No.

They handed us a phone headset that they had found at another nearby burglary. It was ours. So there were indications that the same person or persons had robbed three homes in the same day, taking a bike from the first house and abandoning it at our house, then taking a number of items at our house and accidentally dropping one of them at the next house. And yet the officers made it clear they were only there to make a record of the burglary and to provide us a report to take to our insurance company.

We had the locks changed, called the bank to stop payment on the checks that had been stolen. We tracked down the serial numbers of the camera, camcorder, and CD player, and filed a supplemental report with the police, thinking they would be put on the list that pawn shops use to check for stolen property, hoping it might help the police to catch the crooks.

Then one of our stolen checks was received by the bank. (The bank didn't notify me immediately -- it showed up in the next statement.) Someone had written a check to Pizza Hut delivery at 49th and Peoria. I requested an image of the check from the bank. They had forged my signature -- not even close. The phone number from which the order had been called in had been written on the check by the delivery man.

I notified the detective assigned to the case. Here was a lead. At the very least, we knew that someone had committed a crime by trying to pass a stolen check.

The detective was uninterested. He said that wouldn't be enough to tie someone to the burglary and get a conviction. Well, of course not, but surely it was enough to justify at least visiting the residence where the pizza had been delivered and the stolen check had been offered in payment. Nope.

I'm not sure why TPD doesn't pursue burglars more vigorously. Perhaps it's because they aren't prosecuted vigorously. Perhaps it's a lack of police manpower. Perhaps it's a mistaken philosophy of policing. I've heard enough stories from others to know that it isn't a matter of the individual cops not caring. The decision was made above their pay grade.

Whatever the reason, it needs to change.

It seems to me that some of these burglaries could end in home invasion, assault, and even murder. Some of these burglars could be tied to crime syndicates. "Broken windows" theory says that when you start to enforce lesser laws, the rate of more serious crime goes down.

I wonder if insurance companies keep tabs on which cities have the highest rate of burglary or the highest rate of unsolved burglary cases. We get an insurance discount for having a monitored alarm system. Not that I want my premiums to go up, but it seems reasonable that insurance companies would raise rates on policyholders in cities that are effectively sanctuaries for burglary.

Tonight at their regular 6:00 p.m. meeting, the Tulsa City Council will decide whether to authorize the Tulsa Public Facilities Authority (TPFA) to borrow the money -- $76 million -- to buy One Technology Center and to pay for consolidating city offices in that building. Because the financing will be sole-source -- seller-financed -- it will require seven affirmative votes from the city council to pass.

Proponents of the move talk about how a shiny new City Hall would improve the image of the City of Tulsa. I agree that the image of the City is important, but the true image of the City isn't shaped by the appearance of city government's headquarters building, which few of Tulsa's nearly 400,000 residents and few of our visitors will ever see.

The image of Tulsa's city government is not to be found in the City Hall building. Our citizens and visitors see it in our crime statistics, in the smoothness (or lack thereof) of our streets, in whether our pools are in good repair and open for use, in whether our building codes are enforced, in whether our parks are mowed. The public interacts with city government on our streets and in our parks and neighborhoods, and those places, not City Hall, shape their perception of Tulsa as a place to live, visit, and do business.

This deal should be measured by one standard: Will it leave the City with more money or less money available to fund the basic functions of city government?

Based on the numbers in the Staubach Company's report and the analysis of those numbers by Councilor Bill Martinson, there is a high risk that the move will leave the City of Tulsa with less money for police and parks and streets. If one of the current tenants leaves or even reduces its presence, if we are unable to find a replacement tenant who will pay the same price, if rental revenue is less than debt service on the loan, the City will have to make up the difference out of its operating budget. This deal would make the City of Tulsa a competitor in the commercial real estate industry, rolling the dice in a risky business, and using our mortgage money to place the bet.

To shift metaphors, this deal is a house of cards, and if any one of several contingencies fails to occur, the whole thing collapses.

The only facts that matter are these numbers -- how much it costs to operate our current facilities, how much it will cost to operate One Technology Center, how much it will cost to repay the loan on OTC, and how much we are likely to be paid in rent from third-party tenants.

The Council has not been given a full and detailed accounting of the cost of operating our current facilities. This information is surely available in our accounting system -- how much we pay custodial staff, how much we spend on utilities, the cost of repair projects -- based on actual expenditures over the last few fiscal years. Instead, Staubach prepared a sheet estimating cost per square foot for broad categories -- utilities, repairs, security, etc. -- and then multiplied by the sum of those per square feet numbers by the size of our buildings. The $24 million claimed as deferred maintenance costs are buried somewhere in Staubach's per-square-foot figures.

The Council has not been provided with a list of deferred maintenance items, the cost of each one, and the likelihood of needing to fund those items in the near future. Each such item should have a basis of estimate, explaining the work to be done and the manpower and material required. Instead, in response for their request for a detailed list, the Council was given the names of the items and a single number covering the cost of all of them.

With this lack of detail, it would be easy for Staubach to pick numbers for estimates that would make staying in the existing facilities seem to be more expensive than moving. And don't forget that Staubach gets paid more if the deal goes through, so they'd have an incentive to make the existing facilities look as expensive as possible.

The Council should not approve this deal without an accurate apples-to-apples comparison of costs showing that the move will be less expensive in the near term.

MORE: Jeff Shaw has a better idea for One Technology Center.

Laugh of the Day: "'I'm going to live in Tulsa the rest of my life,' [Kathy] Taylor says." Home is where the homestead exemption is.

Once again I'm later than I should be in getting this linked....

This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly is about the special Council meeting held on Saturday morning, June 23, to discuss Mayor Taylor's plan to move municipal offices from the current City Hall and other locations to One Technology Center at 1st and Cincinnati. Originally planned to be an executive session, councilors (with my encouragement) chose to discuss as much of the proposal as possible in open session and to defer any confidential matters until the end of the meeting. The meeting left councilors more doubtful than ever about whether the move would be good for city finances in the near term.

I left one interesting facet of the discussion out of the column: Councilor Martinson said he didn't think the Staubach Company had given due consideration to two other options for consolidating city offices: build-to-suit on land already owned by the City or by the Tulsa Development Authority, or a purchase-leaseback arrangement, whereby a private investor would take on the risk of finding tenants for the extra space in the building.

A possible location for build-to-suit would be on TDA-owned land near the Hartford Building between 1st and 2nd, Greenwood and Hartford. Martinson pointed out that a building custom-made and right-sized for city purposes, including requirements for easy public access to certain offices, might well be less expensive, and would be less risky, than a deal that required the city to attract and keep tenants for excess space.

A Whirled story about the plan quoted Martinson's analogy illustrating the problems with buying more building than we need:

"A gallon of milk is a lot cheaper per ounce than a quart. But if you only need a quart and the rest of it goes sour, you've ended up paying more money than what you really needed for the amount of milk you're going to consume."

Pat Fox responds to a lament about the demise of the Civic Center:

From an urban design perspective, Tulsa's Civic [Center] Plaza is a typical example of late 50's/60's thinking on public architecture. Government center in Boston is another example that is almost universally derided as an urban planning and urban design disaster. Far from providing a democratic, pedestrian friendly gathering place, these plazas actually discourage free assembly.

From the brutalist architecture of the convention center, to the tilt up aggregate walls of the police and municipal courts building, the civic plaza is a most unappealing place to sit, walk, or be. The library and the Francis Campbell Council building are it's most redeeming features, but the library is long outdated for functions of a modern library. City hall's public entrance is not on civic plaza as you'd expect, but below "ground" level in a dark, musty garage. The sloped sides of the planters prevent any resting or sitting, the fountain is empty because it leaks, and the county courthouse has so much mold in it, one of the judges who presides there considered filing suit recently. By the way, a large portion of our "paper" county records are kept in the basement of that building. If the Belvedere flooded because of the water table...you get the point.

I know firsthand that Boston's Government Center is a planning disaster, one of the least inviting public places in the world. The ultimate test of a public place is not whether there are people there in the architect's concept sketches, but whether people (normal people) want to linger there.

The concept of a six-block Tulsa Civic Center was an enormous mistake. Closing 5th Street to traffic only compounded the error. And when you realize that it replaced a tree-lined mixed-use area with three-story apartment buildings -- well, planners back then didn't appreciate the role that nearby residential areas played in the health of a central business district.

I recently photographed most of the articles in the Tulsa Civic Center vertical file at the Central Library and posted the photos on Flickr. The file contains news clippings mainly from the 1950s about the selection of the area (in 1952), what was there before the civic center, the area's appraisal and acquisition, the failure of bond issues to build the city's facilities, early concepts, including a 14,000 seat arena and a new facility for the Gilcrease collection, an explanation for the decision to deviate from the original award-winning plan, a protest from downtown merchants over the closing of 5th Street, complaints from patrons of the arts about the decision to defer construction of a new performance space, and, finally, a brochure from 1969 showing the new City Hall and Police Courts building.

IMG_1783

My UTW column this week was also about the proposal to move City Hall to One Technology Center at 100 S. Cincinnati. Most of the questions I posed were raised in one form or another, and most were answered, although I won't say that my fears were allayed. (Don Himelfarb couldn't answer my question about the true operating costs of the first year, operating in both old and new facilities.)

I had two related feature stories in the issue, a report on the unearthing and unveiling of the buried car, and a look back at the Tulsarama! celebration in 1957 -- it was a huge city-wide celebration, plagued by at least as much rain as we've seen so far this year. It was much more than burying a time capsule and a car.

I'm pleased with the way the Tulsarama! story came out, but it isn't the comprehensive Tulsa 1957 story I wanted to do. I just ran out of time and couldn't get my arms around it. I have gathered a ton of material, looking through old city directories and planning documents, and receiving the reminiscences of Tulsans who were around in 1957. The article I wrote just scratches the surface, and I intend to provide more here and hopefully in future feature stories. The story of the major comprehensive planning effort that began in 1957 is a story that we need to know as we begin assembling yet another comprehensive plan.

Also in the current issue, Brian Ervin has a story on the difference of opinion about how many police officers Tulsa needs, with the Mayor and her interim police chief on one side and the Fraternal Order of Police on the other side.

UPDATE: Regarding the Belvedere, reader Richard Randall offered this interesting (and frightening) perspective:

We wonder why all of the bridges in Tulsa (and Oklahoma) are falling apart. Most of them were designed and built around the same time as the vault (give or take some years) by some of the same engineers. It seems to show just how well they designed and built some things back then and today, when it is built by the cheapest bidder. Growing up my dad had always talked about how bad the car would look when it came out (He worked at his dads construction company at the time the vault was built). He knew that the vault would fill up with water, by the design they used. Had they looked to the oil industry, they would have learned that water will find a way into anything. The best thing to use would have been a 1 to 2-inch steel box welded shut and encased in concrete. This would have withstood the fifty years. They did seem to grasp that idea a little bit. The time capsule was steel, (not sure if it was welded shut). Everything in it was in great condition.

Not only that, but the same engineers were probably responsible for designing the Civic Center's leaky and crumbling subterranean garage. (Maybe not crumbling any more. I haven't heard a report of falling concrete in some time.) One of the interesting facts that emerged in today's Council meeting about the proposed City Hall move -- about $16 million of that $24 million in deferred maintenance is related to the underground parking garage.

Actually, it isn't secret. It has been officially posted, but it seems to have been scheduled for a time (Saturday morning at 8:30, in room 201 of the City Hall tower) that would be unlikely to draw spectators, and it appears that part or possibly most of the meeting will be conducted behind closed doors in executive session. Here's the agenda:

Unless otherwise noted, the Council may discuss and/or review the following items:

01. Discussion regarding the proposed consolidation of City offices at One Technology Center located at 100 S. Cincinnati Ave. 07-529-3

02. Council may consider a motion to enter Executive Session pursuant Title 25 O.S. Section 307 (B)(3) to discuss the purchase of the One Technology Building. 07-529-4

03. Leave Executive Session regarding the discussion related to the proposed consolidation of City offices at One Technology Center. 07-529-5

04. Adjournment

The cited section of law includes the following item in a list of permitted purposes for executive sessions of public bodies:

Discussing the purchase or appraisal of real property;

The law further provides in subsection D:

An executive session for the purpose of discussing the purchase or appraisal of real property shall be limited to members of the public body, the attorney for the public body, and the immediate staff of the public body. No landowner, real estate salesperson, broker, developer, or any other person who may profit directly or indirectly by a proposed transaction concerning real property which is under consideration may be present or participate in the executive session.

While the discussion of the purchase or appraisal of One Technology Center is a valid reason for going into executive session, I would argue (and I hope that the councilors and other members of the press argue) that discussing the total costs of moving to OTC, the estimate and comparison of operating costs in the current facilities and at OTC, the sources of funds for a move to OTC, and any other aspect of moving city offices to a new building are not within the legally permitted reasons for an executive session and should be discussed in open session.

UPDATE, Saturday 1:00 p.m.: I was there this morning, and they spent three hours in open session covering a wide range of issues. I was proud of the job the City Council did this morning. Vice Chairman John Eagleton did a fine job of keeping the meeting on track. (Chairman Roscoe Turner had been scheduled to be out of town before the meeting was called.) Councilor Bill Martinson presented his analysis of the financial situation along with a list of questions drawn from his years in the real estate business. Every councilor had some significant question or point to make about the financial analysis presented by the Mayor's office. More details later, and in my column.

You know the story that ran on the front page Sunday's Whirled about how Mayor Kathy Taylor is going to solve downtown Tulsa's problem with vagrants?

Urban Tulsa Weekly's Brian Ervin had that story two weeks ago, and he included the significant detail that the downtown YMCA's residence is going to be forced to close in 2010 because of expensive new city fire sprinkler regulations, eliminating 300 single-room occupancy spaces.

Just sayin'.

How did the Whirled's P. J. Lassek come up with this first paragraph:

Consolidating several city facilities including City Hall into the One Technology Center appears to be a good deal, seven of the nine City Councilors said Friday.

from this set of comments, found in the same story:

District 1, Jack Henderson: "Councilor Jack Henderson said he needs to talk to more city employees because of concerns raised about the open office environment in the new building, which would mean workers might have less space and privacy. 'I think when all the dust settles, it will probably be a good deal.'"

District 2, Rick Westcott: "Councilor Rick Westcott said the city faces a decision -- either perform $12 million that is funded out of $24 million in deferred maintenance on the current aging City Hall building, or find an alternative. 'This alternative seems like an idea that makes sense,' he said. Westcott said he also plans to seek input from real estate experts. 'This alternative seems like an idea that makes sense.'"

District 3, Roscoe Turner: "Councilor Roscoe Turner said he doesn't know what he thinks about the deal. 'I have a lot of concerns to focus on other than moving City Hall. I can understand getting out of this building with the mold problems and all. I really haven't given it much thought. I really don't care about it.'"

District 4, Maria Barnes: "Councilor Maria Barnes said relocating City Hall has not been on her radar. She said she needs to determine what the city is getting into."

District 5, Bill Martinson: Was out of town, missed briefing.

District 6, Dennis Troyer: Was out of town, missed briefing.

District 7, John Eagleton: "Councilor John Eagleton said he needs time to digest the figures so he can make a decision. He said he already has some questions he needs answered. "

District 8, Bill Christiansen: "Councilor Bill Christiansen said the proposal 'sounds like a great business deal, but I think it will be a hard sell to my constituents who are still waiting for basic services. Most people don't realize that we're a fund-based city. They just know we don't have good streets, and they don't have sewer lines. Now we're going to go out and buy another building,' he said. Christiansen said he isn't saying he's against it at this point."

District 9, Cason Carter: "If this decision ends up saving taxpayers money, I think it's
a good one.... Right now, it's too early to tell."

My tally is seven who say they have concerns or questions that need to be addressed, and two that couldn't be reached. Was this a case of the Whirled putting their preferred spin in the lead paragraph and hoping no one would read the body of the article?

See Dubya tipped me off to this story in the New York Times about New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's anti-gun-rights crusade, and Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor gets a mention for her involvement in Bloomberg's group:

“As a new mayor, I’ve been able to talk to other mayors who have had similar experiences with violent crime,” said Kathy Taylor of Tulsa, Okla., a longtime N.R.A. member who said she does not see a contradiction between her support of gun rights and her work on the gun coalition. She views the coalition as a law enforcement effort to protect her constituents, not as an attempt to diminish the legal right to own a gun.

Ms. Taylor, a Democrat, said she had picked up methods for recognizing and controlling gang activity.

That's nice, but you could get the same thing from, say, the National Conference of Mayors, and it wouldn't require you to join an anti-gun-rights group.

The City Council ought to at least ask her to defend her involvement in this group. Other mayors left the coalition once they discovered that its focus was on changing laws to keep records on legal purchases of guns.

And just how long is her "long-time" NRA membership? Did she join when she decided to become a politician, to immunize herself from criticism on gun rights issues?

Zingo's dismantling is almost complete, and Bell's Amusement Park is about to vanish from their long-time location on the Tulsa County Fairgrounds. Bell's paid the most rent of any Fairgrounds tenant, but despite that, the park's lease was not renewed and county officials claimed to have no plans for redeveloping the land.

This week in Urban Tulsa Weekly, I ask whether the U. S. National Arabian and Half-Arabian Championship Horse Show is the real reason that Bell's was given the boot and whether trading a 50 year Tulsa tradition for a lucrative but temporary event was a smart move for taxpayers.

By the way, I used a number in the story of $20 million, which I recalled hearing cited by Expo Square officials as the cost of improvements made to attract and accommodate the Arabian Horse Show. I called Expo Square to confirm that number, and the comptroller went down the list and came up with a number of $15 million. Unfortunately, his response came too late for UTW's deadline.

And here's a link to last week's column on the City Council's vote to authorize Tulsa police officers to verify the immigration status of anyone who is taken into custody on felony or misdemeanor charges.

The intervention by Congressman John Sullivan and Senators Coburn and Inhofe seems to have given the Council the backing they needed to take up this issue. Here you can read a letter from Sullivan to Mayor Kathy Taylor prior to the Council vote, and here is one from after the vote, urging her to implement the resolution.

Some further notes on local law enforcement and illegal immigration

In a letter to the head of ICE, Sullivan repeats his call for expediting the Sheriff's Office application for 287(g) status:

I believe that a 287(g) designation, which would allow for the cross deputization of Tulsa County Sherriff’s deputies and jail personnel, would help to mitigate these problems by ensuring that Oklahoma law enforcement personnel have the authority, training, and tools they need to report and detain criminal aliens in the course of their regular duty. If implemented in Tulsa, the 287(g) program would act as a force multiplier for ICE and help protect our communities from terrible incident like the one mentioned above.

Nashville police recently obtained 287(g) status. This case is one of the reasons they pursued it vigorously:

Garcia was charged with two counts of vehicular homicide while intoxicated and evading arrest. Court officials said he has reached a deal with prosecutors and will plead guilty today, the same day the trial was scheduled to begin. His lawyer, Assistant Metro Public Defender Glenn Dukes, did not return a call seeking comment.

Garcia is being held at the Metro Jail under an immigration hold, which means he'll be turned over to federal authorities after any criminal sentence he might serve.

But Garcia was well known to law enforcement before the fatal accident.

County records show that he had been booked into the Metro Jail on at least 14 different occasions since 1997.

Besides the DUI cases, he had been charged with domestic assault, leaving the scenes of accidents, driving on a revoked or suspended license, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, theft, failing to have insurance and driving with an open container.

On at least one occasion, local authorities said, Garcia was flagged by federal authorities and deported, only to return and resume his streak of arrests.

The other times, Garcia went to court, was jailed for some period and released. Sheriff's officials said they routinely sent notification to federal immigration authorities that they had booked a foreign-born inmate.

Nashville hopes to replicate the success of 287(g) in Charlotte, N.C.:

In the seven-month period following the implementation of its 287(g) immigration enforcement program, Charlotte, N.C. saw significant decreases in the number of Hispanics arrested for Driving Under the Influence (DUI), the total number of DUI-related arrests among Hispanic persons and the amount of Hispanic gang-related crime, law enforcement personnel there said.

In the program’s first nine months, Charlotte’s specially trained sheriffs identified 1,520 arrestees as having entered the country illegally.

All were marked for deportation back to one of the 31 different countries — mostly Central and South American — from which those 1,520 individuals came, Mecklenburg County Sheriff Jim Pendergraph told WFAE (Charlotte) talk radio last month.

And a full 20 percent of the foreign-born persons who were brought into the jail and subsequently identified though 287(g) had been arrested for drunken driving, Pendergraph said.

At the same time, a statistical analysis by the Sheriff’s Office shows that the number of Hispanic-related DUI incidents and arrests fell sharply in the months following the beginning of 287(g).

From 2005 – when sheriff’s deputies had to request an arrestee’s immigration information from a federal database in Vermont, as they still have to do in Nashville – to 2006, the number of Hispanic persons arrested for DUI decreased by 26 percent.

Additionally, the number of overall DUI-related arrests of Hispanic persons decreased by 63 percent – from 1,379 to 508 – during the same period.

Thanks to a helpful reader, I managed to find a cached version of the crime position paper that had been on Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor's campaign website prior to the 2006 election. Just in case it vanishes from there, I've posted the whole thing below, in the extended entry. It would be interesting to know from police officers and other insiders how many of these proposals have been put into motion.

I can still find no sign of Taylor's campaign commercials. If you happened to capture any of them, please contact me at blog at batesline dot com.

UPDATE 2006/05/28 10:30 pm: A reader with inside knowledge of Tulsa Police Department operations e-mailed his point-by-point review of Taylor's plan -- what's been implemented and what hasn't. For ease of comparison, I've added his review below each point.

Also (hat tip to MeeCiteeWurkor), the FOP local has a page devoted to tracking Taylor's campaign promises regarding crime. I'll include their evaluation as of today below each section.

The situation with the cameras ought to be easy and inexpensive to remedy. A simple digital camera ought to be standard equipment in every squad car.

This week in UTW, I'm writing about Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor's vanished campaign promises and her failure to deliver on one of them in particular: a more collaborative relationship with the City Council. Her refusal to keep them in the loop about the hiring of an interim and a permanent police chief, her use of private dollars for public actions (like the recruitment of a new chief) to try to circumvent the Open Records act, and her unilateral decisions to commit Tulsa to radical positions on gun control and anthropogenic global warming with which most Tulsans disagree.

Two weeks ago, Kathy Taylor became the 500th mayor to sign the U. S. Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement, which you can read in PDF form here, and you can read more about the agreement's development on the website of Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels. And here is the Climate Protection page on the U. S. Conference of Mayors website. Taylor's action came without any consultation with the City Council.

And here's a belated link to the previous week's column about the last-minute agreement reached on Fairgrounds annexation, negotiated by Taylor behind the Council's back, and the need for the Council to defend its institutional prerogatives for the sake of checks and balances in local government. In the same column, I also covered an apology by a Tulsa Whirled reporter to the Tulsa Minuteman Project for underestimated their numbers at a Cinco de Mayo counter-rally, and I make my recommendations for Absolute Best of Tulsa Spiritual Leader and Best Family Fun Spot.

MORE: Here's an interesting thread on a national police and law enforcement forum about the Tulsa Police Department and Taylor's criteria for a new chief. The pseudonymous officer posting there claims Taylor is only looking at female candidates. If true, it would be another example of Taylor putting left-wing politics ahead of the public interest.

Tulsa Police Department's "don't ask" policy regarding illegal aliens is creating a vicious cycle -- fewer reports of crimes by illegal aliens means a perception that Federal support isn't needed.

May 24, 2007

City of Tulsa
200 Civic Center
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74103

Dear Tulsa City Council,

We firmly believe that a change in Tulsa Police Department’s (TPD) “hands off” policy in dealing with illegal immigration is a vital step towards protecting Tulsa from criminal illegal aliens. We are writing to encourage you to adopt a proposal that would permit TPD to ask for proof of citizenship on all suspected illegal aliens encountered by TPD officers in the course of their regular duty. This policy change should also request that anyone who is found to be unlawfully present in the United States by TPD be reported to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

As you are aware, Mayor Taylor recently introduced a proposal to change TPD’s current illegal immigration policy, which unfortunately would limit the criminal offenses for which TPD officers can call the Department of Homeland Security’s Law Enforcement Support Center (LESC) to report immigration violations. By only requiring officers to report illegal aliens who commit felonies, this proposal would prohibit the ability of TPD officers from reporting immigration violations of individuals involved in offenses such as DUI’s, hit and run accidents, simple assault, carrying a concealed weapon without a permit, or shoplifting, just to name a few. We urge you to reject this proposal.

In order to bring more federal resources to Tulsa, more calls must be placed to LESC reporting immigration violations; they can be reached by calling (802) 872-6060. ICE has repeatedly told us that the Tulsa area has low numbers of illegal alien apprehensions by local law enforcement because proof of citizenship is often not asked for and not reported to ICE, thus depressing the perceived number of criminal illegal aliens residing in our communities. By allowing TPD to report all immigration violations to ICE during every incident with illegal aliens, this will bolster our case for a permanent ICE office and presence in Tulsa, to help alleviate the strain on our communities, and local law enforcement budgets. TPD is one of the largest police agencies in the state and the simple fact is that, without their help in reporting immigration violations to ICE, Tulsa can expect to have difficulty getting a permanent ICE presence and the increased federal resources we so desperately need.

Clearly, we welcome those who wish to come to our country to pursue the American dream through legal measures. America is a nation built by immigrants, who are vital to our culture and society. It is important to note that we are not asking for the Tulsa police to engage in racial profiling. We reject racial profiling as a means to enforce immigration law at all levels of government.

Again, we encourage you to approve this important policy change to permit the TPD to ask for proof of citizenship on all suspected illegal aliens encountered by them, as well as report those violations to ICE. Together we can make an increased ICE presence in Tulsa a reality.


Sincerely,


John Sullivan
Member of Congress

James Inhofe
United States Senator

Dr. Tom Coburn
United States Senator

You can register your opinion with your Councilor by dialing 596-192X or e-mailing distX@tulsacouncil.org, where the X is the district number.

From the Mayor's Office to city employees:

I am pleased to announce today the selection of David Bostrom to serve as Interim Police Chief for the City of Tulsa. He will serve in this capacity beginning immediately and until I complete my review of applications and select a permanent chief. I will be making this announcement public this morning at a press conference, but I wanted to let you know prior to that announcement.

David is coming to us with outstanding credentials and will be moving from Wilmington Delaware. He has served in law enforcement for over 35 years and his career includes command roles with the City of Wilmington, Delaware and 23 years with the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C.

I am very proud of our Tulsa Police Department and all that they have done to help reduce crime in our community. I have briefed David on the professionalism and qualities of all of our city employees and the many initiatives our police officers have worked to implement. Acting Chief McCrory and the command staff has met with David as well to bring him up to speed on the structure and operations at the TPD.

I want to personally thank Chief Mark McCrory for his service as acting Chief since the retirement of Chief Been. He has served with honor during a challenging time and I sincerely appreciate all of his efforts.

Thank you for all you do to support our city public safety officers and I hope you join with me and Chief McCrory in welcoming David Bostrom to Tulsa.

Sincerely,

Kathy Taylor
Mayor

MORE: From a quick Google, it appears that Bostrom is the former Public Safety Director for the City of Wilmington, Del., and that he left that post in 2000 after a newly elected mayor declined to rehire him.

This column from the Wilmington News Journal by Al Mascitti suggests that Bostrom was hired to deal with a rise in gang-related shootings, and that he tried to implement some form of community policing, but couldn't get the support of the police department, and the mayor that hired him didn't back him up:

There is no connection between a public opinion survey about Wilmington police and the news that David Bostrom will leave his city public safety post. But there should have been.

That Bostrom will depart with his boss, Mayor James H. Sills Jr., is no surprise. He's an outsider, brought here from Washington during Sills' second term, and never had a prayer of building a power base in City Hall....

Bostrom, to his credit, quickly realized the rancorous relations between the cops and the black community posed a greater long-term threat than the drug-related gunfire.

So he tried to institute community policing - a system of strengthening ties between officers and residents credited with reducing crime in such cities as Boston and Washington.

He might as well have tried breeding an attack opossum. His plans for six neighborhood "mini-stations" were foiled at every turn. Though it might be rent by problems with labor and race relations, there's one point on which everyone in the Wilmington Police Department agreed: It's safer to hunker in the bunker at Third and Walnut streets.

Mayor-in-waiting Jim Baker has indicated he intends to let them have their way on this point, and why not? He will have enough battles waiting when he takes office - why tick off the police?

Bostrom might have fared better with backing from Sills, but that would have constituted special treatment from this administration. In eight years Sills never learned how to back away from his liabilities, let alone back up his assets.

In the end, with nothing else to do, Bostrom was reduced to measuring the public's perception of its safety. The $30,000 University of Delaware study found slightly more people felt safer at night in their neighborhoods in 1999 than in 1998. Fittingly, the increase wasn't considered statistically significant.

A story about the new mayor's decision not to rehire Bostrom tells more about his background and the controversy with the police department:

Bostrom said he was not surprised when he received his letter. Baker had said during the campaign that he likely would not keep Bostrom as public safety director.

Mayor James H. Sills Jr. appointed Bostrom in 1997. He came from the Police Foundation, a nonprofit research group. He also served on the Washington, D.C. police force for 23 years.

"I live in the city, so of course I hope the Baker administration is successful in accomplishing all the things they want to get done to improve Wilmington," Bostrom said.

Bostrom oversaw the police and fire departments. Baker has not yet indicated whether Bostrom will be replaced or whether he will instead deal directly with the chiefs of those two departments.

Bostrom's tenure included a clash with the police union over his plan to patrol the city's neighborhoods. An arbitrator in 1998 ruled the plan was discriminatory and based on race. The plan was replaced with one that assigned officers based mostly on their seniority.

Some summer 1995 stories in the Washington Post identify Bostrom as a an inspector in Washington's Metropolitan Police Department and the commander for the 2nd District. Earlier in the year he was identified as commander of the MPD's special operations division. In 1990, Bostrom was identified as director of the planning and research division. In 1983. he was identified by the Post as a captain and assistant commander of the youth division.

An organization called Street Law lists Bostrom as a member of its board of directors and lists his affiliation as International Association of Chiefs of Police. In the 2002 program for the IACP convention, Bostrom is listed as Manager, Community Policing Consortium, part of the IACP's Programs and Research Directorate.

UPDATE: Someone e-mailed MeeCiteeWurkor with the information that Bostrom shows up in the city's computer network address book as "Chief of Police." Is the interim title just a way around legal complications from the lawsuit filed on behalf of the three internal candidates?

INTERESTING THEORY on why an interim has been appointed:

My guess is that he is being hired as a sort of short-term 'hatchet man' - someone to implement possibly unpopular policies. Then after those changes are implemented and the hubbub over them has died down, a new, permanent chief is brought in to maintain things.

A permanent new chief coming from the outside right away and changing things a whole lot would probably only find dissension and low morale after six months. After all, there were 3 people working for you that were qualified and wanted your job.

I think this may be a good move by the mayor.

To use a sports analogy:

Many times the head coach that is hired to replace a long-time head coach has difficulty making it simply because the players and fans are used to the old coaches system. These replacement coaches frequently do not last long, but their replacement typically does because the players and fans are now accustomed to change.

UPDATE: The Street Law program, of which Bostrom is a board member, is an initiative of the Soros Foundation. Hat tip to commenter G. Hanna.

Chris Medlock has his ear to the ground regarding Mayor Kathy Taylor's plan to sell 18 holes out of 36 at city-owned Page Belcher golf course for private development. His latest blog entry has an aerial view showing the area in question, which extends north and south of 71st Street west of Union, very convenient to the newly improved 71st Street and US 75 interchange and the Tulsa Hills retail "power center."

Whether or not you think the city should be involved in the golf business, this is why you ought to be concerned:

Regardless of your position on whether or not the golf courses should be shut down to save money, it is quite troubling to hear that Mayor Kathy Taylor may be planning to offer the highly valuable land to only one, highly connected, developer.

If sold, the city should ask for Requests for Proposals (RFPs) from the entire development sector. How else will we ever know if the citizens are getting the best deal possible on their tax dollar investment? How else will we know that special favors haven’t been granted for future favors?

If there is only one developer involved, it's likely that this plan didn't just happen, but has been in the works for some time and has nothing at all to do with solving the city's tight finances.

This week's UTW column topic: The Mayor's proposed FY 2008 budget has been released, and it includes some unpleasant surprises. As the old arena is converted to ballroom space and the new arena isn't open yet, convention and arena revenues will vanish for the year, while start-up administrative costs appear with a vengeance. The net result: A $1.7 million hole in the General Fund, which the Mayor proposes to plug by shutting down 27 holes of golf and cutting a police academy, resulting in a net loss of officers. (The suggestion that golf savings will be funding northside pools is a smokescreen. The Mayor didn't actually say that that would happen, and in fact one fewer pool will be open this year than last.)

There was a typo -- my fault -- in the section of the column about the pools. Last year nine pools were open -- four funded by the city and five by private sponsorships, not four.

Also this week, a few thoughts on the result of Oklahoma's vote for a state quarter design. How did we miss out on an American Indian theme?

One of the images I suggest might have been a better choice is Willard Stone's sculpture "Exodus". Follow that link to see a picture of it.

Elsewhere in the current issue, Brian Ervin has a story on the problem of sinkholes caused not by geology but by aging underground sewer and stormwater pipes. (Take a look at the downtown stormwater management master plan -- it's in the government documents section at Central Library -- and note the section on "subsurface voids." That's where there's a gap between the relatively thin layer of concrete and asphalt and the solid ground beneath.)

The second installment to UTW's guide to summer events and activities is in this week's issue. Here's a link to the first installment.

Also, nominations are in order for Urban Tulsa Weekly's Absolute Best of Tulsa awards. Click the link to enter your choices online, or pull a ballot out of a paper copy and mail it in.

Dear Mayor Taylor,

I read about your compromise proposal -- the City waives sales taxes on the Arabian Horse Show, the County allows the City Council to vote on any zoning changes at the fairgrounds, the County handles permitting at the fairgrounds.

Do you realize that none of this makes any sense unless you approve annexation? If you veto annexation, you lose any leverage you have over the county on the terms of this agreement. The county could renege tomorrow, and you'd have no recourse.

But if you sign the annexation ordinance, then you and the Council could approve sales tax waivers, permitting waivers and any other relief that you deem appropriate to address the County's concerns.

You're holding all the cards. Why are you folding?

And why didn't you include any of the city councilors in the negotiations with the County? They had to learn about the agreement through the news media. If you truly want to work with the council as fellow teammates working for Tulsa, it won't help if you show more deference to officials of another government than to the elected representatives of your own citizens.

I was disappointed when you won, but I consoled myself in thinking we were at least getting someone who was tough, someone who would aggressively represent the city's interests. Guess I was wrong.

And about that comment in the letter from the County Commissioners, saying that you could blow off the city councilors because they'd soon forget. I think you know better.

Of the five who voted for annexation, I've known four of them for many years. They aren't going to forget. This isn't like the legislature where they vote on thousands of bills in a four-month session. This was a major issue, and these councilors spent some political capital because they believed annexation was best for the City and would have no adverse effect on the County. You led them, and us, to believe that you agreed with them, and then you went behind their backs to cut a deal that leaves the City empty-handed.

This was a telling comment:

"She's been scared of the county since day one. First day she talked about it she was trembling, saying, 'They've got all the money,' " [Council Chairman Roscoe] Turner said.

That's the real problem here, isn't it? Your predecessor was so determined to get approval for a downtown arena that he handed the county the keys to the cash box. You had to go hat in hand to get extra money for the arena, and you'll probably have to go back again.

But the City Council has control of a lot of money, too. Do you think they're going to be inclined to vote for your utility rate hike when you just walked away from at least $300,000 in revenue?

Bill LaFortune put this city at a serious disadvantage, all for an arena that we didn't need and won't be able to afford to run.

At some point City officials have to stop being pushed around by the County and the suburbs. I'm not saying you have to go to war, just that you have to defend the City's interests without apology.

I hoped we'd elect a Mayor in 2006 that would do that. Chris Medlock and Don McCorkell would have. I thought you might, but evidently I was wrong. I guess we'll have to wait for 2010.

I want to call your attention to three relatively new links on the sidebar:

TPD Blog, the blog of the Tulsa Police Department, has had a lot of interesting content lately. They link to articles in local media about TPD, and provide regular updates on the progress of the latest academy class. In one recent entry, Off. Will Dalsing expresses his opinion of the personnel and financial challenges faced by the TPD:

So here is the problem: while it is true that we are back to being at, or slightly above, our "authorized strength," that number is terribly low. The Tulsa Police Department has been at that number for over twenty years. True, the population has not significantly changed in numbers, but the calls for service (the amount of calls that the officers must respond to) yearly has gone up in the tens of thousands....

Imagine that you are having a bit of a problem in the neighborhood. Kids are out at all hours of the night being loud and tearing stuff up. Maybe there are some houses with what appears to be a lot of traffic…. maybe someone is selling drugs there. Or maybe there are some scary looking people whom you are pretty sure are calling themselves a gang. You would call the police right?

So the Police Captain at the local division assigns a whole squad of seven or eight cops to your street. The Captain tells them "saturate that neighborhood for a few days….I don’t want anyone to so much as spit on the sidewalk without having to talk to an officer because of it."

Is that a dream? It is in Tulsa. See we don’t actually have enough staff to take the calls for service. We "hire-over" nearly every shift at every division. It’s hard to be pro-active when you are always back "on your heels." So even thought we do have a squad at some divisions for "Directed Patrol," it may be still at the expense of our response to calls in the field.

Or let’s say you are building a new structure in your downtown that will likely bring tens of thousands of people to the area several nights a week. The area is in the process of revitalization. Foot traffic is going up. The bars and restaurants are popping up. For tourism, safety, and the well being of everyone involved, more cops are needed. In fact, the business owners are so decisive on the matter that they are willing to give their own money to help equip officers to work in the area. Can we give them a squad of officers? Not currently.

We know we must be pro-active for Tulsa’s new arena and for the downtown district as a whole. A part-time bike squad is in the works but how will we have the manpower to staff the area full time?

The second link is Stop the Chop, a website about protecting Woodward Park's trees from indiscriminate removal. You can read the history of the controversy, view relevant documents, and learn what you can do to help.

The final link is not Tulsa-specific. It's a web community for conservative activists throughout the State of Oklahoma, and it's called GetRightOK.com. The site includes a blog, a forum, an events calendar, and other community networking tools. It's intended not just to be a place to chat and trade insults but to network for the purpose of taking constructive political action. I've written a guest piece for them, yet again about the Oklahoma Republican state convention, but with a focus on the state chairman and vice chairman's races, with some historical background.

Fairgrounds annexation: Still no action from the Mayor, who has until the end of this week to sign or veto. The scrivener's error that reset the 15-day clock was a failure to specify to which council district the newly annexed territory would be assigned. I supposed everyone thought that was obvious, as it's surrounded by Council District 4 on all four sides.

City budget: The Mayor will submit her proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2007-08 to the Council at the 10:00 a.m. urban development committee meeting, with a full presentation to follow at the regular meeting on Thursday night. With the fire district tax dead (a fact the Whirled didn't get around to reporting until Saturday), there will have to be some creative juggling to get the books to balance. Rumors are that proposed spending will grow faster than the rate of inflation and that the arena operating costs will be worse than previously acknowledged.

Also on the council committee agendas: During the 8:00 a.m. meeting, a presentation on the FY '08 operating budget for the BOk Center. During the 10:00 a.m. meeting, Councilor Turner's proposal to require the public display of sales tax permits, the rezoning of the SE corner of 11th Street and 161st East Ave. for residential and commercial use (currently the Brashear Stables; the TMAPC voted 4-4 on the rezoning in a rare tie), a discussion of the 2006 Police Department Manpower Report, and a property tax increase.

Yeah, you read that right. City of Tulsa property owners will have their millage go up enough to cover the latest $6.125 million installment of the city's $14.5 million settlement with Arvin McGee, who spent 12 years in prison for crimes he didn't commit because of what a jury ruled was Tulsa police misconduct. The Council has no choice but to commit the money to pay the settlement.

Brad Henry veto watch: The first attempt to override Henry's veto of pro-life SB 714 failed, because of a switcheroo by Shawnee Sen. Charlie Laster and a longer term flip-flop by Sand Springs Sen. Nancy Riley, who promised in her first race in 2000, "absolutely NO STATE FUNDING FOR ABORTION." Henry protected the interests of his trial lawyer buddies by vetoing SB 507, a comprehensive lawsuit reform bill that incorporated most of the provisions he had previously championed. Brandon Dutcher says there's a link: Laster insisted on the tort reform veto in exchange for his SB 714 flip-flop.

The National Association of Manufacturers is watching Oklahoma's progress on lawsuit reform very closely. And here's a fact sheet from the State Chamber outlining the key points of SB 507. (Hat tip: Point of Law.)

And after returning tanned and rested from Spring Break, missing the successful conclusion of budget negotiations, Henry has now vetoed not only the legislature's budget, but five agency bills that matched his own budget proposal.

Today should see passage of Oklahoma's landmark immigration enforcement bill, HB 1804. If it passes, it will be headed to the governor's desk.

UPDATE: Where was I this morning? Oversleeping. I thought I had two alarms set, but somehow neither one went off. We'll try again tomorrow morning at 6:10.

An edited version of this column was published in the April 26 - May 2, 2007, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is available on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Here is my initial post on Michael DelGiorno's departure from KFAQ to WWTN, and here is the blog entry linking to this UTW column. Posted November 1, 2023.

DelGiorno Departs
By Michael D. Bates

Friday marked the end of an era in Tulsa radio with the departure of Michael DelGiorno from News Talk 1170 KFAQ. After nearly five years at the station, he is moving to WWTN, the top news/talk station in Nashville.

Many readers' brains may explode as they read the following sentence, but it's true nevertheless: Politics and public dialogue in Tulsa are better off for Michael DelGiorno's tenure here.

All told, DelGiorno spent 17 years in the Tulsa market, serving as program director and afternoon host at KRMG for nearly a decade, then as operations manager for Clear Channel's Tulsa stations and host of the morning show on KTBZ 1430 ("The Buzz").

At loose ends after parting company with Clear Channel and then working on State Sen. Scott Pruitt's unsuccessful 2001 run for Congress, in the spring of 2002, DelGiorno approached Journal Broadcast Group management with the concept for KFAQ's format, a talk radio station that would be, like the bulk of metropolitan Tulsa's population, unapologetically conservative.

While right-wing national talk show hosts were easy enough to find on Tulsa radio, local talk was dominated by John Erling, who delighted in poking fun at Tulsa's conservative Christians. The daily paper had (and still has) a lockstep editorial board that's liberal on social issues and never met a tax increase it didn't like.

Here is a market that repeatedly sent conservatives like Jim Inhofe, Steve Largent, and John Sullivan to Congress, that attracts students from around the world to attend two major charismatic Christian colleges, home to evangelical and charismatic megachurches, and hundreds of smaller churches with a conservative social and political inclination, but you'd never have known it by listening to local radio.

There was a niche to be filled, and DelGiorno, a conservative Republican and Southern Baptist, persuaded Journal Broadcast Group to let him step in and fill it.

Where other attempted alternatives to Erling had come and gone - like Ken Rank's valiant efforts on KAKC 1300 in the late '90s - DelGiorno succeeded. He switched from afternoons to mornings in 2003, and swiftly moved past Erling in the ratings.

It was DelGiorno's passion in speaking about the issues and his ability to rally listeners to action that made the difference. Even those who disagreed with him found his show to be compelling listening.

As the Vision 2025 debate heated up that summer, for the first time the opposition to the establishment consensus had a 50,000-watt platform for their message.

And it was that aspect of the DelGiorno show - giving a voice to people whose concerns had been ignored for years - that is his most significant legacy.

Community activists in north, east, west, south, and midtown Tulsa found out that they weren't alone in their frustration with the status quo, and through KFAQ, they started to find each other and support each other's issues.

Coalitions were born. The long ignored and less prosperous periphery of the city began to be heard. Friendships were formed across partisan and racial lines. It's telling that, during his final broadcast, DelGiorno singled out two African-American Democrats, Jack Henderson and Roscoe Turner, as the city officials for whom he felt the most respect and affection.

Issues like zoning and appointments to boards and commissions and airport management weren't on DelGiorno's radar when he began, but he could see the common thread of media bias and the use of government power to benefit the politically connected - the daily paper's tardy acknowledgement of their significant ownership interest in Great Plains Airlines being a prime example.

Here's one way to quantify his impact: Since KFAQ was launched in May 2002, we've had two City Council elections, the only two (so far) in which the daily paper failed to get a majority of its handpicked slate elected. The 2004 election almost went the other way, but DelGiorno used his show to spotlight voter irregularities in Council District 3. The result was a court case, a new election, and Roscoe Turner back on the City Council.

I feel a personal debt to Michael: I first got to know him during the Vision 2025 debate. After the vote, he asked me to come on the show on a weekly basis to track the implementation of Vision 2025. As the 2004 city elections approached, our visits expanded to include all aspects of local government. Those weekly spots attracted the attention of then-UTW reporter G. W. Schulz, and his profile of me led to the opportunity to write this column.

I've often been asked whether his on-air persona is a pretense, a shtick to gin up ratings. For better or worse, Michael's personality, his demeanor, and his opinions never changed when the ON AIR light went dark. His passion for Tulsa was heartfelt - it's his wife's hometown and the birthplace of his kids and was his own home base for a decade and a half.

DelGiorno often expressed his frustration with local leaders who seemed too pleased with themselves over half-measures and irrelevant initiatives while the big, basic issues - crime and infrastructure - continue to go unaddressed.

It was hard for him to have hope in the future of a city that put a priority on building new facilities when we can't afford to maintain what we already own. Why build a new arena and pocket parks and a jazz hall of fame when we can't field enough police officers, fix our streets, keep the expressway lights on, or put water in our pools?

At the state level, he saw the embrace of casino gaming and a state lottery as the first step toward Oklahoma becoming just like his hometown of New Orleans, with all the social dysfunction but minus the Old World charm. Perhaps he understood the risks better because of his own weakness for gambling.

Adding to DelGiorno's frustration with what he saw as a lack of political progress, personal pressures took a toll: A libel lawsuit by City Councilor Bill Christiansen (now in its 20th month, and the pretrial conference won't happen until July 30th), the year-delayed revelation of his expulsion from two Indian casinos in a single day, and the foreclosure on his home.

There had always been humor and playfulness to leaven the earnestness, but those qualities weren't evident much over the last year or so. He was ready to start over somewhere else.

Despite the continual pressure on station management to take him off the air, DelGiorno left on his own terms. His contract was due to expire at the end of 2007, but he had already been investigating other possibilities. In early April, after a visit to WWTN, he requested and Journal granted him an early release from his contract. Two weeks after he accepted the Nashville station's offer, he was doing his last Tulsa broadcast.

WWTN is the highest rated of the two talk stations in the Nashville market, despite the fact that its competition, WLAC, runs the top three syndicated talk shows - Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck. DelGiorno's hiring represents his new station's increased commitment to local talk. He's replacing the syndicated G. Gordon Liddy and Bill O'Reilly shows, increasing WWTN's local content from 8 to 12 hours daily.

DelGiorno may seem mild compared to his new stable mates. Morning host Ralph Bristol once hung up on John McCain when the senator seemed to be dodging his questions. Afternoon drive host Phil Valentine is legendary for leading the "Tennessee Tax Revolt of 2002," stopping efforts by a Republican governor and Democratic legislature to impose the state's first-ever income tax. Michael should feel right at home.

More and more drivers are tuning out traditional radio and tuning into narrowcast music stations or national talk shows on satellite radio or programming their own stations on their iPods. Local content may be the only way for analog broadcasting to compete, whether that means local politics or locally programmed, consultant-free music.

Wisely, KFAQ management's understands the value of local content. While the pioneer has moved on (still pulling arrows out of his back), the station remains committed to the mission of "Standing Up for What's Right" and to maintaining a focus on local news and politics.

If DelGiorno's detractors were celebrating at news of his departure, the party didn't last long. His longtime sidekick Gwen Freeman and former Councilor Chris Medlock are the new co-hosts of KFAQ's morning drive, ensuring a continuity of the station's point of view. With Medlock on board, I would expect as much if not more focus on local and state issues. And unlike the competing news/talk station, KFAQ's format will continue to allow time to discuss issues at length and in depth.

Michael DelGiorno could be frustrating. He would let passion get ahead of precision. It could be tough at times to get a word in edgewise. Thoroughly suburban in his outlook, he was never going to see eye-to-eye with me on the importance of a healthy urban core.

But Michael's time at KFAQ opened up the airwaves to voices and issues that never before got a hearing. Although it was time for him to move on, I'm thankful for his time here. Even if you didn't care for his manner or his take on social or religious issues, if you value the richer, broader, more open public discourse we now have in this city, you ought to be thankful, too.

###

It appears that Mayor Kathy Taylor is waffling on signing the ordinance annexing the Tulsa County Fairgrounds. After the measure passed 5-4, Taylor said that the Council "did the right thing for the right reason." So why, two weeks later, has she still not put her signature on the measure?

One possibility is that she's feeling pressure to veto from individuals who could help or hinder her climb up the political ladder.

If that's so, it's disappointing. Although I didn't support Taylor's election, she had a reputation for decisiveness, and I hoped that a mayor with plenty of her own money would be insulated from the financial and social pressures that afflict politicians of more modest means.

Her first instincts were sound: The Council had the benefit of a great deal of financial analysis by administration and Council staff and came to the conclusion that it was good for the City of Tulsa and would not harm the interests of Tulsa County government. In addition to the five voting in favor, two more councilors indicated that the economic case supported annexation, although constituent concern aroused by the fair board's prophecies of doom kept them from voting yes.

While a mayoral veto might endear her to County officials - at least until the next time they regard a City initiative as a threat to their interests - it would alienate five councilors who risked a considerable amount of political capital to do what they believe to be in the City's best interests.

The Mayor has until Friday to make her decision. I'm still hopeful that she'll make the right one.

Wherein I try to figure out what I need to talk about tomorrow morning on KFAQ:

Tuesday night at 7 p.m. the South Tulsa Citizens Coalition will hold a town hall meeting to discuss the state of their lawsuit trying to stop Jenks and Bixby's deal with Infrastructure Ventures Inc. to build a toll bridge across the Arkansas River. The meeting will be held at Christ Church, 10901 S. Yale. The lawsuit suffered a surprise setback when Judge Gordon McAllister ruled that the 75-year contract between a trust established by the two cities and IVI was not a franchise. Will they appeal or give up and see if the city will step in?

Yard signs all around Woodward Park are advertising a website called stopthechop.net. The petition effort is working to save trees in Woodward Park which have been marked for removal when trimming of branches would be sufficient to protect public safety and the trees' health. One of our city's greatest but underappreciated assets is our canopy of trees. Seen from the air or a tall building, the extent and density of our urban forest is amazing. These trees reduce summer temperatures and cooling costs, improve air quality, act as a wind break, and improve property values. Councilor Cason Carter has taken some ribbing for his proposal to raise private dollars for an urban forestry program focused on city rights-of-way (there already is one for the city's parks), but I think it's a good idea. Expanding our urban forest and maintaining its health is important to the city's "curb appeal" and quality of life.

I also like Carter's proposal to amend the Tulsa City Charter to move city elections to the fall of odd-numbered years. It's a move I've championed for a long time -- it gives new elected officials time to find their feet before the budget process begins, and it helps grassroots candidates by enabling door-to-door campaigning in the summer and fall, rather than the winter when early sunset and inclement weather can interfere with a candidate's efforts to meet the voters.

The State Senate has yet to vote on whether to override Gov. Brad Henry's veto of SB 714, which would have put Oklahoma taxpayers out of the abortion business. The bill passed with a veto-proof majority, but pressure is on eight Democratic senators who voted for the bill to reverse and vote to sustain the veto. Oklahomans for Life is asking us (click to read the action alert in PDF format) to write the Democrats who voted for SB 714 and thank them for their past and future support for the bill. They provide a simple method to e-mail all eight of them at once via this address: Pro-LifeDemocrats@OkForLife.org

A bill designed to bypass anti-charter-school obstructionists on the Tulsa School Board passed the State House last week. SB 661 would expand which governing bodies could grant a charter to create an independently governed but publicly funded school. Cities of over 300,000 population and public universities could also oversee charter schools. The effort was led by Democratic State Rep. Jabar Shumate, who represents part of north Tulsa. His constituents are fed up with being trapped in sub-par schools, and they cannot afford private school tuition. One charter elementary school, the Deborah Brown School, serves the near northside, but the school board is unwilling to let them expand enrollment and unwilling to charter additional schools. When a student enrolls in a charter school, state funding (about $5,000) would follow him from his public school to his charter school.

While SB 661 has passed both House and Senate, there were some legislative maneuvers which mean that the bill is not yet able to go to the Governor. Shumate was the only House Democrat to support SB 661, the only Democrat to put the interests of schoolchildren and their parents ahead of the interests of the education union and the school board association. The bill passed with only 51 votes because a number of Republicans were absent. The bill had passed the Senate by a vote of 34-9 with bipartisan support.

Jeff Shaw also brings news of a hot dog vendor who set up shop next to the daily paper's building on Main Street. I don't know if I've ever heard of someone selling hot dogs in downtown Tulsa in my lifetime, although I've seen them crop up in front of Lowe's and Best Buy stores. (A long time ago, my grandfather would buy tamales from a man who sold them in downtown Bartlesville.)

Another good piece of legislation is waiting for Gov. Brad Henry's signature. SB 507 is a serious, comprehensive tort reform bill that bears a striking resemblance to the recommendation put forward in 2004 by the Oklahoma Council for Public Affairs. The OCPA blog lists the key features:

  • $300,000 cap on rewards for non-economic damage;
  • Reforming joint and several liabilities rules (eliminate the ability to collect from defendants a award percentage that is much larger than the percentage at which the defendant was at fault);
  • Limits and uniformity on prejudgment interest;
  • Requiring expert testimony for medical liability cases;
  • Collateral source rule reform, (defendants can now take into account how much plaintiff has already been awarded from other sources); and
  • Strengthen evidence required in court to prove liability and negligence to be awarded punitive damages.
  • In the final Senate vote, the bill passed by a vote of 25-23, along party lines except for a lone Democrat, Susan Paddack of Ada, voting in favor.

    Me, Svengali?

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    One of the goofiest accusations made in the course of the Fairgrounds annexation debate is that some councilors, specifically John Eagleton, voted for annexation just to make me happy, out of some misguided sense of loyalty.

    (Other goofy debating points: I'm for annexation because I have "a bone to pick with the county," and my opinion doesn't matter because I'm not a businessman. Both are ad hominems and neither address the merits of my arguments or the arguments of other annexation proponents. I'll deal with the "bone to pick" in depth some other time, but I will say this: I have never suffered any personal or financial loss or significant inconvenience as a result of a county action -- with one exception. My skepticism about certain aspects of county government is not at all personal, but is grounded in nine years of watching the County Commissioners' actions, particularly the addiction of certain commissioners to non-competitive contracts.)

    (The one exception? As a dad, I'm disappointed that my kids won't have an amusement park in town any more.)

    There are five members of the Council whom I knew and with whom I was friendly before they became city councilors. If they always did what I wanted, then I would be the uncrowned King of the City Council, a modern-day Robert S. Kerr. But that doesn't happen.

    I can think of one vote in particular that was important enough to me that I took the time to come to the Council meeting and speak. It was a zoning case near I-44 in east Tulsa, the part of town where I grew up and where my parents still live. I was there with other east Tulsa residents to ask the Council to deny the zoning request, which would have perpetuated the trashy first impression Tulsa gives to those who arrive by car from the east and northeast. Our side lost, with a couple of my councilor friends voting contrary to my wishes.

    If any city councilor listens to me it's not because I can finance their climb up the political ladder. I can't use my massive economic and social clout to ruin them if they crossed me. I can't provide make-work jobs for their relatives. I can't take them to dinner at the Summit Club or for a round of golf at Southern Hills. And to borrow an old blues lyric that Bob Wills borrowed a few times, "I'm not good-lookin'. I don't dress fine. The way I whip it is a hangin' crime."

    As was evident last Thursday night, I don't have masses of mind-numbed followers ready to obey my every command. It was pretty much just me and, amazingly enough, Greg Jennings, with whom I have often disagreed in the past, speaking in support of annexation. If the decision Thursday night was a matter of pull, there was a lot more pull on the other side of the issue.

    If any of these councilors pays me any mind, it's only because I try to be precise and thorough in what I say about an issue, and sometimes I do a decent job of translating a concept from bureaucratese to plain English.

    Bill Martinson certainly didn't communicate with me in composing his rationale in support of annexation. I opposed his first run for office and didn't endorse him in the Republican primary last year. I didn't feed information to the Council staff or the city finance department staff for their thorough research and analyses. Council Attorney Drew Rees did the legal research on the issue of security for the Tulsa State Fair, not me. I had a few conversations with John Eagleton, but I didn't come up with a copy of the Arabian Horse Show contract, or even have the foresight to suggest it to anyone.

    If anything, the thoughts I've presented here and in my column owe more to the research and analysis that others did than the other way around. The only original point I contributed to the conversation had to do with the non-financial benefits of annexation, a point that didn't seem to carry a lot of weight in Thursday night's debate. (Which is why my business background is irrelevant to the discussion.)

    I guess it's more comforting to annexation opponents to believe that I mesmerized the City Council into bending to my will than to believe that five independent, intelligent councilors came to their own conclusion based on facts and logic, in the face of heavy pressure to set those facts aside.

    It took a while, and everybody got to speak that wanted to speak, but the City Council voted 5-4 to approve the ordinance to annex the Tulsa County Fairgrounds. Voting in favor were Henderson, Turner, Barnes, Martinson, and Eagleton; voting against were Westcott, Troyer, Christiansen, and Carter. The emergency clause vote broke the same way, which means it failed -- two-thirds vote would be required to put the annexation into immediate effect. Without the emergency clause, it will go into effect sixty days after the Mayor signs the ordinance.

    I'll be on KFAQ at 6:10 in the morning to talk about the debate and the vote, so tune in to 1170 and listen.

    I was especially impressed with Councilor Martinson's comments. I've had plenty of disagreements with him on various issues, but his analysis of the pros and cons of annexation was flawless, just as impressive as his analysis of the city's financial constraints. His business and accounting experience is a real asset to the council.

    As are the legal expertise and fearlessness of Councilor Eagleton. A highlight of the meeting was when he called fair board member Clark Brewster (the banty rooster) on Brewster's bluffing claim that the increased sales tax rate resulting from annexing the Fairgrounds would constitute a breach of contract with the Arabian Horse Show. Eagleton had the contract in hand, demanded that Brewster cite the paragraph to back up his claim, and then read the clause that clearly contradicted Brewster's claim. Eagleton's diligent digging for facts has diffused several of the bogus arguments leveled against annexation.

    UPDATE 4/11: There are two complementary accounts of the City Council debate on annexation in the latest Urban Tulsa Weekly: Brian Ervin's news story on the debate, with details on why various councilors voted the way they did; and my column, on the factors that may influence Mayor Kathy Taylor's decision to sign or veto annexation.

    UPDATE 4/18: David Schuttler has posted video on YouTube (thanks, David!) of the exchange between Clark Brewster and John Eagleton regarding the Arabian Horse Show's contract. I had forgotten that it was actually Bill Martinson who interrupted Brewster to ask him how a city action could cause a breach of contract between the fair board and the Arabian Horse Show. Brewster's reply, "The terms of that contract provides [sic] very specifically what their vendors would pay as a matter of tax," led to Eagleton's question, "Clark, which paragraph are you referring to?"

    This week in Urban Tulsa Weekly, I take a look back at the decision of the Tulsa County Public Facilities Authority last fall to evict Bell's Amusement Park from the Tulsa County Fairgrounds. Although it's not a new story, the way the eviction was handled sheds some light on the question of the City of Tulsa's annexation of the Fairgrounds (to be decided this Thursday night by the City Council), currently an unincorporated enclave surrounded by the City of Tulsa. Expo Square management and TCPFA members have made a number of claims about the effects of annexation, and those claims need to be weighed in light of the board's credibility and transparency -- particularly the credibility of the three TCPFA members who were on the board prior to 2007.

    Here's another doubtful decision: Last year the Tulsa State Fair reached the one million attendance mark for the first time in four years. In December, the 2006 Fair won six awards for Marketing and Competitive Exhibits at the International Association of Fairs and Expositions (IAFE) in Las Vegas. Amber Phillips, who was manager of the Tulsa State Fair in 2004, 2005, and 2006, overseeing increased attendance each year, didn't get to enjoy the fruits of her hard work and creativity, because Expo Square CEO Rick Bjorklund had fired Phillips a week earlier. (Officially, her position was eliminated in a "reorganization," but it's not as though they're going to stop having a Tulsa State Fair, and someone has to manage it.)

    You can read more commentary and background about the Bell's eviction here (including an interesting look at Bjorklund's career trajectory). And this website has a number of articles on Bell's and other amusement parks in this region, including Frontier City and Joyland in Wichita. Here's his evaluation of what was done to Bell's.

    Move City Hall?

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    I've gotten really sloppy about posting blog links to my Urban Tulsa Weekly column. In case I forget, you can always go directly to the urbantulsa.com home page and find a link under Columns. Articles from the new edition are posted on the website Wednesday morning. I will be adding retroactive links to previous articles so that you'll be able to find a complete archive listing here.

    In any case, this week I consider the idea of moving City Hall to the Williams Communications Group building, aka the Borg Cube, aka One Technology Center. Our existing City Hall is inadequate and, to say the least, homely:

    A couple of years ago, I was giving a tour of the city to a friend from New York. Despite her love of '60s pop music and fashion, the poorly-executed '60s architecture of City Hall left her cold. When I pointed out the place that occupies so much of my attention, she declared, "That is the ugliest city hall I have ever seen."

    As you'll read, even Weird Al dissed our City Hall when he filmed a movie here. (In the service of researching this article, I had to watch UHF again. In the commentary track, Weird Al misidentifies the ersatz City Hall as the Christian Science church at 10th and Boulder -- it's the First Christian Church across the street at 9th and Boulder.)

    The real City Hall entrance is gloomy and subterranean, beneath the Civic Center Plaza. In place of grand steps, there is a curb cut leading up a few inches from the main driveway through the parking lot. A set of automated sliding glass doors are framed by white-painted cinder blocks, on which is mounted the words "CITY HALL" in original-series Star Trek block lettering.

    Also in this week's issue, Brian Ervin has a story on the anti-illegal-immigration proposal currently before the Oklahoma Legislature. Ervin does an excellent job of setting out the details of the bill, how it differs from last session's bill, what influences shaped the bill, and how changes in the balance of power have changed the prospects for passage. He spoke to proponents Rep. Randy Terrill and Sen. Jim Williamson and opponents Victor Orta and Ed Martinez and is very fair in representing both perspectives. (UTW has a real gem in Mr. Ervin.)

    No, not me, darn it. Michael S. Bates, Human Resources Director for the City of Tulsa, is stepping down after nearly 12 years in the post and 34 years as a city employee. He's one of the reasons I have made a point of using my middle initial here, in my Urban Tulsa Weekly column, and in my two runs for City Council.

    I've only met him once, probably in 1999 or 2000, at a breakfast hosted by Mayor Susan Savage on "smart growth." He mentioned (in jest, I think) that if I had a letter to the editor in the paper, Savage would stop by his office to ask about it.

    Citeewurkors have told me that the other Michael Bates isn't beloved within their ranks. I don't know why that is -- perhaps just because he's the guy that has to enforce the rules, the guy sitting on the other side of the table during salary negotiations. When I ran for office, I won over a few voters by assuring them that I wasn't him, so I assume I lost a few votes from city employees who didn't get that message. Then again, I may have gained a few votes from people who assumed the head of personnel for the city would have something substantial to offer as a councilor.

    He says he plans to be a consultant, so the need to disambiguate our names isn't going to go away any time soon.

    But it turns out that a middle initial isn't enough to set me apart from all other Michael Bateses. I know of another registered Tulsa County voter with the same three names as me who is six months older than I am. And according to the city payroll spreadsheet released recently by the Tulsa Whirled, there's an "equipment operator II" in the Public Works department named Michael D. Bates.

    Then there's Michael W. Bates, a former Member of the British Parliament and a leader of the Conservative Christian Fellowship; Michael Bates, the late British actor (Clockwork Orange, Bedazzled, and, on TV, "It Ain't Half Hot, Mum" and "Last of the Summer Wine"); Michael Bates, prince of the unrecognized micronation of Sealand; Chicago area political columnist Michael M. Bates. (The latter's bio concludes, "As a lad, he distributed Goldwater campaign literature and since then has steadily moved further to the Right.")

    I guess this sort of confusion is bound to occur when you have a surname in the top 250 by popularity and a first name that was number one through most of the Baby Boom and Baby Bust years.

    Maybe I should follow TAFKAP's lead and change my name to an unpronounceable symbol.

    Here's to a happy retirement for any and all Michael Bateses.

    Tulsa City Council Chairman Bill "Landslide" Martinson is not one of my favorite city councilors, but I've been told by other Martinson non-fans that he does have a good mind for numbers and financial analysis, which could be an asset as the city confronts with its budget problems.

    Recently Martinson presented to his colleagues a thorough and impressive summary of the financial box the City finds itself in. Municipal Revenues and Fiscal Constraints is available for your perusal on the City Council's website. Every citizen ought to read it and digest it.

    Some highlights:

    • Charts showing how much of the general fund is used for personnel costs, particularly public safety personnel costs.
    • A chart on page 12 showing the city budget adjusted for inflation over the last 10 years. The budget grew faster than inflation during Susan Savage's tenure, didn't keep up with inflation in the wake of the telecom crash during LaFortune's term, and with last year's budget returned to the same level as 1996-7 in constant dollars.
    • Why less than half of the city's revenue is available for operations.
    • How the city balanced its budget during the lean years -- cuts to parks, street maintenance, street lighting, code enforcement, graffiti abatement, right-of-way mowing -- all areas that affect the city's "curb appeal" and quality of life.
    • Why the same percentage of sales taxes (2% for operations) hasn't been sufficient for maintaining the same level of service.
    • The impact of federal policy shifts -- reduction in direct federal aid to cities since the 1970s, reduction in Medicare reimbursements for ambulance service, increased environmental mandates on cities, failure to deal with illegal immigration.
    • Why the state has a surplus, while cities struggle to provide services -- the state has multiple, complimentary revenue sources, including income taxes, sales taxes, and oil and gas production taxes.
    • Why only one of those three options is available to the City of Tulsa.
    • Restrictions on the use of property taxes by cities.
    • The impact of sales tax exemptions.
    • Tulsa County government's discovery of sales tax as a source of operating revenue.
    • Tulsa County government's refusal to restore a share of property tax to Tulsa County municipalities.
    • The impact of suburban flight on the city's finances.

    Again, every active citizen needs to read this. So do all of our state representatives and state senators and county officials. This is what Chris Medlock was talking about when he called for Tulsans to reject the county's attempt to renew Four to Fix the County and when, as a candidate for state house, he called for adoption of an urban policy at the state level -- how do we finance Oklahoma's cities, the state's economic engines, and protect them from a spiral of decline?

    Veteran Oklahoma political analyst Mike McCarville has been keeping a close eye on one aspect in particular of Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor's administration: Her involvement as a charter member of the Mayors' Coalition against Illegal Guns, a group of pro-gun-control mayors led by New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino.

    The coalition has claimed that its focus is on enforcement of gun laws, but its real agenda has been exposed by mayors who were involved at the outset but later withdrew. In February, Mark Begich, the Mayor of Anchorage, Alaska, announced his withdrawal from the coalition:

    "I do support the efforts to strengthen laws and prosecute individuals who dispense or use illegal guns, and getting them out of the hands of criminals. However, upon further review of the coalition, it appears they may have a different agenda than I anticipated.

    "I am concerned the coalition is working on issues that conflict with the beliefs we share in Alaska about legal gun ownership, and I'm also concerned gun ownership advocates are not part of the full discussion within the coalition. We cannot afford to risk protecting our Bill of Rights and the rights of legal gun owners.

    Earlier, Idaho Falls mayor Jared Fuhriman withdrew for similar reasons:

    He told a local newspaper that he was originally told that Bloomberg's coalition was only going after "illegal guns." But after doing his own research he said, "I could see there was a conflict with the NRA and with some of the beliefs we have here in Idaho." ...

    Bloomberg won't be sending out any press releases, of course, but it's important to point out when mayors dump Bloomberg's anti-gun group because they've been told the same lie Bloomberg's telling the public.

    This isn't about going after criminals with guns. This is about criminalizing gun ownership. Mayor Fuhriman, a former police officer, did the right thing after his constituents helped him see the truth about Bloomberg's group.

    Taylor is the only Oklahoma mayor to join the coalition. Her nearest fellow members are the mayors of Fayetteville, Arkansas, North Little Rock, Arkansas, Dallas, and Irving, Texas. There are very few dots on the map in the plains and mountain states.

    Most recently, McCarville is noting speculation about Taylor's involvement in this group and her decision to reject three qualified internal candidates to replace Dave Been as Tulsa's Chief of Police. The three internal candidates are working with the local FOP chapter to file a grievance under the city's civil service regulations.

    I'm sympathetic to the idea that the city's chief exec should have the authority to hire the best candidate for the position (with the advice and consent of the Council), and the maneuvering in the upper echelons of the TPD when Been was placed on leave suggests that an outside candidate might have a better shot at unifying the force under new leadership. Still, I'm concerned that Taylor might hire someone who doesn't respect the rights of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms. I think it would be appropriate for city councilors to ask the Mayor to appear before them and answer questions about this group, about her involvement, and about how this issue is shaping her search for a police chief.

    This entry from December features a photo showing Taylor at the organizing meeting of the coalition at New York's Gracie Mansion and includes a quote from the New York Daily News describing Bloomberg's gun record: "He mounted a national gun control crusade, and he scored unprecedented court victories against firearms dealers...."

    The initial meeting of the group included a briefing on New York City's lawsuits against gun manufacturers, an effort that makes it harder for law-abiding citizens to obtain weapons for their own protection, and a Jersey City gun-buyback program, which encourages the handover of legal weapons but does nothing to slow the use of weapons by criminals.

    Bloomberg even used private investigators posing as gun buyers to try to entrap gun dealers in other parts of the country, endangering several federal investigations in the process.

    The coalition's main purpose appears to be repeal of the Tiahrt Amendment, a rider on the appropriations bill for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE). The Tiahrt Amendment exists to protect the privacy of lawful purchasers of guns. When a person buys a gun and passes the required instant check, the law forbids the government from retaining a record of that purchase. (Dave Kopel wrote an article explaining the Tiahrt Amendment for National Review Online in 2004. The NRA fact sheet on the law explains why it should be retained and strengthened, not eliminated.)

    You can read all of McCarville's entries about Kathy Taylor at this link.

    Congratulations to fellow Tulsa blogger Steven Roemerman on his confirmation as a member of the City of Tulsa Sales Tax Overview Committee. It's a sign of his manifest intelligence and civic-mindedness that he was nominated by the man whose election he tried to prevent. Roemerman was a fervent supporter of former Councilor Jim Mautino, who was defeated for re-election by Dennis Troyer.

    The Sales Tax Overview Committee monitors the spending of the "third-penny" sales tax fund for compliance with the list of projects promised to the voters. I know that Steven will be a diligent watchdog, and he should have some interesting insights into city finances to share with us on his blog.

    This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly is about the latest developments in the City of Tulsa's move to annex the Tulsa County Fairgrounds (aka Expo Square).

    Related to that topic, UTW reporter Brian Ervin has a cover story profile of City Councilor Roscoe Turner, the leading proponent of annexation.

    There were a couple of developments in the story that I didn't get to in my column: Mayor Kathy Taylor's bizarre entrance into the debate with her set of bargaining chips and County Commissioner Randi Miller's passive-aggressive raising of the white flag. But Ervin does a great job of covering them in his news story on annexation.

    If you're interested, here's a link to the
    state law that governs a city's annexation of an enclave -- 11 O. S. 21-103.

    This is just nuts. Saint Francis Health System has decided to close its hospital near 101st Street and 161st East Ave (New Orleans and Elm) in Broken Arrow and move those operations to the Saint Francis Heart Hospital at 91st & Garnett, just west of the Tulsa - Broken Arrow boundary.

    Now Tom Neff, strategic planner for St. Francis Health System, is saying that the cities of Tulsa and Broken Arrow are negotiating to swap land so that the St. Francis Heart Hospital would be transferred to the jurisdiction of the City of Broken Arrow, in exchange for some other land.

    I guess the point is that this would let Broken Arrow claim that it still has its own hospital, even though the actual location of the hospital wouldn't be any different. And since Owasso is getting two hospitals, Broken Arrow might feel left out if it hadn't any.

    Tulsa has already conceded land to Broken Arrow in recent years, giving 480 acres northeast of 51st and 145th East Ave. so that the entire Battle Creek development could be within the City of Broken Arrow. That was a very valuable concession -- Tulsa gave up a big chunk of its land which lies within the Broken Arrow school district, which is more valuable for residential development than land within the Tulsa school district.

    The City of Tulsa can't afford to give up any of its territory to booming suburbs. We annexed this land 40 years ago to make sure Tulsa wouldn't wind up like landlocked inner cities in the midwest and northeast.

    Here's an idea: Instead of saying, "Broken Arrow has one hospital," the Broken Arrow Chamber of Commerce could say there are two excellent hospitals (Saint Francis and SouthCrest) within a few miles of Main Street. After all, suburban officials are fond of telling us (when it suits them) that we're all one big happy metro area.

    Retailers have been relocating from the core city to the suburbs for business reasons. Now an institution is relocating from a suburb to the core city for business reasons, strategically located to serve Broken Arrow, Bixby, and southeast Tulsa. The City of Tulsa needs to tell the City of Broken Arrow, firmly but gently, to live with that reality.

    Chris Medlock has the beginnings of a list of answers to frequently asked questions regarding the City of Tulsa's proposed annexation of the Tulsa County Fairgrounds. He tackles the following questions:

    Q: Is the City taking over the Fairgrounds from the County?
    Q: Is the Fairgrounds a “tax free” zone?
    Q: Is the 3-cent tax break the major draw for retail activity at the Fairgrounds?
    Q: Is annexation akin to raising taxes?

    That last one has an interesting answer. Medlock points out that Sen. Randy Brogdon, indisputably the taxpayers' best friend at the State Capitol, was previously Mayor of Owasso, and as Mayor and thus a member of the City Council, he voted to approve numerous annexations, many of them including already developed property which suddenly became subject to city sales tax and millage. Either that means that Randy Brogdon is a tax-raisin' fiend, or else annexation isn't really a tax hike.

    Annexation opponents have also asserted that the City of Tulsa gets a free ride on the use of the David L. Moss Criminal Justice Center, more colloquially known as the County Jail. In a comment on an earlier entry, County Commissioner Fred Perry wrote: "He [Michael Bates] ignores the fact that the county runs the jail and charges the city nothing (a multi-million dollar value)."

    But there's more to that story. First of all, everyone who spends money in Tulsa County, whether within the city limits of Tulsa, in some other municipality, or in the unincorporated areas, pays the 1/4 cent sales tax that funds operation of the jail. Tulsa businesses supply the lion's share of that fund. Everyone who owns property in Tulsa County, whether within the city limits of Tulsa, in some other municipality, or in the unincorporated areas, pays the county millage, part of which goes to fund operation of the jail. Even though the money flows through county government, most of it originates with the economic activity of City of Tulsa residents.

    The City of Tulsa also has a contract with the Tulsa County Commission, running until June 30, 2008. In the contract, the City provides the County with the use of the old city jail, on the third floor of the City of Tulsa Police Municipal Courts Building, just west of the courthouse, and the use of the Adult Detention Center on Charles Page Boulevard near Newblock Park. The City also provides a "fully staffed evidence property room" to handle evidence required for district court cases related to City of Tulsa law enforcement. The agreement refers to a separate agreement giving the County use of a facility adjacent to the County's Juvenile Detention Center.

    When the contract was executed in 1998, the value of the City of Tulsa's contribution was estimated at $1,862,350. The contract specifies that the "reasonable value" of the City's contribution is equivalent to paying the County for daily housing of 116 municipal prisoners.

    In exchange for all of that, plus $1 a year, the County pays to house up to 116 of the City's municipal prisoners. If the monthly average of the daily number of municipal prisoners ever exceeds that number, there is a formula for the City to compensate the County for the excess. But if the number of municipal prisoners is lower than 116, the County does nothing to compensate the City.

    Now, not every perp caught by the Tulsa police department is a "municipal prisoner." When someone is arrested on a violation of state law -- homicide, robbery, grand larceny -- that case will be handled through District Court, no matter whether the sheriff, the Tulsa police, the Highway Patrol, or some other authority arrested him. The county jails exist for the purpose of handling such prisoners. (I'm sure someone could find the appropriate cites on oscn.net. I'm too tired right now.)

    Municipal prisoners are defined in the contract as "individuals present in the Jail System exclusively as the result of a City of Tulsa misdemeanor charge." If you're convicted of violating one of the laws in the Tulsa's penal code and you haven't also violated a state law, you'd be considered a municipal prisoner. At the time the jail contract was executed, the number of municipal prisoners was less than 80 per day, about a third below the amount considered equivalent to the City's contribution to the system. I am not sure what the current average number of municipal prisoners is.

    What would happen if, hypothetically, the County Commission decided to "retaliate" for annexation by terminating the jail agreement with the City?

    The County would lose the use of the old city jail would have to find another place to house prisoners awaiting trial in District Court, as the old county jail on the upper floors of the courthouse has been remodeled into offices for the District Attorney. The County would also have to set up a bigger evidence room of its own find other facilities to replace those that the City provides it free of charge. Finally, the County would lose the financial benefit it enjoys when the number of municipal prisoners that the County pays to house drops below the level the City is allowed by virtue of its contribution to the system.

    In short, the County would be cutting off its nose to spite its face, especially since annexation would not have a detremental effect on County government. That would also be true if the County were to follow through on threats to move the Fairgrounds out to Glenpool. But that is a post for another day.

    An e-mail this morning from Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor:

    Dear City of Tulsa employees,

    I am writing to keep you informed of recent actions regarding the City's legal department. City Attorney Alan Jackere has decided to retire effective January 2nd, 2007 and has agreed to remain with the City's legal department through the end of the year. Alan has worked for this city for 32 years and I sincerely appreciate his long service to Tulsa.

    I will begin the process of searching for a permanent successor immediately. As you may know, this is a civil service position and, as has been the long-standing practice, internal candidates will be given the first opportunity to apply and be considered for the position.

    To supervise the Legal Department and assist in a transition until a successor is hired, Judge Deirdre Dexter will serve as acting interim City Attorney beginning immediately.

    I hope you will all join me as we all wish Alan well in his future endeavors. As is true of so many of you, Alan has been a dedicated veteran of public service to our City. He deserves our thanks and appreciation for his work.

    Thank you for all you do.

    Sincerely,

    Kathy Taylor
    Mayor

    Interesting -- thanks and appreciation to someone she suspended? And what of Larry Simmons, the deputy City Attorney who was also suspended.

    Deirdre Dexter is a pleasantly surprising choice to serve in the interim. I endorsed her in the runoff for District Judge Office 10 (won by Mary Fitzgerald).

    You'll note that City Attorney is a civil service position. As important as the job is -- one of the few non-elected offices whose duties are specified in the City Charter -- the appointment ought to be handled like the U. S. Attorney General, nominated by the executive and confirmed by the legislative branch (the City Council).

    Jackereed away

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    Chris Medlock has been looking at Mayor Kathy Taylor's sudden and unexplained suspension of City Attorney Alan Jackere and his deputy Larry Simmons, and sees a connection with Taylor's push for changes in civil service policies and a renewed push to get the Bixby-Jenks bridge built.

    I'm no fan of Jackere's, and I was inclined to agree with Councilor John Eagleton's speculation (heard on KOTV tonight) that the suspension was connected with Jackere's handling of the wrongful prosecution lawsuit of Arvin McGee, but there's a lot to ponder in what Medlock has to say.

    In that same entry, you'll get an intro to Nancy Jane Siegel, currently an adviser in the Mayor's office, and very possibly the next City Attorney.

    Lest you think Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor's attendance at a New York City conference of pro-gun-control mayors was an aberration, the McCarville Report finds a news story that puts Taylor at yet another meeting of the group, this time in Chicago, and now the group has a name:

    New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and Milwaukee Mayor Thomas Barrett had harsh words Wednesday for the Bush administration and the gun lobby's influence on Congress.

    "When Washington makes bad decisions to protect criminals rather than the public, we suffer the consequences," Bloomberg said at a news conference outlining the agenda for Thursday's Midwestern summit of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group Bloomberg founded with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino....

    Daley, Bloomberg, and Barrett - accompanied by counterparts from a number of smaller cities - all complained that inaction by the federal executive branch and the influence of the gun lobby, particularly the National Rifle Association, on Congress have left local officials to combat the problem of illegal weapons....

    The mayors - including Tulsa, Okla. Mayor Kathy Taylor and Rockford, Ill. Mayor Lawrence Morrisey - spoke at Chicago Police Headquarters from behind a table loaded with illegal firearms seized by police in recent months. Most were rapid-fire automatic pistols, but there also were automatic shotguns, military-style assault rifles and even a Prohibition-style Thompson submachine gun.

    The Midwestern mayors were to meet in an all-day conference Thursday to discuss legal and technological strategies. Bloomberg said Menino would hold a similar conference in Boston Nov. 9 and Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin would hold one in her city Nov. 30.

    The NRA's response is that the laws are there, ready to be enforced if these mayors will only apply the necessary resources. These are illegal weapons, and added burdens on law-abiding gun owners isn't going to stop criminals who are already violating the law. Taylor is allying herself with mayors who have sought to use lawsuits to put gun and ammunition manufacturers out of business. That's like suing the head of Black and Decker for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

    McCarville notes that Taylor's involvement in this group hasn't received much attention in the local media. Whatever your opinions on gun laws, surely everyone can agree that we ought to know what alliances and causes she is joining in her official capacity, in the name of the City of Tulsa. And the City Council ought to ask her to come before them to explain her involvement.

    I wonder: If Taylor's leanings on this issue had been known, would it have cost her the election?

    This was originally posted on October 7, 2006. I've bumped it to the top since it was a topic of conversation during my weekly visit with Michael DelGiorno on KFAQ this morning. On a related note, KFAQ is sponsoring a special showing of the film Border War tonight at 7 (by invitation only) and paid screenings at 9 tonight and tomorrow night at 7 and 9 (October 17 and 18) at the Starworld cineplex in Bixby.


    MeeCiteeWurkor has begun a series of posts about the hiring practices of contractors and subcontractors to the City of Tulsa. In this first post, he is reporting on a specific instance of a city subcontractor employing people who cannot work legally in the U.S. One of the illegal workers was driving a truck carrying city property, despite the fact that he had been arrested on a DUI charge.

    On August 17th of this year, between approximately 7am and 8am, I observed one of Don Shope’s “Mexicans” driving a blue and white Ford F-150 truck with an Oklahoma license plate of 396-ZMH....

    I was told that the worker driving the truck had recently received a DUI and had his license suspended. I approached the gentleman, who I believe goes by the name “George”. I hollered at the guy in the truck and confronted him. There was an exchange in which I asked the supposed illegal worker why he was driving if his license was suspended, and especially after getting arrested for DUI. The contractor’s worker admitted to being arrested and not having a driver’s license, but soon realized what was happening and began to speak in Spanish and saying that he didn’t understand English.

    There is audio (actually a darkened video) and a transcript of a confrontation with the Mexican worker's boss about this situation.

    In the introduction to this series, MeeCiteeWurkor explains why he is posting this information, and he also explains the relationship between the City of Tulsa, the companies that contract with the City, and the subcontractors that are hired by the contractos to do the actual work.

    As Dan Paden wrote: "Mee's risking his livelihood to bring this to your attention. Go and have a look. I don't think it's putting it too strongly to say that the citizens of Tulsa owe that to him."

    Found on the web:

    Mayor Taylor was selected as one of 60 applicants — out of a field of 400 — to participate in a Joint Civilian Orientation Conference. During her trip, she will be attending briefings with senior defense officials to discuss national defense matters from a strategic perspective, and then travel to the Middle East to observe activities and operations of each branch of the military.

    During her trip, she will send back regular reports of her experience.

    And this helps address budget shortfalls, economic development, and violent crime in Tulsa how, exactly?

    Ron Turner's last dig

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    It was just days before he would be replaced on the Tulsa Airport Improvements Trust (TAIT) and Tulsa Airport Authority (TAA), having been rejected behind the scenes by the City Council for reappointment to another term. Nevertheless, at the board's meeting last Thursday, September 14, lame-duck Ron Turner jumped right in to nominate Meredith Siegfried for another year as TAA chairman, breaking the precedent of rotating the chairmanship. Not only did he make the nomination, but he cast the deciding vote. Although he wasn't legally obliged to abstain, it would have been decent and honorable to allow his replacement, Dewey Bartlett, Jr., to participate in the selection of a new chairman.

    Siegfried, as chairman, seconded her own nomination.

    Siegfried and Turner are both Nordam board members and have tended to vote in lockstep on TAA and TAIT. Perhaps, by keeping her in the chairmanship, Turner figures he can keep a hand in running the city's airports.

    Not only is it a breach of precedent, it's a bit presumptuous to appoint Siegfried to a year as chairman when her TAA/TAIT term expires midway through her term as chairman. There's no guarantee that the Mayor will reappoint her or that the Council will confirm her.

    The nominations were approved by a 3-2 vote, with Don Himelfarb from the Mayor's office casting a vote in favor. Himelfarb was attending his first TAA/TAIT meeting and acknowledged, in response to Siegfried's question that the Mayor had not given him any direction regarding the selection of a new chairman. Nevertheless, he voted. It's not clear whether he was there as a formal proxy for the Mayor, and therefore entitled to vote on her behalf, or just present as her eyes and ears.

    (Where was Mayor Kathy Taylor? There's a rumor that she was out of the country -- in Paris with her husband. If she was running the city long-distance, it might also explain why she was caught flat-footed by the controversy over police pay.)

    David Schuttler has posted the meeting video at Google -- you can find via this entry on his site. The vote on officers for 2006-7 occurs within the first eight minutes.

    The Tulsa Police Department has had a blog for a few months now, but they've recently added a new blogger.

    Casey Mankin is one of twenty recruits in the current TPD Academy. Mankin, 32, is a C-130 pilot in the Oklahoma National Guard. He's married, and they're expecting their first baby in January. He began blogging his experiences starting with his orientation back in June.

    Mankin's blog entries are collected in the "Academy Life" category of the TPD blog.

    Other recent TPD blog entries of note:

    There's a map that shows the City of Tulsa divided into drainage basins, named after creeks that carry stormwater runoff to the rivers. It's interesting because it also illustrates where the city's ridges and high points are, such as the major divide between the part of the city that drains directly into the Arkansas River (via Crow, Joe, Haikey, Fred Creeks, among others) and the part that drains into the Verdigris (via Mingo, Bird, and Spunky Creeks, among others).

    I've seen these maps at the State Fair and at neighborhood meetings, but I've never been able to find it online. Can anyone point me to a digital copy?

    Money for that police raise

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    Mayor Kathy Taylor is busy trying to wash her hands of any tough decision-making on giving Tulsa police officers the raise that the arbitrator says they deserve. In the Tulsa Whirled today she's quoted as saying:

    "So far, I'm pretty disappointed that the police haven't come to help me develop a solution to this problem," the mayor said. "We need to work as a team to figure it out."

    She said the "easiest thing would be to accept the raise and not figure out how to pay for it long term, but that is not the fiscally responsible thing to do."

    Taylor said she has asked Police Chief Dave Been and the FOP leadership to provide information by Sept. 1 on how to pay for their raise, but hasn't gotten a detailed analysis. She said she plans to call on them again.

    "This shouldn't just be up to the mayor to figure out when the FOP and the chief are running the Police Department," she said.

    It's hard not to hear a peevish, passive-aggressive tone in that comment.

    It's the Mayor's job, as head of the City's executive branch, to allocate the City's financial resources to fit our priorities and meet our obligations. She has a finance department to help her with that task. She's already punted once on serious budget work this year, opting for a utility rate increase instead of limiting the growth of the city budget to the rate of inflation.

    A couple of people have suggested a source of funds worth considering: The money currently used to pay the Tulsa Metro Chamber for convention and tourism promotion and economic development. Not all of the money, mind you, just the additional percentage of the hotel/motel tax that the Chamber has been granted every year since the late '80s.

    It is reasonable to argue that nothing is more important to Tulsa's ability to attract conventions, tourists, and new businesses, and to retain existing businesses and attract the labor pool they need to grow and thrive, than to get violent crime in Tulsa under control. And to do that we need to retain our best police officers and attract high-quality additions to the force.

    I'm pleased to see that four of the City Councilors are backing the raise. It seems to me that the Council could on its own initiative pass a budget amendment to make the funds available for the raise, then appropriate the funds. If the Mayor approves the budget amendment and appropriation, the raise would go in without the need for an election. The election would only go forward if the Mayor vetoed the raise.

    They told you so

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    Those meddlesome City Councilors told us that these members of the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority (TMUA), Messrs. Cameron and Reynolds, were arrogant and uncooperative. They declined to support their reappointment to this authority which controls Tulsa's water system, and whose policy decisions affect the future growth of Tulsa and its suburbs.

    In July 2004, as these two men were up for reappointment, the Council had questions about the policy of the TMUA for prioritizing the extension of water lines to unserved parts of the city ahead of extending new lines to the suburbs. Rather than respect the Council's concerns and delay any significant decisions until the issue could be addressed, the TMUA voted the next day to extend a new water line to Bixby. That action was an expression of the TMUA's high-handed contempt for our elected representatives on the City Council.

    The Council responded with the only tool they have for keeping authorities, boards, and commissions in line with the will of the public. Five councilors -- Henderson, Mautino, Medlock, Roop, and Turner -- voted against both of them. Their action drew howls of outrage from the Mayor's office, the suburban development industry, and the Tulsa Whirled. Two of the five were targeted for recall. Medlock was specifically told that if he approved the reappointment of Cameron and Reynolds and new water lines to Owasso, the recall effort would be dropped.

    After months of lobbying and pressure, Sam Roop flipped his vote, going back on a signed commitment not to support the reappointment of Cameron and Reynolds under any circumstances. Shortly thereafter, Roop was appointed to a high-level position in Mayor Bill LaFortune's administration. Cameron and Reynolds were back in for another three-year term.

    Saturday's Whirled had a story about Mayor Kathy Taylor's concerns about the TMUA. Decisions about the board's lobbyists and attorneys were made without consulting the board. She was left out of the loop on the change in lobbyists. One TMUA member, Richard Sevenoaks, has been excluded from membership on any of the TMUA's three committees. (The board has only seven members.)

    If I'm not mistaken, Cameron and Reynolds should be up for reappointment next year. The Mayor should replace these two with board members who will look after the City of Tulsa's best interests first, who will be deferential to policies set by the city's elected officials, and who will not regard the TMUA as their personal fiefdom.

    And sometime soon, the Tulsa Whirled, among others, should apologize to Henderson, Mautino, Medlock, and Turner for all the nasty things the paper wrote about them for opposing the reappointment of these two board members.

    UPDATE: Tultellitarian has given Cameron and Reynolds the GOBble award.

    Tulsa City Council Weekly Bulletins

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    Every week, Tulsa's City Councilors receive a bulletin with a list of upcoming city and county board and commission meetings, with hotlinks to the agendas for each, plus links to other news and articles worthy of our councilors' attention. The current weekly bulletin and an archive of back issues are available on the City Council website.

    Of note in the latest issue: A 1950s photo of 71st and Memorial, back when it was a county road intersection, and a summary of the latest population trends. Metro area population grew 7% from 2004 to 2005, but the City of Tulsa lost 2.4%, dropping down to 370,447.

    Last week, on August 23, Ed Chambers of the Federal Aviation Administration in Fort Worth sent a letter to Jeff Mulder (500 KB PDF file), head of the Tulsa Airport Authority (TAA), regarding discrimination by the TAA in the treatment of Fixed-Base Operators (FBOs) at Jones Riverside Airport, the City's general aviation facility west of the Arkansas River. The TAA manages Tulsa's two city-owned airports.

    FBOs typically provide aviation fuel, repair services for aircraft and avionics, and facilities for the use of crew and passengers. AirNav lists two FBOs at Jones Riverside Airport (KRVS): Roadhouse Aviation, owned by Kent Faith, a pilot with American Airlines, and Christiansen Aviation, owned by City Councilor Bill Christiansen. (Click those links and scroll down to read comments from pilots about the two FBOs.)

    The letter reminds Mulder that federally-funded airports are required to be evenhanded in their treatment of FBOs, in accordance with the airport's grant assurances. The FAA letter quotes Assurance 22c:

    Each fixed-base operator at the airport shall be subject to the same rates, fees, rentals, and other charges as are uniformly applicable to all other fixed-base operators making the same or similar uses of such airport and utilizing the same or similar facilities.

    The FAA is investigating a "Part 16 complaint" that Roadhouse Aviation has filed against the Tulsa Airport Authority, and the FAA's findings, after several delays, are expected in October. Like the Part 16 complaint, this letter deals with the TAA showing favoritism toward one FBO over another, but the letter addresses a separate issue.

    In 2002, Roadhouse Aviation sought to lease an empty lot from the TAA for a new facility. The TAA board, prompted by new board member Ron Turner, placed a condition on Roadhouse's lease: Because the new facility was near one of several sites identified in a study as a potential future tower location, a condition was placed on Roadhouse's lease. If the FAA chose that location for a tower, Roadhouse would be required to tear down its new facility at the company's own expense, restoring the site to its undeveloped condition.

    As a result of Roadhouse's lawsuit against TAA, the condition was removed from the lease, but a memorandum of understanding making the same commitment was placed in the airport's lease file. The added requirement meant added expense and delays for Roadhouse in getting the new facility financed and built.

    Fast forward to April 2006. Two new hangars are being built by airport tenants, one by Christiansen Aviation, the other by Ray Booker. Both new hangars are within the required 300 foot clear area of four of the potential tower locations identified in the study. Because these two new facilities are in the same situation as the Roadhouse facility, the FAA wrote that, "they also should have the same memorandum in the airport's ground lease file that calls for their removal should the FAA decide to proceed with tower construction on this site."

    But they don't. These two other tenants have not been subjected to the same conditions and agreements as Roadhouse Aviation. The letter says:

    In the interest of treating all similarly situated FBOs the same, the memorandum requiring removal of facilities and restoration of the lease area at lessee's cost should the FAA opt to construct a new tower should be in all three of the lease files or in none.

    We ask the airport operator to examine the lease records and respond to the allegation of unfairly treating one FBO in favor of two other FBOs by September 11, 2006.

    The TAA should respond in one of two ways: (1) by saying that they have placed the same memorandum in the files of all similarly situated tenants, or (2) by saying that they have removed the memorandum from Roadhouse's file. This is a simple and straightforward situation, and the TAA should acknowledge the problem and correct it.

    What the TAA should not do is what has been done so far in response to the Part 16 complaint: Have the Florida lawyer that was hired by the city send a lawyerly response filled with rationalizations and self-justifications.

    What course of action the City and the TAA will take is up to Mayor Kathy Taylor. As an ex officio TAA board member, she can join with two reformers on the TAA board to fix the problem that the FAA has identified.

    It's not a good sign that she nominated Ron Turner for another term on the TAA, when he seems to have been the driving force behind the policies that have put Tulsa in hot water with the Feds.

    We don't need a team or a plan. We need the Mayor and the TAA to say to the Feds, "You're right, that was wrong, and we've already put things right." That attitude would serve the City well in dealing with the broader Part 16 complaint, and might help us avoid financial penalties that would hurt commercial aviation passengers who fly from Tulsa International as well as the private pilots who use Riverside.

    Jackson, Turner turned out

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    I was pleased to hear this morning that Brandon Jackson and Ron Turner had withdrawn their names from reappointment to the TMAPC and the Tulsa Airport Authority, respectively. Both had drawn significant opposition based on their performance in office. Turner basically disqualified himself by saying that he would not appear before the Council for questioning, calling the Council a "kangaroo court."

    That kind of contempt for the elected representatives of the citizens of Tulsa ought to be rewarded with a permanent ban from service on a board or commission. Future councils need to remember Turner's attitude.

    Turner is a retired Brigadier General in the Air National Guard. Regarding Turner's contempt for the City Council, someone said that generals don't answer to privates. But generals do answer to the civilian authority of the President and the Congress. The reappointment process is the one opportunity the people of Tulsa have, through their elected representatives on the Council, to hold authority, board, and commission appointees accountable for their performance and judgment on these important boards.

    Although they have withdrawn their names in writing, Turner's and Jackson's names still appear on tomorrow night's Council agenda, so it would be sensible for those in opposition to have a representative present, just in case. If they were to reverse themselves, the Council would have good cause to delay the hearing, since many opponents would have made other plans based on the news of their standing down.

    In response to Turner's announcement, State Rep. Mark Liotta, whose district encompasses Tulsa International Airport, called on Mayor Kathy Taylor to appoint an airport neighbor to fill the seat on the Tulsa Airport Authority:

    State Representative Mark Liotta called on Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor to appoint an airport area neighbor to the Board of Trustees of the Tulsa Airport Authority. "Mayor Taylor has an opportunity to appoint to the Board, someone who actually lives within the traffic and sound footprint of the airport." said Liotta. "This would be a great first step toward ensuring that all parts of Tulsa are given a voice."

    "The board could only benefit from the perspective of an individual who understands the local effects of the airport on a daily basis." he said.

    "Among the many active neighborhood leaders who are also airport area
    residents, there should be no problem finding someone willing and uniquely able to serve their community."

    The position became available when current member Brigadier General Ron Turner asked that his name be removed from consideration. General Turner had served on the board since 2002.

    Liotta continued, "This individual would be keenly aware of the concerns of Tulsans who live within a mile radius of the airport, including neighborhood cohesion, street traffic patterns, industrial and commercial development, as well as airport noise abatement."

    Rep. Liotta suggested that relations between the airport and its neighbors could be improved, "The best way to maintain good neighbors is by maintaining communication, and putting a neighbor on the board can certainly improve communication. This should have been a requirement for at least one of the board positions when the board was originally developed."

    Representative Liotta's House district encompasses the entire Tulsa
    International Airport and all the surrounding neighborhoods. Liotta has served in the House since 1996.

    I can think of a number of excellent candidates, such as Carol Barrow and Laura Dowty of Layman Van Acres neighborhood (just south and east of the main runway) and David Schuttler, who has had to deal with all the problems in Cinnabar's management of the airport noise abatement program.

    (I hope our new County Commissioners-to-be will take a similar step with regard to the Fairgrounds and put an Expo Square neighbor on the Tulsa County Public Facilities Authority.)

    A majority of the City Councilors deserve credit for standing firm and asserting their right to ask questions and hear the concerns of the public on these controversial nominees. They held the line against Jim Beach's nomination to the Board of Adjustment, too, resulting in that nomination's withdrawal. Overall, the Mayor has gotten her way on over 100 nominations, so you can't fault the Council for scrutinizing only three of the Mayor's nominees.

    My Tulsa World blog has video of yesterday's Council Committee hearing on Ron Turner's reappointment to the Tulsa Airport Authority. Turner has been asked to appear before the full City Council meeting to answer questions and respond to citizen complaints of his conduct during his time as a chairman and member of the TAA.

    I posted this a year ago March, after a Council meeting when things didn't go as anyone expected. It seems appropriate again tonight:

    Trust is a fragile thing.

    Trust is essential to any human endeavor involving more than one person (which is to say, nearly every endeavor worthy of pursuit), but it is easily broken and once broken it is almost impossible to mend.

    You can go from treasured friend to arms-length acquaintance and not realize it's happened until it's too late. It's like being demoted, but someone forgot to copy you on the memo. Good will is gone, and its absence is evident in body language and tone of voice. Warm smiles are replaced by chilly glares.

    It comes down to this: Before, your actions and words were given the benefit of the doubt. Your good intentions were assumed. After, your actions and words are viewed with suspicion of dark motives, and actions and words from the past are reinterpreted in accordance with this new, negative theory of you.

    And here's the worst part: Every effort you make to find out what went wrong, to mend fences, to seek restoration is viewed through the same lens of suspicion. Far from patching the hole, your efforts only dig it deeper. What sounds like a simple, reasonable explanation as it leaves your mouth reaches your erstwhile friend's ear as defensive and evasive.

    (UPDATE: Dawn Summers posted a "not so random thought" a couple of days ago that captures this situation perfectly -- "I was there when we became friends, where was I when we became strangers?")

    What can bring about such a dramatic change, in the absence of any intentional breach of trust? A seed of doubt, watered by imagination, is all it takes. The seed may be planted by accident, the misapplication of past experience, or it may be planted deliberately by someone seeking to destroy a friendship or an alliance.

    In the battle for the Tulsa's future, the coalition of reformers is made up of people who are just getting to know each other, and the bond of trust is not yet fully formed. We are vulnerable to attack at this point, and we must guard against it.

    Thursday night's City Council meeting didn't go the way anyone expected. Allies inadvertently ended up working at cross-purposes, but some observers jumped to the conclusion that there had been a betrayal, that some sort of deal had been cut to the disadvantage of the Reform Alliance. The seed of doubt was planted and imagination watered it. I'm hopeful that efforts to root it out quickly were successful.

    Brethren, we need to watch and pray, because we are surely under attack. And we need to give each other the benefit of the doubt.

    Someone said some words that were misunderstood and taken out of context. Instead of trying to settle this misunderstanding privately, those offended decided to take their dispute public. I have spent a good deal of my time these last three days trying to get everyone to talk to each other before bridges are irretrievably burned. It may be too late. The story is now in the hands of those who are gleeful at the prospect of the Reform Coalition torn asunder. I do not believe that was the intention of those who chose to take the matter public, but I fear that is the effect.

    Please pray for peace and healing.

    The final report from Tulsa's Citizens' Commission on City Government is the topic of this week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly. The commission, appointed by then-Mayor Bill LaFortune last December, finished on schedule, made some constructive recommendations, including a recommendation against adding at-large seats to the City Council.

    You can find the full text of the Citizens' Commission on City Government report on the Tulsans Defending Democracy website.

    Also in this week's UTW, Ginger Shepherd covers the new Tulsa Public Schools superintendent, downtown revitalization in Muskogee, the recently passed City of Tulsa budget, and the sweet no-bid contract Murphy Bros. got to continue to run the Tulsa State Fair midway.

    The story quotes Jerry Murphy, owner of Murphy Bros.:

    Murphy added, "Why would you fire someone that is doing a good job? and been doing it for a long time? "

    In fact, the midway has been a disappointment for a long time, and Tulsa County Public Facilities Authority (TCPFA -- the fair board) members owed it to the public to see if another operator couldn't bring better, more reliable rides for better prices, but instead they continued the Tulsa County practice of awarding contracts to insiders without competition. Jerry Murphy's wife, Loretta Murphy, contributed $5,000 to the mayoral campaign of County Commissioner Randi Miller, who is also a member of the TCPFA and voted to approve the contract with Murphy Bros.

    Links updated October 28, 2017.

    An edited version of this piece was published in the June 21, 2006, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The archived version is no longer online. Here is my blog entry linking to the article. Posted on the web August 2, 2009. Links to the Citizens' Commisison final report added October 28, 2017.

    At-large barge runs aground

    By Michael D. Bates

    Over the next four weeks, between now and the state primary election, this column will focus on the statewide, legislative, county, and judicial races that will be on the July 25th ballot.

    Before we launch ourselves headlong into state politics, let's get caught up on a city issue that we've been following for over half a year: the Citizen's Commission's recommendations for changing the City Charter.

    Back on June 9, the Citizens' Commission on City Government wrapped up its work and issued its final report. This was the panel which was established last December by then-Mayor Bill LaFortune just as an initiative petition seeking to replace three City Council districts with three at-large supercouncilor seats stalled for lack of popular support and was shelved.

    It appeared to many opponents of at-large supercouncilors that this commission was another means to push the measure through: Get the idea endorsed by a blue-ribbon panel so as to pressure the Council to put the idea on the ballot.

    It didn't turn out that way. The commission's final report makes it clear that most of its members oppose any change to the structure of the City Council. A few supported the idea of adding at-large or super-district seats to the Council, without reducing the existing number of districts. (At the meeting I attended, the only commissioners to express support for the idea were Realtor Joe McGraw and attorney Steve Schuller. Schuller replaced at-large Council advocate Howard Barnett when he stepped aside to begin his run for State Treasurer.)

    The report cited three reasons for keeping the Council structure as it is: the numerical reality that at-large seats would dilute district representation; the "racial divides that still afflict" Tulsa (which was a major reason for moving to district representation in 1989); and the sense that the division that provided a rationale for at-large councilors wasn't really a structural problem, but a function of the people in office at the time.

    In this Sunday's edition of the monopoly daily paper, Ken Neal, a vocal opponent of any degree of popular sovereignty and a leader in the call for at-large councilors, did his best to spin the report his way, claiming that the commission "put aside the contentious question of district versus at-large councilors," when in fact they dealt with it quite decisively.

    You can read the report for yourself and draw your own conclusions - there's a copy posted at tulsansdefendingdemocracy.com.

    The commission did recommend three charter changes: non-partisan elections, making the city auditor an appointive office, and moving elections to November in odd-numbered years.

    Changing the election date, something proposed in this space last December, seems to be the most broadly supported and simplest change, one that would be worth putting on the ballot at the earliest opportunity, perhaps this November.

    The move would give new elected officials nearly half a year to find their way around City Hall before the budget cycle begins. Under the current calendar, a draft budget is due within weeks of the inauguration. Had there been a longer lead time this year, it would have given Councilor John Eagleton, who ran on a platform of fiscal conservatism, more time to build support for keeping the growth of the city budget within the rate of inflation. Under the pressure of time, most councilors felt the need to swallow whatever was proposed.

    Fall elections would also mean better weather and more daylight hours for face-to-face, door-to-door campaigning, and avoiding the Christmas and New Year's holidays.

    The Council that sends this to the voters will have to sacrifice three months of their term, which would likely end in January instead of April. That might be the only thing that might prevent this proposal from moving forward right away.

    The matter of non-partisan elections will take longer to sort out. The commission recommended the change, calling party politics a distraction and an impediment to unity, but they couldn't reach a consensus on how to implement the change, and there were even a few dissenters who prefer no change at all.

    It was noted that a few members "embraced" my proposal for "multi-partisan" elections, outlined here in the April 5 edition, which would leave party labels in place, encourage the formation of locally-focused political groups, and make a candidate's local affiliations evident to the voter on the ballot. However much we desire unity, there will be factions - it's a function of human nature - and our system should acknowledge and accommodate that reality.

    The strongest recommendation was to have the City Auditor appointed by and accountable to an audit committee whose five members would be appointed by the Mayor and confirmed by the City Council.
    The report claims, "No longer subjecting the auditor to periodic elections, the task force believes, would safeguard the independence and integrity of the audit office." Quite the opposite: An elected auditor is accountable only to the voters, while an appointed auditor would be dependent on the goodwill of people handpicked by the Mayor, the head of the executive branch of government, the principal object of the auditor's investigations.

    Overall, the report was thoughtful, deliberate, and didn't overreach. On two issues, civil service reform and city/county consolidation, the commission felt it was "ill-equipped to make major recommendations." Where there were conflicting views on a recommendation, the report makes that plain.

    Why did things turn out so well, contrary to the expectations and fears of many? The members of the commission heard and heeded those concerns, and worked diligently to allay them.

    While most commissioners didn't come in with years of city government dealings to shape their understanding of the issue, they weren't about to be led by the nose. It was apparent that most of these busy leaders were doing their own study and research, seeking out different perspectives, filling in the gaps in their own knowledge of Tulsa's governmental history and alternative ways to organize City Hall.

    They sought out different perspectives for presentation at commission meetings.

    It didn't hurt that, under re-election pressure, LaFortune nominated members of Tulsans Defending Democracy, the at-large opposition group, to the commission. One of those commissioners, Jane Malone, gave powerful personal testimony of the impact that diluting district representation would have on racial equality in Tulsa.

    There was one significant shortcoming in the process: The commission's meetings were all held during normal working hours, making it difficult for citizens with full-time jobs to attend and participate during opportunities for public comment.

    Co-chairmen Ken Levit and Hans Helmerich did a fine job of running the meetings and focusing the issues. Their innate intellectual honesty and appreciation of the gravity of the task deserves a good deal of credit for the positive outcome of the commission's work.

    Congratulations to them and the commission members for a job well done.

    Elsewhere at City Hall:

    Last week we wrote about the controversy over Mayor Taylor's appointment of Jim Beach to the Board of Adjustment. The groundswell of opposition to the appointment from neighborhood leaders expressed itself in a letter to the City Council and the Mayor, calling on the Mayor to withdraw the appointment.

    Beach's appointment was scheduled for a vote at last Thursday's City Council meeting, but Mayor Taylor, apparently aware that she lacked the five votes needed for approval, asked the Council for a delay.
    The letter, sent by a bipartisan group of neighborhood association leaders and community activists, refers to Beach as an "insider in an insider's game." In addition to the concerns about conflict of interest on specific cases where Beach's employer, Sack and Associates, is a part of the development team, the letter mentions the possibility that Beach may have an inherent conflict of interest under the Oklahoma Constitution on every case, because his employer is a contractor to the City.

    The letter urges the Council to research the conflict issues thoroughly before considering Beach's appointment, rather than dealing with them after Beach has been confirmed.

    The neighborhood leaders aren't likely to back down. It will be interesting to see whether Taylor insists on pushing ahead, no matter how fierce the opposition.

    Beach-ed appointment

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    This week's column in UTW is about Mayor Kathy Taylor's first batch of appointments to city authorities, boards, and commissions (ABCs), particularly the appointment of Jim Beach to the Board of Adjustment, a move that has drawn opposition from neighborhood leaders and may provoke the end of Taylor's honeymoon. Taylor's appointment of Steve Berlin, a Great Plains Airlines board member, to the TARE board is also controversial.

    Yesterday, long after I filed the story, I got word that the Taylor administration had pulled Beach's appointment off of this Thursday's Council agenda, and in fact it is missing from the online agenda, while the other appointments are still present.

    Someone has said that any appointment to the Board of Adjustment is bound to be controversial, and that's true. You're almost certain to upset either the development lobby or the homeowners' groups. You have to choose which group you want to please and which group you want to anger, and Kathy Taylor has chosen to please the development lobby and anger neighborhood leaders with her first pick. That says a lot about the direction of her administration.

    Also in this week's issue is Ginger Shepherd's story about the planned cleanup of Tent City, an unauthorized campground for the homeless between the north bank of the Arkansas River and the levee, west of downtown.

    Shepherd also has a story about former Councilor and mayoral candidate Chris Medlock and his campaign for State House District 69.

    An edited version of this piece was published in the May 24, 2006, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The archived version is no longer online. Posted on the web July 3, 2010.

    Flunking the Yellow Pages Test

    By Michael D. Bates

    When he was Mayor of Indianapolis, Stephen Goldsmith had a simple test for whether city government ought to be performing a service or whether it should be left to the private sector:

    "Look at the city's yellow pages. If the phone book lists three companies that provide a certain service, the city probably should not be in that business, at least not exclusively."

    Using the Yellow Pages Test, Goldsmith cut hundreds of millions in city expenses, money that was then spent on city improvements. City government focused on the tasks that only it could provide. Dozens of functions were completely turned over to the private sector or contracted out. In order to keep a task in-house, a city department had to compete successfully on cost and quality with private providers.

    Goldsmith's example is more often applauded than followed. Oklahoma politicians have been all too anxious to get into businesses like entertainment, resorts, and commercial aviation, providing public funds to help private enterprises that are in competition with other private businesses.

    These interventions are always justified as essential to the public good, but instead they always seem to drain money away from the basic functions of government.

    On Sunday, May 14, the Oklahoman reported that the $27 million in transferable state tax credits used to finance Great Plains Airlines was coming out of fuel taxes, money that would otherwise go to replace

    Oklahoma's roads and bridges. Rather than fund the rehabilitation of 90 bridges or the resurfacing of 135 miles of highway, Oklahomans are paying for a failed airline that never got close to its stated purpose of providing air service between Oklahoma and the coasts.

    (Don't go looking for that story in the Tulsa World, whose parent company was a major investor in the failed airline.)

    With that lesson on the front page of the state's biggest paper, you'd think it would deter the Legislature from making the same mistake again.

    Instead, there's a push to approve $30 million in state tax credits for redevelopment of Grand Lake's Shangri-La resort. Earlier this session, a bill containing the credits stalled in the House, but they may be inserted into the massive budget and tax cut bill.

    There's no question that Shangri-La is not much of an attraction any more. My wife and I spent our fifth anniversary there 12 years ago and were so bored with the place we left early to visit Buffalo Ranch and the Precious Moments Chapel.

    Backers of the plan claim we need a revived Shangri-La to compete with convention centers and resorts in other states. It seems more likely that it would compete for convention business with city-owned convention centers in Oklahoma City and Tulsa and with tribal and privately-owned facilities like the Cherokee Resort in Catoosa and Tulsa's Renaissance Hotel.

    Left to its own devices, the free market would be unlikely to pick the southern end of Monkey Island for a major resort. Shangri-La is nearly as inaccessible as its literary namesake. It's over 80 miles away from the nearest commercial airport, and there's only one two-lane highway leading to it.

    By now, GOP leadership in the House should have poured cold water on the plan, but they have remained silent. Perhaps they're concerned about protecting the bill's sponsor, Doug Cox, a freshman representative from Grove serving a traditionally Democratic district.

    House Republicans should be more concerned about protecting a reputation for common sense and integrity. That will do more in the long run for maintaining their majority and building popular support for their platform than meddling in an area that should be left to the private sector.

    Closer to home, there was much ado last week about the city's meddling in the competition for local entertainment dollars.

    Last Thursday night, the City Council authorized payments to the Tulsa Oilers hockey team, the Tulsa Talons arena football team, and the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA).

    Former Mayor Bill LaFortune changed the formula for splitting concession revenues with the Oilers and Talons. As a result, each team will receive more money back in concession revenues than they paid in rent, about $20,000 more for the Talons and $50,000 more for the Oilers.

    The PRCA and Professional Bull Riders (PBR) are each getting a $50,000 sponsorship payment from the city.

    During Thursday's Council meeting, Council Chairman "Landslide" Bill Martinson called the payments corporate welfare and said they were offensive. That's ironic: The same Bill Martinson now fretting about $100,000 was just a few months ago pushing to have the city bail out Bank of Oklahoma to the tune of $7.5 million for the bad loan it made to Great Plains Airlines, a loan for which the city has no liability.

    The Tulsa World's Friday front-page graphic painted a distorted picture of the payments to the teams by omitting the money the city received in concession revenues from the events. Between rent and concessions, the city made $187,952 from Oilers' games and $63,409 from Talons' games. That's after paying the teams their share of concession cash.

    The real question, one the monopoly daily paper doesn't want to address, is whether the city makes enough money from these events to cover the expense of operating the facility. Conventions and major concerts might bring in a significant number of out-of-town visitors, so that theoretically, the increased sales tax revenue from those visitors would offset any operating loss.

    But the Talons and Oilers draw mainly from the local area, so the revenues need to be enough by themselves to cover the expenses. Otherwise, we'd be better off keeping the place closed.

    LaFortune was quoted in the World as defending the deals on the grounds of quality of life: "Professional teams in our city are absolutely critical to our city's economic well-being."

    Minor league sports are really just one entertainment option among many in this city, competing with night clubs, restaurants, and movie theaters for the disposable income of Tulsa residents. There's no more justification for subsidizing them than there would be for a city-funded Western Swing band. (Actually, the latter would be far more likely to bring in outside tourist dollars.)

    There's something else ironic about Martinson's fussing about corporate welfare. The amounts in question are three orders of magnitude smaller than what we're spending on the new arena - around 100 grand compared to $200 million. Talk about straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel!

    Ordinarily, a private business has to pay for a place to conduct business. You might buy or lease an existing building, or you might build something new, but the cost of a place is part of the cost of doing business. If you're leasing, your rent is paying for the landlord's cost of building and maintaining the place.

    But in all the financial projections for the new arena, the cost of construction is left out of the picture. If we exceed all reasonable expectations, we may cover the costs of operation, but there's no expectation that taxpayers should recover the funds we spent to build a place for sports teams and musical acts to make money. If anything is corporate welfare, that surely is.

    Taxpayers don't build movie theaters or dance halls, and there's no reason we should be funding a location for entertainment options that compete with those private businesses.

    The charter review commission that Bill LaFortune put in place last December following the failure of Tulsans for Better Government's supercouncilor initiative petition is nearing its scheduled conclusion. I spoke at last Friday's meeting at the invitation of Co-Chairman Ken Levit. This week's Urban Tulsa Weekly has my report on the meeting and the kind of recommendations the Citizens' Commission on City Government is likely to make. (For a complete picture, don't miss Bobby's entry at Tulsa Topics, which contains audio of my presentation and TU Professor Gary Allison's remarks.)

    My column also includes an update on SB 1324, the bill that would interfere with local government control of Board of Adjustment appeals and enforcement of design rules in historic preservation and neighborhood conservation districts.

    (By the way, on Wednesday the State Senate officially rejected House amendments to SB 1324 and requested a conference committee. Conferees have yet to be named.)

    This issue also includes a Ginger Shepherd profile of new District 7 Councilor John Eagleton. (Previous issues featured District 2 Councilor Rick Westcott and District 4 Councilor Maria Barnes.)

    Eagleton tells how he came up with the idea that would use a south Tulsa toll bridge and a nearby TIF district to fund improvements to the roads leading to the bridge and to cover the shortfall in the BOk Center arena, while giving BOk the financing for the bridge in exchange for dropping their lawsuit for the $7.5 million owed by Great Plains Airlines and guaranteed by the Tulsa Airport Improvements Trust:

    He said he came up with the idea while sitting in a Creek County Court for a docket call. The docket that day was six to seven pages long, and he was bored while he waited to be called. He counted the ceiling tiles, his mind was wondering and then he "was hit like a bolt of lighting" with the idea.

    Whatever the merits of Eagleton's idea, that's certainly a more constructive and acceptable way to beat boredom in a Creek County courtroom than other methods that have made the news.

    This issue also includes coverage of Mayfest (also here), a continuation of the summer events guide, and a ballot for the 2006 Absolute Best of Tulsa awards.

    UPDATED on October 26, 2017, to replace dead links with Internet Archive Wayback Machine links and to add direct links to audio of my remarks and Gary Allison's remarks. Here is audio of a comment by Greg Jennings with further comments from me about giving the voters a meaningful choice, the possibility of party endorsements, the 1991 Louisiana election, and the reality of local factions that don't line up with national parties. Here is a direct link to former Councilor Chris Medlock's remarks. And here is a direct link to the Urban Tulsa Weekly 2006 Absolute Best of Tulsa paper ballot. A tip of the hat to Bobby Holt for recording the hearing, posting the audio files, and doing so in such a way that the Internet Archive could grab them.

    An edited version of this column appeared in the May 17, 2006, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is no longer available online. Here's my blog entry linking to the article. Posted online October 26, 2017.

    Charter change commission winding down

    The blue-ribbon panel assembled to consider radical changes to Tulsa's form of government is winding down its work and appears ready instead to make a set of more modest but constructive recommendations.

    Last Friday, May 12, I spoke at the invitation of the Citizens' Commission on City Government about my idea of multi-partisan elections (described in my April 6 column) and the related concept of instant runoff voting (described in my March 9 column).

    I have been skeptical of this commission, which was established by Mayor Bill LaFortune last December after the petition drive in support of at-large councilors failed to gain traction. LaFortune handpicked the commission members and set the ground rules without consulting with his fellow elected officials. It seemed to be another means to advance the notion of at-large councilors.

    That notion, you'll be pleased to know, is all but dead. In a straw poll taken at the end of the meeting, only two commissioners, realtor Joe McGraw and zoning attorney Stephen Schuller, supported any form of at-large membership on the Council.

    McGraw said that he wants someone on the Council representing all of Tulsa, not just special interests. Reuben Gant, head of the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce, replied that no one will have the best interests of all Tulsa at heart. Victory Christian Center pastor Sharon Daugherty pointed out that Mayor is there to represent the whole city.

    Commission co-chairman Ken Levit said that a move to a mixed district and at-large Council might have been workable when the current City Charter was written, but having gone to a district-only Council, any addition of at-large members would be "wrenching" and would dilute the "representativeness" of the Council.

    Nor is there any sentiment for switching to Oklahoma City's form of government, where the Mayor is just an at-large member of the Council and the city would be run by a professional manager. Chris Medlock's view seems to have prevailed: The problem wasn't with the organizational chart, and if we want someone with city manager credentials to oversee city operations, the Mayor has the power to make that happen.

    One of the commissioners raised the idea of giving the Mayor a vote on the City Council, so that someone with a whole-city perspective would have a voice in their decisions, but it didn't gain any support. Anyway, doesn't the Mayor have more power to represent the interests of the whole city with a veto over the Council's decisions than with one voice and vote out of 10 as a Council member?

    The commission's thinking hasn't gelled on the issue of partisanship in city elections, beyond a general agreement that something needs to change.

    Some commissioners seem to like the idea of a blanket primary, with all candidates on the ballot, labeled by party. National party labels may not tell the whole story, but, as Daugherty said, they give some insight to the voter.

    Others, like Gant, say there's no room for partisan politics in local government.

    Commission member Sandra Alexander spoke of her frustration as a Republican living in heavily Democratic Council District 1. She said that in five of the eight elections under the 1989 City Charter, she has not had a say in who would become her city councilor because the race was decided in the Democratic primary.

    Someone proposed that we keep the current system, but if all the candidates who file are from one party, move the contest to the general election and let everyone vote. But that doesn't solve the problem for Alexander. What if, as often happens, all the viable candidates are from one party and someone from the other party files on a whim? In that situation, the real contest would still take place in the primary, and voters from the other party would still be left out.

    I presented my multi-partisan solution - all candidates on the same ballot, each bearing a ballot label indicating endorsement by party or local PACs, and using Instant Runoff Voting to ensure that the winner is the candidate backed by the majority of voters - at the beginning of the meeting, long before the commission's discussion took place.

    The more I listened to their concerns, the more convinced I was that the multi-partisan, instant-runoff approach solves all the problems they're trying to solve. I hope they'll give it a closer look.

    There are three other issues that are likely to appear in the Commission's final report: whether the City Auditor should be appointed, civil service management, and the election calendar.

    This last issue, which I raised in this space last week, came up during a meeting between Levit, his fellow co-chairman Hans Helmerich, and Mayor Kathy Taylor. Taylor had less than a month after her swearing-in to submit a budget to the Council. Because the budget cycle can't move, moving the election cycle would be the only way to relieve the pressure on newly-elected officials.

    Former Councilor Chris Medlock spoke in support of elections in the fall of odd-numbered years. A fall election would provide better weather and longer daylight hours for door-to-door campaigning and might boost turnout, because the election would come at a time of year when people are accustomed to vote. Levit thought this might offset the drop in turnout likely with non-partisan elections.

    The entire commission will meet with Taylor in the near future, then will meet in executive session to draft a final report, with an aim to finish work as planned in June.

    SB 1324 in conference committee

    An update on the zoning legislation we've been following:

    Last Tuesday, May 9, I spoke to State Sen. Brian Crain, the author of SB 1324 (see last issue), the bill that would restrict the freedom of municipal governments with regard to Board of Adjustment appeals and enforcement of design guidelines (the sort found in historic preservation districts and neighborhood conservation districts).

    Crain told me that the bill was headed to conference committee. (As of Friday, there was no reference to the bill going to conference or any conferees being named in either the House or Senate journal.) Crain said that the companion bill, HB 2559, was dead.

    The Mid-City Advocate, a weekly serving central Oklahoma City, an area with many historic preservation and neighborhood conservation districts, featured the two bills on their front page. The paper gave Crain's rationale for SB 1324:

    "What we're concerned about is providing flexibility to cities and towns with zoning codes. What we have now is an inability to redevelop some existing areas because the zoning codes are so inflexible. They don't allow city councils to make any variances. So the first part of the bill allows communities more flexibility in zoning, and the second part just clarifies that if you have to appeal from the board of adjustment, you go to district court."

    Crain's explanation is at odds with the actual language of SB 1324, which appears to take enforcement of design guidelines away from design review committees, such as the Tulsa Preservation Commission, whose decisions can be appealed to the City Council, and to give that power to the Board of Adjustment, whose decisions could only be appealed to District Court, under the other provisions of Crain's bill.

    Given Crain's rationale, one might think that elected officials from cities across Oklahoma were begging for this bill. I asked Crain if he had sought input from any members of Tulsa's City Council about his bill. He told me that he had not.

    If you don't live in a historic preservation district, you may not feel threatened by this bill, but it sets a dangerous precedent. Someday the legislature may decide to nullify a part of the zoning code you depend upon to protect your property value. Do you really want legislators from Bugtussle and Slapout to decide Tulsa's zoning policies, or do you want decisions about local policy to be made locally?

    Call the State Capitol and let your state senator and state representative know what you think about this bill.

    This week's column covers three topics: (1) An update on the status of HB 2559 and SB 1324, the bills in the Oklahoma legislature which would dictate local zoning and land use policy from Oklahoma City; (2) Mayor Taylor's hiring of former City Councilor Susan Neal; (3) the topics under serious consideration by the Citizens' Commission on City Government, including non-partisan city elections.

    Since the story was filed, I've learned that HB 2559 is dead, but SB 1324 has gone to conference committee and is still very much alive. I spoke yesterday to State Sen. Brian Crain, the Senate author of the bill, who believes that the provision requiring Board of Adjustment appeals to go directly to District Court is merely a clarification of existing law. He directed me to 11 O. S. 44-110. I mentioned that Tulsa's City Attorney office had said that Tulsa could change its zoning ordinance to allow certain BoA decisions to be appealed to the City Council, and that such a change was discussed by the previous City Council.

    The other part of the bill amends 11 O. S. 44-104, and it appears to put design guidelines (such as those in use in historic preservation and neighborhood conservation districts) in the control of the Board of Adjustment, rather than special design review boards:

    [The Board of Adjustment shall have power to] Hear and decide proposals for accessory elements associated with an allowed building use, where appropriate general performance and design standards have been established which promote greater economic value and provide a harmonious relationship with adjoining land uses by ordinance or by administrative rule or regulation. Such proposals and performance or design standards may include, but are not limited to, such accessory elements as sound, building material, runoff, lighting, visual screening, landscaping and vehicular considerations;

    I understood Crain to say that that language was intended to give cities the flexibility to enable infill development, and that it was crafted with the help of INCOG staff. Crain said he was open to suggestions for clearer language.

    While I am sure of Sen. Crain's good intentions, I don't see an urgent need for either provision. Unless cities are complaining that they are unable under present law to add flexibility to the zoning code, leave well enough alone. While Tulsa does need infill development, local government is best suited to design rules that will balance competing concerns and ensure that the investments of homeowners and developers alike are respected.

    Your calls to state representatives and state senators are still needed to stop this bill, which I believe would set a precedent for further legislative interference in local zoning.

    On the matter of the City Charter, I'll be speaking Friday afternoon at the invitation of the Citizens' Commission, mainly to address the issue of partisanship. Here's my column on the idea of multi-partisan elections, an alternative to the non-partisan concept. I hope also to get in a plug for Instant Runoff Voting, which we need already, but we'll need it more if we move toward any system in which primaries are eliminated.

    An edited version of this piece was published on May 10, 2006, in Urban Tulsa Weekly. The archived version is no longer online. Posted on the web, with hyperlinks to related articles, on August 18, 2010.

    We're now a month past the city election, and it's time to follow up on a few stories that we've been watching.

    * * *

    First, let's look to the State Legislature, where Tulsa's development lobby has taken its battle to regain total control of zoning and land use planning. HB 2559 has been sent to conference committee. The bill, sponsored by three Tulsa legislators (State Reps. Ron Peters and Jeannie McDaniel, and State Sen. Brian Crain), would interfere with local control of the zoning process, requiring appeals to Board of Adjustment (BoA) decisions to go directly to District Court and making it easier to remove lots from historic preservation districts (and ensuring the eventual erosion of these districts to non-existence).

    The companion Senate bill, SB 1324, is awaiting the Senate's consideration of House amendments, but it appears to be on hold while HB 2559 is in conference. SB 1324 includes a section that would give the BoA oversight of design guidelines, which would affect historic preservation districts and Oklahoma City's neighborhood conservation districts. Combined with the BoA appeal requirement, it would make it tougher to enforce these zoning provisions which aim to preserve the character of a neighborhood. It's likely that this provision will be included in the conference negotiations over HB 2559.

    Legislators have gotten an earful about these bills from neighborhood association leaders and historic preservation activists over the last two weeks. We'll see if the voice of the people is enough to overcome the loud voice of campaign contributions from builders' PACs and individual developers. One encouraging sign: State Sen. Randy Brogdon, a former Mayor of Owasso, and one of the most principled members of the State Legislature, has come out in opposition to the bill.

    The local monopoly daily weighed in with an editorial on the bill, predictably siding against local control of land use decisions. The editorial set forth a false alternative: Do you want zoning decisions made by professionals or by politicians?

    In fact, the BoA is not made up of professionals. It consists of five private citizens, nominated to the board by the Mayor for three-year terms and confirmed by the City Council.

    And although much of what the Board does is cut-and-dried, there is a strong subjective element to the approval of special exceptions, where the Board's role is more legislative, rather than "quasi-judicial." Neighborhood compatibility is involved in special exceptions, and it would be reasonable to provide a level of review that doesn't require the expense of hiring an attorney.

    Whatever the merits of changing the BoA appeals process or changing historic preservation rules, the issue should be debated and decided locally - a point the World's editorial avoids. The bottom line is that the World and the development lobby don't want land-use decisions made by a body that they don't control.
    Keep calling the State Capitol. Our legislators need to get the message - keep local issues under local control.

    * * *

    Mayor Kathy Taylor is being lauded for reaching across partisan lines to hire former City Councilor Susan Neal, a Republican, to serve on her staff as a legislative and education liaison. Neal and former Council colleague Tom Baker were Taylor's first two permanent hires.

    The reality is that, when it comes to local political factions, Neal's hiring doesn't cross any ideological boundaries at all. Neal is very much a part of the Midtown Money Belt faction that crosses national party lines and includes Taylor, Baker, and former Mayor Susan Savage. She and Baker were the Tulsa World editorial board's favorite councilors. The pair was nicknamed Bakerneal by their colleagues for voting in lockstep.

    Although she worked for a Republican congressman a decade and a half ago, Neal is considered a RINO (Republican In Name Only) by most local activists. As a councilor, she would show up at the annual Tulsa County Republican Convention just long enough to wave when the elected officials were introduced.

    I'm only aware of one occasion where Neal took a discernibly Republican position on an issue: She voted twice against allowing more city employees to unionize. Then again, that's a position many Money Belt Democrats share, including Mayor Taylor and former Mayor Savage.

    Her appointment as a legislative liaison is ironic. In choosing a liaison, you want someone who has the respect of those you're going to be lobbying.

    Neal's ties to Tulsa's mostly-Republican legislative delegation are rather tenuous. When Republican elected officials gathered in late 2004 to announce their opposition to the recall of two Republican city councilors, Neal was nowhere in sight. Of the local delegation, she's known to have a good rapport with only Ron Peters and Jeannie McDaniel, both of whom sponsored the aforementioned HB 2559, working to keep a reform-minded City Council from exercising local control over zoning.

    Neal isn't Taylor's worst choice for a liaison to the City Council - that would have been Baker - but she comes close. She wasn't highly regarded by the reformers on the Council, a perspective that now holds a solid majority on that body. During Council debates, Neal would try her colleagues' patience with her lengthy soliloquies on the agony of decision-making, complete with sighs and anguished facial expressions. Her wilderness wanderings invariably led her to whatever position the Tulsa World editorial board favored.

    I received a good deal of flack for endorsing Bill LaFortune against Taylor in the general, after working for his defeat in the Republican primary. I was accused (ironically, by someone married to a member of Taylor's campaign staff and transition team) of selling out for a chance at an unpaid appointment to the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission (TMAPC); others said I was acting out of pure Republican partisanship.

    I wrote at the time that a chastened LaFortune was Tulsa's best chance for City Hall reform. The primary result opened LaFortune's eyes. The voices he had dismissed as a fringe group turned out to represent a broad, bipartisan, and geographically diverse coalition that prevailed in most of the contested council seats and, if it hadn't been for Randi Miller's spoiler role, would have taken him out in the primary.

    Taylor obviously hasn't had that wake-up call yet. Taylor's choice of Baker and Neal confirms my suspicion that she will do nothing to challenge the City Hall status quo. If you were a Medlock or McCorkell voter, if you're from north, east, or west Tulsa, she won't be listening to you. She appears to be encasing herself in a Money Belt bubble, where she can remain uncontaminated by the concerns and opinions of the rest of Tulsa.

    I'd be happy to be proven wrong. Taylor's appointments to expired terms on the TMAPC, the BoA, and Tulsa Airport Authority will be very telling.

    * * *

    Speaking of partisanship and city government, this Friday I will be speaking about non-partisan municipal elections to the Citizens' Commission on City Government, a body appointed by former Mayor LaFortune to study changing the City Charter. I'll be presenting the alternative of multi-partisan elections, which I described in this space back in April, and advocating for instant runoff voting, which I wrote about in March.

    The Commission is meeting at the TCC West Campus (a strange venue - it's not within Tulsa's City Limits) on Friday at 1:30pm.

    I've been hearing that the two recommendations most likely to emerge from the commission are non-partisan elections and appointment of the City Auditor. The commission has been told in no uncertain terms that the addition of any number of at-large or supercouncilor seats would provoke a Federal Voting Rights Act case because of the diluting effect such a move would have on minority representation. (Attorney Greg Bledsoe, representing the group opposing at-large councilors, set out the legal issues in great detail. You can read his testimony in detail at tulsansdefendingdemocracy.com.)

    Non-partisan elections would deprive voters of useful information in the voting booth. My alternative, spelled out in full in my April 6th column, would put all candidates on a single ballot, giving every voter a choice of every candidate. But rather than concealing the reality of factions and interest groups by stripping the ballot of any partisan labels, my idea would allow both national party labels and the names of locally-based political action committees to appear on the ballot, so that voters would know how the candidates line up on local issues.

    Instead of pretending that these divisions don't exist, let's make them apparent.

    One issue the commission should examine, but hasn't: Moving city elections to the fall of odd-numbered years. It would give candidates more daylight hours and better campaigning weather, and it would give new officials a full six months to find their way around City Hall before the next budget cycle begins.

    The City Auditor's post has worked well for decades as an elected post. If it must be changed to an appointed position, let the Council make the appointment, not the Mayor. Above all, the Auditor should act as a check and a watchdog over the executive branch of government, which the Mayor heads. Many Tulsans were uneasy enough with the idea of a mayoral staffer running for City Auditor this year; imagine if Bill LaFortune had been able to appoint Michael Willis directly to the post.

    The commission will wrap up work and issue their recommendations in June. I doubt the new Council will do anything with them right away, given the other issues on their plate. At the earliest, the commission's ideas may be given a hearing as part of the usual charter review cycle which will begin in the summer of 2007.

    Third-penny roundup

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    Tomorrow Tulsa votes on a new one-percent sales tax, a tax that will stay in effect until it raises nearly half a billion dollars. I'll be on KFAQ, starting at 6:40 (a bit later than normal) for my usual Tuesday slot, then joining a panel discussion about the tax after the 7am news.

    Here's a link to a 19-page PDF with the official ordinance containing the approved lists of projects.

    I haven't had much to say about this one. My preferred solution -- 18 month extension to finish unfunded 2001 sales tax projects -- was passed over by a rush of deal-making by the last council. There are plenty of needed projects, but there's a lot that doesn't seem worthy of the third-penny, which was originally envisioned as a tax devoted to long-term capital improvements -- not computer equipment, not "rolling stock" (e.g., police cars), but things with a life span of 20 years or better.

    If it failed, it wouldn't be the end of the world. The new mayor and council could put together a new package focused more on necessities, less on frills. It would mean a couple of months with a lower sales tax rate, rather than a seamless continuation of the same rate.

    In the course of putting together my own roundup, I came across Steve Roemerman's comprehensive aggregation of third-penny sales tax stories, which he started collecting back in September.

    Here's what other Tulsa bloggers are saying about the issue. I won't duplicate Steve's excellent effort, but I will pull out a few quotes of note.

    Mad Okie says send it back to the drawing board:

    If this proposal was about infrastructure and roads I wouldnt even be typing this, but its about repairing pools we cant afford to fill, improving roads & parking for an arena we cant afford to build, its for repairing a roof on a convention center that Vision 2025 is supposed to fix.

    Voting this penny down will not destroy Tulsa, but it will show that you are not a sheep willing to be herded around by your city masters.

    Bobby Holt
    has a problem with the priorities, not with the penny:

    I'm not against the 3rd Penny Sales Tax. My problem is the priorities that management, our elected officials, set. Every capital project can be categorized as either "needs" or "wants" and the current capital project listing for this 3rd penny is full of both. Basic needs of a city, public safety, roads, water, and sewer should take the largest chunk out of this tax. If not, our elected officials have their priorities askew.... So once again Tulsans have what appears to be a quickly thrown together package with a hefty list of "wants" attached to it.

    Red Bug of Tulsa Chiggers writes:

    Somehow over the decades this penny has been hijacked in usual fashion by those not so concerned with our crumbling infrastructure, but for a hodgepodge of porcine projects.

    Our streets are a disgrace. Anyone with any reasoning knows that we need a major emphasis on improving streets. Yet this third penny gives only a token amount to street projects. My problem is not with the third penny so much as the priority of projects and what the projects themselves represent.

    If, by some miracle, this tax is defeated, it only means we are telling politicans we don't like this plan, roll up your sleeves and give us another practical choice.

    Dan Paden wonders how we afforded streets and police and fire protection and water service thirty-some years ago on a sales tax rate half of today's:

    Oh, I remember the bad old days, back when I was a kid. Sales tax was only about four and a half cents on the dollar. Of course, we had no police, no fire department. No streets. No safety and no security. No city-county health department.

    What? You don't believe that? But if we had all that, back then, at about four cents on the dollar less than we are paying now, what's all the extra money been for?

    Buying votes, of course. If you're as sick of it as I am, then I encourage you to vote no on the Third Penny as well.

    MeeCiteeWurkor hints at his preference.

    Dave Schuttler reminds us that we still have a choice.

    Regarding the second item on the ballot, which would add temporary hangars for the American Airlines maintenance base, Bobby has a link to a Daily Oklahoman article about an aerospace analyst who calls attention to the changing aircraft maintenance business and the risks of cities investing in that industry:

    American Airlines is the only domestic airline that continues to do its own aircraft maintenance and is expanding operations to take on the work of other airlines. In the last few years, several U.S. airlines have been liquidated or filed for bankruptcy. Other airlines have continued to send their maintenance and repair work to outside contractors in the United States and around the world.

    "This is a high-risk business," said William Alderman, president of Alderman & Co., a Connecticut-based aerospace and defense investment banking company. "Projects like this where state and local governments have invested money have been a complete disaster."

    Alderman pointed to the United Airlines maintenance center in Indianapolis, where the state invested millions to get the center, only to have it shut down leaving workers without jobs. Oklahoma City was among the cities competing for the airline's maintenance facility in 1991. Losing the bid for the facility caused city leaders to put together the MAPS sales tax program.

    I am worn out -- I've been up since 5 a.m. and going without a stop -- so I don't have much to say, but my fellow Tulsa bloggers do:

    Several bloggers responded at length to Ken Neal's Sunday column in the Tulsa Whirled, which called for raising taxes to cover the cost overruns of the BOk Center:

    And the BOk Center made the cover of the latest Tulsa Inquiry.

    MeeCiteeWurkor has Mayor Kathy Taylor's e-mail to city employees about her proposed budget and a response from an anonymous city employee.

    MeeCiteeWurkor also has photos and a thoughtful entry about Monday's immigration protest at City Hall.

    Tulsa Topics' Bobby was at the City Hall event, too, and has photos, including a panoramic crowd shot.

    David Schuttler was at the anti-illegal-immigration rally at 21st and Garnett and has posted his mixed feelings about what he saw and some photos of the event.

    Mad Okie has a question about mass healing services:

    ...as someone said to me a long time ago, "If they really had the gift of healing why aren't they down at the hospitals using their gift instead of making a stageshow out of it?"

    Good discussion follows in the comments.

    In the "Photo Fun" corner, Mad Okie has some truth-in-advertising billboards and bus benches, and Chris Medlock features State Rep. Ron Peters on an SB 1324-themed DVD cover. Nice midriff, Ron.

    Red Bug at Tulsa Chiggers hosted a neighborhood crime awareness meeting in his home and writes about what he learned.

    I caught the tail end of the Homeowners for Fair Zoning meeting tonight, after my son's baseball game. Former City Councilor Jim Mautino is the new HFFZ president. Other past, present, and future Councilors there: former District 2 Councilor Chris Medlock, District 4 Councilor Maria Barnes, and possibly-future District 5 Councilor Jon Kirby.

    Kirby told me that Martinson has asked for a rehearing of the voter irregularity case, rather than signing off on the judge's order for a new election. Martinson, as the incumbent, will continue to serve until the revote is finally held. It may not happen until the July state primary date.

    Scary bypass

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    An edited version of this piece was published on April 26, 2006, in Urban Tulsa Weekly. The archived version is no longer online. Posted on the web on August 18, 2010.

    It appears that Tulsa's development lobby, discouraged by the results of the Tulsa City Council elections, has decided to take its fight to the next level. Three Tulsa legislators have sponsored a bill that would interfere with local control of Board of Adjustment (BoA) appeals.

    The bill, HB 2559, would require all appeals of Board of Adjustment decisions, whether variances or special exceptions, to go to District Court, with the attendant expenses of attorneys and court costs. The BoA can grant a variance to zoning ordinances if a hardship exists. The BoA can grant a special exception to allow certain uses that aren't allowed by right by the zoning of a piece of property.

    In the past, Councilor Roscoe Turner and then-Councilor Jim Mautino have argued that certain BoA decisions should be first appealed to the City Council. While the BoA acts as a quasi-judicial body in many cases, in special exception cases it has the discretion to consider subjective matters like neighborhood compatibility. A special exception can have the impact of a zoning change, and neighborhood advocates argue that the City Council should have the opportunity to review such decisions before the courts are involved.

    Under current law, Tulsa's City Council could modify our ordinances to tailor the BoA appeals process to balance the concerns of developers and neighboring property owners. HB 2559, sponsored by State Reps. Ron Peters and Jeannie McDaniel and Sen. Brian Crain, would take away this local discretion over the process and would dictate a one-size-fits-all solution for the entire state.

    HB 2559 passed the House on March 8 and passed the Senate on April 19. Because the House "struck the title," the bill must go back to the House for one more vote before it can go to the Governor's desk. All of Tulsa's state representatives and all but two of our state senators supported the measure. (Republican Senators Randy Brogdon and Scott Pruitt voted against.)

    An amendment to the bill that would have interfered with local control over historic preservation (HP) overlay zoning was also considered by the State Senate on April 19, but it failed by a 21-24 vote. Of Tulsa's senators, only Judy Eason-McEntyre voted yes.

    Five historic Tulsa neighborhoods (and the park around the Council Oak) have special protection under Tulsa's zoning code. Exterior modifications and new construction within an HP zoning district need a certificate of appropriateness from the Tulsa Preservation Commission (TPC) before proceeding, to ensure that the historic character of the neighborhood is maintained. Demolition permits can be delayed for up to 60 days.

    HP protection serves the same value-protecting purpose that deed restrictions serve in newer subdivisions. If you buy a home in an HP neighborhood, you can invest in maintaining your home to historic standards with the assurance that your neighbors are subject to the same rules.

    But the protection is undermined if someone can easily buy a property in an HP-zoned neighborhood and have it removed from the district. The failed amendment to HB 2559 would have cut the TPC and the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission (TMAPC) completely out of the process of removing lots from an HP district.

    In contrast, the process of creating an HP district or expanding its boundaries requires a great deal of time, historical research, and public input. As a rule of thumb, HP districts need the support of 80% of property owners in the district to move forward through three separate levels of review. Removing a property from the district ought to require a similar high standard of review.

    Tulsa's development lobby is used to getting its way 100%. Rather than sitting down with other Tulsans to develop a land-use system that will serve the needs of everyone, they have tried and failed to recall two councilors from office, tried and failed to dismember three City Council districts and replace them with citywide supercouncilor seats, and tried and failed to pack the Council with people they can control. In a move akin to plugging your ears with your fingers and singing "The Star-Spangled Banner," they excluded then-Councilor Chris Medlock from their mayoral candidate forum.

    I was hopeful when I learned of the departure earlier this year of Josh Fowler from his post as the Home Builders Association of Greater Tulsa's executive director. I was hopeful that the development lobby had finally recognized that the pit bull tactics he epitomized were no longer working. I was hopeful that the developers were ready to take a more conciliatory approach to public policy. This legislative end-around shows that my hopes weren't well-founded.

    Frustrated by the fact that ordinary Tulsans are paying attention to City Hall, Tulsa's development lobby is now trying to dictate local land-use policy from Oklahoma City. Whatever the merits of BoA appeals or of moving parcels in and out of HP districts, those are local matters that should be settled locally.

    We need to let our state legislators know that HB 2559 is unacceptable. Homeowners and other property owners should object to local decisions being made a hundred miles away, where it's harder to keep an eye on things. Our City Council and municipal officials across the state ought to object loudly to this infringement on their prerogatives.

    In his 2000 campaign book, A Charge to Keep, George W. Bush wrote that he is a conservative because he believes that government closest to the people governs best. I expect to see my fellow Republicans at the State Capitol uphold this fundamental Republican principle, and I expect them to defeat HB 2559 when it comes back to the State House of Representatives for a final vote.

    In other City Hall news:

    Last Friday the latest round of bids on subcontracts for the construction of the BOk Center were opened.

    This was after a two-week delay to give bidders "more preparation time," according a report to the Tulsa World. Despite reassurances that all was well, there was good reason to assume that the delay was because of concerns that bids were coming in way over budget.

    As it turned out, the lowest bids on each item exceeded budget by $32 million, about a 50% overage. The total of all five bid packages, plus the cost of land acquisition, plus the amount paid for architectural, project management, and other professional services comes to just shy of $150 million. The remaining bid packages are budgeted at around $30 million, which would bring the total for the arena alone to $180 million.

    Remember that the Vision 2025 package allocated $183 million of that sales tax to pay for both the construction of an arena and improvements to the Convention Center, including the conversion of the existing arena into ballroom space. It looks like we won't have anything left to fix the facility that, we have been told again and again, is crucial to bringing outside dollars into the local economy.

    When Councilor Chris Medlock raised concerns last fall about money being shifted from the Convention Center to the arena, he was shouted down by the monopoly daily paper and even by members of the overview committee who are supposedly keeping an eye on project finances on behalf of us taxpayers.

    Back during the mayoral campaign, Democratic candidate Don McCorkell said he would stop work on the arena in order to get a handle on how much the facility would cost to complete and how much it would cost to operate and maintain. If the cost is going to exceed the budget by a wide margin, Tulsa's voters ought to decide whether or not it's worth proceeding. McCorkell's idea looks better all the time.

    The fact that we've already put tens of millions into the arena doesn't mean it makes sense to throw good money after bad. (See "sunk costs, fallacy of.")

    Meanwhile, County Commissioner Randi Miller, who had been mum about potential overages, not wanting to jeopardize renewal of the County's 4-to-Fix-Tax, now seems to be trying to recast herself as a taxpayer watchdog.

    Some of us can remember when she was asked by Republican leaders, back in 2003, to make the arena a separate item on the Vision 2025 ballot, to give the voters a clear opportunity to vote against the arena without having to vote against the higher education improvements that were tied with it.

    Miller stood by and did nothing at the time. She continued to go along to get along, voting with the other commissioners to sole-source the Vision 2025 financial contracts to favored vendors. After Vision 2025 was approved, when Medlock raised concerns about oversight and governance, Miller was silent.

    On the other hand, Miller was more than happy, back on March 20, to grant a Murphy Brothers a 10-year exclusive contract to operate the Tulsa State Fair midway, despite complaints about rising prices and declining quality of the Murphy Brothers operation. The midway contract was not put out for competitive bids. Miller's support for the sweetheart deal with Murphy Brothers came after her mayoral campaign received a $5,000 contribution from Loretta Murphy, wife of Murphy Brothers owner Jerry Murphy.

    Medlock, a genuine taxpayer watchdog, is continuing to keep an eye on arena expenditures at his blog, medblogged.blogspot.com.

    Inauguration day photos

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    Monday afternoon, I pulled my nine-year-old out of school early and we met my wife and the other two kids at Gilcrease Museum for the inauguration of the Mayor, City Auditor, and City Council of Tulsa. We were happy to be there to honor our friends on the Council who were newly elected and newly re-elected.

    Everyone was running a little late. Parking was a complete mess. I saw Alison Eagleton, the wife of one of the new councilors, and Councilor-elect Cason Carter pulling their cars out of a full parking lot and into an overflow lot just as the festivities were set to begin. Gilcrease hosted the event two years ago, but that wasn't a mayoral inauguration, so the crowd was a good deal smaller then. The last mayoral inauguration was held outdoors on the Williams Center Green.

    The room was packed to capacity. We said hello to Councilors Roscoe Turner and Jack Henderson and their wives as we walked past the VIP section. Jim East offered my wife his seat and my daughter took the empty seat next to it, while I took the baby and his big brother and found a place to stand near the back of the room. My holding a very cute baby meant that there were some smiles in my direction from people who normally wouldn't smile at me.

    We wound up standing just behind Ginger Shepherd, UTW's new city reporter, and just in front of Becky Darrow, from South Tulsa Citizens Coalition and Tulsans Defending Democracy. I noticed that the baby was much happier if I held him on my left shoulder where he could flirt with Becky.

    Since no one (maybe not even Kathy Taylor) really knows what a Kathy Taylor administration is going to look like, we are all like a bunch of Sovietologists trying to discern the inner workings of the Kremlin based on who is standing next to whom atop Lenin's Tomb during the May Day parade.

    The first clue of the day wasn't an encouraging one: Former KRMG morning host John Erling was the Master of Ceremonies. Erling was the radio mouthpiece of the Good Ol' Boy network, finally driven from his microphone last year by declining ratings.

    Taylor's speech? Nothing much specific. She talked about her administration representing the diversity of Tulsa. If she really means geographical and ideological diversity, that's great. If she means there's a place at the table for supporters of Chris Medlock and Don McCorkell and Bill LaFortune and even Ben Faulk, that's wonderful. If she plans to look beyond the Midtown Money Belt for appointments to authorities, boards, and commissions, I applaud her. I hope she didn't mean that she'll surround herself with people who think just like she does and justify it because they have a diversity of ethnic backgrounds or political party affiliations.

    My five-year-old daughter, who is on the petite side herself, complained after the ceremony that she still hadn't seen the new Mayor's face in person; she could only see the top of Taylor's head over the heads of the people in front of her.

    We stayed around for a long time after the ceremony, shaking hands and chatting. I took a few pictures of dignitaries, and I had my son take a few of me with some of the councilors, but I missed a few shots I wanted because my son was busy taking pictures out the Vista Room window of the Osage Hills in bloom. (If you're on the home page, click the "Continue reading" link to see the photos.)

    It's no surprise that the Tulsa Whirled continues to spin its revisionist web about the last two years at City Hall as a way to vindicate itself and to try to intimidate the incoming Council. With a little more free time on his hands, recently former City Councilor Chris Medlock does an able job of rebutting the Whirled's assertions with reality.

    Unable and unwilling to debate the Council reformers on issues, the Whirled and the entrenched special interests painted a portrait of lies, and through frequent repetition they got their readers to believe it. It's the same phenomenon I described in my Thursday, November 24, 2005, column:

    That sort of accusation by implication happens a lot at City Council meetings, but with reform-minded City Councilors as the target. The accusers are city officials who find themselves being asked polite, reasonable questions that they’d rather not answer. To deflect attention from the substantive issue at hand, they complain that they’re being bullied or browbeaten. The daily paper duly reports the baseless complaints, which gives their editorial board a chance to wheeze out a few paragraphs deploring the behavior that didn’t happen.

    I challenge anyone to point to one example of rudeness from those two men -- name the date and the occasion. I never saw it or anything approaching it.

    The Whirled editorial that Medlock rebuts is about Tulsa's water policy. It was the belief of a majority of the City Council that the City of Tulsa should reexamine its policy concerning water sales to the suburbs. Instead, the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority and Mayor Bill LaFortune rushed to commit the city to 40-year sweetheart deals that were not necessarily to Tulsa's advantage. At the same time, suburban developers financed a campaign to break the Council majority through the recall of the two councilors their polling told them were most vulnerable.

    Oklahoma City charges outside-the-city customers from 25% to 75% more than inside-the-city customers. Meanwhile, Tulsa sells water wholesale to outside customers at the same price city residents pay -- $1.98 per thousand gallons. Medlock and Mautino and the other councilors thought Tulsa ought to be smarter about how it handles water sales.

    Owasso is certainly smart -- they buy water from Tulsa at the same price Tulsans pay, then they mark it up and pocket the profits to pay for municipal services. Owasso's city manager, Rodney Ray, raised a ruckus because some wise Tulsa councilors were talking about doing something for Tulsa's benefit that might cut into his profits.

    Someone over on the TulsaNow Forum (currently broken due to Microsoft web server issues) wondered recently about using water revenues to make up Tulsa's likely budget shortfall. Chris Medlock and Jim Mautino wondered about that, too. For their trouble their reputations were trashed, and they and their families were put through a recall ordeal that lasted nearly a year. They've been falsely accused of being rude, mean, impolite -- all adjectives that better fit their accusers. To the TulsaNow forum poster who wondered about that, where the heck were you when these two forward-thinking councilors needed your support? And are you going to be there for the new city councilors when they get flack for thinking outside the box?

    As I mentioned earlier, the Whirled's aim with this editorial is partly vindication, partly to warn the incoming councilors not to cross them. This editorial was published for the same reason that King Edward Longshanks had William Wallace's head displayed on a pike on London Bridge -- pour encourager les autres. supplicedusieurfoulon.jpg

    There's a mythology surrounding councilors of the past who were savaged (and Savaged) by the political and media establishment. The myth says that those councilors somewhat deserved the trashing and bashing they received -- they pushed things too far or too fast, they didn't choose their battles carefully, they were inflexible, they were unwilling to compromise.

    A new councilor will be tempted to think, "If I'm just smart -- like they weren't -- I'll get positive things done for the City, I'll emerge without a scratch, and everybody will like me." Lady and gentlemen, if you do the job you were elected to do, if you faithfully seek the best interests of the citizens of Tulsa, you will get trashed. You will get trashed by powerful and entrenched interests who don't care if a policy is good for Tulsa as long as it's good for them and their cronies.

    As for the temptation to distance yourself from the legacy of Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock -- just remember that six of the nine of you were elected because you were more like Chris and Jim than your opponents were. Your opponents got money from the same people who tried to give Medlock and Mautino the boot, and you beat them. Your opponents complained about bickering at City Hall, and you beat them. If you aren't getting any pushback at all from the Whirled, the Chamber, the Public Works Department, or the development lobby, we're going to assume you aren't doing the job we sent you to do.

    Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock have a proud record of achievement during their too-short time at City Hall. West Tulsa is getting a new superregional shopping center which will bring in sales-tax revenues from residents of Tulsa's rapidly growing south and west suburbs. For the first time in nearly 20 years of the City's contract with the Chamber, there's real oversight of how that $2 million a year gets spent. We have a city-specific economic development plan. We're going to get a new comprehensive land use plan. We have an ethics ordinance in place, so that conflicts of interest are properly disclosed and handled.

    District 6 and District 2 are getting long-overdue infrastructure improvements. Charter changes are now in place to protect homeowners from arbitrary rezonings, to avert another wasted year on a frivolous recall effort, and to ensure that appointees to authorities, boards, and commissions face regular review by our elected representatives.

    All of that happened because Chris Medlock and Jim Mautino and their allies were willing to push those issues and to take some heat as a result, but also to compromise enough to get majority support and a mayoral signature. What more might they have accomplished without the distraction of a recall election?

    By all means, learn from their mistakes, but don't ignore their many successes. Build on those successes.

    Remember your roots

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    I'm off in a few minutes to attend the 2:00 p.m. inauguration of the new Mayor and City Council of Tulsa at Gilcrease Museum, in the Vista Room. The event is of course open to the public, but I was honored to receive personal invitations to attend from three members of the incoming Council.

    As an inauguration gift to the incoming councilors, particularly the Republicans, I'd like to present this January 2002 article by grassroots organizer Morton C. Blackwell: Advice to a Just-Elected Conservative Friend. Some key excerpts that contain echoes of the campaign just ended:

    If significant political forces which supported your election decide you can no longer be the object of their affection, they will make you the object of their pressure. And when you run into a few troubles, as every elected official does, they won't instinctively jump to support you. They will ask themselves, "Why bother?"

    Keep the faith. You can't make friends of your enemies by making enemies of your friends. Learn to live with the reality that some people won't like you if you do what you were elected to do.

    No matter what you do, some people will be your enemies. They will never love you, so don't worry about trying to make them love you. You can make most of them respect you, though. If you work at it, you can learn better the art of how to say unpleasant things pleasantly. If you keep your word, you can keep your friends and win at least respect from most of your enemies....

    The local, state and national political landscapes are littered with the moldering wrecks of the careers of politicians who won conservative support by giving their word on conservative principles and then broke their pledges....

    In a system of separation of powers and checks and balances, most people realize you can't accomplish everything you'd like to. But you must say and do things which prove you are doing the best you can to live up to your supporters' reasonable expectations.

    Complete victories are delightful but rare. You should prove yourself willing sometimes to win only incremental victories and sometimes to fight losing battles for good causes.

    Curious as it may seem, a politician rarely hurts himself when he fights in a principled way for a cause which loses or against a cause which wins.

    It's not exactly the Federalist Papers, but here's a fascinating glimpse of the intent behind Tulsa's form of government, from the debates that preceded the adoption of the 1989 City Charter.

    From the January 11, 1989, Tulsa Whirled, then Police and Fire Commissioner Bob Dick speaks in support of the proposed mayor-council charter which was up for a vote that February 14:

    Dick said some people are worried city councilors would argue among themselves.

    "What's wrong with that?" Dick asked. "Why shouldn't we hear differing views on the issues that will arise?

    "Our form of government tends to chill a little bit of the public debate over some issues," he said. "There is a tendency that if I need something I may not want to attack the street commissioner or the water commissioner because I may need his or her vote.

    "I'm not saying that happens all the time. But it can happen," Dick said.

    From a debate with Tom Quinn, in the February 2, 1989,
    Whirled:

    Quinn said the mayor, the chief administrator who would serve a four-year term, would erect a political empire through doling contracts without competitive bidding and through appointments on commissions, trusts and authorities.

    "It all boils down to how benevolent the dictator is," Quinn said.

    Dick countered that council approval of the mayor's proposed budget is required, as is approval for all appointments, including division heads.

    Dick also said the auditor "would be the 'anti-mayor,'" counterbalancing through whistle blowing any abuses of power by the mayor or council.

    I'd say Tom Quinn was prescient. His is an apt description of city government during the Savage years, and I suspect we can expect the same under a Kathy Taylor administration. It wasn't until the City Council had members who were assertive enough to "argue among themselves" that the Mayor began to be held in check. We finally have a critical mass of councilors who are assertive enough to buck the Mayor on appointments and other issues. It has helped to have a mayor who hasn't used the office's leverage to keep the Council on a leash.

    The Council could be even more effective as a check on the Mayor's power with the passage of Propostition 1, which would give the Council the right to employ an attorney independent of the City Attorney's management.

    What we haven't had to date is an Auditor that has acted as an anti-mayor. Phil Wood has done a competent and thorough job for the last 18 years, but he has taken a quiet behind-the-scenes approach to the job, rather than acting as a whistleblower. His focus has been on ensuring that the city follows sound financial practices and controls. I applaud Wood's pioneering work to make city government information available on his personal website, which preceded the official city website by a few years.

    Michael Willis, the Republican challenger to Wood, has suggested that the City Auditor could be more proactive in working with the Council to conduct performance audits of city departments -- going beyond asking whether money is being spent as authorized to ask whether money is being spent wisely. That's worth considering.

    I was inclined to vote for Wood, because what he has done, he has done well, even if he hasn't fulfilled the potential of the office, and he has a reputation of being above the fray of partisan politics.

    What pried me loose from that position was a $2,000 contribution from Wood's campaign to the campaign of Dennis Troyer, the Good Ol' Boy candidate trying to unseat District 6 Councilor Jim Mautino. Mr. Wood has picked a side in the struggle to make Tulsa's government work for all Tulsans, and he picked the wrong one.

    (UPDATE 4/3/2006: From Phil Wood I learn that his campaign gave only $200 to the Troyer campaign, not $2,000 as reported in the Tuesday, March 28, 2006, Tulsa Whirled. While the Tulsa Whirled printed a correction in the next day's edition, they didn't note the correction in their online story, nor did they link the correction in their special election section of their website, which is available without charge to non-subscribers. Here is Wood's explanation of the contribution and the discrepancy in amounts:

    The Tulsa World published that my campaign contributed $2,000 to Troyer's campaign. I sent them a copy of his report clearly showing $200 (not 2,000) and they published a correction the following day.

    I contributed the $200 to encourage distribution of my signs since the 'sign crew' is primarily my wife Emily and me.

    I called Councilor Mautino the morining of the publication to assure him I had not given $2,000 to his opponent.

    Thanks to Phil Wood for the clarification. I was also told by someone who spoke to Wood that he said he had given $200 to each of the Democratic candidates to encourage them to place his yard signs in their districts. $200 gifts are not required to be reported, and presumably wouldn't appear to be an endorsement. In this case, the Troyer campaign chose to report the gift, which was misread by the newspaper as a $2,000 gift.)

    The fact that Willis until recently worked for LaFortune is a concern, but if we wind up with Taylor as Mayor, Willis could be a good counterbalance. He doesn't have Phil Wood's decades of experience, but the actual audit work is done by a team of internal auditors, under the management of the City Auditor. And he would inherit the procedures and policies established by Wood.

    On the other hand, Willis endorsed City Council District 9 Good Ol' Boy candidate Jeff Stava and last year co-founded a PAC with Stava. (The PAC hasn't spent any money.)

    My inclination is to vote for a move toward a more active, visible role for the City Auditor.

    Status

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    Yes, I know I was slammed by the Whirled in yesterday's lead editorial. I will respond, but not tonight, as I am already up too late and have an early morning and a long day ahead of me.

    Something else that deserves your attention -- the breakdown of contributions to city candidates. Note the PACs at the end of that story, who contributed to the PACs, and to whom the PACs contributed. I'm happy to see that most of the candidates they backed lost their primaries, but they are putting a lot of money behind Dennis Troyer, trying to unseat Jim Mautino.

    Meanwhile, my son played his first little league game of the year tonight. He scored the winning run!

    District 6 City Councilor Jim Mautino will have a town hall meeting tomorrow evening, Wednesday, March 22, at 6:30 p.m., at Martin East Regional Library, 26th & Garnett.

    Here's the agenda, according to Mautino's website:

    • So that you may have the opportunity to make an informed decision about who you want to be your voice at City Hall
    • Short informational powerpoint presentation on the 3rd penny sales tax extension
    • What street, water, and sewer projects are in the works and what is proposed
    • What can be done for all of us to feel safer and what can be done to improve our streets
    • What are our options regarding Eastland Mall
    • "From the Floor" Question and Answer Session covering all your areas of concern -- Questions will NOT be prescreened

    Jim is in a tough race, and he could use your help to get the word out about his accomplishments as a City Councilor. Call 437-2642 to volunteer. If you have friends and family in District 6, encourage them to support Jim and to attend tomorrow night's Town Hall. (Click here to see a map of the district.)

    UPDATE: Volunteers will be walking neighborhoods on Saturday to hand out campaign material for Jim Mautino. To help out, meet Saturday at 10:00 a.m. at Jim's house, 14628 E. 12th St.

    Thursday night the Tulsa City Council gave the green light to the Tax Increment Finance district for the Tulsa Hills retail development between 71st and 81st on the east side of US 75. Steve Roemerman and I were both there, and both of us spoke in support. Steve has a good summary of the debate and discussion.

    The final vote was 8-to-Martinson. If I were Jon Kirby's campaign manager, I'd record the replay, grab some audio or quotes and use it in the final weeks of the campaign. Martinson's performance undermines any claim Martinson might make to being reasonable, pro-Tulsa-business, and pro-Tulsa-development.

    Martinson claimed he just had questions that needed answers, but he undermined his credibility by asking repeatedly if there weren't better ways to spend the $16.5 million in taxpayer money involved in this project. But those tax dollars won't be generated if the development doesn't go forward. I'm sure he understood that, so why act like he didn't?

    At one point, the taxpayer who would be generating those revenues was recognized -- the developer, John Collett. As the sole owner within the boundaries of the TIF, part of his property taxes (the increment over the current taxes on the land) will go to repay the bonds which will finance the roads and water lines and sewer lines needed by the development. Some of the sales taxes generated by the center will as well, but only up to a certain amount each year, and only until the bonds are repaid. No taxing entity loses any money that they are currently receiving, and taxes aren't raised on anyone else to pay for it.

    Martinson, Neal, Baker, and Sullivan all wanted to move the issue back to committee, but Medlock held firm, saying that everyone was here who might be needed to answer Martinson's doubts, and that he was willing to spend the time necessary. Christiansen wasn't willing to wait, as his wife (a school teacher) was off for spring break next week, and they planned to be out of town. Martinson seemed angry at Christiansen, saying that he thought Christiansen had an open mind but it was apparent that he was all for it. Martinson said something about Christiansen giving him some leads to pursue -- presumably leads that would help derail this project.

    One aspect of the proceedings confirmed the appropriateness of the label "Cockroach Caucus": Christiansen, Martinson, Neal, and Sullivan all said that they had heard from experts and people more knowledgeable than they who said that this was a bad deal, but none of those knowledgeable experts were named, and none of them showed up to argue for killing the deal. Rather than have the debate in the light of public scrutiny, these shadowy opponents remained hidden. And when it was apparent that they wouldn't be able to move the issue back to committee, the opposition from these councilors disappeared.

    I think the plan was to push it back to committee and to continue to delay and delay until options on key pieces of land were set to expire, making it impossible for the project to proceed. I suspect that other investors want to see a big-box center closer to 121st Street and US 75, between Jenks and Glenpool. If Tulsa Hills went forward, a center five miles south wouldn't be able to attract that same collection of tenants.

    A commenter on my previous entry expressed surprise and amusement about my concern for the success a big-box development. Would I rather this be a mixed-use, New Urbanist village? Of course. I don't like the fact that between 71st and 81st there is no access from the East or the West to this development -- you're going to see traffic nightmares because of this. I'm hoping they'll respect the topography and the trees, but I don't expect that they will.

    But I'm realistic enough to know that this kind of development is going to go in somewhere in southwest Tulsa County. The demographics are ripe for it, and if it isn't built by these developers in the city limits of Tulsa, it'll be built by someone else outside the City of Tulsa, and some other city will reap the tax windfall. That's money to pay for police, streets, and sewers. That money will help finance improvements to downtown and inner city neighborhoods, too.

    How can I support big-box retail here, but not on Cherry Street or Brookside? It's a matter of scale and compatibility. This development is going to be next to a limited-access highway, and is designed to attract customers from a wide radius, particularly to the south and west where there are no comparable facilities. And there isn't an existing neighborhood that it has to be compatible with.

    A big-box store would damage the pedestrian-oriented qualities of neighborhoods like Cherry Street and Brookside unless it met certain design guidelines to make it pedestrian-oriented -- e.g, a two-story Lowe's, with parking in the basement. Even then, the scale of such a store would overwhelm these neighborhoods of small-scale retail right next to homes. The Brookside Plan is a good first step in defining what would be compatible new development in that neighborhood, but it needs teeth -- design guidelines for selected areas need to be part of our land-use code.

    In Miami's Kendall area, they've built a big-box center where it's all stacked vertically and connected to a transit station. It can be done, but it won't be done unless the City of Tulsa requires it.

    Congratulations to the Council, and particularly to Chris Medlock, who has been working with the developer and the Urban Development Department for two years to bring this to fruition. He deserves some credit, too, for building support for this from his fellow councilors and for rallying community representatives to show up and support this.

    Speaking in support of this plan were Darla Hall, the former District 2 councilor whom Medlock twice defeated, and Randi Miller, the County Commissioner and former District 2 councilor who probably kept Medlock from winning the GOP nomination for mayor. Rick Westcott was there, too, so you had everyone who ever represented the affected council district there speaking in support. Despite past disagreements and rivalries, they all came to support this project for the benefit of west Tulsa.

    Six more FOR

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    My column this week is about the six Tulsa city charter amendments on the April 4 ballot, and why you should vote FOR all six.

    I wrote a column about these amendments, and those that didn't make the cut, back in November, right after the amendments had been approved for the ballot. It's instructive to see which councilors supported and which opposed each one.

    At TulsaNow's forum, there's a lively discussion about the need for Proposition 1, which would allow the Council to hire legal help independent of the City Attorney's office. Michelle Cantrell (posting as "pmcalk") makes some excellent points.

    Also in this week's issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly:

    Jarrod Gollihare has the first in a series of stories about charismatic universalist preacher Carlton Pearson.

    UTW's new city reporter, Ginger Shepherd, has a story about the proposed sprinkler ordinance for residential high-rises and another story about a dispute between Community Care College and students over the school's veterinary program.

    The cover features the poker craze, and Barry Friedman reports from an illegal private game and from the casinos.

    Wonder whatever happened to KTUL sports director Mike Ziegenhorn? So did David Austin, who spoke to Zig and his old boss at KTUL.

    Tomorrow night the Tulsa City Council will vote on whether to approve a Tax Increment Finance (TIF) district for Tulsa Hills, a major shopping destination planned for the east side of US 75 between 71st Street and 81st Street. The center would attract shoppers from west Tulsa, Jenks, Glenpool, Sapulpa, and other cities further to the south and west. A study of retail opportunities within the City of Tulsa identified this site and one near I-44 and 129th East Avenue as the optimum locations for a new major retail development.

    Do I need to spell it out again? Retail generates sales tax, and sales tax pays for police, fire protection, street repair, and every other city service. With all the residential development, there's going to be a major retail development west of the river, and if it isn't in the City of Tulsa, we lose.

    The idea behind a TIF is that you take an area not producing much in the way of taxes and finance infrastructure improvements to the area via the increase in taxes resulting from new development. Tulsa has a number of TIFs in and near downtown; the one centered on Home Depot has been the most successful.

    "Increment" is the key word. The various taxing authorities are still getting the same amount of money they had been getting, but the incremental dollars are used for improvements within the district. The hope is that improvements within the district will stimulate development outside the district that will also generate more tax revenues.

    It takes a long time to put together a TIF. You have to get the support of every public entity with a claim on those property taxes. In this location that means the City of Tulsa, the Jenks School District, Tulsa County, the Tulsa City-County Library, the Tulsa City-County Health Department, the Tulsa Technology Center (Vo-Tech), Tulsa Community College, and I think there's one more, but I can't think of it at the moment.

    The final hurdle requires the affirmative vote of seven councilors. (Hey, wait a minute -- I thought we couldn't have supermajorities under our Charter.) That may be a problem. Bill Martinson, Councilor for District 5, has been making noises like he may vote against it. In a previous council meeting, Bill Christiansen raised concerns about this new shopping center stealing customers from Woodland Hills Mall.

    But the more accurate comparison is to 71st between Garnett and Mingo, a collection of big box stores and smaller retail. East and southeast Tulsa, Broken Arrow, and Bixby residents will still shop along that corridor, because it will still be more convenient than going another seven miles further west.

    The real target for this shopping center are the residents of new upscale housing in Jenks, Glenpool, and unincorporated parts of northeastern Creek County. If Tulsa Hills isn't built, these shoppers will still be stolen from 71st and 169, but instead of those retail dollars staying in Tulsa, the new shopping center will be in Glenpool, and that's where the tax revenue will go.

    There's another problem if this TIF is turned down. This has been a lengthy process, and if it ends before being consummated, Tulsa will have trouble attracting other developers to anchor other TIF districts.

    I encourage you to show your support at tomorrow (Thursday) night's City Council meeting. Help Councilors Martinson and Christiansen understand how important this is to Tulsa.

    Third-penny proposal

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    Here is a link to a 19-page PDF file with the list of "third-penny" projects approved by the City Council on Thursday for a May 9th election.

    $71 million of the package consists of incomplete projects from the 2001 third-penny. Of the $385 million in new projects, here are some interesting figures that give you a sense of the priorities of the outgoing City Council:

    $41 million for culture and recreation, including new and expanded parks facilities that will require more money from the first two pennies for operation. That amount also includes $2 million for convention center renovations, something we were told that the $183 million in Vision 2025 funds for the arena and convention center was going to pay for. That $2 million replaces money shifted to the arena to pay for the "iconic" glass wall.

    $32 million for police equipment and facilities -- a helicopter, police cars, and a new police lab and property room.

    $24,150,000 for downtown projects, spread out among various categories. That doesn't count five downtown street projects out of 22 in the "arterial streets -- major rehabilitation" category. The capital project inventory in the 2005-6 budget (p. 34, item 108) lists downtown street and sidewalk improvements at $9.2 million, so let's use that number in the absence of a project-by-project breakdown in the third-penny plan. That makes $33,350,000 for downtown compared to $32,000,000 for the police department.

    I'm taking a quick break from work to post this breaking news.

    Over the transom comes some very good news for Tulsa and the Tulsa Metro Chamber, news of the first victim of Tuesday's City Council results:

    Dear Steve and members of the Board:

    Please accept this letter as notice of my resignation effective no later than January 16, 2007. I will plan to leave my position at a mutually agreed upon time that works for me and my family, as well as you and the Chamber and our contractual obligations to each other.

    I submit this resignation with mixed emotions. The Tulsa Metro Chamber and Tulsa have been my passions for the past eight years. All of the accomplishments we have achieved together are too numerous to mention in this letter. Highlights to me are: a streamlined organization that is focused on economic development and the issues that impact economic development; a large, stable, and active membership that has been engaged through the creation of new programs that benefit business, our organizational relationships, and our community; the Chamber is supported by our members at the highest level in its 100 year history with a budget that has grown from approximately $5 million to $8 million during the past few years; we are on point on all of the major issues impacting Tulsa’s business community and we pass the initiatives we support, the most significant being Vision 2025, which is focused on economic development and higher education; and, today the public policy issues we are tackling, and the strategic directions of our new Tulsa’s Future program and our Convention and Visitors Bureau are focused, meaningful and tight.

    I am leaving behind a contemporary organization that is truly poised to provide direction and leadership in a community that has broken out of a long period of complacency about itself. Today Tulsans are restless and looking to take the leap forward, a sleeping giant has been awakened. The Chamber has played a big role in waking the giant. We recently were nationally recognized as America’s Best Metro Chamber. This Chamber can make a big difference in leading forward. We have great community leaders around our various tables, we have an experienced and talented executive team and staff, and we have the desire to make good things happen.

    On a personal note, I am a guy that needs to make a difference. I will look for a new challenge either here or someplace else where I can make that happen. Meanwhile, when we moved here eight years ago we sold the sailboat and boxed up the skis. The skis haven’t been out since. It is too late in the season for the skis, but maybe we will see you on the lake.

    Very truly yours,

    Jay M. Clemens


    Commentary later.

    UPDATE: Before you read the news stories below, here are two primary documents:

    Mayor Bill LaFortune has placed Police Chief Dave Been on administrative leave, claiming that Been withheld a consultant's report about the department's SWAT unit.

    KOTV is reporting:

    Police Chief Been sent us a statement that says in part, "Mayor Bill LaFortune was fully informed of the audit and approved the contract." He said he received five copies of the report on February 10th and gave them to the SWAT team's chain of command to review. He said the report was common knowledge within the department and was delivered to the Mayor's chief of staff immediately when it was requested on February 15th.

    This seems like a very disproportionate response, and you have to wonder: The FOP didn't endorse LaFortune. Without directly calling LaFortune a fool or a liar, Been has been on the radio saying that, yes, more police officers would actually reduce crime and make Tulsa a safer place. Meanwhile LaFortune has been trying to sell the idea that "more police officers mean more arrests mean a higher crime rate," that we have an adequate number of officers for a city our size. This looks like retribution by LaFortune against a department that won't play with make-believe with him.

    Over on the TulsaNow forum, a forum participant calling himself "ChazInTulsa" says Been was on KRMG radio this morning, and when asked for his endorsement, Been said that he can't get involved in politics, but the FOP speaks for him.

    (Here's a link to the KRMG clip, in Windows Media format, courtesy David Schuttler.)

    It is interesting that LaFortune would be so swift in taking action, when you remember how he dragged his feet in dealing with leadership failures at the airport, failures that jeopardized Tulsa's federal funding.

    In case you've missed hearing about it, this Sunday, 2 p.m., KFAQ is holding a rally in support of Tulsa's police officers at LaFortune Stadium, between 51st and 61st on Hudson Ave, just north of Memorial High School. This has suddenly become an even more interesting event than it already was.

    meeciteewurkor has some thoughts and interesting comments here.

    And I thought I heard Terry Simonson calling in to KFAQ's Dillon Dodge show, and if I understood what I heard correctly, he seemed to think that some person or persons in the Police Department who wanted to push Been out of the way, and they convinced LaFortune that he could regain support among police officers by getting rid of Been.

    UPDATE: Dan Paden comments:

    Of course, I don't know. If the Mayor is really justified in his actions, you have to feel a bit sorry for him, 'cause it sure looks like he's behaving like a spoiled, petulant child. And so close to the primary, too. Surely he's smart enough not to do something like this unless he has to.

    On the other hand, I guess there's always the possibility that he really isn't smart enough not to behave like a spoiled, petulant child just before the primary. I know what that's like. Done it enough times m'se'f. Behave that way, that is, not that I've ever been in a primary election.

    Tulsans for Better Government (TBG), the group promoting a petition to dismember three Tulsa City Council districts and adding three supercouncilor seats (to be elected citywide to four year terms), filed ethics reports with the City Clerk's office, as required by state law. As of December 31, 2005, the group has accumulated $66,350.00 and has spent $18,882.14. Given that they suspended the petition drive on December 5, it will be interesting to see what they do with the remaining money.

    Here is the list of donors disclosed on those forms, in descending order of amount contributed:

    Date Name Address Amount
    12/30/2005 Tulsa World P. O. Box 26750, OKC 73126 $10,000.00
    11/30/2005 George Kaiser Family Fndtn 7020 S. Yale, Tulsa OK 74136 $5,000.00
    12/16/2005 Ram Energy 5100 E Skelly Dr, Tulsa OK 74135 $5,000.00
    11/9/2005 Anchor Stone Company 2021 S. Lewis, Tulsa OK 74104 $4,000.00
    10/18/2005 Howard G. Barnett 6742 S Evanston, Tulsa OK 74136 $3,000.00
    10/18/2005 A.H. McElroy, II 1964 E 45th Pl, Tulsa OK 74105 $3,000.00
    10/31/2005 Hughes Lumber Company P.O. Box 2220, Tulsa OK 74101 $3,000.00
    11/16/2005 Ruth K. Nelson Revocable Trust 1350 S. Boulder, Tulsa OK 74119 $3,000.00
    11/16/2005 Mike D. Case 4200 E. Skelly Drive, Tulsa OK 74135 $3,000.00
    11/30/2005 Leonard J. Eaton, Jr. 2617 E 26th Pl., Tulsa OK 74114 $3,000.00
    12/16/2005 Robert J. LaFortune 427 S. Boston, Tulsa OK 74103 $2,500.00
    11/22/2005 Coury Properties 201 W. 5th St, Tulsa OK 74103 $1,500.00
    10/31/2005 Ted Sherwood & Associates 15 W 6th Suite 2112, Tulsa OK 74119 $1,000.00
    11/4/2005 Capitol Club Tulsa OK $1,000.00
    11/4/2005 Joseph McGraw 10900 Louisville, Jenks OK 74137 $1,000.00
    11/16/2005 MidFirst Bank PO Box 26750, OKC OK 73126 $1,000.00
    11/16/2005 Jack and Maxine Zarrow 2660 S. Birmingham Pl., Tulsa OK 74114 $1,000.00
    11/16/2005 Philip C. Lauinger, Jr. 320 S. Boston, Tulsa OK 74103 $1,000.00
    11/16/2005 Robert A. Franden 525 S. Main, Tulsa OK 74103 $1,000.00
    11/22/2005 GBR Properties, Inc. 6660 S. Sheridan, Tulsa OK 74133 $1,000.00
    11/30/2005 Frontier Energy Services LLC 4200 E. Skelly Dr, Tulsa OK 74135 $1,000.00
    11/30/2005 Richard Minshall 2444 E 26th Pl., Tulsa OK 74114 $1,000.00
    12/16/2005 Stephen J. Heyman 3200 First Place Tower, Tulsa OK 74103 $1,000.00
    11/16/2005 Midwesco Industries P. O. Box 3445, Tulsa OK 74101 $750.00
    11/16/2005 BHC Pipe & Equipment Co. P. O. Box 701166, Tulsa OK 74170 $500.00
    11/22/2005 Ranch Acres Wine & Spirits 3324 A E. 31st, Tulsa OK 74135 $500.00
    11/16/2005 Donald B. Atkins 1406 S. Terrace Dr., Tulsa OK 74104 $300.00
    11/22/2005 James M. Hewgley, Jr. Trust 427 S Boston, Tulsa OK 74103 $300.00
    11/16/2005 Paula Marshall-Chapman P. O. Box 4829, Tulsa OK 74159 $250.00

    No time to analyze this, but feel free to comment on who gave, their connections with various interests, and their possible motivations.

    Copycat Christiansen?

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    At Thursday's City Council meeting, District 8 City Councilor Bill Christiansen read a proposed resolution concerning the south Tulsa toll bridge. The resolution outlined a compromise position that would allow a bridge to be built, but not under the current arrangement between Tulsa County and Infrastructure Ventures, Inc. (IVI).

    It sounded very familiar to me. That's probably because it was nearly identical to a plan that Cliff Magee, Christiansen's opponent in the Republican primary, put forward on January 23. Dave Schuttler linked to it on Our Tulsa World at 4:41 that afternoon. The Tulsa Beacon featured a story about Magee's plan in this week's issue, which went to press on Tuesday. Christiansen's plan first saw the light of day on Thursday's Council agenda.

    It's an annoying reality in politics -- you can put forward a great idea, and your opponent can rip it off and claim it for his own. If your opponent has the support of the local power structure, he may even get away with it.

    Magee's plan is better than Christiansen's copy in one important respect. Both plans involve setting up a public trust, but Magee would have the City of Tulsa as the only beneficiary of the trust, while Christiansen would include the county and other municipalities.

    I am hoping that south Tulsa voters who are concerned about the bridge are also concerned about the bigger political picture that makes deals like IVI's possible, that they won't settle for someone who backs them on their pet issue, but will support candidates who will work with other reformers for positive change at City Hall.

    My wife worked for American Airlines for a number of years, before the airline spawned the SABRE Group as a separate business. It was a good company, she liked her job, and we appreciated the flight benefits. I have no axe to grind with Tulsa's largest private employer, but I don't see the point in spending another $4 million in taxpayer dollars for the special benefit of one company.

    Mayor Bill LaFortune has proposed adding a little over $4 million to his "Third Penny" sales tax plan, extending the duration of the tax by another month. The money would pay to build temporary hangars at Tulsa International Airport for the use of American Airlines' maintenance operation.

    AMR, American's parent company, lost over $600 million in the last three months of 2005. Over the course of 2005, AMR lost $861 million. The loss in 2004 was $761 million. The company will be paying out an estimated $78 million in bonuses to upper management. AMR has $3.8 billion in unrestricted cash on hand.

    The money LaFortune proposes to spend on AA is a drop in the bucket from the airline's perspective. So why this last minute push to add it to the Third Penny package?

    Reason #1 is to try to salvage his plan to put a six-year renewal on the ballot for the general election. A majority on the City Council is leaning toward passing an 18 month extension of the current tax, to pay for projects approved in 2001 that haven't yet been funded. If that happens, LaFortune looks ineffective, and he loses the ability to sell his reelection based on the new projects in his plan. The AA subsidy creates a sense of urgency -- the claim will be made that if we pass only an extension to pay for already-approved projects, it may cost our city jobs.

    Reason #2 -- it's a response to the story that he cost Tulsa jobs by snubbing the airline. He sent a deputy to a meeting with AA officials about bringing new maintenance work to Tulsa, while he went off to Mississippi with ORU students and members of Guts Church to help rebuild the hurricane-damaged town of Long Beach and to shore up his support for re-election with a segment of Tulsa's charismatic community. Kathy Taylor has said LaFortune being AWOL in this situation is the main reason she decided to run for Mayor.

    Reason #3 -- he's hoping for the endorsement of the Transport Workers' Union (TWU) and the help of their membership with his campaign. LaFortune was heard today saying that the Firefighters' Union (which was early to endorse his re-election) would be helping him put out campaign signs, and he was hoping to get the TWU's help with that, too. (How will Republican voters feel about re-nominating a mayor whose primary base of support is the labor unions?)

    Whatever LaFortune's reasons for wanting this, it's not wise to include the money in the Third Penny, which ought to be for basic infrastructure improvements. Nor should we be putting all our eggs in one basket; we need to cultivate other sources of jobs. And it shouldn't be the City of Tulsa paying for this alone. Many AA employees live in Owasso, Broken Arrow, and elsewhere in the region, and all stand to benefit from any growth in AA's local workforce.

    This proposal ought to stand separately from any other ballot item. Mayoral candidate Don McCorkell has suggested using a general obligation bond issue to pay for the hangars. Others have suggested that the suburbs chip in their fair share.

    Chris Medlock has pointed out that direct government subsidy of business is a losing game in the long run, and why should we single out one company and ignore other businesses that may leave the city? I think the subsidy is a bad idea, but even if it weren't, it still has no business being part of our city's essential capital improvements program.

    Who's anti-development?

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    One of the baseless charges tossed at Tulsa City Councilors Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock during last year's recall attempt was that the two were anti-growth and anti-development. The reality is that both are boosters of quality new development in the two underdeveloped sections of the city that they represent -- far east and west Tulsa respectively. What has put them at odds with the development lobby is that Medlock and Mautino believe the City ought to prioritize its resources and infrastructure to encourage new development within Tulsa's city limits.

    Both councilors have worked with developers to encourage and facilitate new developments in their districts. Medlock helped shepherd Tulsa Hills, a major retail development at 71st and US 75. Mautino has worked with developers interested in the I-44 corridor for mixed use projects and other locations around east Tulsa that would be prime locations for new housing.

    What Mautino and his constituents don't want is to turn east Tulsa into a dumping ground for all the uses that aren't wanted in other parts of the city or metro area. As a neighborhood activist, he made some enemies by insisting that the concrete batch plant on 11th Street west of 145th abide by the rules for screening and stormwater management. East Tulsa has a dramatic north-south ridge with views of the city to the west and the Verdigris River valley to the east. There are hills and streams and woods, and historic Route 66 runs through the middle of it. The four-mile-long section of I-44 where it is joined with US 412 is the busiest segment of highway in the State of Oklahoma, and with some infrastructure improvements it would be an excellent location for retail.

    Unfortunately, the area has been overlooked for most of the 40 years it has been within the city limits of Tulsa. Most areas still do not have water or sewer service, making development even more risky and expensive. Worse, the negative perception of Tulsa Public Schools and East Central High School in particular are deterrents to new housing developments. To my knowledge, the last subdivision built in that part of the city was Indian Hills (legally Rolling Hills IV) in the mid-70s.

    Recently, a new 400-home subdivision proposed for the southeast corner 11th and 161st East Avenue fell through apparently because of financial demands made of the developer by the head of the City of Tulsa Public Works Department. The developer was just seeking a sewer connection to make the development feasible. At this point, I am going to hand you off to Tultellitarian, writing at MeeCiteeWurkor's site, who has a detailed summary of the situation, what happened, and who seems to be at fault for losing a development that would have been good for the City of Tulsa and Tulsa Public Schools.

    Last Tuesday, December 27, Councilor Jim Mautino notified City Clerk Mike Kier that Mayor Bill LaFortune appears to be in violation of the city's ethics ordinance, because he is a member of the board of the Tulsa Metro Chamber, which is a contractor to the City of Tulsa. While a member of the Chamber board, LaFortune has approved and signed contracts on behalf of the City with the Chamber.

    Two days after Mautino's letter, City Auditor Phil Wood sought City Attorney Alan Jackere whether a violation of the Ethics Code has occurred. Wood points out that LaFortune, as a board member of the Tulsa Metro Chamber, "appears to have an Organizational interest," which is defined by section 601 of the ethics ordinance as existing when "a City official is a director or member of a board which establishes policy and/or budgetary decisions for the entity." Wood goes on to cite section 603, which states that "no City official shall participate in any City business in which they have an organizational interest." Wood then cites an contract renewal between the City and the Chamber, worth $1,901,000, which the Mayor approved on August 29, 2005, saying, "This appears to be City business in which he has an organizational interest." (The City Auditor is designated by the ordinance to handle ethics complaints regarding the Mayor.)

    The following day, December 30, the Mayor's Office issued a press release requesting a "clarification" of the ethics ordinance. In the release, the Mayor's membership on the board of the Tulsa Metro Chamber is compared to his membership on the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority, the Tulsa Airport Authority, and the Indian Nations Council of Governments. The difference is that the Chamber is a private organization with its own interests, while the two authorities are public trusts established to own property and enter into multi-year contracts for the benefit of the City of Tulsa. By law, the Mayor is an ex officio member of the two authorities and appoints the other members, subject to Council approval. INCOG is a "voluntary association of local governments," established by agreement of the governments involved. The City of Tulsa is a member of INCOG.

    The Tulsa Metro Chamber and its defenders seem to think of the Chamber as an official branch of City Government, but it is a private organization, established to serve the interests of its members, which sometimes may coincide with the best interests of Tulsa's city government, but sometimes may not. That's why it's a conflict of interest for an official approving City contracts for the Chamber to also sit on the Chamber's board. It's revealing that this press release issued on LaFortune's behalf doesn't distinguish between governmental agencies and the Chamber.

    Below are links to PDF files of the relevant documents, each about 30 KB in size:

    Councilor Mautino asked the City Clerk's office for a copy of Bill LaFortune's ethics disclosure statement, which is required by the ordinance. Mautino was told that LaFortune had not filed such a statement. Mautino has asked for a letter from the City Clerk confirming that fact, and he was told it would be forthcoming.

    Up ahead

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    As I get time over the next couple of days, I'll fill you in on Councilor Jim Mautino's ethics complaint against Mayor Bill LaFortune, who (until yesterday) was a board member of the Metro Tulsa Chamber and while serving as a board member, he also approved and signed contracts on behalf of the City of Tulsa with the Metro Tulsa Chamber. Turns out the Mayor hasn't filed an ethics disclosure statement, which is required by law.

    Councilor Mautino has also been speaking out about the way the city's Public Works Department mishandled extending sewer to a new housing development proposed for 11th and 161st East Ave, which would have been one of the first new developments in the Tulsa Public School district in years, maybe more than a decade. Our city departments and boards seem to be more eager about extending infrastructure to the suburbs than to unserved areas of our own city.

    Bobby of Tulsa Topics has done a great service by collecting in one place, in chronological order, the petition origins of the recent drive to dismember three Tulsa City Council districts and add three at-large seats on the Council, and the parallel thread leading to the Mayor's "Citizens' Commission on City Government".

    It's especially interesting to notice the timing of Tulsa Whirled editorials and news stories on the subject.

    Updated October 28, 2017. Sadly, this particular blog entry doesn't seem to have been captured by the Wayback Machine, but the Tulsa Topics archive for December 2005 has some related material on the charter change initiatives during this period.

    An edited version of this column was published in the December 14, 2005, edition of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is still online, courtesy of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Here's my blog entry linking to the article. Posted October 28, 2017.

    The at-large councilor petition appears to be dead, but supporters of representative democracy in Tulsa shouldn't rest easy just yet.

    On Monday, December 4, the effort to dismember three City Council districts was put on hold. You'll recall that on October 20, a group with the misleading name of Tulsans for Better Government (TBG) began collecting signatures on an initiative petition for a City Charter amendment: Add to the Council three at-large "supercouncilors," elected citywide to four-year terms, and reduce the number of council districts from nine to six.

    Just over halfway through the 90 days for gathering signatures, the petition wasn't catching fire with the general public. An opposition group, Tulsans Defending Democracy, quickly emerged, with support from Tulsans of all races, classes, and political views.

    Also on Monday, December 4, Mayor Bill LaFortune announced the formation of a "Citizens' Commission on City Government," a group of 17-20 citizens, handpicked by him, to study the structure of Tulsa's government for six months and make recommendations next June.

    Most of the petition's backers were residents of Tulsa's "Money Belt," and their motivation was to bring city government firmly and permanently back under the control of the old city establishment. The petition gained some ground thanks to sleight of hand: They hired the same petition circulators who were collecting signatures for the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights (TABOR) petition and another popular petition which would limit the use of eminent domain condemnation for economic development. Circulators, paid by the signature for all three petitions, would attract signers for the popular TABOR or eminent domain petitions, and then would quickly ask the signer if they'd also sign a petition "for better city government," hoping the voter would sign one more time without looking too closely.

    Opinions are divided as to whether the supercouncilor petition was shelved because it wasn't on track to get the necessary signatures, or out of fear that, if it were on the ballot for next spring's city elections, it would create a backlash that would leave the petition's supporters with even less power than they now have.

    So the petition is dead, or at least hibernating, and this "Citizens' Commission" has risen in its place, evidently to accomplish the same goal by means of a "blue ribbon" panel.

    Here's how a blue ribbon panel usually works: Appoint to the panel prominent people who don't really have time to devote to the effort. These people are accomplished in their fields, but not engaged in the issue to be studied. They come into the process with an open mind, with no predetermined conclusions. To help guide them to the appropriate conclusion, lend the panel your own staff to gather and organize data, helpfully arranged to point in one clear direction. Add to the mix a couple of panel members who are passionately committed to the desired conclusion, but make sure no one passionately committed to another point of view has a seat at the table.

    After the requisite number of meetings, the advocates for the desired conclusion and the staffers will make a convincing case for their position, and no one on the blue ribbon panel will be strongly committed enough to an opposing position to make a rebuttal. The panel will make the desired recommendation, which the daily paper's editorial board will hail as tablets from Mt. Sinai. The pressure will then be on the legislative body to adopt the recommendation, even if they disagree with it.

    LaFortune seems to be following this recipe. He created this panel without any input from any other public official, and he alone controls who will sit on the panel. Two members, Howard Barnett and C. S. Lewis III, were members of the advisory board for Tulsans for Better Government, so you know they'll be pushing for at-large seats on the Council to be part of the commission's recommendation. So far, no women have been named to the panel. Neither has anyone involved with Tulsans Defending Democracy.

    As a bonus (for him), some of LaFortune's choices seem desired to bolster his reelection campaign. One of the co-chairmen is Hans Helmerich. Hans's brother Jono Helmerich is the chairman of LaFortune's reelection committee, but it's rumored that he is shopping around for a better candidate to back. Michael Covey, spokesman for the South Tulsa Citizens' Coalition, represents a group that will wield a lot of influence over next March's Republican mayoral primary; Covey's inclusion may be an attempt by LaFortune to win his support or at least neutralize him.

    If LaFortune were serious about creating a broad-based, diverse group of citizens to study this issue, he should have given each of his fellow elected officials the chance to name a committee member. If he were serious about keeping politics out of it, he would have consulted with his fellow elected officials before setting the rules, and he would have delayed doing anything until after the election. The Council asked LaFortune to speak on the issue at their December 8 meeting, but he claimed a prior engagement; he has promised to show up on the 15th. We'll see.

    There are some good and thoughtful people on LaFortune's commission, but it will take a lot of determination and time and energy on their part to keep the process honest, if that's even possible.

    As we bid good riddance to the at-large councilor petition, while training a wary eye on the Mayor's "Citizens' Commission," let's pause to note two oddities about Tulsans for Better Government:

    Oddity 1: TBG insisted that Tulsa needs an elected city official who would advocate effectively for the needs of the entire city, not just a single district. Don't we already have such a position? Known as "Mayor"? Ah, but the key word is "effectively," isn't it? The obvious solution is to have an effective Mayor, but since many of the members of TBG are supporters of LaFortune's re-election effort - Chip McElroy, the chairman of TBG, hosted the Mayor's reelection launch - the obvious solution wouldn't have occurred to them.

    Oddity 2: While many long-ago-former elected officials were members of TBG, the only currently-serving official on TBG's board was County Commissioner Randi Miller. This was surprising, since the at-large proposal would have rendered her home base of West Tulsa politically insignificant, too small to influence even a district council race. LaFortune's backers are talking about Miller as a tag-team substitute for the him in the Mayor's race, but her support for this proposal isn't going to endear her to grass-roots Republicans. (Her political future has already been damaged by her admission under oath that she didn't review any supporting information before voting to approve the IVI toll bridge contract.) There are rumors that she didn't intend to support the at-large proposal, but to date her name is still on the TBG website as a board member, and she has yet to issue a public statement withdrawing her support for the plan.

    More blogging elsewhere

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    I encourage you, as always, to explore the links on the right side of the page, as well as the linkblog above. (And note, too, that there's an archive of all previous linkblog entries.)

    If you're a Tulsan, be sure to check out the TulsaBloggers.net aggregator. And MeeCiteeWurkor offers the convenience of the same set of blogs combined into a single set of links, in reverse chronological order.

    Beyond our city limits (well beyond, in one case), you will find a couple of blogs that always have something new and interesting: Dustbury and Mister Snitch!

    Tulsans for Badder Government halted their petition for at-large councilors on Monday, and Mayor Bill LaFortune announced formation of a new "Citizens' Commission" to study Tulsa's form of government. The Mayor says he doesn't want any politicians involved in the process, but he's handpicking all the members. Council members weren't consulted, nor have they had the opportunity to recommend members of this task force. Bobby's got details at Tulsa Topics.

    Updated Tulsa Topics link October 28, 2017. The direct link to city press release is dead, but the Tulsa Topics article reproduces it in full.

    I really did hear Tulsa Mayor Bill LaFortune say this tonight:

    "More police officers mean more arrests mean a higher crime rate."

    Here's the audio of my question and his answer (500 KB MP3), at a "Mayor's Night In" meeting for neighborhood leaders. (Thanks to Bobby of Tulsa Topics for capturing it.)

    I always thought crime rate was based on crimes reported, not arrests.

    Also, LaFortune seems to say that it's just fine for Tulsa to be a donor city on the "4 to Fix the County" tax. (If the tax passes next week, Tulsa sales will generate $50 million of the tax, but only $40 million will pay for projects in or near the City of Tulsa. The rest will go to the suburbs.)

    The good news is that Tulsans for Badder Government has decided to drop its petition effort for dismembering three Tulsa City Council districts and replacing them with three elected city-wide. The bad news is that, word has it, Mayor Bill LaFortune is going to set up a blue-ribbon panel to study the form of government headed up by the same wealthy Utica Square types who supported the petition. Either way, their goal is the same -- dilute the influence of citizens from the outlying parts of Tulsa at City Hall.

    Bobby at Tulsa Topics went by to sign the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) state initiative petition at a storefront near 51st and Harvard today, and he learned that the same company was soliciting and paying for signatures on TABOR, the eminent domain reform petition, and Tulsans for Badder Government's petition. Go read what Bobby learned when he visited the office and returned again later. Then go visit politicalactivists.org and learn about the world of professional petition signature gathering.

    MORE: On the home page of politicalactivists.org, the first sentence says, "At politicalactivists.org we are a non partisan organization dedicated to putting conservative issues on the ballet for voter approval." But they go on to say that they've done work for the Kerry for President campaign and the Democratic National Committee and an anti-Bush 527 called America Coming Together.

    And here's one of politicalactivists.org's proud accomplishments on behalf of "conservative issues": "We were directly responsible for rallying over 5,000 people to attend our promotion of John Kerry with Michael Moore (Producer of Fahrenheit911) and Carl Pope (Executive Director of Sierra Club) on the Portland State University Campus."

    The deal fell through?

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    MeeCiteeWurkor was at last night's City Council meeting for the last item on the agenda: Whether to extend the right to unionize to more city employees. The proposal failed at the previous meeting: Turner, Henderson, Baker, and Mautino voted yes; Sullivan, Medlock, Neal, and Martinson voted no; Christiansen was absent, effectively a no vote, since five votes were required for passage. Councilors Turner and Henderson put a motion to reconsider on this week's agenda, but someone who voted against the proposal would have to make the motion to reconsider. And no one did.

    MeeCiteeWurkor reports much anger at Councilor Randy Sullivan after no motion to reconsider was made. He writes about what he was told in trying to understand the cause of the anger, and he writes about his disgust, if what he was told is true.

    Here's what I found shocking: If what was said is true, Randy Sullivan is raising campaign money. Will he run in the district he currently purports to represent, District 7, or will he run in the district in which he lives, District 9?

    My column in the current Urban Tulsa Weekly is a review of the City Charter amendment proposals Tulsans will vote on next spring, as well as a few that didn't make the cut, along with a look at the politics behind what passed and what didn't.

    There were a couple of new developments tonight. Illegitimate Councilor Randy Sullivan tried to move the zoning protest petition amendment from the March primary election ballot to the April general election ballot. He tried to make the case that voters would be disenfranchised by having the vote on the primary ballot, when turnout would be lighter.

    Councilor Chris Medlock pointed out that homeowners were promised back in 2004, when the courts ruled that the protest petition ordinance was in conflict with the charter, that the amendment to restore that protection would be on the next citywide election ballot. That would have been the December 2004 library bond issue, but the Council held off at the request of library officials. The next opportunity was the city bond issue in April 2005. The Council called the election, but something happened -- the dog ate Bill LaFortune's homework -- and the required public notices weren't placed in the Tulsa Legal News. The March 2006 is the next available citywide date to vote, and because there will be a mayoral primary, every precinct will be open anyway.

    The other councilors were apparently persuaded by Medlock's argument -- Sullivan's motion died for lack of a second.

    Councilor Roscoe Turner brought the recall amendment up for reconsideration, as I was hoping he would. The original proposal was modified by two complementary amendments proposed by Councilor Tom Baker. The requirement for signature comparison for the recall petitions was dropped (by a unanimous vote). Added in its place was a requirement for each signer to provide a valid contact phone number. That passed by a 5-4 vote (Baker, Henderson, Mautino, Medlock, Turner in favor; Christiansen, Martinson, Neal, Sullivan against). The amended amendment was sent to the voters by a 7-2 vote -- Martinson and Sullivan voted against. Although it isn't my ideal, the proposed amendment would require that recall be for cause, provides a consistent standard for number of signatures across all offices, and requires that signature gatherers be residents of the district. If we pass it in April, it will help ensure that a recall only happens when genuine constituents have a genuine and grave complaint against an elected official.

    Finally, a District 7 resident (and a friend of mine), John Eagleton, protests that he did raise the issue of Randy Sullivan's non-residency with members of the City Council when it was publicly acknowledged in February 2005. Eagleton asked the Councilors to seek the City Attorney's opinion on the effect of filing a bogus declaration of candidacy; he believes it would render the election null and void and cause the office to become vacant. That was never done, apparently, perhaps because everyone was distracted by the recall effort underway at the time.

    I remember, too, that there were District 7 residents who wanted to recall Randy Sullivan, but they restrained themselves at the request of Councilors Medlock and Mautino, who were themselves under threat of recall at the time.

    Here's a link to all the articles in the current issue. Don't forget -- just a few more days to donate gifts for children in the DHS foster care system. Pick up a copy of the dead-tree version of UTW for a list of kids, ages, and the gifts they'd like for Christmas.

    Know what you're signing. There are reports that Tulsans for Badder Government, the elite bunch pushing for diluting representative democracy in Tulsa, are obtaining petition signatures under false pretenses:

    A person went to the post office and a petition was presented for him/her to sign. The top petition page was for the TABOR (Tax Payer Bill of Rights) and all indications were that was the petition being signed. HOWEVER, THE ACTUAL PETITION WAS FOR THE COUNCILOR AT LARGE PROPOSAL. That, folks, is lower in life forms than dung beetles. So, if you are asked to sign a petition, just refuse unless you read everything completely and know for a fact exactly what you are signing.

    In addition to being so low, get this; the people asking you to sign the petition, may be breaking the law. Title 34, Oklahoma Statute 3.1, says signature collectors must be citizens of the State of Oklahoma. Violations of that statute can be fined $1000.00 plus 1 year in jail for each offense. Two of the signature gatherers were from out of state and ran away when asked to provide identification.

    Remember, a valid petition will always have the gist of the petition on the page you're signing. Be sure you can see and read the whole page before you sign. If you are presented with the at-large councilors petition, ask to see the petition gatherers' ID.

    Please report any sightings of the at-large councilors petition to the Tulsans Defending Democracy website -- what day, what time, where, and, if possible, the name of the petition gatherer. Also let TDD know if you've been contacted in any other way about the petition -- a letter in the mail, a phone call, a poll.

    Hat tip to MeeCiteeWurkor and Citizens for Fair and Clean Government.

    Conspicuously absent

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    A couple of my Tulsa Blogger colleagues (Steve Roemerman, Mad Okie) noticed that Councilor Bill Christiansen, who is said to be plotting a run for Mayor, was absent from Thursday night's meeting, which was chock full of controversy. Christiansen avoided going on the record for or against allowing city employees to unionize and avoided voting on a couple of key charter change proposals -- protecting historic preservation zoning and reforming the recall process.

    Councilor Roscoe Turner surprised a lot of people with his vote the other week against a charter provision to require a councilor to resign if he moves outside his district and again this week with his vote against recall reform. There was a silly rumor going around that Turner swapped his vote on the requirement to live in your district for a vote from Randy Sullivan (the Councilor who doesn't live in his district) to support unionizing city workers. I found that rumor incredible: Turner has enough honor not to make that kind of deal, and enough sense not to trust Randy Sullivan to keep that kind of deal. (On Thursday, Sullivan voted against allowing city workers to unionize.)

    I saw Councilor Turner a few days ago and asked him about his vote on the district requirement. He pointed out that state law already authorized the Council to expel a member who moved outside the district, but there needed to be a complaint from a District 7 resident before they could investigate and act.

    (I wrote about the relevant statutes back in January when the Whirled finally acknowledged that he no longer lived in the district. Bubbaworld disagrees with my analysis and makes a pretty convincing case that if you moved often enough, the City Charter allows you to run for Council in any district. I could run in District 6, since I was a qualified elector there from 1981 through 1988, and in District 9, since I was a qualified elector there from 1988 through 1993.)

    I'm hoping that Councilor Turner was making a tactical move in his vote against recall reform. It couldn't win last Thursday -- Sullivan, Neal, Baker, and Martinson were all against it, so at best it would have been a 4-4 tie, with Christiansen absent -- but Turner's vote against allows him to bring it up at the next meeting for reconsideration when Christiansen is present and will either send the measure on to the voters or at least put Christiansen on record opposing recall reform.

    Dave Schuttler has posted some video highlights from last Wednesday's town hall meeting at Martin East Regional Library with Councilors Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock. I was there and thought they both did a great job of answering questions about the third penny, "4 to Fix the County," economic development, and the various airport issues. Watch the videos and see for yourself.

    Medlock will be speaking Tuesday night, November 15, at Rudisill North Regional Library, which is at Pine Street and Hartford Ave (1520 N Hartford). The program is scheduled to run from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

    From a reader who was at today's Council Committee meeting, at which a resolution was to be considered, opposing the proposal to dismember three council districts and replace them with three supercouncilor seats elected citywide to four year terms:

    The Jackal is up to his dirty tricks again. The resolution was pulled from the agenda by Susan Neal because [City Attorney] Alan Jackere called giving his opinion that they were not legally able to vote on a resolution that might affect the outcome of an election. How interesting considering that the Council just passed a resolution last week to support the school bond vote. Oh, the irony of it all!

    Can't vote on a resolution that might affect the outcome of an election? In the first place, an election hasn't even been called, and they've only begun to collect petition signatures. Second, as my reader points out, just last week they endorsed the school bond issues, which was intended to affect the outcome of Tuesday's election. And I seem to recall that the Council voted back in 2003 to endorse Vision 2025. Third, what is the controlling legal authority for Jackere's advice? Did he dig out another obscure citation from some obscure jurisdiction -- Nunavit ice fishing regulations, perhaps? Hoyle's rules for canasta? And, finally, every vote the Council takes could have an impact on the outcome of an election. It's a political body, for Pete's sake!

    Would Jackere allow the Council to vote on a resolution that expressed opposition in principle to the idea of at-large seats for the council? That wouldn't be about any specific proposal that is now or will be before the voters.

    What happened is apparent: Poor Susan Neal doesn't want to go on record supporting this proposal, even though she almost certainly supports it, and her district is the base for most of the support. Or perhaps she's trying to protect potential mayoral candidates Tom Baker and Bill Christiansen from having to go on the record in support. So rather than say she doesn't want to go on the record, she gets cover from Jackere. This bunch is all about shielding public officials from accountability to the voters for their views and actions.

    The following press release announces the formation of a group to oppose the plan to dismember three Tulsa City Council districts and replace them with three seats elected citywide:

    Tulsans Defending Democracy

    "that we here highly resolve... that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish...."

    Abraham Lincoln, from the Gettysburg Address, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November 19, 1863

    A Bipartisan group from all parts of Tulsa will announce its formation and its plan to defend democracy. The group will work to preserve fair representation and will fight the ill-conceived petition drive to create 3 At-Large City Councilors with four year terms. Ordinary citizens will have their City Council representation diluted by reducing council districts from 9 to 6 unless this undemocratic plan is stopped.

    Where: Embers Restaurant, 81st and Harvard, 9 am, Thursday, November 10, 2005.

    For More Information:

    herb.beattie@sbcglobal.net  Herb Beattie    749-4586  Dist. 9 
    mruouthere@sbcglobal.net Mona Miller 496-1481 Dist. 2
    bbrdarrow@cox.net Becky Darrow 369-4487 Dist. 8
    rpearcey@mac.com Ray Pearcey 853-1726 Dist. 4

    Councilors Chris Medlock and Jim Mautino will speak and field questions at a "town hall" meeting this Wednesday, November 9, from 6 to 8 p.m., in the auditorium of Martin East Regional Library, 2601 S. Garnett Rd. Topics will include the December 13 vote on a new county capital improvements tax, the City of Tulsa's "third-penny" sales tax for capital improvements, due to expire next summer, proposed charter amendments, and other topics pertaining to city government.

    Tomorrow during the Tulsa City Council's 10:00 a.m. Urban and Economic Development Committee meeting, Councilors Jack Henderson and Jim Mautino will present a resolution against the at-large councilor proposal being pushed by Tulsans for Blue-Blood Government:

    9. Resolution against the proposed initiative petition which seeks to replace three City Council positions elected from specific election districts with three City Council positions elected for the entire city. (Henderson/Mautino) 05-1536

    I'm sure Councilors Henderson and Mautino would appreciate support from the public at this meeting.

    Some other items of interest, at the 8 a.m. Public Works Committee meeting:

    12. Resurvey of screen wall, sign, and trees at Wind River Development on 121st St. between Delaware & Yale Avenues. (Christiansen) 05-1383-2

    13. Council discretion and authority with regard to proposed Yale bridge development project. (Christiansen) 05-779-5

    14. Discussion with Administration regarding events center naming rights agreement, convention center improvement funding, and any change from the public presentation to voters in the allocation of Vision 2025 funds between the events center and convention center improvements. (Medlock) 05-1533

    15. Update from Administration on the status of the Ethics Advisory Committee described in the ethics ordinance. (Turner) 05-1314-2

    16. Allowing non-supervisory employees to unionize or bargain collectively. (Turner/Henderson) 05-1486

    That item 12 is connected to the bridge issue -- the pro-IVI people have said they can't move that bridge because it would interfere with the Wind River upscale housing development underway at 121st and River Road.

    Also, the first item on the 10 a.m. agenda is interesting:

    Charles R. Ford - Appointment to the Tulsa Development Authority (TDA); term expires 7/31/08; (replaces A. Adwon). [UED 11/8/05] 05-1406

    Adam Adwon is the brother of Mitch Adwon, a close advisor to Mayor Bill LaFortune. Mitch Adwon is said to be involved with the backers of the proposed soccer stadium development in the "East Village" section of downtown. Since TDA-owned land would be involved in any such deal, this looks like a move to eliminate a potential conflict of interest.

    Adam Adwon's replacement, Charles R. Ford, is the former State Senator for District 25, representing far south Tulsa and Broken Arrow until he was term-limited for the 2004 election. (It was called Senate District 51 prior to the 2002 redistricting.) Ford lives a couple of blocks east of Southern Hills Country Club. Ford is a distinguished public servant, but he represented and lives in a suburban part of the city. Given that TDA deals with property in the older, urban part of Tulsa, it would make more sense to appoint someone who actually lives and works in Tulsa's urban core.

    Tulsa blog roundup

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    A look at what's new from bloggers who blog about Tulsa politics:

    Mad Okie sees Tulsa at the crossroads. The Oklahomilist elaborates on the idea:

    This is not about liberal or conservative issues. It's not even about Democrats and Republicans, since it is apparent that the same elitist mindset governs many PTB regardless of party.

    It's about transparency in government. It's about trust. Explanations. Consultation. It's about equal opportunity, in advance. It's about keeping first things first. And first things for a city should be good streets, safe homes, good schools.

    Anything that takes away from priorities, or that diminishes trust and transparency should be fixed, if possible. If it cannot be fixed it should be isolated and avoided. And the public should know why.

    Both pieces are well worth reading.

    Steve Denney at HFFZ urges a no vote on 4 to Fix the County and has Mona Miller's speech to the City Council on the charter amendment regarding zoning protest petitions requiring a supermajority council vote on zoning changes.

    TulTellitarian says the boards of Tulsa Airport Authority and Tulsa Airport Improvements Trust ought to resign.

    Chris Medlock, Tulsa City Councilor and Republican candidate for Mayor, has several recent entries on developments at City Hall regarding the haste with which the management team was selected for the new Tulsa arena (less than 24 hours after the interviews were held) and the interesting link with Bill LaFortune's former boss; corrects a Tulsa Whirled article about the vote on a charter change regarding zoning protest petitions, and corrects TulTellitarian's blog entry (mentioned above) about his status on the Council's airport investigation committee (he's never been chairman or vice chairman, and the committee no longer formally exists); wonders about the connecton between Bill LaFortune's insistence on limiting the ethics ordinance definition of a conflict of interest to two degrees of consanguinity and the fact that his uncle, former Mayor Bob LaFortune, sits on the Bank of Oklahoma board of directors; and a couple of conflicting quotes from the Tulsa Whirled a week ago on the value of the arena to Tulsa's prosperity.

    Dave Schuttler (Our Tulsa World) has the news that Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn will be on Meet the Press Sunday morning. If you miss the show, you can subscribe to the podcast -- Dave has the link.

    Bobby at Tulsa Topics has video up of the meeting on plans for I-44 widening.

    Chimchim has some thoughts about downtown redevelopment:

    To me the argument is: Where is downtown going to find its life? its energy? The days of dreaming that huge oil companies be attracted to downtown Tulsa, and will rain down sacks of gold coins on to DTU and the chamber of commerce are over. Those organizations need to wake up and realize that it's 2005. They need to see what's REALLY around them -- a vibrant, energetic, creative class of diverse citizens who are PASSIONATE about downtown and all the beauty and potential it holds -- and embrace that. welcome it with open arms.

    Steve Roemerman was having fun with anagrams awhile back. Did his anagram for "Tulsa World" inspire Don Danz's adjustment to the paper's logo? It does look a bit sallow, doesn't it?

    (Comments disabled for this entry since I'm linking to others rather than posting my own thoughts.)

    An edited version of this column appeared in the November 2, 2005, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is available online via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. My blog entry linking the column is here, responses from other bloggers are linked here and here. Posted online October 6, 2017.

    Faith and political courage

    by Michael Bates

    It's been just over a week since "Tulsans for Better Government" launched their initiative petition to change the Tulsa City Charter to cut the number of City Council districts from nine to six and to add three super-councilors, to be elected citywide for four year terms. Already there's a strong backlash: An opposition group is getting organized, and it's drawing support from across the political spectrum. The Tulsa County Democratic Executive Committee has already issued a formal statement opposing the at-large councilor scheme, and grassroots Republicans are pushing for their party to come out against it as well.

    Like so many other local issues, it doesn't divide along party lines. Instead you have certain privileged interest groups pushing for it, and ordinary Tulsans, concerned about fairness and equal representation in government, pushing back. Of the 22 members of the advisory board for Tulsans for Better Government, 18 live in the wealthy sections of Council District 9 or right next to Southern Hills Country Club in District 2. District 9 already has two City Councilors living within its borders -District 7 Councilor Randy Sullivan has lived there for nearly two years, preferring not to live among the people who elected him - but apparently that isn't enough for these people.

    Of all the provocative things I wrote in last week's column on this topic ("Seeing the Light on City Charter"), this sentence has provoked the most comment: "Councilors Medlock, Mautino, Turner, and Henderson are all men of devout Christian faith."

    The statement was in the middle of a paragraph about how these four reform-minded councilors have withstood relentless pressure from the defenders of the status quo. All four have said publicly and privately that their faith in Christ has sustained them through all the trials they have faced.

    Over on my blog, batesline.com, Michael Sanditen commented that my statement was "off base and makes you appear a bigot. I will remind you that without the Jews in Tulsa, this town would be extremely pitiful. They are the quiet givers, the anonymous ones, many more than just the Kaisers, Schustermans, and Zarrows!" I'm amazed that the statement, intended as a compliment to the four councilors, would be read as an insult to adherents of any other faith. I concur that the contribution of the Jewish community to the prosperity and welfare of Tulsa far outweighs its numbers, but that has nothing to do with what I wrote.

    Other commenters objected to any mention of religion in this context. One wrote, "Whether these men are Christian is irrelevant. Whether these men can perform their duties as city councilors is much more important." Another said, "Religious persuasion (or a lack thereof), for me, is not a litmus [test] for the qualifications for public service. I don't need to know what faith these Councilors follow to know that they are good men.... I hope you will realize bringing religion into the debate will most likely divide us more than it unites us."

    I think I understand the root of their objections. If you think of faith as just professing agreement with certain doctrines, then what I wrote would be irrelevant to the discussion. If you confuse faith with religion, then you might well wonder what a Councilor's position on the propriety of infant baptism, which foot to lead with when genuflecting, or whether musical instruments have a place in worship has to do with his performance in office.

    But faith is more than reciting a creed or performing certain rituals. Faith involves confidence and trust. During a worship service you profess certain things to be true about God's nature and character. During the rest of the week, your true faith - what you really believe about God and his dealings with you and the rest of the humanity - becomes apparent in the way you live your life, and particularly in the way you deal with adversity.

    For that reason, what an elected official really believes about God's nature and character affects how he conducts himself in office. Someone who has genuine confidence and trust in God as He is revealed in the Bible will have courage and persistence in the face of discouragement, danger, hostility, oppression, and injustice. From the Torah, he knows that God delivered His people from slavery in Egypt, made a way of escape through the Red Sea, provided food for them in the wilderness, and settled them in the Promised Land. In the prophets, he reads of God's hatred for injustice, favoritism, and false dealing.

    The politician who believes in the God of the Bible knows that he is in office not because of his brilliant campaign strategy, but because God put him there; in Psalm 75, he reads that "promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another." He reads Jesus' parable of the talents and knows that he is accountable first to God for what he does with the office which has been entrusted to him. He reads Mordecai's appeal to Esther and knows that he too is where he is "for such a time as this" - that it is not by accident that he is in office at this particular moment. There is something to be accomplished now, not put off until after the next election.

    The usual pressure tactics won't succeed with the politician who reads and believes the Epistle to the Philippians. He turns his anxieties into prayers to his all-sufficient Father. You can threaten his job or his wife's job, but he reads that God will supply all his needs. You can threaten him with removal for office, but he is learning, with Paul, to be content in any situation. You can threaten his reputation and position, but he is a follower and servant of Christ, who forsook his heavenly throne, "made himself of no reputation, and took upon [himself] the form of a servant." You can threaten his life, but he knows that "to die is gain" - the worst you can do is send him on to his heavenly home earlier than he expected. He expects to share in the sufferings of his Lord, but also in his Lord's resurrection.

    If you're a Councilor steeped in Scripture you aren't going to be deterred when a big donor threatens to fund your opponent, when someone from the Chamber or the Home Builders corners you to cuss you out over a vote, or when the World does another front-page hatchet job on you.

    History is filled with men and women whose faith gave them the courage to persist in the political realm. One example: William Wilberforce, a member of the British parliament in the early 1800s, was driven by his faith to push first for the abolition of the slave trade, then for the abolition of slavery itself. His faith sustained him through the18 years it took to accomplish the first aim and another 15 years to accomplish the second. He spent most of those years as one lonely voice trying to overcome apathy and the opposition of powerful commercial interests.

    There are and have been courageous politicians who are not Bible-believing Jews or Christians, and they draw their strength from other wells. But the Scripture is a deep well from which to draw.

    Please understand that I am not talking about the sort of politician who wears his religion on his sleeve, who flits about from one megachurch to another, more in search of votes than spiritual nourishment. And I'm not talking about where a politician stands on any particular issue, although a worldview shaped by Scripture is bound to affect one's platform. I am talking about men and women who have learned through hardships, setbacks, and disappointments that the God of the Bible is still present and is worthy of their complete trust.

    We say that we are weary of run-of-the-mill politicians. We are tired of compulsive people-pleasers who can't make a decision and stick with it. We are fed up with officials who abandon reform at the first sign of resistance. We have had it with "public servants" who seek only to serve themselves. If we want elected officials who are fearless to do what is right, we ought to look for men and women whose character has been shaped by confidence in a God who is bigger than any adversary they may face.

    The rainbow coalition

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    I want to apologize for suggesting that the backers of the plan to cut the number of Tulsa city council districts and add at-large districts is not a diverse group. Now that I've seen a list of the steering committee, I see that it includes both people connected with Holland Hall and people connected with Cascia Hall.

    Here's the list of names, from today's Tulsa Whirled story:

    The group's advisory board comprises [committee treasurer Len] Eaton's wife, Patty Eaton, a former Tulsa water commissioner and current member of the city's water board; Howard Barnett, former Gov. Frank Keating's chief of staff; former Mayor Robert LaFortune; former Mayor Jim Hewgley; Norma Eagleton, a former Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner and former Tulsa Airport Authority member; former Councilor Dewey Bartlett Jr., the president of Keener Oil & Gas Co.; former Street Commissioner Sid Patterson; Paula Marshall-Chapman, the chief executive officer of Bama Cos.; Tom Hughes, the owner of Hughes Lumber; and the lawyers David Riggs, C.S. Lewis III and Ray Feldman and his wife, Nancy Feldman, a former professor at University of Tulsa.

    Clearly District 9 is not content with having two councilors already -- they want five.

    Mad Okie has a report from his neighborhood meeting, and it provides some useful perspective on the airport noise abatement issue and a rebuttal to those who blame the homeowners for being there in the first place.

    Dave Schuttler has video of the meeting and a map showing noise contours around the airport.

    At-large councilors

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    An edited version of this piece was published in the October 26, 2005, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The archived version is no longer online. Posted on the web October 27, 2009.

    It's been a tough couple of years for Tulsa's traditional political establishment. The bunch that for years has had control over city government - a group I call the Cockroach Caucus, after their aversion to the light of public scrutiny - saw their grip on public opinion beginning to slip.

    Despairing of their long-term chances to regain full control of city government under the current rules, they've got a scheme to change the rules so that money will count for more than grass-roots support. The plan is to dilute geographic diversity on the Council and guarantee that big money will control at least a third of the city's legislative body.

    Last Thursday, a group calling themselves "Tulsans for Better Government" filed an initiative petition to reduce the number of Tulsa City Council districts to 6 and to create three at-large "supercouncilor" seats.

    The group is headed by Arthur H. "Chip" McElroy II, whose company played host to Bill LaFortune's re-election announcement. The three supercouncilors would be elected citywide to four-year terms, beginning in 2008, while the six district councilors would continue to serve two years at a time.

    The idea has been pushed enthusiastically by the Tulsa World editorial board, distraught by their fading influence over city politics. (The World routinely waits three weeks before publishing a letter to the editor, so it's telling that the paper fast-tracked a Sunday "Readers' Forum" guest opinion in support of the campaign just two days after it was launched.)

    After the 2004 elections, the Council had, for the first time ever, a majority of members that were elected contrary to the endorsements of the Tulsa World and the money of the developers' lobby. In four contested primaries and four contested general elections, reform-minded candidates received 59% of the vote to 41% for the World's endorsees.*

    The empire struck back in May of this year, with Bill Martinson replacing Sam Roop in a special election. But Martinson won with only 29% of the vote, aided by the unusual structure of a special election. The result gave the anti-reform bunch an apparent majority in the short term, but they can't have been encouraged about the long-term prospects of maintaining control.

    The results of July 12 had to have been a shock to the Cockroach Caucus. Despite a year-long barrage of criticism from the Tulsa World and now-retired radio host John Erling and a well-financed and relentlessly dirty campaign against Councilors Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock, the two survived a recall election by overwhelming percentages.

    What has become apparent is that, in a district race, feet on the ground - enthusiastic volunteers willing to go door-to-door on behalf of a candidate - can beat money and a monopoly daily newspaper. With passionate grass-roots support, a candidate can get a message out to counter direct mail, robo-calls, and the potshots taken on the news and editorial pages of the World. Tulsa's Council districts each have a population of 43,000, still small enough to be reachable by grass-roots methods.

    It really seems to frighten the Cockroach Caucus that there are four councilors who don't feel the need to grovel before them for campaign money. In the past, the occasional maverick would rise up and challenge business as usual at City Hall, but the old guard was always successful in isolating them and either defeating them or wearing them down into submission. Councilors Medlock, Mautino, Turner, and Henderson are all men of devout Christian faith. They are willing to risk their political careers to do what they believe is best for the city, and they are confident that in seeking what is right, they will have the support of their constituents. And they've stood by each other through thick and thin, thwarting the old divide-and-conquer strategy.

    By making three of the council seats citywide, money comes back into the picture. TV and radio advertising come into play, and for that you need plenty of campaign cash. Grass-roots campaigns can succeed at that level - Tom Coburn and John Sullivan beat elite-supported candidates at the congressional district and state levels - but are much harder to pull off.

    Not only would big money have the best shot at winning the three at-large seats, but the process of consolidating nine districts into six would allow the Cockroach Caucus to eliminate the incumbents they hate the most by throwing them into the same districts as other incumbents.

    North Tulsa would go from two councilors to one, putting reform Councilors Roscoe Turner and Jack Henderson into the same district. West Tulsa's concerns would be drowned out under the plan - its population currently makes up half of District 2; under the new plan it would only be a third of a district.

    Bigger districts are also easier to gerrymander, and with all the support for this effort coming from the Midtown "Money Belt" - that band of affluence stretching from Utica Square to Southern Hills - don't be surprised to see the new lines drawn so that nearly every district includes a Money Belt precinct. That's a time-honored technique used at the state legislative level to allow the affluent to represent working class citizens without having to actually (ick!) live among them. Diversity of representation, the reason we went to districts with the new charter in 1989, would disappear.

    Supporters of at-large councilors make the bogus claim that "ward politics" are damaging the city. They say that district councilors are focused on the parochial concerns of their constituents at the expense of the best interests of the city as a whole. But if you look back at the most controversial issues of the last two years, they've been citywide issues. Great Plains Airlines and airport operations, creation of a city-focused economic development policy, oversight for funding to the Chamber of Commerce, fairness in the zoning process, north Tulsa County annexation, the water line to Owasso and the reappointment of two suburbs-focused members of the city's water board, the IVI toll bridge - in each case the councilors under attack by the World-led establishment have been seeking the City of Tulsa's best interests, in many cases where they conflicted with the interests of the suburbs.

    Councilors Henderson, Mautino, Medlock, and Turner are each devoted to the needs of their own constituents, but they've also worked together to ensure that the citizens of the historically neglected east, west, and north sections of our city receive the city services they are owed.

    And that seems to be what really bugs the bunch behind the at-large council proposal. It's the Money Belt denizens backing this plan that tend to take a parochial view, seeing Tulsa as a small, close-knit, fabulously wealthy town centered on Utica Square. Neighborhoods like West Highlands and Garden City, Rose Dew and Wagon Wheel, Sequoyah and Suburban Acres may as well be foreign countries to them.

    We finally have a critical mass of councilors who believe that city government should serve all Tulsans, not just a favored few, and it is shaking up the cozy worldview of the old elite. The forces behind at-large council seats used their years in power to lead Tulsa to its current state of declining population, rising crime, and an economy still dangerously dependent on a few key industries.

    The Cockroach Caucus has run this town for years, but it is out of ideas, out of energy, and very nearly out of power. The "Tulsans for Better Government" is the elite's final desperate attempt to keep city government in their grasp.

    I feel certain that the people of Tulsa will tell them, "No thanks, the city belongs to all of us now, and we intend to keep it that way."

    * NOTE: I've only counted elections where a Whirled endorsee faced a reformist opponent. The Democrat primary in District 3 and Republican primaries in District 7 and 8 decided the winners of those seats. Jack Henderson won a contested Democrat primary in District 1 and handily defeated token opposition in the general election. Districts 2, 4, 5, and 6 had seriously contested general elections. I've left out District 9 entirely - the general election pitted incumbent Republican Susan Neal against incarcerated Independent Paul Tay.

    Last "Third Penny" meeting tonight

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    Tonight's the last of the Mayor's five town halls about renewing the "Third Penny" -- the one-cent, five-year sales tax that funds a specific set of capital improvements for the City of Tulsa.

    The meeting is at the Helmerich Library, on 91st, and east of Yale, at 7 p.m. (Note that unlike the other town halls, the one for south Tulsa is not being held at a regional library, but at a smaller branch.)

    I've argued for extending the current tax, passed in 2001, for another 14 months, to finish the projects that were promised way back then before starting over with a new set. If you've got an opinion about that, or anything else the Mayor needs to hear, tonight's your chance.

    The Tulsa Whirled gave prime real estate -- the top of the Local section on Sunday -- to a story about City Councilor Tom Baker's proposal for a charter review committee:

    "I don't necessarily think there is a need to make all of the proposed changes, but rather than continuing this debate, maybe we should put some of those changes through a more serious review process by a broader base of citizens and act on their collective opinion," he said.

    "If they feel certain changes need to occur, then we can give it to the voters. Or, if they think not much is wrong, then let's let it ride for a while," he said.

    So rather than let the Council, the elected representatives of the people, vet the proposed charter changes and pass them on to the citizens for a vote, Baker wants to gather a handpicked, unelected group to decide which reforms we the people will get to consider.

    Does Tom Baker actually have any opinions of his own? Does he convene a task force when he's deciding what to have for dinner? Baker's approach to decision-making bears the marks of his years climbing to the top of a bureaucracy. It allows you to seem like a decisive leader, without actually making any decisions for which you could be held accountable.

    At the end of the story, we learn that Baker has a couple of opinions about charter change: He doesn't think there's anything wrong with the recall provisions of the charter, and he doesn't think there's anything wrong with a councilor living outside the district he purports to represent.

    Baker on recall:

    The attempt to change the charter's provision on recall, which Baker said he thinks worked, points to the unsuccessful attempt to oust controversial Councilors Chris Medlock and Jim Mautino. A group wanted to recall the councilors, followed procedures, an election was called and the voters said no, he said.

    Baker conveniently forgets the months of smears that his two colleagues had to endure, the expense of fighting to defeat the recall, and the effect that the process had on the City Council. Makes me wish they'd pursued a recall against him after all -- he might not be so blithe about it.

    Baker on residency:

    A change that would require a councilor to live in his or her district for the entire term is aimed at Councilor Randy Sullivan, who because of a divorce and court order had to find a new residence and moved out of his district.

    It's not aimed at Randy Sullivan, but Randy Sullivan's situation pointed to a loophole that really shouldn't be there. (As I read state law, it isn't there, but it still needs to be spelled out in the charter, for our City Attorney's sake.) The proposed charter amendment doesn't make a councilor a prisoner of his district, but if he chooses to move out, he has to resign, which is only reasonable. There were plenty of places in District 7 where Sullivan could have moved after being booted from his home, but he had the gall to run for re-election after he had already moved out of the district. Anyone who supports the principle of geographical representation ought to have a problem with that.

    Which is why Tom Baker doesn't have a problem with that. The hidden agenda of his proposed blue ribbon panel is to push for the addition of at-large members to the City Council, diluting geographical representation, and taking grass-roots politics out of the equation. The powers that be realize that they are losing control of the current form of city government, and they are trying to reel it back in. That's why you have a story that is not particularly timely, focused on one favored councilor, bolstered by a handpicked academic, on the front page of Sunday's local section. The Whirledlings want a council that's under their thumb, and they want an unimaginative bureaucrat as the next mayor.

    Tulsa roundup

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    Roemerman on Record will be quiet for a while, as Steve Roemerman is off to Gretna, Louisiana, just across the Mississippi from New Orleans, with a group from his church to help Convoy of Hope. We'll keep Steve in our prayers and look forward to his report when he returns.

    Our Tulsa World has added more video clips from Mayor Bill LaFortune's September 6 third-penny meeting at the Zarrow Library. This is a great service that Mr. Schuttler is doing by filming, converting, and posting these video clips. Too often the claims and promises made in this sort of meeting are lost to history. His summary of the meeting puts the clips in context. In another entry he has the response from Mayor LaFortune and Fire Chief Allen LaCroix to the question, "Are we prepared if Keystone Dam breaks?"

    MeeCiteeWurkor has a special comments thread just for registering your opinion of the Tulsa Whirled. He's asking for submissions in a contest -- things you can do with a Tulsa Whirled. And he's about to add a new contributor to the blog.

    City Councilor Chris Medlock has a recent entry on his proposal regarding the sales tax money currently going to Tulsa County for "4 to Fix the County." He says that the county is fixed now, and between the Vision 2025 sales tax and rising property taxes, the county is well fixed for funds. By denying a renewal of the 2/12ths cent "4 to Fix" sales tax, City of Tulsa voters could opt to pass the same size sales tax at the city level and earmark it for public safety.

    Another noteworthy item on MedBlogged cites two Tulsa Whirled City Hall stories, one from 2002, one from last week. The March 2002 story has Mayor-elect Bill LaFortune saying he plans to have a direct, face-to-face relationship with the City Council, which lines up with my recollection of my first meeting with LaFortune as he started his run for office. The September 2005 story has councilors, including recently-elected Bill Martinson, complaining that LaFortune won't deal directly with the Council on issues like the new third-penny proposal.

    Tulsa Downtown reports that new clubs are opening in the Blue Dome district.

    Tulsa newcomer Joe Kelley has been trying the immersion approach to understanding his new hometown, and he's posted a list of some of the people he's met with so far, and would like suggestions for others he ought to talk to. About a week and a half ago, I introduced him to the tawook at La Roma Pizza (a Lebanese restaurant disguised as a pizzeria), and we had a very enjoyable conversation. He seems to be a very astute observer and a quick study.

    Tulsa Topics has an audio tribute to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, including their radio theme song, "Okie Boogie," "Cadillac in my Model A," and tributes by The Tractors and Asleep at the Wheel. One thing I love about Bob Wills songs -- you don't need liner notes, because Bob tells you who's playing as the song proceeds.

    As always, you'll find the latest and greatest entries from blogs about Tulsa news on the Tulsa Bloggers aggregation page.

    Extend the 2001 Third Penny

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    On October 7, 1980, the City of Tulsa approved a one-cent sales tax for capital improvements to expire after five years. It was dubbed the "Third Penny," as Tulsa has a 2% sales tax to fund general operations. It's a pay-as-you-go tax -- money is spent as it comes in. The Third Penny tax has been renewed every five years since, most recently in May 2001. Below are the dates the tax was renewed and the term for which it was renewed.

    April 9, 1985 -- December 31, 1985, to April 30, 1991
    December 4, 1990 -- May 1, 1991, to July 31, 1996
    February 13, 1996 -- August 1, 1996, to July 31, 2001
    May 8, 2001 -- August 1, 2001, to July 31, 2006

    Each Third Penny election establishes a separate fund, which may only be spent on the projects advertised to the voters prior to the election.

    Nearly every previous Third Penny fund has run a surplus, which the City Council has allocated to unfunded capital improvements projects. That isn't the case with the 2001 fund. At a Council committee meeting on August 2, Finance Director Mike Kier reported a shortfall of $69.2 million, reflecting the downturn in the local economy thanks to the bursting of the telecom bubble. That means that nearly $70 million in basic projects -- streets and sewers -- that we've been waiting to have for five years won't get done by the time the tax expires.

    The rule of thumb is that a one cent city sales tax will raise $60 million in one year. It would take about 14 more months to erase the shortfall and pay for all the 2001 Third Penny projects.

    There are two options: The first is to lump any unfinished projects in with a full slate of new projects for another five year extension. Mayor Bill LaFortune seems to be headed in this direction, as he holds town hall meetings gathering public input starting tonight. This would mean only 80% of the new tax would go for new projects. There's a danger that new projects for the 2006 Third Penny would be funded and completed ahead of the carryover projects from the 2001 Third Penny.

    Another danger of this approach is that it would mean that the Mayor and Council will be putting together this entirely new slate of projects in the midst of a mayoral campaign that will pit at least one sitting councilor (probably more) against a sitting mayor. The renewal election would probably be held at the same time as the primary or general election. It would be the first time that a Third Penny vote has coincided with a mayoral election. Bill LaFortune would be in an excellent position to manipulate the list of new projects to help him secure renomination and a second four-year term.

    If a five-year Third Penny election coincides with the mayoral primary or general, it will mean that there won't be a major capital improvements funding package during the term of the new mayor. The general obligation bond issue we just voted on back in April won't be up again until after the 2010 elections. In the past, it's been the tradition to space the bond issue and Third Penny votes out by 2 years -- Third Penny in 1996, bond issue in August 1999, Third Penny in 2001. The bond issue should have been up again in the summer of 2004, but the Mayor's office delayed and delayed.

    The least controversial way to move forward, the way that will guarantee that all 2001 projects will be completed as soon as possible, the way that is most likely to win the voters' approval, is to vote in February or March to extend the 2001 Third Penny for another 14 months. No new projects -- just finish what we started. The tax would then expire at the end of September 2007, plenty of time for the new mayor, with a fresh mandate from the public, to put together a new five-year Third Penny package which reflects the new mayor's priorities.

    Here's the list of the Mayor's town hall meetings on the Third Penny. If you'd like to see a vote just to extend and complete the 2001 package, this is an opportunity to make sure the Mayor hears you. All the meetings start at 7 p.m.

    Tuesday, September 6: Zarrow Library, 2224 W. 51st St.

    Wednesday, September 7: Aaronson Auditorium, Central Library, Fourth and Denver, downtown.

    Monday, September 12: Rudisill Library, 1520 N. Hartford Ave.

    Tuesday, September 13: Martin Library, 2601 S. Garnett Road.

    Monday, September 19: Helmerich Library, 5131 E. 91st St.

    Charter amendment status

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    I attended Thursday night's Tulsa City Council meeting, when they once again went through the list of proposed charter amendments, and the public had the opportunity to comment. Here are some points I made and some I intended to make, but cut for the sake of time:

    Councilor Bill Martinson had complained at Tuesday's committee meeting that the list of amendments needed to be "whittled down". He particularly wanted to get rid of the requirement for a councilor to resign if he ceased to reside in his district. (It's worth remembering that the backers of absentee Councilor Randy Sullivan, who would be affected by the amendment, also backed Martinson.) Recall that in 2004, Oklahoma voters had nine state questions plus as many as six offices on the ballot. One might disagree with the outcome, but Oklahomans were able to handle the complexity just fine. As in 2004, if all the remaining charter amendments are put to a vote, some, like the residency requirement, will be no-brainers, others will be controversial, but we can trust the voters.

    Many of the amendments are not new, but have been proposed before. It's just that previous councils have declined to send them along for the voters' consideration, and so there's a significant backlog. Next March it will have been 10 years since any charter amendments have been sent to the voters. (Here is the list of all amendments since the adoption of the 1989 charter.)

    Here's the list they were working with on Thursday (PDF file), with the longer, earlier list following. I'll use the numbering from that first page in my comments below.

    Three items have to do with residency: 1a, 1b, 6.

    The charter frequently uses the term "qualified elector" as a qualification for office, and in Article XII that term is defined as "a registered voter of the City of Tulsa, registered to vote as provided by the laws of Oklahoma." Unfortunately, this doesn't mean you actually live in Tulsa. As long as you live in a place when you register to vote, it's OK, under Oklahoma election laws, to keep your registration there, even if you move away. Item 1a would add the requirement to be a resident to the definition of "qualified elector."

    Item 1b would require appointees to authorities, boards, and commissions (ABCs) to be qualified electors residing in Tulsa for a period of 90 days. Item 6 would require a councilor to live in his district and to resign if he moves out. If you're an elected or appointed city official, you ought to forfeit that office if you don't live in the city. If you're elected or appointed to serve a specific district, you ought to forfeit that office if you no longer live in the district. Here in America, we value geographical representation.

    Items 1a and 1b were previously sent to the City Attorney for an initial draft. Thursday night, the Council voted 7-1 to send on item 6. The lone dissenter was Bill Martinson.

    Item 4 would establish a time frame of 60 days for the Mayor to make appointments to ABCs. The Mayor can ask for an additional 60 days with Council approval. If the appointment still hasn't been made after the extension, the Council would be allowed to fill the position. This is necessary because under state law, the current appointee continues to serve after his term expires, until a replacement is approved. As things are today, if a Mayor wants an ABC member to remain, but doesn't think he can get Council approval to reappoint him, he can simply delay bringing the member up for reappointment, allowing the member to continue to serve and effectively bypassing the wishes of the Council. Terms expire periodically so that the Council and Mayor can decide whether an ABC member is representing the best interests of the City of Tulsa. This amendment would ensure that members of ABCs have a mandate from the people we elect to represent us. Item 4 was approved for an initial draft on August 18.

    Item 5 would authorize the City Council to hire its own attorney independent from the oversight of the City Attorney. This is an item that I proposed at least five years ago. If checks and balances are to be effective, the legislative branch needs independent advice from an attorney whose sole responsibility is to serve the interests of the City Council. This is especially important when the Council and Mayor are at odds. Item 5 was approved for an initial draft on August 18.

    Item 7 has to do with city election dates. There are only five or, rarely, six weeks between the city primary and the city general election. A state law passed this year (HB 1378) requires that there must be at least 35 days between the primary and the general election. We will meet that requirement in 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012 using our current election dates, so I'm not sure why the City Attorney is saying we may be forced to move the primary to an earlier date. If we do move election dates, moving the primary closer to New Year's would be the wrong approach. Move the general later in the year, or, my favorite option, move the whole election cycle to the fall of odd numbered years. It would be better for grass-roots campaigns if the elections could be conducted when there are more hours of sunshine and warmer weather for knocking on doors. It would be better for all campaigns if the month of December didn't fall in the midst of prime campaign season. Item 7 was approved for initial draft on August 18.

    Items 3 and 10 require supermajorities for zoning changes in certain circumstances. Item 3 is the same proposition that was supposed to be on the April ballot (but the dog ate someone's homework), requiring a 3/4 supermajority to approve a zoning change if affected property owners or neighboring property owners got sufficient signatures a protest petition. Passing this would bring Tulsa back in line with state law and with our ordinance, which the City Attorney ruled a violation of the Charter. The only outstanding issue was whether to enshrine the minimum percentages for a protest petition in the Charter, and the consensus seemed to be to do so. Item 10 would impose a supermajority for any zoning change to property under Historic Preservation zoning. I'm concerned about unintended consequences with this one, and I'm not sure about enshrining a particular zoning overlay district in the Charter. Item 10 was approved on August 18 for initial draft. Item 3 we still have from when it was approved for the ballot this spring.

    That leaves us with the two recall items, items 2 and 9. I refer you to my thoughts on reforming recall from a couple of days ago. Councilor Tom Baker brought forward a proposed amendment for the recall process, which was presented only after the public comments were over, so we neither saw it nor were able to comment on it. In any event, it was approved by a 7-to-Martinson vote for an initial draft by the City Attorney.

    I left before item 9 -- complete removal of the recall provision from the charter -- was voted on. It failed to advance by a 4-4 vote, with Christiansen, Henderson, Mautino, and Turner voting yes, Baker, Martinson, Medlock, and Neal voting no. Medlock's vote was a bit of a surprise, but he expressed concern about voter confusion if two separate recall propositions -- mending it and ending it -- are on the ballot. Personally, I think the voters can handle it, and I'd like to see it move forward.

    By the way, my nine-year-old son was with me for the whole two hour meeting. His GameBoy didn't work, but he sat there very quietly and patiently. I'm very proud of him.

    Tonight at the Tulsa City Council meeting at 6 p.m. you'll have the opportunity to voice your thoughts on the list of proposed amendments to the Tulsa City Charter. The initial working list is here (PDF format). From that list, items 3, 4, 8, 12, 14, and 17 are off the table -- that covers nonpartisan city elections, adding councilors at-large, making the City Attorney's office either elected by the public or jointly appointed by Mayor and Council, term limits, removing department heads from civil service protection, and changing to a council/city manager form of government.

    Good news: One item that didn't make the cut at last week's meeting was reinstated for discussion this week -- requiring a councilor to live in the district he represents. This ought to be a no-brainer, and I think voters will be shocked to learn that this requirement isn't already in the Charter.

    I was at Tuesday's committee meeting at which the proposed amendments were discussed. Regarding reform of the recall process, the council seemed to divide into three groups: (1) those who wanted the recall process completely removed, with the possibility of bringing it back at a later date after it had been thoroughly studied and reformed; (2) those who want to leave the recall provision in place, but reform it now; and (3) those who want to do nothing now.

    I had the opportunity to speak and proposed a compromise between positions (1) and (2), for which Councilors Medlock and Christiansen expressed support. The Council could put two questions before the voters -- an outright repeal and an amendment of the existing process. If voters approved both questions, the repeal would supercede the amendment, which would be moot. Even if voters defeated the repeal, they might still approve the amendment, which would be preferable to leaving the current system in place, with all the ambiguities and problems unaddressed.

    Reform of recall should address three aspects of the process:

    (1) The number of signatures should be standard across all districts. Under the current process, the number of signatures is based on turnout in the last general election, which means it will be different depending on whether the previous general was a high turnout mayoral election or a lower turnout, council-only election. Under the current system, it isn't clear how many signatures are required if an official was elected without facing a general election opponent. We should standardize either on a percentage of registered voters or on a percentage of the number of votes cast in the previous regular mayoral general election.

    (2) How the signatures are verified needs to be clarified, so we avoid the semantic games that were played in the recall of Councilors Mautino and Medlock. Make it clear that the signatures are to be compared to the signatures in the official voter registration records, regardless of whether the signatures are contained in books or on cards. The charter amendment could specify a particular standard for signature verification or could direct the Council to adopt a standard.

    (3) If an official is removed from office by recall, there ought to be an election to replace him, regardless of the time remaining until the next election. Under the current system, the replacement would have been chosen by election or appointment, depending on when the vote was certified and the vacancy officially existed. Another approach to this problem would be to make one year before the next general election the last permissible date to hold a recall election.

    More later on the other proposals.

    At last Thursday's Tulsa City Council meeting, a list of charter changes was on the agenda and about half of them were dropped off the list. The Council is deciding which proposed charter amendments will be presented to the voters at next March's general election. Further discussion of the list is on the agenda for tomorrow's Urban and Economic Development Committee meeting, 10 a.m., in the Council committee room on the second floor of the City Hall tower. If there are items on the list that you want the chance to vote on, or items that were dropped that you'd like brought back for further consideration, be there tomorrow if you can, and plan to be there Thursday night when the list is back before the full Council.

    Here's the list of proposed charter amendments that emerged from last Tuesday's Council committee meeting and was discussed at last Thursday's regular Council meeting.

    I was disappointed at the decision to drop the residency requirement (item 9). That ought to go without saying in a representative form of government, but since we have a councilor (Randy Sullivan) who lives outside the district he purports to represent, apparently we need to spell it out, and provide a process for determining that a member no longer resides in his district and declaring the seat vacant. (In fact, there is already such a provision in state law, but since it requires the Council to act against one of its own members, and there is room for interpretation in any conflict between state law and city charter, it's best to spell out the process in the charter.

    I was also disappointed at the decision against the idea of removing city department heads from civil service protection. If government is to be accountable to the voters, the mayor has to have the ability to bring in a department head who will cooperate with his proposed reforms. It's pathetic that in a so-called "strong mayor" form of government, the Mayor can tell the voters, "Sorry, I wish I could make the changes in Department XYZ that I promised in the election, but the department head doesn't see things my way, and there's nothing I can do about it." The President gets to choose the heads of Federal departments with Senate approval; why not let the Mayor choose the heads of city departments with Council approval?

    That's all the time I have to write about this tonight, but I hope you Tulsans will take an interest in this, attend the meetings if you can, watch it on TGOV 24 if you can't be there in person, and make your opinions known. The issues up for debate are there for a reason. The right amendments will help us have a city that is run for the benefit of all Tulsans, not just a favored few.

    Some Tulsa items

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    MeeCiteeWurkor has posted a poll for the 2006 Mayoral Election.

    Dan Paden rebuts the opinion section of Sunday's Whirled

    Mad Okie doesn't think much of the cheerleading for Tulsa as a tourist destination, but he's got some ideas for how we can capitalize on our strengths, and they start with stopping the destruction of our history, particularly along Route 66. I like his idea of using the Rose Bowl as home to a Route 66 museum.

    As an aside, remember the building at 11th and Lewis atop which the big Meadow Gold neon sign once stood? The sign had to be dismantled and stored because the building's owner (a car dealer) wanted to demolish the building for parking for used car storage. The car dealer has abandoned 11th and Lewis for another location and the car lots where the building once stood are completely vacant.

    Finally, and this one isn't about Tulsa specifically or by a Tulsa blogger, but Charles G. Hill drove through the Oil Region of Pennsylvania, an area that draws 50,000 visitors annually to an oil heritage festival, an event we aren't likely to see here: "It occurs to me that Oklahoma is far too embarrassed about its own oil patch, that we'd like to think we're so over that." Perhaps that because painful memories of the last oil boom and bust are still fresh to many, while Pennsylvania's oil boom dates back about 100 years. What we need to get over is any embarrassment about the black gold that built our state, and find a way to preserve and present our oil heritage to visitors. It may not be a mainstream interest, but plenty of folks lived and worked in the oil patch or had ancestors who did. About eight years ago, we played tour guide to a woman who was born in Whizbang (Denoya), a boom town in Osage County, lived many years in Seminole, and had last seen Tulsa in 1936. Let's bring back pride in Oklahoma's oil heritage, and maybe we could start by re-airing Bob Gregory's "Oil in Oklahoma," a TV series produced by KTUL in the '70s.

    (Great minds think alike -- I promise I had not seen Charles' headline about OKC's underground Chinatown before I wrote mine.)

    Despite fears of yet another delay, the Tulsa City Council actually passed an ethics ordinance tonight, unanimously. Steve Roemerman has the scoop.

    Tulsa District 6 City Councilor Jim Mautino is holding a town hall meeting next Wednesday, June 29, at 7 p.m. at Martin East Regional Library, near 26th and Garnett. Jim will be talking about district matters as well as the recall election on July 12 -- he's one of the two targets. If you support Jim, show up to show your support. If you're wondering what to believe, show up, ask questions of him, and judge for yourself. You'll find a man who is passionate about encouraging quality growth and development in his district, and someone who knows his district inside and out. He's a good man, and we're blessed to have him on the City Council.

    Be sure to keep Jim and his family and Chris Medlock and his family in your prayers as the well-financed barrage of attack ads hits over the next three weeks.

    "The City Attorney shall be the chief legal advisor and attorney for the city and all offices, divisions, departments, boards, authorities, commissions, and agencies thereof." -- Tulsa City Charter, Article III, Section 4

    There's more evidence today that Mayor Bill LaFortune's appointment of Alan Jackere as City Attorney is a slap in the face of the reform-minded citizens who worked hard to elect him Mayor.

    Two weeks ago, the City Council took up final consideration of an ordinance governing ethics for city officials, whether elected, appointed, or employed. Mayoral staffers (and former Councilors) Sam Roop and Clay Bird spoke on behalf of the administration, asking for more time and more input from those who would be affected by the new administration. Even though the ordinance had been in work for the last eight months, Councilor Medlock proposed and the Council approved continuing the item for two weeks. Since that meeting, there have been three work sessions and a committee meeting. Representatives from Mayor LaFortune's administration and the City Auditor's office participated in the meetings. An attorney from the City Attorney's office was present for most of the work sessions as well, although it was said that she didn't have much to say in the meetings. It appeared that consensus had been achieved among all the participants on nearly every point, and that the way was clear for the Council to pass an ordinance which the Mayor would sign.

    Then this afternoon at 5 p.m., an hour before the Council meeting was to begin, City Attorney Alan Jackere delivered a memo outlining about a dozen objections and concerns about the draft ordinance. He stated that he spent the last two days looking over the draft and developing this list. Most of the concerns were minor, some seemed to be significant, but the thing to notice is the timing. If the City Attorney regarded himself, as he should, as the servant of the people we voted into office, he or a deputy would have been actively involved over the eight months that the ordinance was in development and particularly over the last two weeks as the final version was being hammered out, raising concerns and helping to put the language into proper legalese. Many of the concerns Jackere raised applied to the version that was before the Council two weeks ago, and he should have raised his voice at that time, or shortly after, if he were truly interested in helping these elected officials achieve their goal of enacting an ethics ordinance.

    Jackere's last-minute objections had one purpose -- give Cockroach Caucus councilors cover to vote for further postponement or to vote against the ordinance. It was obvious from the councilors' comments that a vote would fail by a 4-5 margin.

    In response to this 11th hour surprise, Chris Medlock made a smart move, but it angered some of his allies. He proposed continuing the item for one more week, until next week's Council meeting, to allow time to incorporate the City Attorney's concerns and to make sure a majority of the Council is on board. If Medlock had not taken the initiative to postpone for one week, it's very likely that a Cockroach Caucus councilor would have proposed, and succeeded in getting, a delay of a month or more, past the recall election, in hopes that there would be two fewer votes for a real ethics ordinance with teeth.

    Tomorrow evening, Thursday, June 16, the Tulsa City Council will consider adopting an ethics ordinance which will govern all elected officials, city employees, city appointees to authorities, boards, and commissions, and trustees of Tulsa's public trusts. You can read the proposed ordinance online in PDF format. (Warning: It's a big file. They appear to have printed the document, and scanned it in full color mode, then converted the scans to PDF. They could have used Acrobat to convert the original digital document directly to PDF and produce a much smaller file.) Here's another, smaller PDF file, showing recent markups, but I'm not sure how recent.

    There will be a rally in support of adopting the ethics ordinance on City Hall Plaza at 5:15, just before the Council meeting. The Mayor and a number of councilors (the usual suspects) have been dragging their feet on this, and I suspect they hope to drag it out beyond the recall election in hopes that Medlock and Mautino won't be around to help get it passed.

    Tulsans deserve a government that is run for the benefit of all Tulsans, not just a favored few. When important decisions are being made about land use and public infrastructure, the decisions need to be made by people who don't have a personal stake in the outcome. We've waited over a decade for an ethics ordinance, and this one has been in the works for over a year. It's modeled after successful ordinances in use in many other cities. There is no good reason to delay action.

    Please call or e-mail your councilor -- 596-192#, dist#@tulsacouncil.org, and replace # with your district number -- show up for the rally at 5:15, and if possible, stay to address the Council during the meeting. Let them know you want openness, transparency, and ethics in city government.

    Tulsa City Councilor Chris Medlock will hold a town hall meeting Tuesday night, June 14, at 6:30 pm, at Cityplex Towers (a.k.a. the City of Faith), 81st and Lewis. The meeting will be on the first floor under the east tower. While the forum is principally for Councilor Medlock's District 2 constituents, anyone is welcome to come, listen, and ask questions. According to Councilor Medlock's website, topics will include Vision 2025 Neighborhood Funds, remediation schedule for Fred Creek, planned improvements for 81st & Delaware, an update on recent zoning issues, new developments in district (particularly the new Tulsa Hills development at 71st Street and US 75), and the upcoming recall election.

    If you support Councilor Medlock's efforts at City Hall, this would be a great opportunity to come and show your appreciation. If you don't think you like what he's doing, or you're skeptical or unsure, this is a great opportunity to see for yourself and ask your questions face-to-face, without the Tulsa Whirled editing and rearranging his replies.

    (This entry's timestamp has been set forward to keep this entry at the top through Tuesday evening.)

    The proposed City of Tulsa ethics ordinance is on the agenda for a special City Council meeting on Friday, June 10, at 10 a.m., in the City Council committee room (Room 201 of the City Hall tower).

    That's a very convenient time for various special interest lobbyists, a very inconvenient time for the rest of us, who would like to see more accountability at City Hall. Hope at least some pro-disclosure citizens can be in attendance to balance things out a bit.

    On the blog Cosmic Rantings, AJ Coyner, a Tulsan and a physics grad student at Rice University in Houston, has a nice synopsis of the situation at Tulsa City Hall, which those of you coming in late may find helpful:

    It's been a fairly quiet month here for notable stories but I have to think the brilliant politicians and puppeteers of Tulsa Oklahoma for the latest bit of political comedy I've seen. It appears a three page code of ethics with actual penalties for not disclosing conflicts of interest is complicated enough to require an additional month of study. Nevermind it's been in the works in its present form for more than a year and had been previously informally approved by all concerned parties. I know those of you not from there are probably thinking what could possibly be wrong with Tulsa? Trust me there are enough parallel storylines to compose about a 15 page entry. Luckily my caffeine-induced ADD will not allow me to expound beyond the following:

    Two city councilors are being recalled. One of the councilors not under recall lied on his election forms and doesn't live in the district he represents. One of the allegedly clean councilors is under investigation by the FAA for unfair business practices at the airport. Something to the extent of increasing holdings and preferential signage because he appointed his best customer to head the Tulsa Airport Authority. The chairman of the council got a death threat last week because he wants to continue the airport investigation. One former council was rewarded for a controversial vote change with an $80,000 raise and a cabinet position in a city whose budget cannot afford to light the freeways but can afford to pay him.

    That's just the tip of the conflict of interest iceberg. yet the situation is not worthy of a simple 3-page code of ethics. Maybe they'll have it in place when the airport gets shut down and I have to fly back to OKC and hitchhike 90 miles to get home.

    In a nutshell.

    I was watching a replay of Thursday's Tulsa Council meeting, where former Councilor (now Chief Administrative Officer) Sam Roop and former Councilor (now Mayoral Chief of Staff) Clay Bird spoke to prevent the passage of an ethics ordinance. Their line is one we've become accustomed to hear from Mayor Bill LaFortune's administration: "We're supportive of the concept, but this isn't the right time." And the right time never seems to come.

    Seeing Sam and Clay in the same camera shot reminded me of a lunch that happened sometime in 2001. Former Street Commissioner (and my colleague from two sales tax fights) Jim Hewgley set up a lunch at St. Louis Bread on 15th Street so that I could meet zoning attorney Bill LaFortune, who was getting ready to run for Mayor. I had expected that it would be just me, Bill, and Jim, but Bill was accompanied by Councilors Sam Roop, Clay Bird, and Randi Miller. The three Councilors wanted me to know how Bill would work with the Republicans on the City Council to achieve the kind of reforms that Mayor Savage had routinely blocked. They were excited that Bill would be a Mayor who would treat the Council with respect, as a co-equal branch of government.

    Today -- well, Bill has certainly treated Sam and Clay well, giving them high-paying jobs in his administration. Their job is to appear before the Council and tell them that the Mayor won't be cooperating with them on the reforms they are trying to achieve. Meanwhile, I hear that Councilors have a very hard time getting a meeting with the Mayor.

    Sam and Clay seem pretty happy with the outcome, even if it doesn't match the picture they painted for me over lunch at St. Louis Bread.

    Change the charter?

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    As mandated by the City Charter, every odd-numbered year the Tulsa City Council receives recommendations for amendments to the City Charter, evaluates the suggestions, and, if a suggestion is supported by a majority of the Council, the amendment is placed on the following year's general election ballot.

    We're in the first phase of that process, and suggestions are due to the Council by July 1. You'll find details on the Council's home page. Suggestions for charter amendments can be e-mailed to suggestions@tulsacouncil.org or you can fax them to 596-1964.

    John S. Denney has submitted a few suggestions and has posted them on the Homeowners for Fair Zoning newslog. His amendments have to do with zoning, the City Attorney, and disclosure of conflicts of interest for councilors. He also supports eliminating the recall process entirely; officials could still be removed for cause in accordance with the process defined by state statutes. I especially like his suggestion that the City Attorney's position should be removed from the classified service (civil service). I'd extend the idea to include all city department heads -- the Mayor should be able to appoint whom he will to run city departments, with the advice and consent of the Council. As it stands, the Mayor has very little control over who will carry out his policies, which makes city government less accountable than it should be to the people who pay for it.

    (By the way, in response to a comment on an earlier entry -- I am not the same person as Michael S. Bates, the human resources director for the City of Tulsa. He and I are among about half a dozen Michael Bateses registered to vote in Tulsa County.)

    An election result like this ought to convince you that first-past-the-post is a lousy way to run an election. Never mind for the moment who won -- none of the candidates came anywhere near a majority.

    Ideally, you want a system where voting for your favorite candidate can't help your least favorite candidate win. You want a way to handle races with more than two candidates so that the winner is the candidate who would have beaten each of the other candidates in a head-to-head election. You want a system where no candidate -- not a Ross Perot, nor a Gary Richardson -- can be a spoiler.

    In this election, there is no way to know for sure if Martinson would have beaten Phillips or Harer or even Nichols in a head-to-head race.

    Adding a two-candidate runoff gets you closer to the ideal system I described above, but with the top three so close, there is still the possibility of the order of finish varying had the minor candidates not been in the race. Between them Nichols, Harjo, Weaver, and Jackson received 601 votes, and there were only 63 votes separating 2nd and 3rd place, 74 separating 1st and 3rd. If only the top three had been in the race, where would those votes have gone? We can't know, but any two of the three might have wound up as the top two.

    Louisiana has a system where all candidates run against each other, regardless of party, and if no one gets 50% of the vote, the top two candidates face off in a runoff. In 1991, with twelve candidates in the race, disgraced ex-Governor Edwin Edwards received 34%, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke received 32%, incumbent Governor Buddy Roemer received 27%, and the remaining nine candidates received 7%. The runoff was "between the crook and the Klansman," but we can't know what the initial result would have been if the nine minor candidates had not been in the race. Roemer may well have received enough of that 7% to put him in second place instead of Duke. There's little doubt that in a head-to-head race with either Duke or Edwards, Roemer would have won. There was a similar result in the 1990 Democrat primary for Governor in Oklahoma (David Walters, Mike Turpin, Steve Lewis) -- the top three clustered together, and enough minor candidate votes that any two of the top three might have made the runoff if the minor candidates had been eliminated.

    What voting system eliminates those sorts of anomalies? Instant runoff voting (IRV) does. Under IRV, voting is simple. Voters rank the candidates in order: I mark a 1 next to my favorite, then mark a 2 next to the name of the candidate who would be the my choice if my favorite weren't in the race, and so on down the list.

    It's called instant runoff voting because it's equivalent to having a series of runoff elections, eliminating the low vote-getter each pass and choosing among the remaining candidates. The advantage of IRV over a series of runoff elections is that you only have to open the polls once. IRV is used to elect the President of Ireland, members of Parliament in Australia, and here in Tulsa it was used at the 1st District Republican Conventions of 2000 and 2004 to elect delegates and alternates to the Republican National Convention. I first experienced IRV in college -- we used it in our fraternity to elect officers.

    At the very least, Tulsa needs a runoff in special elections, but it would be better still to use IRV in all elections. As a charter city, Tulsa could choose to do that.

    The final unofficial returns in the Tulsa City Council District 5 special election, from the Tulsa County Election Board, with all precincts reporting and absentee ballots included:

    Martinson 1129 28.93%
    Phillips 1118 28.64%
    Harer 1055 27.03%
    Nichols 389 9.97%
    Weaver 131 3.36%
    Harjo 58 1.49%
    Jackson 23 0.59%

    Although no official announcement has been made, word around City Hall is that acting City Attorney Alan Jackere will be appointed City Attorney, and Mayor Bill LaFortune has said an announcement will be made tomorrow.

    I spoke to the Mayor as he was leaving tonight's neighborhood meeting about the proposed Yale Avenue bridge. Here is a link to a 2 MB WMV (Windows Media) file of the interview, which runs about nine minutes. (Sorry for the video quality -- I am still learning how to get video from the camera to the hard drive, and I probably should have picked a higher resolution or some better compression settings.) In our conversation, I asked the Mayor how he thought the appointment of a Democrat holdover from the Savage administration would be viewed by the conservative Republicans who supported his election, and I asked him how he thought neighborhood associations would react to the appointment of an attorney who was involved in controversial zoning opinions surrounding the 71st and Harvard F&M Bank case, decisions which undermined and ultimately nullified the protest petition process. He didn't have an answer when I asked if Jackere had ever issued an opinion that went against developer interests.

    All right, you say, this British election stuff is mildly interesting, but what does it have to do with the situation in Tulsa? Plenty. Britain's "first-past-the-post" electoral system has a fundamental flaw that works against enacting the will of the majority, and Tulsa's upcoming City Council special election -- no primary, no runoff, no majority required -- has the same flaw, only to a greater degree. The flaw requires voters to do more than simply vote for their favorite candidate, if they want to ensure that the outcome is at least acceptable to a majority of voters. Strategy is required.

    First-past-the-post means no majority is required to win a seat. Whoever gets the most votes wins, no matter how small the percentage of the total vote. If 20% of the electorate loves Candidate Smith, and the other 80% hates him, but are split evenly between five or six candidates, the hated Mr. Smith wins anyway. In the 2001 UK general election, the winning candidate received a majority of the vote (greater than 50%) in less than half the constituencies. 333 seats out of 659 had a winning percentage below 50%, 26 seats had a winning percentage below 40%, and in two seats, Argyll and Bute, and Perth, both in Scotland, the winning percentage was just under 30%. (Thanks to the UK Elections Directory for making the 2001 results available in spreadsheet form.)

    Winning without a majority is common in the UK because there are three nationally competitive parties -- Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrat -- and in Scotland and Wales, there's also a pro-independence party that has a significant base of support, (Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru, respectively). If voters who supported the winning candidate in the last election became disaffected, there were at least two other places they could take their votes, and an unpopular MP could stay manage to in office if his opponents split the rest of the votes evenly. This is how Tony Blair's Labour Party managed to retain a majority of the seats in the House of Commons, despite taking only 35.2% of the nationwide vote, down from 40.7% in 2001. If the entire 5.5% swing away from Labour had gone to the Conservatives, there would have been moving vans at Number 10, but most of it went to the Liberal Democrats, the third place party. If a voter's main goal had been to get rid of Tony Blair as prime minister, the smart thing would have been to vote for whichever party stood the best chance of beating the Labour candidate in his constituency, even if that meant a Tory voting for a LibDem or vice versa. It's called tactical voting, and anti-Tory activists tried to convince anti-Tory voters to give it a try in 1992 and nearly succeeded -- the Conservatives barely managed a majority of the seats despite winning nearly 41% of the vote.

    In Tulsa on Tuesday we have an election which will determine which of two factions -- the Cockroach Caucus and the Reform Alliance will gain overall control of the City Council. The two factions are fundamentally divided over policy and philosophy (although the Cockroach Caucus would like you to think that it's all a matter of personality and temperament). There are four serious candidates in the race -- two, Bill Martinson and Andy Phillips, have the support of elements of the Cockroach Caucus, and two, Charlotte Harer and Al Nichols, are supported by pro-reform activists. There is a real danger that pro-reform voters could form a majority of those who vote on Tuesday but still lose the election by splitting that pro-reform vote between two candidates.

    I can illustrate the danger by telling you about the results in the South Belfast constituency. In Northern Ireland, there are two main political sympathies but four main parties -- two nationalist parties that want all Ireland united in the Republic of Ireland (Social Democratic and Labour Party, Sinn Fein), two unionist parties that want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom (Democratic Unionist Party, Ulster Unionist Party). To oversimplify, within each grouping there are two parties that share a central aim but differ on how best to achieve that aim. All four parties competed for the South Belfast seat, which had been held by an Ulster Unionist.

    In Thursday's vote, unionist parties received 51.1% of the vote, while nationalist parties received 41.3% -- the rest of the votes went to three minor parties which are neither unionist nor nationalist. Even though a majority of voters supported unionists, the winning candidate was a nationalist. Most of the nationalist votes went to the SDLP candidate, who took 32.3% of the vote, while the DUP and UUP candidates split the unionist vote almost down the middle -- 28.4% and 22.7% respectively. If there were a runoff, the DUP candidate would almost certainly have won, but there isn't going to be a runoff -- just a "winner" who had two-thirds of the voters against him.

    In such a situation, the only way to ensure that the winner is someone acceptable to the majority is for each voter to conduct the runoff in his head before he goes to vote. A voter should ask himself, "Of the candidates acceptable to me, which one has the most support already? Which one has the best chance of winning?" That question is easier to answer if polls have been conducted, but you can still make an educated assessment by looking at the segments of the electorate that are likely to back each candidate.

    The South Belfast scenario may well play itself out in Tulsa's District 5, but the stakes are higher here. If the reform candidates split a majority of the vote and lose the election, it will be cold comfort to say that we would have won if there had been a runoff. We'll have to suffer for the next 11 months with the Cockroach Caucus back in control of the Council.

    The situation here is complicated by the fact that each of the factions has a serious candidate from each political party. That's part of the data that has to be considered in casting a strategic vote. You may not care what party label a Council candidate wears, but some voters will, and that affects which candidates have the best chance of winning. Charlotte Harer's long list of endorsements by elected Republicans like Senator Jim Inhofe and Congressman John Sullivan will carry a lot of weight with those voters who care most of all about electing a good conservative Republican.

    Al Nichols, a Democrat and a reformer, is a good man and would be a good councilor. His credentials as a neighborhood activist are impeccable, and he has the best understanding of land use issues of any of the candidates in the race. I don't believe that neighborhood activists and voters concerned about land use constitute a sufficient base of support to win the election. Nichols would have to win a certain number of voters who are simply looking for a Democrat to vote for. Unless they disagree with him on a specific issue, most Democrat voters will vote for Andy Phillips -- they saw his name on the ballot and voted for him just over a year ago.

    I believe that Charlotte Harer is in the best position to put together a winning coalition. Her support from prominent Republicans gives her a head start, and the district does lean Republican. Now that she's the only woman in the race, she'll get all the votes of those who simply want more women on the Council. She's solidly pro-reform at City Hall and that should win her some crossover votes from pro-reform Democrats.

    I'm going to ask some people I greatly respect and admire to do a hard thing. We share the same goals for city government. I wish it weren't necessary to make this request, and if we had a better voting system, like Instant Runoff Voting, it wouldn't be necessary. Under IRV, you could give your first preference to your favorite without worrying that you might help elect your least favorite candidate. But we don't have IRV, or even a simple runoff. So here goes:

    I urge Al Nichols and his supporters to throw their support behind Charlotte Harer for the sake of keeping the Council in the hands of the reformers. You've fought a good fight, and as a former candidate I have some idea of how hard it would be to drop out at the last minute after knocking on hundreds of doors and making hundreds of phone calls. For the sake of the ultimate aim -- reforming city government -- I believe such a sacrifice is necessary. The only thing that would change my mind is a scientific poll or comprehensive survey showing Al in first or second place.

    Tulsa City Council District 5 candidate Nancy Jackson withdrew from the race earlier in the week and has thrown her support behind Cockroach Caucus standard-bearer Bill Martinson. Her voice was used a few days ago for an automated phone call on behalf of Martinson to District 5 voters, accusing the Republican Party of being unfair to certain candidates in the race.

    In response to Jackson's accusations of unfairness, Tulsa County Republican Jerry Buchanan issued the following statement at a press conference today:

    It has been my intention as the Chairman of the Tulsa County Republican Party to give every Republican Candidate in the City District 5 every opportunity to any and all information available from the party. We have maintained a neutral position for all candidates because it is not only fair, but the right thing to do.

    Nancy Jackson, a former candidate of the upcoming city council race, has been prompted to use a pre-recorded phone message to blanket the constituents of District 5.

    I would like to read an excerpt of the message containing the material:

    "Hello, my name is Nancy Jackson and even though I have withdrawn my candidacy from the District 5 race, I wanted to tell you why I have given my full support to Bill Martinson. The adversarial nature of the local Republican Party officials toward candidates other than their chosen one in this race has been apparent from the start. First by encouraging candidates to rethink the candidacy and withdraw so that the heir-apparent, Charlotte Harer, would be the only option for the voters. Following that, they withheld access to valuable party lists to all of the candidates except for Charlotte."

    Any candidate that might feel that information was not available to them is only because they did not ask for it. I have repeatedly called the Republican Candidates to see if they needed anything or any help with their campaigns. Ms. Jackson was asked if she had any needs from the Republican Party and which I was told that all was going fine and that she appreciated being asked. Later calls made were either ignored or not returned.

    The Tulsa County Republican Party has not endorsed or given extra help to any Candidate competing for the Tulsa City District 5 seat. Any persons that might be misguided into stating so is mistaken or is stating untruths. Those that would use smear tactics, un-truths, inaccurate statements about our party are encouraged to disengage from the outside forces that are inherently trying to disrupt a fair and honest election. It would almost seem that there are those that would have a self interest in ruling our city government that are toying with a free and democratic election. The City of Tulsa is trying to fill a position vacated by Sam Roop with an individual that has Tulsa's best interest at heart and not the interest of someone or a group that have their own selfish motives. I understand that Ms. Jackson's campaign did not go her way, but to blame the Republican Party with untruths and trying to discredit a fellow Republican candidate with untruths is just not consistent with Republican Values.

    Jerry Buchanan has been scrupulously even-handed in his dealings with these candidates. Whatever resources the county party has at its disposal -- and those resources are not as impressive as you might think -- they've been available to any Republican candidate.

    As Republican chairman, he has expressed the concern that, in a first-past-the-post special election, with no primary and no runoff, too many Republican candidates would split the GOP vote and allow a Democrat to win with a minority of the vote. It's a simple political fact, and several sensible candidates assessed their chances, their willingness to commit time and resources to the race, and chose instead to drop out and support another candidate. Buchanan would have been negligent of his responsibilities if he had ignored the significant risk to the party's ability to retain a seat it has always held.

    But the party chairman doesn't control the endorsements made by Republican elected officials and precinct leaders. Senator Jim Inhofe and Congressman John Sullivan, State Rep. Sue Tibbs and State Sen. Brian Crain are supporting Charlotte Harer because they've known her and worked with her for years in the party, and they know that she's a solid conservative and a hard worker.

    As far as I'm aware, the other Republicans in the race have never been involved beyond checking the Republican box when they registered to vote. Checking that box entitles them to even-handed treatment from the party organization, but it doesn't entitle them to the loyalty and support of Republican officials and activists. Charlotte Harer has earned that loyalty and support. She has served for over four years as one of Tulsa County's representatives on the Republican state committee, and as president of the Tulsa County Republican Women's Club, she has increased membership from 50 to 250, building up a corps of women who stand ready to donate time and money to Republican candidates and causes. If anyone would deserve special treatment by the party organization, it would be Charlotte Harer.

    Charlotte Harer, Republican candidate in the Tulsa City Council District 5 special election, could use your help tomorrow morning to get her message out to the voters. You don't have to be a District 5 resident to help. Volunteers will be gathering at 9:30 a.m. at her home at 2927 S 67th East Ave. For more information, call Charlotte at 664-7596 or on her cell phone at 639-1044.

    The local chapter of the League of Women Voters had candidates for next Tuesday's Tulsa City Council District 5 election respond to an extensive questionnaire, and Tulsa Topics has posted it online. The candidates were asked about their reasons for running, non-partisan elections, the recall provisions of the City Charter, privatization, economic development, zoning, and whether a council seat should be a full-time position.

    In his responses, Bill Martinson, the candidate of the Cockroach Caucus, sidesteps the question about recall ("The recall provisions do not apply to this race"), says he'll follow the recommendations of the professional staff and TMAPC when it comes to zoning decisions, and thinks the job of Councilor can be handled on a part-time basis, "[b]ased upon [his] perception of the role of the city council, as supported by conversations with a number of present and former council members." Yes, Bill, if you want to be a rubber stamp, it doesn't take much time at all. Show up, vote how you're told and go home. No need to read reports or research issues if you've decided not to exercise independent thought.

    Andy Phillips disqualifies himself in my eyes by referring to "bickering and squabbling" by the current council. It shows that he hasn't been paying attention and that he doesn't appreciate the important issues that have been debated over the last year. He also sidesteps questions about zoning and land use.

    Meanwhile on his blog, Chris Medlock makes a strong case for supporting Charlotte Harer.

    Steve Roemerman was at Monday night's candidate forum for the Tulsa City Council District 5 election and his report is on his blog.

    The big surprise of the night: Nancy Jackson dropped out of the race and threw her support behind Cockroach Caucus candidate Bill Martinson. I was never quite sure why Ms. Jackson was running, and I'm not sure she knew either. When she spoke at a meeting of Republican precinct leaders from the district just before the filing period, she was the only candidate who refused to answer a question about her opinion on abortion and refused to say whether she would vote to allocate any of the city's federal block grant money to Planned Parenthood. (Bill Martinson was not in attendance at that meeting -- last minute conflict came up.)

    When you go to Steve's report, pay close attention to the candidates' responses to the question about zoning -- it's very telling.

    FLIR of flying

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    NOTE: After I posted this entry, I received a couple of e-mails from readers with more details on the switch to blue uniforms, details that make the changeover seem quite reasonable, and I present those below.

    Last night after the TulsaNow forum, a number of us gathered at James E. McNellie's Pub on 1st Street for $3 burgers, something wherewith to wet our whistles, and some local political chat.

    I was told that the Mayor and the police chief plan to spend a half-million dollars buying new blue uniforms for our police officers. Why? The decision-makers think they look sharper than the green and khaki that the officers currently wear. These uniforms are not only dark blue, but I'm told that they will be 100% wool. Imagine, my informant said, it's a hot Oklahoma summer day, and you're wearing a bulletproof vest and some other layers under a wool shirt made of a heat-absorbing color.

    I was also told that Tulsa's two police helicopters are equipped with obsolete Forward-Looking Infrared (FLIR) systems. The systems have been in service for 13 years, six years beyond their expected useful life. The company that made the FLIR systems is out of business, and a former employee, out in California, bought up all the spare parts and repairs the systems to keep them running. If the guy gets hit by a bus, we're stuck if our current systems stop working. Repairing the FLIR system in a helicopter means incurring the time and expense to send it out to California.

    A FLIR system, which makes heat visible, is very useful for tracking someone in the dark. Last summer, two Tulsa police officers won an international first-place prize for using FLIR in an arrest:

    At the event FLIR Systems was proud to announce the winners of the 2004 Vision Award competition. First place was awarded to the Tulsa Police Department’s Tim Smith (pilot) and Tim Ward (Tactical Flight Officer). The winning video featured the apprehension of four suspects who fled first in a vehicle and later on foot. The suspects were wanted in connection with a gang-related double homicide. After the suspects were apprehended, the tape was later used by the department to recover the weapon ditched during the chase, which was determined to be the weapon used in the homicides.

    It would make sense to replace the old systems with something new, if we could afford it. We wouldn't have to worry about availability of parts or support. A new system would draw less power and provide sharper images. A new system would allow eyes on the ground to see the FLIR image, which is currently only available to the pilot.

    How much would it cost to buy a new FLIR system for both of the TPD's choppers? Half a million dollars, or what we're paying to outfit our officers in itchy dark blue wool.

    UPDATE: A reader writes:

    After reading your piece on the uniform change for the cops, I passed the information on to a reporter, thinking it might make for a good news story. The response I got tends to indicate you should consider checking your source. You implied in your article that the mayor and chief chose the color. In fact, the change has been approved by a majority vote of the force. That fact was, of course, noted in the link you provided---for those that chose to go there. The reporter I contacted has probed the matter. She said the uniforms cops now wear are made of virtually the same material the new ones will entail, rendering the 100 percent wool issue somewhat neutral. She also said cops pay for their own uniforms. Yes, they pay for them with an allowance from the city, but that allowance will not be increased with the change. So it is perhaps erroneous to claim the city is going to dish out $500,000 to make the switch. And, the new uniforms will be cheaper, according to my source. There are, apparently, more makers of blue uniforms than green. Price competition allows for $40 pants instead of $70 pants, for example. It seems to me the only financial change here is one of a little more pocket money for cops, in that they will be spending less of their allowances on uniforms. There is no dispute on the issue of FLIR. But the two issues are unrelated.

    MORE: Another reader, a Tulsa Police reserve officer, writes:

    When TPD was advised by the sole remaining supplier of the green shirted uniform, that due to low demand for this uniform that it would probably not be available in five years or less, the Department formed a Uniform Advisory Committee. This Committee was to research and advise for possible replacement of this soon to be unavailable uniform. The committee advised to go to LAPD blue.

    Green Uniform Facts:

    1. The uniform is already a blend of wool and polyester.
    2. The uniform is only available in a single fabric weight for summer or winter.
    3. The uniform is not available in female sizes, forcing female Officers to get something close and then visit a tailor for costly fitting.
    4. The uniform is significantly higher in cost than the blue.

    LAPD Blue Uniform Facts

    1. The uniform is available in three different weights including a tropical weight.
    2. The uniform is available in a full range of female sizes.
    3. The uniform is available from a number of uniform manufacturers.
    4. Due to the popularity of this uniform it is significantly lower in cost.

    Who made the decision to change the uniform?

    The decision to change or keep the current uniform was put to a vote by the Officers. They were given the choice of :

    LAPD Blue
    Keep the green
    Go to something else.

    Blue won narrowly over green with something else a very distant third.

    Cost to the City:

    Each Officer receives $625.00 a year uniform allowance. There are 780 Officers. If the City provides a basic issue of the new uniform, this allowance will not be issued for the current year meaning there will be no additional cost to the City for this uniform change. There is no $500,000 additional cost to the City.

    An item 8.F. has been added to the agenda for tonight's Tulsa City Council meeting. It reads:

    Consensus of lack of confidence in Alan Jackere as City Attorney in either a temporary or permanent position, and requesting the Mayor to appoint one of the internal candidates as next City Attorney.

    I am told that the Mayor is trying to get the item pulled off of the agenda.

    For whatever reason the agenda item and its supporting resolution (which details the case against Jackere) do not yet appear on the Council website.

    UPDATE: The item was left on the agenda, and the motion failed on a four-four tie, breaking as you would expect.

    As disappointed as I was when Bill LaFortune appointed Alan Jackere as acting City Attorney, it was a relief to know that this man, with his creative ways of interpreting our charter and ordinances, was not a candidate to become City Attorney. It was also a relief to know that there were some excellent candidates among the four internal applicants, all four of whom were certified as qualified. There's a civil service rule, the "rule of three," that says if you have at least three qualified internal candidates for a position, you must promote from within.

    Jackere became acting City Attorney on July 1, 2004. Evidently, Mayor LaFortune isn't sufficiently enamored of any of the three internal applicants to make the appointment. Now, after an initial lack of interest, Jackere has thrown his hat into the ring for the permanent position.

    Here's the scenario I see unfolding: LaFortune's backers want Jackere or someone like him who will continue misinterpreting the law to suit their financial interests. None of the other internal applicants for the job are sufficiently inclined in that direction. Jackere changes his mind and applies for the position. Now LaFortune can technically fulfill the requirements of the rule of three by appointing Jackere to the post, even though he didn't apply by the deadline for internal applicants.

    I'll say it again: Every day that Alan Jackere remains as acting City Attorney is another day in which Bill LaFortune demonstrates his contempt for fairness and the rule of law. If LaFortune makes him City Attorney, we're stuck with him for as long as he wants to stay, for all practical purposes. Even if we replace LaFortune in 2006, his successor will be burdened with a City Attorney at odds with a reform-minded Mayor and a reform-minded majority on the City Council. What a rotten legacy that would be.

    This Friday night and Saturday, the South and East Alliance of Tulsa (SEAT) will present Community Conference 2005 at Christview Christian Church, 25th and Garnett (just north of Martin East Regional Library). Friday night's session will feature rotating round-table discussions with elected officials, including Bill LaFortune, members of the City Council, County Commission, and various boards and commissions.

    Saturday will feature a variety of seminars -- I'll be leading one in the afternoon session on city issues from the neighborhood perspective. Topics include crime prevention, disaster preparedness, zoning, the city public works department, property taxes, legal aid, parks, Route 66, historic preservation, urban development, environmental awareness, building and running a neighborhood association, and many more. You can find all the details here on the home page for the conference.

    Last year's first-ever conference was very well done, and SEAT volunteers are working hard to make this year's another success. In addition to all the good information, they're bringing in good food. Friday night's roundtables will feature a chocolate fountain. Saturday morning breakfast will be catered by Panera Bread, and Sooner Barbecue is handling lunch, which will be presided over by Jim Cremins, a very entertaining speaker. The cost is $20 for Friday night, $30 for Saturday, including food.

    If you're active in the community or interested in becoming active, the conference will help you learn a lot in a short time. To sign up, phone (918) 439-1432.

    Who's the boss?

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    Mee Citee Wurkor has a solid analysis of today's Whirled article about the lawsuits that have been filed against the City and against several Tulsa City Councilors. The article is a sort of editorial posing as news analysis, featuring carefully selected quotes that all support the common theme: "The Council is irresponsible to ignore the excellent legal advice of my pal, Alan Jackere."

    (One of the subtle entertainments of a City Council committee meeting is to watch P. J. Lassek and Alan Jackere, sitting next to each other near the front of the room, each intently watching the discussion and each chomping rhythmically on a wad of gum. I could swear they always end up chewing in sync.)

    We have an acting City Attorney that fails to understand that the elected officials are his clients, and he exists to serve their interests. If he renders advice, they are free to ignore it, but he is still obliged to provide whatever legal support they need to accomplish their purposes.

    I'll say it one more time, just in case the 11th Floor hasn't been paying attention: It's now been nine months since Martha Rupp-Carter's resignation as City Attorney was effective. Mr. Mayor, you can replace Alan Jackere at any time with one of several good candidates to be a permanent City Attorney. If you value fairness and the rule of law, you'll take care of that this week.

    In a departure from recent tradition, Council Vice Chairman Tom Baker was passed over for the chairmanship of the Council, which rotates each April between political parties. Instead, Roscoe Turner was selected by the Democratic caucus on the Council (Turner, Baker, and Jack Henderson) to take the party's turn with the gavel, and the whole Council approved him by a vote of 7-1 -- Susan Neal cast the only "no" vote.

    The Republican caucus, now dominated 3-2 by associates of the Cockroach Caucus (Neal, Christiansen and Sullivan, against Mautino and Medlock) chose Susan Neal as the nominee for Vice Chairman. Neal was approved by the Council by a 5-3 vote, with Mautino, Medlock, and Turner dissenting. It's ironic that in April 2003, Sam Roop and Chris Medlock offered to support Neal as Vice Chairman, because they did not want to see Randy Sullivan becoming Vice Chairman and then Chairman. Medlock and Mautino opposed Neal's nomination this year because of her refusal to join nearly every other Republican elected official in the Tulsa area in opposition to the attempt to recall Mautino and Medlock from office.

    In other City Hall news, the City will not pay the legal expenses of the five councilors being sued by F&M Bank for their vote rejecting the final plat on the 71st and Harvard property. The topsy-turvy reason: Because the five being sued constitute a majority of the Council, any vote by the Council to cover their legal fees would lack a quorum, because the five would have to recuse themselves. So an official action of the City Council, approved by the majority of the Council, will not be defended by the City. The acting City Attorney, Alan Jackere, who should be working to defend the official action taken by the Council, refuses to do so. Mayor LaFortune continues to demonstrate his contempt for the rule of law and for fairness for all Tulsans by allowing Jackere to continue as acting City Attorney. There are some excellent candidates who have applied for the job, and it's about time LaFortune acted to fill the vacancy.

    The Tulsa City Council District 5 special election is for all the marbles. With Sam Roop's departure, the Council is split 4-4 between the forces of reform and the forces of reaction, between the Faithful Four and the Bought and Paid Four.

    This election poses a special challenge. Under Tulsa's City Charter, a special election has no primary and no runoff. There is one election, and whoever is first past the post wins the seat. With eight candidates in the race, someone could win with only 13% of the votes. While it's a situation that instant runoff voting would handle flawlessly, the rules are what they are.

    Under these conditions, it is essential for reform-minded residents of District 5 to rally around a single candidate. Unfortunately, one candidate, whom I believed to be a reformer, doesn't have the maturity to appreciate the political realities. This candidate has run off whining to the Tulsa Whirled, giving them ammunition, in the form of baseless charges, to use against the good guys.

    District 5 Filing

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    Filing closed today at 5 p.m. for the Tulsa City Council District 5 special election on May 10 -- six Republicans, two Democrats are in the race.

    Joe Conner, R
    Charlotte Harer, R
    Allen Harjo, R
    Nancy Jackson, R
    William Martinson, R
    Al Nichols, D
    Andrew Phillips, D
    David Weaver, R

    I'll tell you what I know about these folks in a later entry.

    Today, voters in the City of Tulsa will vote on a $250 million general obligation bond issue, which will be repaid by an increase in the property tax rate amounting to an extra $30 per year for a $100,000 home. I'm voting for all six items and hope you will, too.

    Union Public Schools has a runoff for one school board seat. I've been very impressed with Tom Seng, a parent of Union students who wants to see the district focus on academics. He's rightly concerned about the amount of money the district spends on bricks and mortar for non-essentials.

    Tulsa Public Schools has a runoff in office 3 (north Tulsa) between Joda Trimiar and Lana Turner.

    Bixby, Broken Arrow, Glenpool, and Skiatook all have City Council races on the ballot.

    GO Bonds, GO

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    I've said this on the radio, but I don't know if I've posted it here yet. I'm supporting the City of Tulsa General Obligation Bond Issues that are on the ballot this coming Tuesday. I've even got "YES" signs in my front yard. You can find details of the projects that the bond will pay for here.

    Yes, I know it means city property taxes will go up, but they've been going down the last few years, and they won't return to their previous peak. The extra cost is about $30 a year on a $100,000 home. The City of Tulsa has a backlog of $4 billion in capital improvements needs -- sewer and water line replacement and extension, arterial street widening, residential street rebuilding, along with improvements and replacements for city-owned buildings. Through the third-penny sales tax and these GO bond issues, we're just keeping pace as the needs continue to pile on. We're still building out the infrastructure for land the city annexed in 1966, and at the same time, we've got to replace infrastructure in the older parts of the city. We really should have voted on this a year and a half ago, but it was delayed to make way for Vision 2025. While I would have preferred many of the Vision projects to go to the back of the funding line behind more critical infrastructure needs, that didn't happen, and the infrastructure needs are still there.

    There has been some talk about defeating the GO bond to send a message to City Hall. If that happened, it would send the wrong message. The Cockroach Caucus would argue that the failure of the GO bond was the fault of Mautino and Medlock and their allies, and the defeat would be used as ammunition in the campaign for their recall as well as in next year's election. There's been scuttlebutt that at least one branch of the Cockroach Caucus would like to see the bond defeated to damage Bill LaFortune and soften him for defeat by their handpicked replacement. The time to send a message to City Hall is on May 10, when the replacement for District 5 City Councilor Sam Roop is elected -- we need to make sure we get someone in that district who wlil keep the Reform Alliance in the majority.

    (In the interest of full disclosure, it turns out that my street will be rebuilt if one of the GO bond questions passes, but I'd already decided to support the bond issue before I knew that, and I'm voting for the items that have nothing to do with me.)

    Polls apart

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    Earlier this week, in three installments, the Tulsa Whirled and KOTV released the results of a poll of 500 likely voters about Tuesday's bond issue, satisfaction with the progress of Vision 2025, and the popularity of the Mayor, the City Council as a body, and each individual councilor. The poll showed the bond issues passing, a majority satisfied with progress on Vision 2025, the Mayor with a 60% approval rating, and the Council with a 34% approval rating. On the individual councilors the undecideds were around 50% on each. The decided voters broke 50-50 for and against Chris Medlock, Jim Mautino, and Roscoe Turner; the other councilors had a majority approving. The poll has a margin of error of +/-4%.

    The supplied answers to one of the questions about the Council were just bizarre:

    We wanted to know if voters think the current conflict among members of city council is helping or hurting the city. When asked if the conflict is helping or hurting the city's growth and development, 60 percent say the conflict is hurting the city by preventing important growth and development. 22 percent say the conflict helps the city by raising questions about the city's growth and development. 9 percent say it's just business as usual. Another 9 percent had no opinion.

    It would make sense to ask the "helping/hurting" question without qualification, but adding the reasons is more typical of a "push poll," in which the poll is really a vehicle for delivering a partisan message to the voter. What answer would you give to that question if you feel that the conflict is helping the city by exposing long-hidden problems in city government? Interesting, too, is that they didn't give the voter a chance to say which side he blamed for the conflict.

    It's possible that this is the one poll in twenty that is outside the margin of error -- the odds are 19-1 against drawing such an unrepresentative sample. How the pollster qualified likely voters is another factor that can affect the result of a poll. Did they simply ask the respondent, "Are you likely to vote?" Pollster Ed Goeas has said that older voters tend to underestimate their likelihood of turning up at the polls, while younger voters tend to overestimate. A more sophisticated approach uses a voter's actual history of showing up at the polls, as recorded in the state's voter database. If the sample of voters for this poll was drawn from the general voting population, I would expect different results if the sample were taken from those who regularly vote in municipal elections.

    That said, I'm not surprised by the results. Although I would have been happy to know that most voters in the city agree with me, the reality is that most people aren't paying close attention, and they will tend to have a positive view of local officials unless they're given some specific reason to believe otherwise. Many people still depend on the Whirled for their understanding of local events, and Councilors Mautino, Medlock, and Turner have been hammered in the news pages and on the editorial pages since they took office. It is surprising that Vision 2025 only has a bare majority of support, lower than its margin of victory in 2003.

    Bobby's got the scoop over at Tulsa Topics on the full slate of community meetings for Tuesday -- a meeting on the widening of I-44, a meeting about AEP's tree trimming policies and your rights as a homeowner, and a District 9 meeting about the general obligation bond issue, plus the usual morning of Council committee meetings. No recall related items this week, but the public works committee meeting at 8 a.m. will include status reports on the Vision 2025 projects for the City of Tulsa.

    That meeting on tree trimming is sponsored by the Tulsa Audubon Society and a number of neighborhood associations. Midtown Tulsa has a wonderful canopy of mature trees, but they interfere with the power lines during storms. Fast-growing "volunteer" trees often sprout and quickly get established along fences, which often means that they grow right up into the wires. AEP has a program to get rid of tree growth that could cause outages, but they don't have an absolute right to cut down any tree they like, any way they like. The meeting is at 5:30 p.m. at Wright Elementary School, on 45th Place west of Peoria. Here's the description:

    This forum has been arranged in response to complaints from many homeowners and other concerned homeowners about damage which has been done to their properties by AEP and its contractors. The speakers will include attorneys who specialize in utilities' and property owners' rights and responsibilities regarding utility easements. They will advise citizens regarding actions they should consider before the contractors arrive on their property and their rights and responsibilities when workers enter the property. They will also have recommendations for owners of properties which are unnecessarily damaged during maintenance activities in the utility easement.

    For information, contact Herb Beattie at 749-4586 or herb.beattie AT sbcglobal.net (substitute an @ sign for the word AT).

    This morning on KFAQ I made a statement that I believed to be correct but was inaccurate. Jim Burdge was NOT on Terry Simonson's 2002 mayoral campaign team. (It had been my understanding during the campaign that he was.) Terry informs me that he did not have a campaign manager as such, but the members of his campaign team (including Janet Sullivan, Ky Vargus, and Tom and Debbie Gutmann) each handled certain key tasks. Burdge was not involved in any of the campaign meetings, and as far as Terry is aware, Burdge was not given any work to do for the campaign. My apologies to Terry for my error. I will repeat my correction on KFAQ on Monday morning.

    The Tulsa City Attorney's Office has issued an opinion, authored by Michael C. Romig, stating that there is an irreconcilable conflict of interest for board members of the Metropolitan Tulsa Chamber of Commerce (MTCC) serving on the City's Economic Development Commission (EDC). According to the opinion, the conflict is created by the contract between the City and MTCC. The EDC oversees performance of that contract. The opinion states that the conflict cannot be resolved by abstaining from debate or votes. The City Attorney's opinion is grounded in an Oklahoma Attorney General's opinion last year regarding the state's constitutional prohibition of conflicts of interest (Article X, Section 11).

    The City Attorney's opinion says that there is no inherent conflict of interest for ordinary members of MTCC serving on the EDC, but they would have to exercise personal judgment on any given issue as to whether they could in good conscience vote in the interest of the City and not in the interest of MTCC.

    Councilor Chris Medlock will be on KFAQ with Michael DelGiorno at 7:40 a.m. Wednesday to discuss this ruling.

    Just a reminder -- Tulsa Topics should be on your list of daily reads. The latest entry is an in-depth preview of Thursday night's Council meetings, including an audio clip of what Bill Christiansen was saying about the 71st and Harvard situation last Thursday night. On Monday he posted a detailed preview of the Council's Tuesday committee meetings with links to relevant background information.

    It's not all political -- Bobby writes of a visit to Swan Lake, which inspired some research into the 1934 Chicago World's Fair.

    Beyond the blog, Tulsa Topics has a media page, with clips from recent public meetings.

    You'll also find the beginnings of a Wikipedia of the Tulsa political and business scene. A wiki allows you to register and contribute your own knowledge to the collection. If enough folks get involved in limited ways, it could grow rapidly into a wonderful resource for understanding the background to the news.

    Monday morning on KFAQ I reported what Mayor Bill LaFortune has been saying about the upcoming general obligation bond issue -- that your property taxes will be lower than they are now if the bond issue passes.

    Turns out it depends on how you look at it. The Mayor is comparing the sum of the last five years, which includes a very high number in 1999, with the sum of the next five years. Here's the city's levy per $1000 net assessed value from FY 1999 through FY 2011.

    Actual:

    1999 - 13.80
    2000 - 12.20
    2001 - 12.00
    2002 - 11.70
    2003 - 11.20
    2004 - 11.10
    2005 - 10.00

    Projected if bond issue passes:

    2006 - 10.30
    2007 - 11.10
    2008 - 12.20
    2009 - 12.30
    2010 - 13.00
    2011 - 12.95

    In a nutshell, the bond issue will make your property taxes will go up, but not as high as they have been in the past.

    UPDATE: Chris Medlock has posted his account of the story that appeared in the Saturday World.

    I can't remember if I've used this analogy on this blog, or perhaps just in other forums, but I've observed that the Tulsa World sometimes operates like a volleyball team, with the newsroom providing the "set" with a well-slanted news story, providing the editorial board just what they need for the "spike" -- the "facts" required to "prove" whatever point the editorial board is trying to make.

    A week or so ago Councilor Chris Medlock made an offhand comment, during an off-the-record conversation with a Tulsa World reporter. He mentioned that a high-ranking city official came to him to relay an offer -- support granting an easement over city land for the proposed private toll bridge across the Arkansas River and the recall would be called off. Someone decided to turn the offhand, off-the-record comment into a news story.

    Commenter Jeff Shaw makes an excellent point about Mayor Bill LaFortune's accusation that the Tulsa Commerce and Legal News is responsible for the failure to publish notice of the charter amendment election and thus for the removal of the charter amendment from the April ballot:

    I would look for an denial from the publisher they made a mistake. It is my view and experience that these type of accidents don't happen on the publication end of things. Legal publications are very very important with regard to due process of law, and they take it very seriously. It's tantamount to malpractice.

    If a newspaper fails to run a legal notice as required, public hearings and court proceedings have to be delayed, at a cost to the people and the government body involved. A newspaper that specializes in legal notices would have all sorts of safeguards in place to avoid exposing the paper to liability for failure to publish.

    If it is the newspaper's fault, the City should be able to sue for the $100,000 it will cost to hold a separate special election for the charter amendment. The newspaper may even have "errors and omissions" insurance to cover the situation. The charter amendment represents a promise made to the property owners of this city, to restore this protection at the earliest possible opportunity. If the Mayor is serious about keeping his promise to the citizens, he'll pursue damages. Otherwise, we'll have to assume he's more interested in keeping the promises he made behind closed doors to the developers' lobbyists.

    Who's to blame for the mistake that forced the Tulsa city charter amendment off the ballot? The mistake, if it was a mistake, meant that the unanimous will of Tulsa's elected officials was thwarted, with only two ways to undo the damage: Schedule another city-wide election at a cost of $100,000, or delay the amendment until next March's city general election. Mayor Bill LaFortune's administration has given conflicting answers and doesn't seem anxious to pursue sanctions against the person or persons responsible for the damage to the democratic process.

    Big Council meeting tonight

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    There are a lot of important issues on tonight's Tulsa City Council agenda.

    • The Mayor has nominated a replacement for planning commission member Dell Coutant (the only member that has respect for the Comprehensive Plan). His name is Owen Ard, and I understand that he lives in Maple Ridge neighborhood and is in real estate. Once again, the Mayor appears to be bowing to his Cockroach Caucus masters by NOT replacing the commissioner who most needs to go -- Joe Westervelt. That must have been some woodshedding they gave Bill out at Homebuilders' Hall.
    • Former District 7 City Councilor Terry Doverspike has been nominated to the Economic Development Commission to replace Jono Helmerich. While Doverspike may not be the Chamber booster that his predecessor on the Council, John Benjamin (now a Bixby resident), was, Doverspike is not likely to be the kind of skeptical outsider we need to oversee the spending of Tulsa's economic development money.
    • An item about allowing the Council to handle appeals from the City Board of Adjustment.
    • An attempt to put off the charter amendment and the city bond issue until May.

    And there's more. It all starts at 6 p.m. tonight at City Hall.

    Kramer, in "The Fusilli Jerry" episode of "Seinfeld":

    "Have you ever met a proctologist? They usually have a very good sense of humor. You meet a proctologist at a party, don't walk away. Plant yourself there because you will hear the funniest stories you've ever heard. See, no one wants to admit to them that they stuck something up there. Never. It's always an accident. Every proctologist story ends in the same way... 'It was a million to one shot, doc, million to one.' "

    I thought of that quote when I heard what happened at City Hall Tuesday morning. It seems to capture the difficulty the Mayor's administration has taking responsibility for their decisions.

    Mayor Bill LaFortune's chief of staff Clay Bird came down to the City Council's Urban and Economic Development committee meeting to say that due to some freak oversight on the part of the City Clerk's office, necessary paperwork wasn't filed in a timely fashion, and therefore a proposed charter amendment won't be on the April ballot with the bond issue. The purpose of the charter amendment, which passed the Council unanimously, is to restore the supermajority requirement for a zoning change in which a formal protest is filed by a sufficient number of property owners affected by the change.

    The committee meeting will be broadcast on TGOV (Cox cable channel 24) sometime between 1:00 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. tomorrow and every day through the rest of the week. I'm told it's must-see TV. Some of the Councilors seemed quite excited that the charter amendment would not make the April ballot. Now there's talk of delaying the bond issue yet one more month, to May, along with the charter amendment, the District 5 special election to replace Sam Roop and the recall elections in District 2 and 6, all on the same day, with the Cockroach Caucus hoping for a clean sweep -- stop the charter amendment, elect a John Benjamin crony in 5 and get rid of two good councilors in 2 and 6. The Cockroaches apparently hope that a single, relatively high turnout election will ensure that their deep pockets will overwhelm the volunteer efforts in support of Medlock and Mautino and the charter change.

    I'm not buying the excuse that it was a mistake by the City Clerk's office. There have been too many coincidental mistakes -- agendas not getting posted and the like -- and they always seem to favor the Cockroaches. If it wasn't an intentional slip, perhaps it's because the City Clerk's office is too busy expediting the processing of recall petitions (which will please the Cockroaches) to handle other important business.

    We hear that the Mayor got verbally beat up by some development lobbyists recently, and in the process of saying "uncle!" he promised to stop speaking out against the recall of Medlock and Mautino. If that's so, perhaps he also promised them to find a way to scuttle the charter change and speed up recall. The Mayor doesn't dare come out openly against the charter change and for the recall, beacuse he'd lose his political base, but if he supports the charter change and opposes the recall, he risks offending the men who might bankroll him to the next level of his 8-8-8 plan (eight years as mayor, eight as governor, eight as president).

    It seems that the Mayor wants what the Cockroach Caucus wants, but he doesn't want the public to hold him accountable for enabling the Cockroaches to get their way. Like the proctologist's patient, he finds it easier to pretend it was all an accident. Sorry, I'm not buying that -- rectocranial inversions like that don't just happen spontaneously.

    Where's all the Tulsa stuff?

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    I've laid off the Tulsa blogging today -- other news has caught my attention -- but I'll get back to it tomorrow. In the meantime, Bobby of Tulsa Topics has been blogging about more shabby treatment inflicted on a neighborhood association, with the aid of the neighborhood's own city councilor.

    Bobby also makes sure the Tulsa World knows precisely whom to contact about the copyright infringements found on the pro-recall Coalition for Reprehensible Government's website. And he reports that now even subscribers can't get to the PDF files on the World's website. (TRACKBACK: Ron Coleman comments over on his blog.)

    Homeowners for Fair Zoning has more about the misuse of continuances as an anti-neighborhood tactic in zoning cases.

    On the TulsaNow forums, there's talk about the released plans for widening I-44 between the river and Yale. I'm disappointed to see that there is no provision for mid-mile crossovers, which means that the expressway will continue to be a kind of Berlin Wall separating north from south, with bottlenecks at the section line "checkpoints."

    Dissin' Terry

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    Just got word that City Hall has confirmed the rumored staff moves I reported earlier: Mayor Bill LaFortune is appointing City Councilor Sam Roop as Chief Administrative Officer, and Mayoral aide Clay Bird will become Chief of Staff. There's one additional bit of information: Fire Chief Allen LaCroix will do double duty as Chief Operating Officer. Good men all, but the Mayor seems to have stuck to one of his guiding principles: Don't hire anyone who could outshine you. He missed a chance to add energy, ideas, and experience to his administration, and in the process may have permanently alienated a key ally.

    The biggest surprise for many City Hall observers is that Terry Simonson was not named to one of these key posts in the Mayor's office. The buzz for a couple of months was that Simonson, who had served under the two previous Republican mayors (Jim Inhofe and Dick Crawford), would be brought on board to try to bring some focus and direction to the last year of Bill LaFortune's term. Some say that the push to put Simonson on the Mayor's staff was coming from Terry's old boss, Sen. Jim Inhofe. (Folks who heard Inhofe's appearance on Thursday's Michael DelGiorno Show remarked that he was unusually willing to comment -- and not in a positive way -- on city matters, a topic he usually sidesteps. The subtext to his comments might well be expressed by this Walt Kelly poem.)

    Although a lot of folks had qualms with his coziness with former City Councilor and Chamber-Pot-in-Chief John Benjamin during his 2002 campaign for mayor, people know that Simonson has done some serious thinking about how City Hall ought to be run and how to make city government more efficient and effective. His thoughtfulness is evident in his many op-eds for Urban Tulsa Weekly and on his own website in the during his last run for Mayor. Although I don't always agree with him on policy, there's no doubt in my mind that his presence on the Mayor's team would have been a good thing for the city and a good thing for Bill LaFortune. Had LaFortune been wise, he would have found a way to get Terry on his staff from the first day of his administration.

    Instead of being offered a key role on the 11th Floor, there's a rumor that Simonson has been offered the job of interim airports director, which brings with it the thankless task of cleaning up the mess left by Brent Kitchen and the Savage administration. In that position, he'd be based out at Tulsa International Airport, well out of the City Hall loop.

    Meanwhile, some folks are asking if there is some connection between Sam Roop's new job and his reversal on the reappointment of Jim Cameron and Lou Reynolds to the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Board. It's hard to imagine that the Mayor would have hired him if he had stuck with his initial "no" vote.

    (I wish I could claim credit for the headline, but it's by another amateur punster from Tulsa.)

    City Hall shuffle

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    I have it on good authority that Mayor Bill LaFortune plans to appoint Clay Bird as his chief of staff and City Councilor Sam Roop as the City's Chief Administrative Officer.

    This is an interesting move as it throws the balance of power on the Council into question, and it may represent an attempt to break the Reform Alliance majority by other means, as the recall effort seems to be faltering. Depending on how soon the appointment takes place, the new City Councilor will either be chosen in a special election or appointed by the remaining members of the Council. Replacing by appointment would be a messy business, with the Council split 4-4 between the Reform Alliance and the Cockroach Caucus. Unless the City Attorney's office comes up with yet another creative interpretation of the City Charter, a vacancy before March 14, 2005, means that a special election will be called to fill the seat. (An example of a creative interpretation -- saying that because it's less than a year before the 2006 election filing period the vacancy must be filled by appointment.)

    If Roop takes the job, it will also remove him as a possible primary challenger to LaFortune in 2006. It will be interesting to see if other possible challengers are handled in a similar way.

    Meanwhile, the Cockroach Caucus seems to be attempting an end-around to break up the Reform Alliance. Councilors Bill Christiansen (District 8) and Randy Sullivan (formerly a resident of District 7, which is now unrepresented) have been seen schmoozing Councilors Roscoe Turner and Jack Henderson, the two Democrats in the Reform Alliance, and it's rumored that the South Tulsa Rotary Club (of which Sullivan and Christiansen are members) is promising a substantial amount of money for projects in north Tulsa, the area represented by Henderson and Turner.

    If the strategy is to buy Turner's and Henderson's loyalty, it won't work, and it demonstrates the Cockroach Caucus's contempt for their integrity and the Caucus's failure to understand what motivates their service. It would be easier for certain special interests if all public officials were venal, but the rest of us can be thankful that at least a majority on the Council have higher motives.

    Way back on Monday, I attended the Downtown Kiwanis club luncheon as the guest of my friend John Eagleton. Ken Neal, editorial page editor of the Tulsa Whirled was the speaker of the day. John knew I'd be interested in hearing Ken speak, since I've written about him and the emissions of his editorial board quite frequently.

    Ken has a folksy voice and manner. He spoke very briefly about the paper and the editorial section he oversees, and then threw it open for questions, what he called a "horsewhip the editor" session.

    I had a pile of questions I could have asked, but narrowed it down to just one. He had just been asked a question about the mix and selection of syndicated columnists on the op-ed pages, and in fact, they now have a decent assortment, including some of my favorite conservative columnists -- writers like Thomas Sowell, James Lileks, and Paul Greenberg.

    I commended Mr. Neal on the diversity of his syndicated columnists but asked why there was a lack of diversity of opinion on local issues. He seemed puzzled by my question. I pointed out that you never read Julie DelCour writing that Ken Neal was wrong about something or Ken Neal writing that David Averill was wrong about something. The board is uniformly supportive of any tax increase -- something Neal openly acknowledged a few weeks ago. The board is also uniformly negative about the reform majority on the Tulsa City Council.

    His reply was about what I expected: The Whirled is a private company, not a public institution. We have the right to push our opinions and our ideas.

    I wasn't questioning the Whirled's right to publish what they wished, just suggesting that the lack of diverse opinion on local issues was a flaw in need of correction. Neal went on to cite the decades of experience of each of the editorial board members, many of them with years of experience covering City Hall. Because they're all so intimate with the way City Hall works, naturally they're all in agreement over how City Hall ought to be run.

    The answer to the next question shed further light on the matter. Kiwanis Club president Rick Brinkley very delicately and politely asked a question about the ethics of the Whirled's coverage of Great Plains Airlines, in which World Publishing Company was invested. Brinkley pointed out that as a matter of practice broadcast media disclose potential conflicts of interest: If ABC reports on a new film from Disney, they make mention of the fact that Disney is ABC's parent company. Neal brushed aside the comparison to broadcast media and said that they have all sorts of ethical standards that cover any conflicts of interest they may have as journalists, although he avoided the issue of conflicts of interest involving the newspaper's owners and their other business interests.

    Regarding Great Plains Airlines, Neal pooh-poohed the idea that the newspaper abused the readers' trust in order to help anyone get rich. Neal pointed out that the Lortons, owners of the paper, are already rich. (And we all know that all wealthy people are contented with the amount of wealth they have.) Neal said, "Everybody in town thought it [public subsidy of Great Plains] was a great idea. It was a Chamber deal."

    That says it all. Neal and company have a huge blindspot when it comes to dissenting opinion. They sit in their bunker on Main Street, with their decades of listening only to the conventional wisdom, and they honestly can't see any other way of running the city. The city's problems are of course not the fault of the powers-that-be and their policies, but the fault of the people who are doing the complaining.

    It's cliched to refer to Pauline Kael's quote about Nixon's landslide -- "No one I know voted for him" -- but it fits this bunch.

    In fact, there were many voices objecting to the city's financial involvement with Great Plains, including two then-City Councilors, Randi Miller and Clay Bird, who voted against the deal. A story in the Whirled some time back used their no votes as a way to needle Sam Roop and Roscoe Turner, councilors who voted for the deal but are now critical of it and are involved in the investigation of the airport.

    To the Whirled editorial writers, and their allies in the Cockroach Caucus, city politics is utter simplicity. If it's a "Chamber deal," it must be good, and of course, "everybody in town" thinks it's a good idea. Anyone who disagrees is by definition a naysayer, an anti-progress crank, and therefore is beneath notice, no matter how well he can argue his position. The result is an inbred intellectual environment with imbecility as a predictable result.

    No wonder the Whirled is so mystified and threatened by the presence of a majority of dissenters on the Council. They don't understand that there are tens of thousands of Tulsans unhappy with the way the city is being run and looking for leaders with fresh ideas.

    One more interesting quote from the Q&A session: In response to a question about changing Tulsa's form of government, Neal said, "When you don't have a strong mayor, and you have a strong-mayor system, you run into problems." Neal advocates adding three at-large councilors and making the Mayor a member of the Council as well. The purpose behind such a move would be to make it much more difficult for grass-roots leaders to secure a majority on the Council.

    I about flipped. I had tuned in late to the live broadcast of the Tulsa City Council and as the meeting ended, I heard Council Chairman and non-Councilor Randy Sullivan say something like: "On Tuesday, please remember the unrepresented citizens of District 7." Had Sullivan finally become embarrassed by the fact that he hasn't lived in his district in over a year? Had he resigned?

    No. Nothing as good as that. He'll be out of town Tuesday when the Council will have a special meeting to vote on placing a charter amendment on the same April ballot as the general obligation bond issue. The amendment will allow Tulsa to have city ordinances that require council supermajorities in certain circumstances. You'll recall that the City Attorney's office claimed that the Charter's requirement of a majority vote to approve ordinances precluded any supermajority, and thus the provision was null and void that required a supermajority for zoning changes protested by a sufficient number of nearby property owners. At the time, the councilors universally expressed their regret at how badly the 71st & Harvard zoning protest had been handled, and universally expressed their support for fixing the problem. We will find out Tuesday which councilors were in earnest and which were insincere.

    In the meantime, District 7 residents continue to be unrepresented even when Randy Sullivan is in town. I am still amazed that so far there hasn't been a movement by District 7 residents to protest his absence from the district. If you're a District 7 resident, I'd love to know if you think Sullivan should continue to serve, despite his non-resident status, and if so, why. Drop me a line at blog at batesline dot com.

    From Monday's DelGiorno show

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    In case you missed it, here, in MP3 format, are Michael DelGiorno's Monday morning interviews with Dawn Eden and with me, as heard on Talk Radio 1170 KFAQ. Warning: Files are large (3.5 MB and 2.4 MB respectively). These will only be available here for a few days.

    TGOV for all?

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    Reader K. A. Hruzer writes to note that TGOV, Cox Cable's local government access channel, has rather limited access:

    I'm frustrated that I cannot see/listen to our City Council Meetings.

    TGOV is a COX Cable proprietary offering, which is good. However, less than 1/3 of local residents subscribe to COX Cable. Besides omitting those disproportionally too poor to afford a cable subscription, newer technologies such as VOOM, DISH or DirecTV are on the increase. None of these people have access to our local government activities in this manner.

    I'm sure the powers that be wish to minimize this form of coverage; at least keep to the minimum definition of any 'Open Records' requirements.

    I expect more.

    In fact, it is not expecting too much that minutes of Council meetings be posted on the City Council website and archived for research purposes. A full transcript taken from the video would be even better. For that matter, streaming video posted.

    IAC, it irks me that I have to wait for the 'Whirled' to 'report' their version of events, then, try to decipher what really happened.

    This morning, I had the thought that better live coverage of the Council meetings should be strived for. The COX thing is good, and should be commended. But, the access is too limited. I wondered if you might try to influence your friends at KFAQ to do a live audio feed on the meetings? I don't know a thing about markets, time slots, etc. with regard to radio. The 6:00-7:xx time slot might be an important one for their revenues. In that light, even a replay late that evening would be better than none. And, those of us wishing to use exact quotes would be satisfied.

    Anything which makes us less dependent upon the 'Whirled' for our information is good. Sure, blogs are good, too. But, they often don't get updated for days and are also subject to perspectives and opinions. So, the horses mouth is always best.

    K. A. makes a great point. TGOV is a major breakthrough for citizen awareness of city government, broadcasting meetings of the Council, Council committees, the Board of Adjustment, the planning commission, and the Airport Authority, as well as some special programming. At the same time, because it is only offered through the local cable system (as a condition of their franchise agreement with the City of Tulsa), satellite subscribers and rabbit-ears users don't have access.

    I don't see KFAQ preempting Laura Ingraham to broadcast commercial-free Council meetings. Anyway, you miss a lot without the visuals to let you know who is speaking.

    Streaming video over the Internet would be the way to go -- it would be accessible at public libraries and at home for broadband Internet subscribers. Citizens would be able to watch the latest meetings any time, rather than just during designated rebroadcasts. And it would be possible for bloggers and others to link to and comment on specific excerpts.

    The technology is not cutting edge, but there would be some cost involved to set it up and to pay for the bandwidth and the server software. Video is already being converted to digital format -- you can buy DVDs of Council meetings.

    AG addresses conflicts of interest

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    Interesting article in today's Whirled about Attorney General Drew Edmondson's opinion issued in response to a question about conflicts of interest on state boards and commissions. You'll find the opinion, which was released on December 15, here. The Whirled article starts here and continues here. I haven't read through the opinion yet to see whether the Whirled article gives an accurate account of the opinion.

    The question came from former State Senator Ben Robinson, and concerned the Environmental Quality Board, which oversees the state Department of Environmental Quality.

    A couple of interesting points:

    Mere abstention from voting may not be sufficient to avoid a conflict of interest. A board member could have considerable influence over a decision even without casting a vote.

    Title 60 trusts are excluded from the constitutional provision on which the opinion is based, but some trust board members also hold positions on related city boards, which would be subject to the conflict provision. The story mentions that the board members of the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority, a public trust, and also board members of the Tulsa Utility Board, a body established by the City Charter, and the members of the Tulsa Airport Improvement Trust are also members of the Tulsa Airport Authority.

    The story mentioned Councilor Sam Roop's potential conflict of interest involving a new business venture seeking to provide networking services to the city, and Councilor Roscoe Turner's service on the board of a charity which sought Community Development Block Grant funds. It was interesting that no mention was made of Councilor Bill Christiansen's status as an airport tenant, and the controversy over airport rules which seemed to put his sole competitor at a disadvantage.

    The City Council majority was right to raise this issue and to demand full disclosure, not only for the bodies covered by this AG opinion, but for all city authorities, boards, and commissions.

    Videoblogging Tulsa

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    www.tulsaworld.cc features photos and video taken around Tulsa, particularly concerning local politics. This page has lengthy video excerpts from last Thursday's Council meeting and the debate over reappointing Jim Cameron and Lou Reynolds to the water board, including Councilor Jim Mautino's speech, in which he lays out the facts about the TMUA's neglect of areas within Tulsa city limits while they rush to serve the suburbs. The site also has extensive coverage of problems with the airport noise abatement program. Good to see a site devoted to eyewitness coverage of local events.

    Watery business

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    This evening the Council will once again consider the Mayor's reappointment of Jim Cameron and Lou Reynolds to the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority, the quango that controls Tulsa's water. It's been amazing to see how much anger has been directed at the Council majority for refusing to approve the reappointment, and how much energy has been spent trying to change their decision.

    A passing mention in today's "Bleat" by James Lileks may help to explain why it matters so much to some people. He's writing about the historical novel Pompeii, by Robert Harris.

    The hero is the local official in charge of the water supply for the cities around Pompeii, and most of the book concerns his efforts to fix a break in the aqueduct. ... Of course, water is a commodity, so there’s corruption of the “Chinatown” variety.

    That's a reference to the 1974 film starring Jack Nicholson, set in Los Angeles in the early 20th century, and loosely based on controversies surrounding the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which carried water from the Owens River valley to the San Fernando Valley, making it possible to develop the valley, and making some land speculators very, very rich.

    Here's the plot summary from IMDb:

    Hollis Mulwray is a chief engineer of the water department. Ida Sessions, pretending to be his wife Evelyn, asks P.I. JJ Jake Gittes to investigate his adulterous ways. Jake takes photos of Hollis with a young lady. Hollis then turns up murdered, which Jake decides to investigate. Jake finds more than he was looking for. He discovers a plot to buy cheap, unwatered land for low prices, water the land, and sell it for millions of dollars. The plot is masterminded by one Noah Cross, who is Evelyn's father and Hollis' one-time business partner. His investigation leads him to an affair with Evelyn and a discussion with Noah Cross, both of whom seem curiously interested in the girl Hollis was seen with.

    Subtract the murder and adultery subplots, and what you have left is a plot to direct public resources to help certain connected developers become very wealthy. The vehemence of the effort to keep Cameron and Reynolds on the water board make some folks wonder if something like that could happen here.

    If you care about this issue, tonight is the time to show up and be heard -- 6 p.m. at City Hall.

    Whirled endorses Medlock

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    Tulsa City Councilor Chris Medlock takes a trip down memory lane, back to his special election primary run for State House District 69 in 1994, back when the Tulsa Whirled editorial board actually liked him, and gave him their endorsement:

    ON Tuesday, Republican voters in Tulsa's House District 69 will pick someone to represent them in the state House of Representatives. They should do themselves and the rest of Tulsa a big service by picking Chris Medlock.

    Of the three GOP candidates, Medlock is the clear choice. At 35, he is a well-educated marketing and research analyst for the T.D. Williamson Co. ...

    He is intimately acquainted with the need for adequate higher education facilities for Tulsa. He has been a staunch supporter of public school reform and new business development.

    He also will provide Tulsa with another strong voice against crime. Articulate and knowledgeable on legislative issues, Medlock is exactly the kind of young person Tulsans should be encouraging to enter the political arena.

    The voters in District 69 should have no hesitation in voting for Chris Medlock.

    What's changed in ten years? As Chris himself notes, in 1994, he was considered the least conservative of the candidates, which would have won the admiration of the Whirledlings. Over the intervening years, Chris moved to the right, part of an even longer journey from a liberal, irreligious upbringing. Once pro-choice, Chris is now decidedly pro-life. Once a Unitarian youth minister, Chris is now part of a Presbyterian congregation. Having known Chris for nearly six years, I suspect several factors played a part: reading socially conservative thinkers and authors like Bill Bennett and Robert Bork, the experience of being surrogate dad to two teenage girls (a Russian exchange student who "adopted" Chris and his wife Cheryl, and the daughter of his late brother, who died the Saturday before his first election to the Council), and the prayers of conservative Christian friends in the Republican Party, who admired his energy, intellect, and boldness, and hoped to see those abilities put to the service of better principles.

    Those prayers have been answered. Chris Medlock is the kind of city councilor we've needed for a long time, and the fact that powerful, shadowy forces have lined up to try to remove him from office is an indication of how sick and corrupt Tulsa's political culture is.

    When first elected, Chris did not expect to be viewed as a radical. But as he witnessed the City's treatment of ordinary citizens, as he observed the way city trusts, boards and commissions operate, as he looked at the ineffectual economic development efforts of the Chamber bureaucracy, he could not in good conscience let the status quo continue without accountability.

    Chris never expected to be at odds with Mayor Bill LaFortune expected to work side-by-side with Mayor Bill LaFortune to help the Mayor implement his promised reforms. But as Chris pursued his principled course, and as the Mayor purged voices for reform from his inner circle of advisors and chose to listen to the siren song of the Cockroach Caucus, they naturally found themselves on opposite sides of issues like economic development reform.

    The Whirled and its publisher and their allies are pursuing their own interests, which are rarely and only belatedly disclosed. Chris didn't set out to alienate the Whirled, but in pursuing what is best for our city, he has come up against the cozy arrangements that suit the Whirled and the shadowy bunch backing the recall just fine.

    An anonymous commenter to Chris's entry tracks the Whirled's decline over the same period. To paraphrase the Whirled circa 1994, the readers should have no hesitation in canceling their subscriptions. And the voters should have no hesitation in supporting Chris Medlock through this recall attempt.

    Jim Rice, a Tulsa businessman, commissioned a song in support of the "Gang of Five," the alliance of reform-minded Councilors given a majority by the voters nine months ago. Two of those councilors are being targeted with a recall petition by entrenched special interests, whose ultimate aim is to grab back control and have a City Council that will serve those special interests without question.

    The song is a parody of the Merle Haggard hit "Fightin' Side of Me" and Homeowners for Fair Zoning has the song on its multimedia page. It's a word of warning to the members of the Cockroach Caucus, and to others, like Mayor LaFortune, who play footsie with the Cockroach Caucus -- don't mess with our councilors, who are doing their best to serve all Tulsans, not just a favored few.

    Rice was on the Michael DelGiorno show on KFAQ 1170 this morning talking about why he commissioned this song. He owns Central Towing and Recovery, and he's one of several towing company owners trying to get the city to use more than one service. Right now, if Tulsa Police needs a car towed, they call Storey Wrecker, which has an exclusive five-year contract. Cities as large as Oklahoma City and as small as Catoosa, the Tulsa County Sheriff's Department, and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol use multiple towing services, rotating calls among them, which improves response time, and spreads the work around. The City Council reformers heard the concerns of Rice and other wrecker owners and put the issue on the agenda to gather information and discuss whether there might be a better approach.

    Towing for municipal governments can be a lucrative business, particularly if the towing company has the right to sell off unclaimed vehicles. The Chicago Sun-Times did an investigative series on the City of Chicago's towing business, and found that the city was selling unclaimed cars to the towing company (whose owner is a major donor to Mayor Daley's campaigns) for scrap prices, less than $130 each, no matter how new or well-maintained the car was. The towing company turns around and auctions the cars off at market values and pockets the difference. The owner of the unclaimed car is still stuck with the responsibility for whatever fines prompted the car being towed and for towing and storage fees -- none of the profit the towing company makes goes to satisfy those debts. The system is ripe for abuse and the Sun-Times documents several cases.

    Meanwhile, Rice said on KFAQ this morning that he was called at home on his unlisted phone number by Tim Bartlett, an employee of the City of Tulsa in the Public Works department, who pushed for him to support the recall effort against Councilors Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock. Rice said that Bartlett suggested that Rice's efforts to get city business would be frustrated if he refused to play along.

    There is something very wrong about a city employee, protected under civil service with the intention of insulating him from politics, using that position to coerce others to participate on one side of a political issue. Even if Bartlett was calling from his own phone on his own time, it was his position with the city that made his warning/threat to Rice credible. The matter should be investigated, and if Bartlett made such a phone call, it ought to cost him his job. It ought also to cost whoever -- his boss at Public Works, perhaps? -- put him up to making the call.

    At some risk to his business, Rice didn't agree to play along with the Cockroach Caucus, and instead decided to find a way to show his support for these councilors who were willing to hear the concerns of local business owners.

    Music can do far more than mere words to rally support and boost morale. Thanks to Jim Rice for giving us a battle hymn for the cause of reform in Tulsa.

    Tulsa City Councilors Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock have just submitted their responses to the preliminary recall petitions. The response, limited to 200 words or less, must be submitted by the target of a preliminary recall petition within five days after the official has been served with the preliminary petition. The response will appear side-by-side with the 200-word reasons for recall on the supporting petition. The City Clerk will approve the form of the supporting petitions, which must be signed by 488 qualified District 6 electors in the case of Jim Mautino, 622 District 2 voters in the case of Chris Medlock.

    Here is the response submitted by Councilor Chris Medlock. The response submitted by Jim Mautino is identical, mutatis mutandis:

    Councilor Jim Mautino and I are honored that you, our constituents, elected us as your voice in city government.

    We both took an oath to be good stewards of your government. We further promised, during our campaigns, to ensure that Tulsa’s city government serves all Tulsans and not just a favored few.

    We promised to serve you with integrity. By keeping these promises, we have angered many who have previously benefited financially from old practices.

    We agree with Mayor LaFortune who said recall “hampers our effort to find real solutions to the problems facing” Tulsa.

    We agree with the League of Women Voters of Metropolitan Tulsa when they say this recall:


    • Would be a waste of time, energy and money.
    • Contains accusations in this petition that do not specify reasons for recall which are consistent with Oklahoma law.
    • Effectively disenfranchises you, the residents of District 2.

    Jim Mautino and I thank you for allowing us to serve you as Tulsa city councilors. We promise to continue to work hard ensuring your business in city government is conducted with integrity.

    I have a good excuse when something newsworthy happens, and I don't get around to writing about it for days or weeks or ever. It's just little ol' me writing this thing, and I have plenty of other responsibilities that have a higher claim on my time.

    I don't know what the Tulsa Whirled's excuse is. The Whirled has a huge staff, plenty of paper, plenty of ink, and plenty of webspace if they run out of paper and ink on a given day.

    Saturday the Whirled finally did a story about the League of Women Voters press release opposing the recall of two Tulsa City Councilors. The League's statement was released on Monday, November 22. The Whirled's story was buried on an inside page at the back of the first section, in the edition with the lowest circulation in a given week, 12 days after the League's statement was released.

    Today the Whirled published a story about a City Council committee meeting (jump page here) that happened on Tuesday, five days earlier, at which meeting the possibility of increasing the upcoming bond issue amount from $238 million to $250 million was discussed. The story headlined the Local section of the Sunday edition. The headline, "Bond issues may keep council at odds" suggests that that rowdy "Gang of Five" is arguing and bickering for no good purpose. The story itself doesn't convey that impression at all. It mentions Councilor Chris Medlock pushing for $450,000 in funding for a new bridge over Fred Creek -- the existing bridge acts as a dam and exacerbates upstream flooding. Medlock's proposal is supported by the Mayor. The story quotes Councilor Jim Mautino as concerned about the higher bond issue amount causing a net increase in property taxes. Nothing in the story suggests that there were any heated words or significant disagreement -- no one was "at odds". And isn't it interesting that only Medlock and Mautino are quoted. I think the intention was for the reader to read the headline, glimpse the names Medlock and Mautino in the body of the story, and move on without reading it, but with a mental association between the words "at odds" and these two councilors.

    Story delays, story timing, story placement, headline selection -- just four more ways the Tulsa Whirled practices media bias to advance its business interests and those of its cronies.

    Back online

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    Thanks to Jace Herring and the crew at BlogHosts for getting us back online. BlogHosts and their customers were offline for about 15 hours because of a server problem. Even though BlogHosts is going out of business at the end of the month, they're still devoted to fulfilling their responsibilities as a hosting provider.

    Meanwhile, I got a mention in the Whirled this morning, so I'm told. No time to write more this morning, but you can read what I wrote about Lake Sunset LLC here.

    Medlock responds to Ken Neal

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    Tulsa City Councilor Chris Medlock responds on his blog to editorial page editor Ken Neal's column in Sunday's Whirled about the attempt to recall him and colleague Jim Mautino. Medlock zeroes in on this Neal remark:

    Now a group composed of upset business operators, developers, home builders and civic activists and many of the hundreds of citizens who serve without pay on the city’s authorities and agencies, have mounted a recall action against Medlock and Mautino. The movement is in its first stages and most veteran observers of City Hall are appalled that Tulsa has come to what amounts to a city civil war.

    Medlock points out that the Whirled has only identified two people backing the recall effort -- Jon Davidson and Herb Haschke, who signed the ethics forms for the recall campaign committee. So does Ken Neal know something that the Whirled doesn't want us to know about this shadowy group? Medlock takes Neal's statement apart and gives his readers a translation, which you should go and read.

    If we're in a city civil war, then Ken Neal is the fool who fired on Fort Sumter, desperate to preserve an old order that is passing away.

    I spent part of today at the library, using the Whirled's online archives to see what the Whirled wrote about Great Plains Airlines from its first appearance on the scene as Sunwest (sometimes Sun West) Airlines in 1999. There is a lot of information to sift through.

    The Whirled's parent company, World Publishing Co., paid $700,000 for 233,333 shares of preferred stock in the airline in November 2000. (The Whirled claims it paid $100,000 in cash -- the remainder was $600,000 in advertising space. The Whirled didn't bother to disclose its investment in Great Plains Airlines until February 16, 2003. By that time, the taxpayers of the State of Oklahoma and the City of Tulsa had donated millions of dollars in subsidies to support this airline that never came close to delivering on its promises. Throughout this period, in which public officials were deciding whether to continue to pump more money into the venture, the Whirled ran positive stories promoting the airline and its potential. You will look in vain for even a hint of skepticism or concern.

    A newspaper has the trust of many citizens and decision-makers in the community. It's assumed that the local daily is doing its best to inform us completely and accurately -- that they wouldn't have any reason to distort or conceal information.

    The F&M Bank zoning controversy and the Great Plains Airlines scandal have exposed to the public the extent to which the business interests of World Publishing Co. and its owners skew the Whirled's coverage of local government.

    If the Whirled wishes to regain the trust of its readers they should stop using their news pages to defend the company's actions and instead recuse themselves from coverage of the story. Let's have a newspaper from another part of the country with no Tulsa business ties come in and investigate the story.

    There's a vigorous discussion about the release of findings about Great Plains Airlines and the Tulsa Airport Authority and the significance of the Whirled's ownership over on the TulsaNow forums. Go read it and weigh in with your own thoughts.

    UPDATE: You can find the Tulsa Whirled's stories in today's edition starting here on the front page, with a jump page for one of the stories plus a timeline of events here, and jump page for the other story plus the June 2003 list of investors here. The Whirled's editorial defense is here.

    No time to write today, but check in Monday morning here and on KFAQ for my analysis and perspective.

    Can't avoid making one comment: I guess the Tulsa Whirled has to be under a cloud of suspicion before it will provide detailed information on a story to its readers.

    The findings of the first phase of the City Council's investigation into the operation of Tulsa's airports were released today, published on the City Council's website. You'll find the main body of the report here and the "abbreviated addendum" here.

    (Be warned that the addendum is PDF file that has been optimized within an inch of its life. It appears that someone scanned in the addendum documents to create a PDF in Adobe Acrobat, then decided it was too large for people to download, so he ran optical character recognition on the result, keeping only the text found by the OCR and throwing away the image of the original. Hopefully, this will be corrected before long, because what is on the web now is hard to decipher.)

    I'm just starting to dig through this. I didn't see the presentation of the report at the City Council meeting, so I'm probably missing some context, but this is what it looks like to me: Great Plains Airlines appears to have been a scheme to take a relatively small amount of private money, allow influential citizens to buy in at a very low cost, in order to pry loose a much larger amount of public money, ultimately for the enrichment of a few stockholders.

    First among the preferred stockholders is World Publishing Company (WPC), publishers of the Tulsa Whirled, purchasing 233,333 shares of preferred stock of Great Plains Airline Holding Co. for $700,000. That represents a majority of the 445,699 shares of preferred stock sold at $3 a share, for a total value of $1,337,103. That investment also represents a majority of the capitalization: 6,495,137 shares of common stock were sold at either 1 mill (one tenth or a cent) per share or five cents per share, for a total value of $31,926.14. So the total price of issued stock was $1,369,029.14.

    There was a dispute some months ago about what share of Great Plains Airlines was owned by World Publishing Company (WPC). Michael DelGiorno reported that WPC owned a majority of Great Plains Airlines. WPC sent legal nastygrams and insisted that it only held 3% of the stock. WPC's answer was misleading, honest only in a narrow technical sense -- if you divide the number of WPC's preferred shares by the combined number of common shares and preferred shares, you get 3.592%. But if you consider the price paid for the shares, the Whirled's parent company had invested 51% of the private money invested in Great Plains Airline Holding Co. The Tulsa Whirled's parent company had the biggest financial stake in the airline, the most to gain.

    The price of the common stock is strange -- selling a thousand shares for a dollar is no way to raise capital for a startup business. The list of names of investors seems to point to an explanation. Many of them were in a position of influence to smooth the way for public financing and subsidy for the airline: Steven Berlin, former CFO of Citgo and a member of the Tulsa Industrial Authority (TIA); Don McCorkell, former Democrat State Representative and an influential lobbyist; Thomas Kimball, head of economic development for the City of Owasso a friend to then-Gov. Frank Keating; Bob Cullison, former Senate President Pro Tempore; Patrick Schnake and Steve Turnbo from the PR firm of Schnake Turnbo, plus Lauren Brookey, formerly a partner in that firm; Margaret Erling Frette, lobbyist and wife of John Erling, once the highest-rated local talk show host; Clyde Cole, former President and CEO of the Metropolitan Tulsa Chamber of Commerce; Van Scoyoc Associates, a DC lobbying firm specializing in government grants. While some of these people invested a tiny amount for their common shares, what would have happened to the value of their shares if an initial public offering (IPO) had occurred (especially if it had occurred before the tech bubble burst)?

    I'll be combing through the report over the next few days. I hope you will, too, and I'd enjoy reading your observations, if you'll e-mail them to me -- or head over to the TulsaNow forums for an online discussion.

    Reading between the water lines

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    The case for the reappointment of Jim Cameron and Lou Reynolds to the TMUA (on tonight's Council agenda) and the case for the policies they've been pursuing were undermined by two articles on the front page of the Tulsa Whirled this morning.

    First, Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson announced (jump page here) that the state has reached an agreement with poultry integrators to pay for the clean up of chicken litter from Oklahoma watersheds. With the state of Oklahoma pursuing this issue vigorously, and apparently successfully, it further undercuts the argument that Cameron and Reynolds on the TMUA are indispensible to pursuing the cleanup of Tulsa's Spavinaw watershed.

    Second, the Grand River Dam Authority (GRDA) is cracking down on freeloaders, (article starts on same page, same jump page as above) and it appears that the Oklahoma Ordnance Works Authority may be taking and reselling Grand River water (as much as a billion gallons a month) without payments to or the permission of the GRDA, which owns the water rights for the Grand River. The Whirled article carefully avoids explaining the possible consequences of the GRDA's reassertion of its rights, and instead spends the start of the story rehashing the threat by Owasso City Manager Rodney Ray to stop buying water from Tulsa and buy it instead from OOWA at a lower rate. Reading between the lines, OOWA may not be able to offer those cheap water rates to Tulsa's suburbs now that the GRDA is reasserting control over its water rights, possibly rendering Ray's threat an empty one.

    Big Council meeting tonight

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    It's "pack the house" night at City Hall at 6 p.m. Three controversial issues are on the agenda: The second attempt at confirming the reappointment of Jim Cameron and Lou Reynolds to the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority; Councilor Jim Mautino's resolution to direct the Planning Commission to study a change to the zoning code that would allow Board of Adjustment appeals to be heard by the City Council; and the unveiling of the report of the Council subcommittee investigating the airport. This is also the first meeting since Mayor LaFortune's veto of the Economic Development Commission reform plan.

    I can't be there, sorry to say, but I hope many of you will show up to support the Reform Alliance Councilors and to sign up to speak in support of their initiatives toward making city government work for all Tulsans, not just the favored few.

    I learned today that TMUA board member Jim Cameron's dad, Roy Cameron, passed away and that his services are tomorrow afternoon, just a few hours before what will likely be a contentious public hearing. Condolences to the Cameron family. Several of the Councilors -- both supporters and opponents of Cameron's reappointment -- expressed a willingness to hold off on his hearing until the next Council meeting (the Thursday after Thanksgiving) out of respect for Cameron and his family. There's no hurry, since he will continue to serve until reappointed or someone is appointed in his place. There seemed to be general agreement on the postponement, but then Council Chairman Randy Sullivan and Council Vice Chairman Tom Baker, both part of the Cockroach Caucus, insisted that the hearing move forward, the funeral notwithstanding. Apparently, nothing is more important to them than getting these men reappointed to the TMUA, for whatever reason.

    Another thing: The talking point from the administration is that Cameron and Reynolds are essential to moving forward productively on the issues involving chicken poop in Tulsa's water. However much they have learned about the issue, neither of them are hydrologists, biologists, or poultry experts. It seems to me that the OKC law firm that was paid $7.3 million of the $7.5 million settlement is far more important -- they must be if we paid them that much -- and they aren't going anywhere no matter who sits on the TMUA.

    Preliminary petitions seeking the recall of Tulsa City Councilors Chris Medlock and Jim Mautino were filed today with the City Clerk's office. More details later. This is just the first phase of the process. You can find details on the recall process here.

    It's interesting that this should come two days prior to the release of the findings of the Council's airport investigation. You don't suppose this is an attempt to distract from and discredit those findings?

    Head Chamber Pot to speak

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    Speaking of the Cockroach Caucus, the head of the bureaucracy at the Tulsa Metro Chamber, Jay Clemens, will speak to the Tulsa County Republican Men's Club this Friday at the Fountains Restaurant, 6540 South Lewis. The TCRMC monthly luncheon begins at 11:45 am, and the cost is $9 for the Fountains' lunch buffet. There are always a number of guests in attendance, and we usually have as many women as men present.

    I'll have to miss it, I'm sad to say, so I hope someone who goes will take some good notes and pass them along to me.

    Mr. Clemens, a resident of Broken Arrow, is a controversial figure. Many in the business community would like to see him replaced. They see the Chamber as fiddling while Rome burns -- taking expensive junkets to the Caribbean and Hawaii, continuing to focus economic development efforts on luring large facilities to Tulsa, rather than nurturing businesses that are already here. Insiders talk of a controlling attitude that stifles innovation both within the Chamber bureaucracy and in the city as a whole. During a previous stint in a similar role elsewhere, Clemens received national attention for discouraging a company's plan to bring 500 new jobs to the area because it would "unrealistically drive up wages."

    It is widely believed that the Chamber is encouraging the effort to recall Councilors Chris Medlock and Jim Mautino because of the Councilors' efforts to hold the Chamber accountable for how the Chamber spends the City of Tulsa's hotel/motel tax dollars. It should be interesting to see what he has to say to Republican grassroots activists, who enthusiastically support Medlock and Mautino and the reform of the city's economic development approach. It will be interesting to see what they have to say to him in return. It may be a valuable learning experience for Mr. Clemens.

    By the way, the Fountains Restaurant serves wonderful bread pudding, which is delicious, and, I am told, also possesses interesting ballistic characteristics when saturated with glaze, but I've never seen that for myself.

    UPDATE: In answer to a question, no, you do not have to be a member of the TCRMC in order to attend the luncheon. (Although you are encouraged to join -- dues are $20 per year.)

    To the surprise of none and the disappointment of many, Tulsa Mayor Bill LaFortune has vetoed the ordinance reforming the Economic Development Commission (EDC), the city board charged with oversight of the portion of Tulsa's 5% hotel-motel tax which is earmarked for economic development and convention and tourism development. Word is that the Mayor called the ordinance "divisive," presumably because the Tulsa Metro Chamber doesn't like the idea of oversight and accountability for the millions of tax dollars it receives each year.

    The Mayor is also reported to have referred to himself in his veto message as a strong and decisive mayor for all of Tulsa. "Strong mayor" appears to mean strong enough to stand up and say a loud no to the ordinary people of Tulsa who are longing for real reform, who expect economic development money to facilitate real job growth, not expensive junkets like the Mayor's recent Chamber-paid trip to Germany and Liechtenstein or the Chamber's trips to Hawaii and Aruba.

    I am told that the Mayor refused to meet with Councilor Chris Medlock, sponsor of the reform, prior to issuing his veto.

    The Mayor can call himself strong and decisive all he wants, but that doesn't make it so. I'll agree with that assessment when I see him actually do something that earns him the public condemnation of Chamber President Bob Poe and the Tulsa Whirled editorial page. The reforms he vetoed were reasonable and necessary to ensure that the City of Tulsa's economic development money goes to develop the City of Tulsa and is used effectively. The Council's reform proposal would have brought about geographical representation -- no part of our city left behind -- a coherent economic development strategy, accountability, and freedom from conflicts of interests.

    Sometimes being divisive means moving forward even when powerful interests disagree, even with four of nine city councilors voted no.

    When Bill LaFortune was running for office, he promised to listen to everyone as he made his decisions. The real question, I told people at the time, is to whom will he be listening when he makes his decision. If we didn't know already, we know now.

    What is the Board of Adjustment

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    Tulsa City Councilor Jim Mautino has proposed allowing Board of Adjustment (BoA) cases to be appealed to the City Council. As it stands, once the BoA acts, the decision can only be appealed to District Court. Councilor Mautino's concern is that this situation puts justice beyond the reach of many who are hurt by a BoA decision, and that having the City Council hear an initial appeal would allow grievances to be handled at a lower cost in time and money.

    The response from the Cockroach Caucus has been fascinating to watch, and, as always, the Tulsa Whirled editorial page leads the way, proclaiming that Mautino's proposal is a solution in search of a problem. It's a typically arrogant response -- if we don't have a problem, the problem doesn't exist -- but more about that later. Here's some background to help you understand what this is all about.

    The BoA gets involved when a property owner's plans or actions run afoul of the City of Tulsa's zoning code. For example: An owner applies for a building permit and is told that his proposed new structure or addition doesn't comply with setbacks from the street or height limits for the land's zoning classification. A business owner applies for a certificate of occupancy -- changing the use of an existing building -- and is denied because the proposed new use isn't permitted by the zoning for the site. A property owner is cited by Neighborhood Inspections (formerly known as Code Enforcement) for a violation of the zoning code.

    This week's Beacon

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    This week's Tulsa Beacon features the news that the Federal probe into Tulsa's airports is now being extended to Jones Riverside Airport, and particularly examining the Tulsa Airport Authority's dealings with City Councilor Bill Christiansen, who owns Christiansen Aviation, and his only competitor for fuel sales at the airport, Kent Faith's Roadhouse Aviation. Faith's suit against the Tulsa Airport Authority (TAA) and Christiansen was settled out of court. The heart of the matter is the allegation that the TAA adopted rules designed to drive Roadhouse out of business and leave Christiansen with a monopoly, contrary to FAA rules. This will be worth watching.

    This week's issue also has a story about Mayor LaFortune's plans to veto the economic development reforms passed by the Council, along with some speculation about who will run for Mayor in 2006.

    You can find the Beacon at area QuikTrip stores, among other places. No need to buy the Sunday Whirled, the Beacon has TV and movie listings!

    Homeowners for Fair Zoning website

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    Tulsa's Homeowners for Fair Zoning has launched an attractive new website, which features a "news log," which is in fact a Movable Type blog, used for HFFZ news items, announcements, and editorials. Eventually, they'll add content about the organization and how to join. The news log currently features an editorial in support of Councilor Jim Mautino's proposal regarding Board of Adjustment appeals and an article about the reappointments to the water board, which was featured in an earlier entry here. Add it to your bookmarks.

    Medlock relaunches website

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    Tulsa City Councilor Chris Medlock has relaunched his website ChrisMedlock.com as a way to get his perspective on City Hall controversies directly to the public, unfiltered by the media.

    For example, there's this article about Mayor LaFortune's response to the reforms to the Economic Development Commission approved by the Council. An excerpt:

    So here we are. We have an ordinance in place that broadens the scope and responsibilities of the EDC, so that the members, chosen by LaFortune, can now look beyond the confines of just the Hotel/Motel Tax, to begin looking at all elements of our city's economy. We have an ordinance that requires from any contracting organization (the ordinance never directly mentions the Metropolitan Tulsa Chamber of Commerce) full disclosure of how tax dollars are spent. The ordinance ensures that all areas of Tulsa will be represented, rather than two or three zip codes. We have an ordinance that deals firmly with conflicts of interest and empowers a majority the city council to remove members for cause (note: "cause" is defined in our City Charter. As such, you need better reason to remove an EDC member from the commission than you need to remove a councilor from the City Council).

    While it is true that Mayor LaFortune offered the council an alternative ordinance, he did so just hours before we were set to vote on the council's version. I had met with the Mayor and his aide, Tom Warren, on the Wednesday preceding the vote. This meeting was to discuss the handful of minor changes that the Mayor had suggested in the Legislative and Public Safety committee meeting the Tuesday before. As he left the meeting, (ironically to meet with Metro Chamber Chairman Bob Poe), we were all still under the understanding that the Mayor would suggest some small changes to reflect his earlier statements. But that was a faulty assumption.

    Rather than some minor tweaking, we got what amounted to a virtual rewrite. Please remember that the ordinance in the form that was ultimately passed, was the result of dozens of meetings with the feed back and compromise of dozens of stakeholders. What the Mayor presented to the council was a document better suited for an opening negotiation, not for an 11th hour alternative. What the mayor proposed couldn't have been more devoid of serious reform, if it had been written by Chairman Poe himself. ...

    Last minute delays are becoming a hallmark of this administration. Appeals for "reasonableness" and "not rushing things" can often be compelling. But when they become mantras of confusion or ill preparedness, then ending the discussion and moving on becomes a rational act. What is irrational is to consistently stall in hopes of an issue merely going away, or resolving itself through other's efforts.

    The mayor is certainly within his rights to veto. In fact, those of us who voted for the ordinance expected he would do so before we ever entered the council room. However, all acts convey something about the person taking the action. In this case, should the mayor veto, we will learn that he is more interested in the promises that will secure him votes for the next election, rather than keeping the promises that won him the last election.

    The site is still under construction, but it should be worth regular visits. I hope Medlock will look into adding blog software to his site, which will make it simpler for him to add new content while keeping the old content available. And a wiki would be perfect for the "Players' List" he plans to add -- as a way to allow Tulsans to explore all the connections between various players in city government.

    Not entirely above board

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    A revealing tidbit from yesterday's Tulsa Whirled story on the re-renomination of Jim Cameron and Lou Reynolds to the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority (TMUA):

    During Tuesday's interview, Henderson asked the men if they knew Herbert Haschke Jr., treasurer of the Coalition for Responsible Government 2004, which is conducting a recall effort against Medlock and Mautino.

    Reynolds said he might have had legal dealings with him, and Cameron said Haschke did some estate planning for his father.

    Henderson asked whether the men supported the recall effort. Reynolds said he was neutral about it, and Cameron never answered.

    According to the records of the Oklahoma Secretary of State, Haschke and Reynolds are co-incorporators of "THE COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE ASSOCIATION OF TULSA, INC." Haschke and Cameron were co-incorporators of "IHCRC REALTY CORPORATION" -- IHCRC stands for Indian Health Care Resource Center, of which Jim Cameron is secretary of the Board of Directors. BatesLine reported this information a month ago (here and here).

    Why did Cameron and Reynolds choose not to be open and direct about their dealings with Haschke? This is one more example of the refusal of these two men to be cooperative and forthcoming with the City Council, and one more reason why the Mayor should fulfill his commitment to name two other Tulsans to replace them on the TMUA.

    I received this via e-mail from Homeowners for Fair Zoning, requesting Tulsans to express their opposition to the reappointment of two controversial water board members, which will be on the agenda at Thursday night Tulsa City Council meeting. It includes a good overview of the reasons for rejecting the reappointments:

    DON'T CONFIRM NOMINEES WHO WON'T QUESTION THEIR OWN POLICY!

    Councilor Sam Roop (e-mail dist5@tulsacouncil.org) is set to reverse a lot of effort of the Reform Alliance of Five City Councilors who, with his support, have declined to confirm the Mayor's reappointment of Jim Cameron and Lou Reynolds to the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority (TMUA). For background on this issue read BatesLine: Picking at a scab. Although Councilor Roop has announced his intention to reverse his position and confirm these nominees, you are requested to e-mail him your thoughts under the subject caption of "Please do not confirm appointments of Cameron and Reynolds." The confirmation vote will likely be at the 6:00 p.m. Tulsa City Council Meeting on November 18th.

    The TMUA is Tulsa's water board. Through bonded indebtedness, the citizens of Tulsa pay for the infrastructure (pumping stations, water lines, sewer lines, water treatment facilities, etc.) which provide our water system, including water to surrounding communities like Broken Arrow, Jenks and Owasso. The Mayor is demanding that two current board members, Mr. Cameron and Mr. Reynolds, be reappointed to TMUA. Aside from potential conflicts of interest, there are several good reasons not to confirm the reappointment of these longtime board members.

    Anyone who has been in their appointed positions as long as these two men have has stopped examining the basis for their decisions and policies. As indicated by their discussion before the City Council, if confirmed, they will continue to support a water board policy of extending water service to those areas, inside or outside of Tulsa, which can demonstrate an immediate need for the facilities and at the same rates paid by citizens of Tulsa. Decisions for future extensions of the water system will not be principally based on developing areas within Tulsa. To these nominees, the idea of extending lines within North, East and West Tulsa to interest and draw business development is considered overly speculative. Furthermore, they consider linking loss of sales tax for the suburbs to increased water rates as beyond their purview. They do not view the water
    board as a potential revenue generating source for the City.

    When some members of the City Council, led by Councilors Mautino and Medlock, tried to question whether it would be practical to charge a higher rate for water service to communities outside Tulsa to offset the loss in sales tax revenue which Tulsa suffers when those communities develop and lower Tulsa's sales tax base, TMUA staff delayed furnishing information and a massive turnout of those who stood to benefit financially by not having the water rates and location of pipeline extensions examined was used to try to intimidate these councilors.

    Since Jim Cameron and Lou Reynolds lead and for all practical purposes set the policy of TMUA, their reappointment will also confirm these policies and prevent a highly desirable examination of what Tulsa's future water policy should be. For Tulsa's sake, it's time to examine water policy. Let Councilor Roop know what you think!

    Picking at a scab

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    We thought the matter was settled. Three Republican councilors -- Sam Roop, Chris Medlock, and Jim Mautino -- signed a letter to Mayor Bill LaFortune saying that under no circumstances would they approve the reappointment of Jim Cameron and Lou Reynolds to the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority (TMUA) -- Tulsa's water board. Just over three months ago, the Council rejected their reappointment, and the city establishment reacted with outrage and fury, which made ordinary citizens wonder what the big deal was. The reaction reminded some people of the defensive behavior of a guilty husband caught in an affair. My wife thought the word "apoplectic" was a good fit for the Cockroach Caucus's reaction. The uproar reminded me of the scene from "The Wizard of Oz" when Dorothy pours water on the Wicked Witch, and she shrieks, "I'm melting!"

    After weeks of contention, the Mayor had finally committed to nominate two replacements, but before he got around to it, Sam Roop went to the Mayor and said that he no longer had any objection to Cameron and Reynolds being reappointed, and encouraged the Mayor to put their names back before the Council.

    So here we are again, and thanks to Mr. Roop, the nominations are on this morning's Public Works Committee agenda at 8 a.m. We will almost certainly see the renominations approved, and the Tulsa Whirled will take the opportunity to praise him for his maturity and judgment and at the same time beat up the other four Reform Alliance councilors. The "injury" caused by the contention was healing nicely, and city officials were moving forward, when Councilor Roop ripped the scab off and reopened the wound.

    The issue at the heart of the renomination dispute was whether our water board's policy is in the best interest of the City of Tulsa and its citizens. Are the suburbs paying the costs of extending water service to them? Are the suburbs paying a fair rate for our water? Are our water policies fueling suburban sprawl to the detriment of the City's sales tax base? These questions were raised at a Budget Committee meeting later on the same day (July 27, 2004) that Cameron's and Reynolds' renominations were before the Public Works Committee. Here are the online minutes for that Budget Committee meeting:

    1. Discussion with Public Works/Environmental Operations and representatives from TMUA Board with emphasis on planning and decision making processes (including unserved areas within the City limits) and calculation of return on investment. 04-411

    Discussion or Action At Meeting:

    Discussion of this item lasted for more than an hour. Mr. Cameron made a presentation on TMUA and it policies. TMUA has a plan for this decade and the next decade that is demand driven, that is they have decided to take certain actions as demand dictate. There is a process for making service averrable to unserved areas in the City. it is not TMUA's policy to provide the individual development or entitiy with service, they provide major lines only. Those lines are usually a reaction to not an impetus for development. Wholesale customers pay the City at least a ten percent return on applicable investment to date and on investment expected to occur in the next five years. The rate model is the same for all outside customers.

    More than one Councilor expressed concern over the City’s present rate of development relative to surrounding communities and the role of water and sewer in this process. Considerable discussion ensued with he eventual conclusion that this topic needs more discussion.

    Instead of allowing the Council time to study and discuss the issue with TMUA, the very next day the TMUA voted to authorize extending a water line to the suburb of Bixby. It was a slap in the face of the citizens of Tulsa, through our elected representatives, by making this commitment so quickly after several council members raised concerns.

    The only means the Council has to ensure that a board or authority is implementing the will of the people is at reappointment time. The highhanded TMUA action on July 28 required a strong response from the Council, not passive acquiescence.

    I am disappointed in Sam Roop's decision to go back on his commitment to oppose these nominations. Like his apology to then City Attorney Martha Rupp Carter in 2002, Roop's pulling back in this case will fuel the Cockroach Caucus' attacks on Roop's colleagues. In 2002, that situation killed the reelection hopes of Roscoe Turner and Todd Huston, and it nearly lost the election for Roop. The apology gave the newspaper a reason to hammer these councilors over and over again. Roop's decision plays right into the hands of the groups actively seeking to remove Councilors Mautino and Medlock in a recall.

    Sam Roop has done a lot of good things and taken some bold stands in his time on the Council. Reopening this wound isn't one of them.

    Time for an adjustment

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    Tulsa City Councilor Jim Mautino has proposed a significant change to the process of land use regulation. The usual suspects have reacted with shock and horror, breathing threats of vengeance. It fits the template I posted a couple of days ago: A city councilor makes a proposal to address a need or concern that has been around for a long time, but which has been ignored by previous councils. The city establishment responds as if it is being subjected to medieval torture.

    Mautino wants citizens to be able to appeal Board of Adjustment (BoA) decisions to the City Council, rather than having to hire an attorney and go to District Court to reverse or amend the decision. Homeowners say that some BoA decisions can have a negative impact on neighboring properties, but the cost of appealing those decisions is beyond the means of many property owners. Developers are concerned that putting the City Council in the loop will politicize land use decisions and adds a degree of uncertainty and delay that would make many projects uneconomical.

    To my eyes, that looks like the starting point of a discussion about what the real problems are and the fairest way to answer both sets of concerns. But for snarling loonies like Tulsa Metro Chamber Bob Poe, it's one more reason to destroy these city councilors.

    In another post, I'll get into the technicalities -- what the Board of Adjustment does, how it differs from the planning commission, and some of the problems that have led Councilor Mautino to propose this change. My feeling is that this proposal would be just another patch on another heavily patched and broken land use system that doesn't fit Tulsa's needs any more, as we transition from developing open space to redeveloping in already developed neighborhoods. We need to find an approach that offers more certainty to everyone involved in the process, rather than making the outcome dependent on the skill of lawyers and the whims of unelected board members. We need a system that protects us against land-use situations that really do create problems, while allowing the creativity of the market freedom to work. We need a system that will help us build the kind of city we want to live in. It's time to have that conversation.

    No, I haven't forgotten about Tulsa

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    I will be back to writing about local politics, although I don't think I've missed much. It's the same old pattern:

    1. Member of City Council majority proposes solution to a widely-held concern that has been ignored by the city establishment.
    2. Tulsa Whirled reports the story, accompanied by a distorting headline and an unflattering picture of the Councilor in question.
    3. Tulsa Metro Chamber Chairman Bob Poe delivers a ranting condemnation in front of a civic group.
    4. Mayor Bill LaFortune tries to find a way to appear decisive without making anyone not like him.
    5. Tulsa Whirled publishes editorial condemning the foolish Councilors for questioning a policy that has been around for years and that the city establishment is quite content with.
    6. Councilor Sam Roop steps away from his erstwhile colleagues and into the spotlight, skull in hand, to recite a soliloquy from Hamlet, so that everyone can see that he's the only real grownup on the Council.

    Lather, rinse, repeat.

    Specifics to be addressed sometime Sunday. There's the EDC thing -- the Mayor was talking about it on KFAQ Friday morning. Then there's Councilor Mautino's proposal regarding Board of Adjustment appeals.

    Got first reports today of recall petitions circulating against Tulsa City Councilor Chris Medlock in an east Tulsa neighborhood. Of course, Chris Medlock doesn't represent east Tulsa; his colleague Jim Mautino, also the target of a recall effort, does. The canvassers are going door-to-door and telling people that Medlock wants to sell water to the suburbs for too cheap a rate. (In fact, Medlock is concerned that water rate from suburban water customers is lower than it should be.)

    Word is that the recall gang was out Friday recruiting petition canvassers at OSU-Tulsa for $10 an hour. I have also heard that former Tulsa City Councilor John Benjamin, who now lives at 14235 S Toledo Ave in the City of Bixby, south of the river, is boasting that he is organizing the entire effort.

    The timing and the cast of characters is interesting. Benjamin is known as a slavish supporter of the Tulsa Metro Chamber bureaucracy. Thursday night, the City Council voted 5-4 in favor of Medlock's Economic Development Commission reforms, rejecting a substitute proposal from the Mayor that would have gutted key reforms. The thrust of the reform effort is to have a City of Tulsa-based committee oversee the City of Tulsa hotel/motel tax dollars which are earmarked for the promotion economic development and attracting conventions and tourists, instead of just signing over the money to the Tulsa Metro Chamber, no strings attached. Sheraton Tulsa General Manager Jon Davidson, chairman of the recall effort, and until very recently vice chairman of the Tulsa Metro Chamber, was spotted in the gallery of the Council meeting during the EDC debate. The day after the EDC vote, the recall plotters are hiring petition circulators and the next day the petitions are out on the street (albeit the wrong street).

    Combine all this with Tulsa Metro Chamber chairman Bob Poe's angry phone call to Mayor LaFortune after the Mayor publicly denounced the recall effort, and a picture begins to emerge: The Chamber bureaucracy and the oligarchs who control the Chamber board are out to punish Tulsa's elected officials for daring to hold the Chamber accountable for the $60 million in city tax dollars the organization has received and spent apparently in vain, given the state of Tulsa's economy, which continues to lag behind the national recovery. The Chamber bureaucracy could be a good partner with the city, could understand the need for more accountability, could humbly acknowledge its failure to deliver economic progress, but instead the Chamber Pots are lashing out like cornered rats.

    I heard a story recently that illustrates the way the Chamber Pots operate. There's a new group called Young Professionals of Tulsa, whose aims include rediscovering and promoting the "people, places and things that make Tulsa original" -- to that end they're working to raise the money to reopen Nelson's Buffeteria and to revive the Greenwood Jazz Festival. The Tulsa Metro Chamber bureaucrats pushed to make YPT a branch of the Chamber, and when rebuffed, threatened to set up a rival young professionals group and to spread the word that it would be very unwise to join YPT instead of the Chamber's knockoff group.

    That insatiable drive to kill anything it can't control is why "Chamber" is a dirty word to Tulsans from every part of the political spectrum, from every part of the city. Apparently that same spirit motivates this Chamber-led attempt to reverse the results of the last city election. They can't even wait a year for the next election. I have hope that the people of Tulsa have the good sense not to be swayed by the Chamber bureaucracy's selfish maneuverings.

    NOTE: If you have any reports of recall petitions circulating, e-mail me at blog -at- batesline.com (replace -at- with @). If you can get video or audio or even still photos of the canvassers at work, so much the better.

    A bit more regarding Sam Roop

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    Based on some response I've received to my earlier entry, concerning Tulsa City Councilor Sam Roop, his new business, and conflicts of interest, I want to emphasize a couple of things:

    • I am not saying that Sam Roop is guilty of anything or is trying to take unfair advantage of the city.
    • I am saying that there is a built-in conflict of interest between his company's business plan (which sounds like a great service with great potential) and Sam Roop's continued service as a Tulsa City Councilor, for the reasons I stated.
    • In saying that Sam Roop must resign, I am not saying he must resign in disgrace because he's done something wrong.
    • I am saying that in order to pursue this business without a conflict of interest, Sam Roop should follow the lead of many other public officials -- Rodger Randle, David Boren, Bill LaFortune, and Steve Largent are a few names that come to mind -- who left office early to pursue new career opportunities.
    • I am not really interested in what the lawyers have to say about this. I am concerned about divided loyalties tugging a councilor between his own financial interest and the public interest. The letter of the law is beside the point.

    Roop must choose

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    Before I say anything else: Tulsa City Councilor Sam Roop is an honorable man. I have no reason to believe he has done anything deliberately to take advantage of his position as a Tulsa City Councilor, beyond using his knowledge as a long-time Councilor of who's who in City Hall, in order to steer city business to his new business venture. He has disclosed his involvement in a new business called American Technical Partners, which is seeking to provide computer networking services to the City of Tulsa. (See Tuesday's Whirled storyhere, jump page here.)

    City Councilor Sam Roop said he had no problem asking the city to hire his startup company, American Technical Partners, to provide the city with the next generation of telecommunications technology.

    "I realize there may be a conflict of interest because I'm a city councilor, but I have disclosed my interest in this group right up front," said Roop, who has raised potential conflict of interest issues with recent city board appointments....

    After Roop had several meetings with employees of the city's Telecommunications Department, American Technical Partners submitted a proposal last month to study the city's options for setting up a wireless broadband communications network using WiMAX technologies.

    The company asked for a fee of $25,000 to do the study. ...

    "I'm in an unique position where I understand the technology world and the municipal world because I've been in both of them. I know what technology can do to save municipalities money," he said.

    American Technical Partners is approaching not only Tulsa but many other cities in the state and in the country, he said.

    (Emphasis added.)

    It's the sort of thing former elected officials do all the time -- they use their knowledge of government to identify and develop goods or services that would be useful to the government they used to serve, and then they use their contacts and goodwill inside the government to help make the sale.

    But Sam Roop is not yet a former elected official. And that is a distinction that makes all the difference.

    To say that a public official has a "conflict of interest" doesn't mean that the person is evil or corrupt. It simply means that he is in a situation where what is in the public interest, which he has sworn to uphold, doesn't necessarily coincide with his private interests. It may be that the smartest, wisest, best money the City could spend would be to hire Sam Roop's company to setup broadband wireless networking, or it may be the stupidest idea ever. But either outcome would be fine for Sam Roop's company, once the city's check clears.

    I'm sure Sam Roop would be scrupulous enough to avoid voting on awarding a contract with his own company. But the public interest demands more than avoiding such a direct conflict of interest.

    "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" wrote Jeremiah. A conflict of interest creates ethical blindspots. When considering a course of action for the City in his role as a Councilor, there will always be, simmering below the conscious level of Sam Roop's mind, some calculation as to the impact of his policy decision on his company's dealings with the City. At a conscious level this will cause him to discount information that would lead him to a conclusion that might hurt his relationships with the people who could make or break his firm. This will happen to Sam Roop, not because he is a bad person, but because he is human.

    Our city government has gone through a tough couple of years, and the City Council has had to make some tough decisions -- freezing and cutting budgets, investigating inefficiency and possible wrongdoing at the city's airports, revisiting the city's water policy, to name a few. Every tough decision means the possibility of offending someone, often someone in management who would be in a position either to grease the skids or to block the path for a contract with Sam Roop's firm.

    The mere appearance of a conflict will raise questions about Sam Roop's decisions, particularly on controversial issues, particularly when he has changed his position on a controversial issue. Tulsans will reasonably wonder: Why did Sam Roop suddenly see the wisdom of having Tulsa water customers pay for a new water line for Owasso? Sam Roop's company is trying to sell its services to "many other cities in the state." Owasso City Manager Rodney Ray is only human, and if Sam Roop, Tulsa Councilor, had voted to cut the line, Ray probably wouldn't be very receptive to a proposal from Sam Roop, entrepreneur. That thought may never have consciously entered Sam Roop's mind, but the question will always be there. The same questions will hang over whatever decision he makes on appointments to the water board or the investigation of the airport authority -- both authorities are potential customers of Roop's new company.

    There's a further question, beyond a conflict of interest: Sam Roop met with employees of the Telecommunications Department, according to the story. According to the City Charter, Article 2, Section 19:

    Except for the purpose of investigation under Article II, Section 17, of this amended Charter, the Council and Councilors shall communicate on matters of city business with the executive and administrative service solely through the Mayor, the heads of each division and department of the City, as well as such other persons as the Mayor shall designate.... Violation of this Section by any Councilor shall constitute willful maladministration and be sufficient grounds for removal from office as provided by the laws of Oklahoma.

    This scenario -- a City Councilor meeting with city employees in the interest of personal gain rather than the public interest -- is precisely the sort of inappropriate influence this section of the charter is intended to prevent.

    "No man can serve two masters," Jesus said, "for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other." Sam Roop cannot honestly do his job as a City Councilor and try at the same time to be a vendor to the City of Tulsa. Sam Roop is a good man, but he is a man nevertheless.

    In his years as a councilor, Sam Roop has taken some stands that made people in city government angry. I have praised him in the past for being willing to make the right choice even if it meant offending someone. Our City Council majority has had the boldness to make the right choices in part because all five were immune from pressure on their employers. But now, as a businessman seeking to do business with city governments, Sam Roop can't afford to anger any city official, and that's going to blunt his effectiveness as a watchdog for the people of this city. He can't afford to anger the officials in other cities, and that's going to blunt his ability to champion Tulsa's interests when they conflict with the interests of other cities.

    I like Sam Roop, and I'm happy for him that after a long stretch of unemployment, he has found a way to earn a living, a way that could be very lucrative. I wish him well in his new business. But as he pursues this new business, there is only one ethical way to handle his Council duties.

    Sam Roop must resign from the City Council.

    Reforms to the Economic Development Commission will likely be before the Tulsa City Council for a final vote this Thursday night. There was some controversy this last week over the composition of the Commission, particularly about the requirement to have at least one member of the EDC from each City Council district. Mayor LaFortune and several members of the current EDC objected to that provision, and at their urging, Councilor Chris Medlock, who is sponsoring the proposal, dropped it, which brought strong and understandable opposition from northside Councilors Jack Henderson and Roscoe Turner. (Whirled coverage here and here.)

    I can understand wanting to bring together the best business minds in the City, wherever they happen to live. But the EDC will be developing a strategy for economic development for the City, and it's important that we don't neglect those parts of the city that are most in need of economic growth.

    There are ways to ensure representation for all parts of Tulsa, while providing the Mayor with more flexibility in naming members of the EDC. One idea would be to designate broad areas, areas that have often been overlooked, from which at least one member must be chosen -- for example, at least one each from west of the river, north of I-244 (maybe at least two, as it's a larger area), and east of US 169.

    Another approach would be to require at least one or two members to live in an area federally designated as underprivileged, designated for urban renewal, or designated as enterprise zones. These are areas where a lot of city, state, and federal funds are targeted for economic improvement, and we ought to make sure the people who live there are represented as economic development plans are drawn up.

    I'm confident there's a compromise that can be reached that will ensure that all parts of the city are represented, so that these important reforms can move forward, and so that our own city government will again be in charge of our own city's economic development strategy.

    Last Wednesday Tulsa City Councilor Chris Medlock got a call from a Tulsa Whirled reporter looking for comment on a story she was writing about that day's meeting of the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority (TMUA -- Tulsa's water board). The gist was that the head of the Southwest Tulsa Chamber of Commerce was claiming that Medlock was obstructing a new housing development outside the Tulsa city limits and outside Tulsa's fence line in the Berryhill area. This is an area that Medlock has proposed to bring within the City's fence line to ensure that Sand Springs or Sapulpa cannot annex it. You'll recall that Sapulpa recently extended its boundaries several miles to grab the Town West shopping center near the Turner Turnpike entrance -- an area just outside Tulsa's city limits. Mr. Gray wants the City to pay for part of the sewer extension to this new development, but he opposes the fence line extension to ensure that this area we help to develop ultimately ends up in the City of Tulsa's limits.

    They ran the story Sunday, top of the page of the Local section. (Starts here, jumps here.) The story does a decent job of letting Medlock respond to the complaint. But the real story is that the Whirled's editors have decided to spotlight any complaint against Chris Medlock, no matter how trivial or baseless. A public official is bound to have at least constituents disappointed with some decision, but you would expect the newspaper to put those disappointments into perspective. Instead, the Whirled seems to have set aside space in its highest circulation edition for a weekly shot at the councilor who poses the biggest threat to the cozy deals of which the Whirled is so fond.

    The bottom line on this particular issue is that Tulsa has a limited amount of money to pay for sewer line extensions and the City Council wants to prioritize connecting unserved areas that are already within the city limits.

    Chris Medlock has posted the e-mail he sent to the Whirled reporter on the TulsaNow forums here. For your convenience, it's reproduced here after the jump.

    Although it won't be voted on tonight, the proposed reforms to the City of Tulsa's Economic Development Commission is on the agenda for Council discussion during tonight's Tulsa City Council meeting.

    The proposed reforms make a few changes to Title 5, Chapter 4 of Tulsa Revised Ordinances. You can see the current ordinance here. The intent is to have the EDC as the focal point of all the City's economic development efforts, whether they involve city departments, city trusts, or economic development work outsourced to the Tulsa Metro Chamber bureaucracy and other contractors.

    I refer you back to an earlier entry, a collection of links to Tulsa Today's coverage of the Tulsa Metro Chamber's many years as sole-source vendor for economic development services to the City of Tulsa. The articles ask whether, after sending $60 million to the Chamber bureaucracy over the years, Tulsa now has a healthy and developed economy. It's time to change what we are doing, because what we have been doing hasn't worked.

    Here are the significant changes:


    • Specific duties: The EDC will become specifically responsible for developing an economic development plan and overseeing the implementation of that plan.
    • Geographically-balanced membership: The EDC would go from as many as 21 members to 15 -- one from each Council district, 4 at-large (who could be non-Tulsa residents), and the Mayor and a Councilor selected by the Council to serve ex officio. All of the members (except the Mayor and the Councilor) would be appointed by the Mayor and confirmed by the Council. Geographical balance will ensure that the EDC will be concerned with the development of the entire city.
    • An open bidding process: In contracting for economic development services, the EDC must go through the standard bidding process used for other city contracts, where the EDC issues a request for proposals, explaining the criteria for winning the job, and bidders submit their proposals for evaluation. Instead of just signing over the hotel/motel tax revenues to the Chamber bureaucracy, the Chamber bureaucracy will have the opportunity to be a part of the competitive bidding process. The Chamber bureaucracy may get some of the work, or possibly all of it, but they'll have to compete to get it. Competition is a healthy thing. Other chambers, like the Southwest Tulsa Chamber and the Greenwood Chamber may get a share of the work to develop their own parts of town.
    • Oversight: The EDC will make quarterly reports to the Council. If EDC approves contracts over a certain amount, the contract must be reported to the Council, and cumulative contracts with a single vendor for more than $20,000 must also be reported (no getting around the reporting requirement by giving one contractor lots of small contracts). An EDC member could be removed -- for cause -- by a majority of the EDC or a majority of the Council.
    • No conflicts of interest: This is important: "No appointee shall have been a member of the Board of Directors, officer or employee of any entity awarded a contract by the Economic Development Commission within the twenty four months prior to confirmation by the Council." This will ensure that the EDC won't be a puppet of any organization that seeks to do work for the EDC. The language needs to be cleaned up a bit -- not clear if the twenty-four months provision refers to when the contract was awarded or when the appointee served on the board. And for completeness' sake, forbid commission members from serving on any such board during their terms of office.

    Although these are sensible and modest reforms, the leaders of the Chamber bureaucracy are predictably unhappy about all this, because it means they will be answerable for the public money they spend, money they seem to feel entitled to spend anyway they like. The head Chamber bureaucrats and their supporters on the Chamber board will no doubt be there in force tonight to glare at the Councilors, particularly Sam Roop, whom they believe (wrongly, I think) they can influence to join the Cockroach Caucus in obstructing these reforms. It would be nice if tonight the Councilors could see the smiling faces of many ordinary Tulsans who believe it's time for this kind of constructive change to our economic development. I hope the Mayor, who has been advocating strengthening the EDC since he took office, will be there voicing his support.

    The meeting starts at 6 p.m. in the Council chamber at City Hall.

    Recall backers still in hiding

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    100_1623-snakeingrass.jpg

    Still no word as to that list of 25 or so members of the committee seeking to oust Tulsa City Councilors Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock. At this point, we only know of the two names that were required to be on the ethics filing for the Coalition for Responsible Government -- the chairman, Jon Davidson, and the treasurer, Herbert Haschke. Maybe the other 23 are figments of someone's imagination. Or maybe they've vanished since last Tuesday.

    I credit Mayor Bill LaFortune's clear and public statement last Tuesday opposing the recall with slowing the momentum of the effort. I've heard that Tulsa Metro Chamber Chairman Bob Poe called the Mayor after his statement and asked angrily "What did you do that for?" I think the recall backers expected to start a war between the Mayor and the Council that would not only help them topple the Council majority, but would also damage the Mayor, which I think is part of this group's hidden agenda. Instead, the Mayor and the Councilors have affirmed the need to move forward together, particularly to ensure the passage of a critical bond issue in February.

    I've heard that Jon Davidson is continuing to try to recruit support behind the scenes. He is the GM of the Sheraton Tulsa Hotel, part of Regency Hotel Management. Regency CEO David Sweet may not be aware that the GM of his Tulsa property is involved in a controversial campaign to depose popularly elected councilors and that his employee is on the opposite side of the issue from the Mayor of Tulsa. If you'd like to make Mr. Sweet aware of this, here is the contact information:

    Mailing Address/Main Phone Numbers:
    Regency Hotel Management
    3211 W Sencore Drive
    Sioux Falls, SD 57107
    Phone: (605) 334-2371
    Fax (605) 334-8480

    Starwood, the company that licenses the Sheraton name, may also be interested in the potential impact of Davidson's actions on the goodwill that its brand enjoys among Tulsans. Here is the corporate contact information:

    Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Inc.
    1111 Westchester Avenue
    White Plains, NY 10604
    Phone (914) 640-8100
    Fax (914) 640-8310

    Investor Relations Contact
    Dan Gibson
    Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs
    Phone (914) 640-8100

    Vince Sposato's passing last week stirred up memories of his last run for office, for Tulsa Water and Sewer Commissioner in 1986, by one of Sposato's opponents in that race, Stan Geiger:

    I was saddened to read of the demise of Vince Sposato. I went to school with a couple of his kids (he had a bunch). I also ran against him once, in one of the most interesting elections in Tulsa history.

    It was 1986, I believe. I had recently changed my voter registration to Republican, believing my views were more in line with that party than the Democratic Party I signed up with as an 18-year-old. Patty Eaton, Democrat, was Water & Sewer Commissioner---and generally considered untouchable in an election. She had signed up to run for another term, and drew no Republican challenger.

    I thought it somewhat un-American to hold an election with only one name on the ballot. So I filed as a Republican.

    Rude? See for yourself

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    The Tulsa Whirled devoted a front-page Sunday story to the charge that some of the Reform Alliance Councilors were rude in their questioning of Owasso City Manager Rodney Ray and Jenks Mayor Vic Vreeland. The Councilors involved say they were politely asking questions, some of which may have made the visiting officials feel ill-prepared to respond.

    The Whirled has run similar stories in the past, trying to make the Councilors look vicious and intemperate -- for example, saying that Medlock and Turner "grilled" TARE appointee Stephen Schuller, when they simply asked where he worked and if he had any conflicts of interest. The televised replay of that committee meeting revealed the grilling to be a series of short polite questions that lasted at most five minutes.

    So this appears to be just one more element of the public relations campaign aiming at ending the Reform Alliance's majority. It's a frequently-used Whirled tactic. The Whirled writers won't attack a public official on the issue that really matters to them, because they know that their positions on most important issues are unpopular. Instead they will fabricate a charge that seems like a reasonable concern, just enough to create a seed of doubt among the supporters of the public official. From some questions I've received, the tactic appears to be working. (Conservatives should understand by now that the same paper that is distorting the record to destroy Tom Coburn and other conservative Federal officials won't hesitate to use the same power for similar despicable purposes at the local level. But a surprising number of conservatives don't seem to have made the connection.

    It's good that TGOV gives people a chance to see for themselves what happened. Last Thursday's Council meeting will be replayed on Tulsa Cable 24 tonight at 6 p.m. and tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m.

    I'm mad, too, Vince

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    It was in the late '70s, and every day on KXXO AM 1300, Tulsa's first all news-talk station, you heard this gravelly voice intone, "I'm Vince Sposato, and I'm mad as hell!" -- followed by a minute of commentary on city government. Vince Sposato was a building contractor, a World War II vet, a father and grandfather, but he was known to Tulsans as an activist who wanted to fix what was wrong with city government. He ran seven times, as a Democrat, for streets commissioner, once for water and sewer commissioner. He never won, but he never stopped trying. And through his political efforts, he had, for a time, a daily radio commentary, just like Eddie Chiles. The station put out promotional bumper stickers, and once in a while you may still see a bumper sticker that says, "I'm mad too, Vince!"

    The obituary in the Whirled mentioned that in the '60s, "he fought against urban renewal and the taking of people's homes without just compensation." I was thinking of that as I read Ken Neal's tribute to Sposato in Sunday's opinion section. I give Mr. Neal credit for not speaking ill of the dead, instead remembering him as a devoted family man and a colorful political character. Neal goes so far as to say this:

    Granted, he was never elected to public office in Tulsa. Perhaps he was a bit too "New York" for Tulsa voters. In retrospect, I suspect that Tulsa missed a good chance to have a top-notch civil servant.

    That made me wonder -- it would be a good project for someone with time to browse through microfilms and vertical files at the Central Library -- whether the Whirled had much praise for Sposato when he was actively involved in politics. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he was condemned as an obstructionist, an opponent of progress, because of his opposition to urban renewal.

    Although we were of different parties, I honor Vince Sposato as a pioneer "troublemaker", asking questions and challenging assumptions, wanting City Hall to do its job well and for the benefit of all Tulsans. Citizens like Vince Sposato and Betsy Horowitz believed in Tulsa, believed it could be a better place, and wouldn't be satisfied with answers like "it's a done deal" or "we've always done it this way." For their trouble, these early activists were marginalized, treated as targets for ridicule. Rather than answer the concerns they raised, the establishment's response was to focus our attention on something different or eccentric about them to communicate to Tulsans that their concerns didn't deserve serious consideration. The same process continues today with a front-page story (written by a reporter who wasn't at the meeting) devoted to the charge that some of the City Councilors said mean things to the suburban officials who spoke at last Thursday's City Council debate on the Owasso water line.

    Today's Reform Alliance councilors could learn a valuable lesson from Vince Sposato's passing: If you want the Whirled to say something nice about you, drop dead.

    UPDATE: If anyone out there has audio of one of Vince's commentaries, or any stories about his political campaigns, drop me a line at blog at batesline dot com.

    Owasso water line cuts in line

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    Getting caught up after some time away during my son's school's fall break:

    After granting the Mayor three weeks to make his case, the Tulsa City Council voted unanimously to allow the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority (TMUA) -- the water board -- to issue $18.5 million in revenue bonds to pay for ten projects, including $4.725 million for Phase 1 a controversial water line to serve new development in the City of Owasso. The revenue bonds will be repaid from future water system revenues -- that means that all Tulsa water customers will be paying for the new Owasso line, not just those who stand to benefit directly.

    The Owasso line -- officially called the North Annexation Area Water Line -- has been on a fast track. Until April of this year, the line wasn't a part of the City of Tulsa's Capital Improvements Plan (CIP). The CIP is the City's "to-do" list, and when the City decides to finance capital improvements, they look at this list to determine what to fund. $474 million is the estimated cost of all the water system improvements that have been identified and included in the CIP. (You can download this large PDF file of the CIP inventory. The water system section begins on page 8-35.

    Most projects sit on the CIP for years without being funded. Inclusion on the CIP just means we know we need to get around to it some day. That's why it's remarkable that this Owasso water line has gone from being off the radar to fully funded in a matter of six months. The water line was added at the April 22, 2004, Council meeting, without much fanfare. It was approved with a long list of other items that were presented to the Council as routine clerical matters.

    It is hard to understand why there has been such a rush to make this happen. There are no imminent plans to develop the area within the Tulsa fence line that would be served by the water line, and Owasso has the resources, thanks to funds earmarked for Owasso infrastructure in Vision 2025, to pay for the line itself. So why is this project being allowed to cut in line, ahead of dozens of other projects that would serve unserved areas within the city limits or that would benefit all users of the system?

    The Reason Public Policy Institute (RPPI) is a think tank focused on using the discipline of the free market to make government services more efficient. RPPI has a paper on water-system pricing which recommends the use of system development charges, which would have those who would be served by a water line pay a one-time fee up front for the cost of building it, rather than having current customers pay for connecting new customers. This seems like a fair approach, and it's what Councilor Chris Medlock and others have been advocating.

    So why the rush, and why not have those who stand to benefit directly pay for the line? About 2 hours and 50 minutes into the meeting, Deanna Oakley, a north Tulsa County resident, asked a very blunt question of Council Chairman Randy Sullivan. She asked him whether the rumor was true that he and two other councilors and Tulsa Metro Chamber Chairman Bob Poe stood to benefit financially from this water line extension. Sullivan gave a non-answer after several seconds of stunned silence. The rumor is that there are plans for a residential golf development at 106th Street North and 97th East Avenue (Mingo Road). One of Bob Poe's companies, Pittman Poe, developed Bailey Ranch in Owasso and Battle Creek in Broken Arrow, along with many other similar developments across the country. If true, the rumor would explain a lot of otherwise unaccountably frantic behavior on the part of Mr. Poe and the Cockroach Caucus councilors.

    In the end, it was Councilor Sam Roop who cleared the way for the Owasso water line to be funded in this package. Without his vote, there were not enough votes to amend the package and replace the Owasso water line with a project that would serve Tulsa. The opponents of the Owasso line felt it was more important to move ahead with the other projects on the list than to hold them up in hopes of persuading Roop or other councilors to see sense on the Owasso line.

    Appointments matter

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    The City Council moved ahead by a 6-3 vote last night with a new ordinance setting deadlines for the Mayor to make appointments to the City's Authorities, Boards, and Commissions (ABCs). The Whirled predictably ridiculed the idea in an editorial yesterday -- couldn't figure out how the citizens of Tulsa had suffered any harm from board members continuing to serve long past the expiration of their terms. I say "predictably" because the Whirled editorial board opposes the idea of popular sovereignty and accountability. They prefer a system as close to oligarchy as possible while still maintining some veneer of democratic process.

    ABCs have substantial powers over land use planning and the operation of our city's water, sewer, and trash systems, and the airport. While some boards can only make recommendations for consideration by elected officials, other boards (particularly the boards of Title 60 trusts) have considerable power to commit public resources and set policy without review from our elected representatives. The only opportunity for these ABC members to be held accountable to the will of the people is when they come before the City Council for confirmation of their appointment or reappointment. None of these appointments are for life. Most are for terms of three or four years, but those terms are meaningless if appointees are permitted to serve for years beyond the expiration without facing the Council.

    Norma Turnbo is a case in point. Her term on the Board of Adjustment expired 17 months ago, in May 2003. The BoA grants variances and special exceptions to the City's zoning ordinance -- decisions that can have a significant impact on property owners. If you don't like a BoA decision, your only recourse is to take it to District Court. No elected official has standing to review their decisions. There's a consensus that Norma needs to go, but nothing can be done unless the Mayor nominates a replacement. Even if she's renominated and rejected by the Council, we're stuck with her continuing to make important decisions, unaccountable to the people of Tulsa.

    Congratulations to the Council on passing this ordinance. And congratulations to the Mayor as well -- this will give him some impetus to do what he wants and needs to do to on these appointments.

    From Homeowners for Fair Zoning:

    IMPORTANT COUNCIL MEETING UPDATE

    Date/Time: Thursday, October 14, 2004 at 6:00 P.M.

    Two important pieces of legislation are on the agenda for this Thursday’s 6:00 p.m. meeting of the Tulsa City Council. (The Council meeting takes place in Francis Campbell Room/Auditorium adjacent to Tulsa City Hall on the North side.) The first proposes that the Mayor be required to promptly submit his nominees for positions on City commissions, boards and trust authorities upon vacancy or term expiration for the current office holder. See the legislation at: Prompt Mayoral Appointments Ordinance. Currently, the Mayor is trying to keep the status quo in place by refusing to submit new nominees for these important City positions. The second ordinance proposes a restructuring of the Economic Development Commission.

    The Reform Alliance majority on the City Council is proposing that $200,000 of the $1,300,000 which was to be given to the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce be instead given to the Economic Development Commission. This is being done because the Chamber has a dismal record of promoting new business for Tulsa and, with the majority of its membership being from outside Tulsa, may not principally represent Tulsa’s interests. Giving the funds to the EDC is an experiment to see if they can do a better job. The Chamber’s President is outraged over this and he and the Mayor have tried to pack the EDC’s decision making body with Chamber members. Councilor Medlock has proposed a more balanced system for appointments to EDC which will spread the decision making body over Tulsa’s 9 Council Districts, one from each, 4 Mayoral appointees and the Mayor and one Councilor as ex-officio members. See the legislation at: Economic Development Commission Ordinance.

    You are strongly encouraged to attend and show your support for this legislation. Both the news media and the Councilors take note of your attendance. In light of the dramatic efforts of the Tulsa World’s management to orchestrate a recall for two of these five honest City Councilors (i.e., Councilor Medlock and Councilor Mautino), it is important to let everyone know how proud you are of their efforts at bringing reform to Tulsa’s boards, commissions and trust authorities. Persons wishing to speak will need to determine which agenda item numbers have been assigned to this legislation prior to 6:00 p.m. and sign up to speak on that item. John S. Denney, Attorney for Homeowners for Fair Zoning, will be at the meeting and can let you know the agenda numbers. If you have questions or need assistance, he can be reached during the day at 918-742-5472.

    Recall backers lay low

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    Still haven't seen that list of 25 backers of the recall. Perhaps with the Mayor's public opposition to the recall, they aren't sure they want to come out publicly. Eventually they will be public, when the ethics reports are filed.

    Word is that Jon Davidson, chairman of the pro-recall committee, is still soliciting funds and public endorsements for his misguided cause. I wonder if his bosses at Regency Hotel Management in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, know and approve of his involvement, much less leadership, of this campaign. You might want to let the Regency folks know how you feel -- your appreciation of Medlock and Mautino and your disappointment in the Sheraton Tulsa's involvement. Here's the contact info:

    Mailing Address/Main Phone Numbers:
    Regency Hotel Management
    3211 W Sencore Drive
    Sioux Falls, SD 57107
    Phone: (605) 334-2371
    Fax (605) 334-8480

    There's also a form for e-mailing a note on the contact page of the website, but a fax or snail mail letter will probably be more effective.

    Mayor opposes recall

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    Thanks to Tulsa Mayor Bill LaFortune for speaking publicly and unequivocally in opposition to the effort to recall Councilors Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock. The Mayor spoke Tuesday at lunchtime at a press conference at the Fountains Restaurant, in front of the monthly luncheon of the Tulsa County Republican Women's Club with Mautino, Medlock, and Councilor Sam Roop. The Tulsa Whirled story (jump page here) quotes the Mayor at length. To the Whirled's credit, they put the story on the front page, albeit below the fold.

    "It does not paint a true picture of the city of Tulsa," the mayor said at a news conference. "We, the citizens of Tulsa, have worked together to get where we are today. The recall hampers our efforts to find real solutions to the problems facing our city."

    LaFortune said the city did not have time to spend on a protracted effort to recall the councilors.

    "We do not need three, four or five months of argument," he said. "Instead, we should be using that time to work at City Hall to move Tulsa forward." ...

    LaFortune said all members of the City Council "make decisions that they think are in the best interest of Tulsa."

    "They are good men and women . . . Their hearts are in the right place for the city of Tulsa," the mayor said. "I do the same thing. I make decisions, which I believe are in the best interest of Tulsa."

    Government should be "constructive, not destructive," LaFortune said.

    "We may disagree, but removing elected officials from office should only be the solution chosen when there has been a crime or a breach of fiduciary duty," he said.

    The mayor said he is not seeing public support for a recall.

    "Just today I've been to three different groups and I've asked just average citizens what they think," LaFortune said before speaking at a luncheon of the Tulsa County Republican Women's Club. "To the person, they said it is not good for our city; we don't like seeing it."

    LaFortune stressed that he continues to reach out to all nine councilors, encouraging them "to meet on common ground and use a democratic process to solve our differences."

    The Mayor is exactly right when he says we don't have time to waste on this divisive issue. To push this issue, especially now, would be selfish and arrogant on the part of the recall supporters. It would be disastrous if a recall were on the same ballot as the general obligation bond issue. I'm glad he said publicly, on camera, and with Medlock, Mautino, and Roop next to him, that he opposes the recall in the strongest possible terms. That should send a strong signal to the organizers.

    The press conference almost wasn't a press conference. It was scheduled to be held prior to the Women's Club luncheon, but when the Mayor and Councilors arrived only KFAQ was there, and KFAQ had been alerted by Medlock that the event would occur. Phone calls were made to other media outlets, and it was learned that none of them had received the press release that was supposed to have gone out that morning. So the press conference was delayed for half-an-hour to give reporters time to arrive. Only KTUL didn't show up.

    There is concern that some of the Mayor's own staff was working to undermine the impact of the Mayor's statement by ensuring that it happened without the media present. The failure to issue the release may have been an innocent mistake, but it is a crucial mistake, one that could have undone all the good will rebuilt between the Mayor and the Council majority in the last couple of weeks, so crucial a mistake that he would be unwise simply to excuse it. While the Mayor is limited in his control over civil servants, he has the ability to hire and fire his personal staff, and he would be better served by someone loyal to his interests, rather than a holdover from the Savage administration.

    I note that the Mayor's press release has not been posted with the press releases on the City of Tulsa home page, or anywhere within the Mayor's portion of the city website.

    I assume that all six Republican councilors were invited to participate in the press conference. Wonder why Bill Christiansen, Susan Neal, and Randy Sullivan weren't there.

    As we approach the hour for a City Council committee to consider an ordinance reforming the Economic Development Commission, I'd like to call your attention to the thorough reporting done by Tulsa Today over the years about the handling of our City's economic development funds. Here's a link to a Google search that turns up most of the relevant articles.

    If you're wondering why many Tulsans involved in local affairs have no respect for the Chamber, these articles will help you understand.

    Some excerpts from key articles:

    In "Jobs Needed Now", from 2003, we learn how the Chamber's leaders plan to grow the economy. Here's some insight into the thinking of Chamber CEO Jay Clemens, who has taken over leadership of the economic development group temporarily, following the departure of Chamber VP Mickey "No Idea" Thompson to Bixby:

    Also, as a staff driven organization, the head of the staff is the ultimate boss and according to the New York Times, Jay Clemens, Executive President and CEO of the Metropolitan Tulsa Chamber of Commerce once said a company’s plan to bring 500 new jobs into an area where he held a similar position would “unrealistically drive up wages.” Not a quote to inspire workers of any community.

    And here's an evaluation of the Chamber's overall approach:

    For the last twenty years or so the primary publicly funded local economic development effort has been conducted by the Metropolitan Tulsa Chamber of Commerce at a cost of over $70 million. Any local expenditure for that long at that level begs the question of value received. Is Tulsa now economically developed and a center for conventions and visitors? That is the objective of the annual contract the Chamber executes in behalf of the City of Tulsa at a rate of approximately $3 million per year. If they are not doing the job, should we fire them?

    A few months ago, Chamber Senior Vice President Mickey Thompson took questions at a meeting of the Republican Men’s Club where he publicly asserted that “big business is more important to Tulsa’s economic development than small business.” The crowd groaned as most knew that statement to be false. Big business is defined as more than 200 employees, but the backbone of Tulsa’s economy has always been small business. Economists by the thousands will testify that small business generates faster higher quality economic growth than big business.

    Chamber officials promised to diversify local economic development efforts after the oil crash in the mid-eighties, but surprise … they did not.Now with the severe local depression within energy, telecommunications, and aviation they are not even promising a different approach.

    "Chamber in Decline", from earlier in 2003, reports on the Mayor's plans to scrutinize the city's economic development efforts. I don't recall hearing whether this blue ribbon panel was ever actually empaneled.

    In his budget presentation May 1, Mayor Lafortune spoke of the importance of economic development and convention and visitor solicitation efforts saying, “We have many agencies, organizations and city departments who work on economic development, but most do so on their own without a coordinated plan among those entities. Of course, the Tulsa Metro Chamber has the lead on Tulsa’s economic development efforts and receives significant funding from our hotel and motel taxes to accomplish this task. At this critical time in Tulsa’s history, with the economy being the victim of so many hard hits, it is crucial that we go forward with the very best economic development plan possible. With this end in mind, I have asked former city councilor Dewey Bartlett to chair a Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Panel of some of Tulsa’s best business leaders to review the City’s economic development efforts and provide recommendations as to how we can improve, and even consolidate these efforts.”

    The article also gives us a glimpse of the inner workings of the Chamber, centered on Chamber CEO Jay Clemens, who does not live in the City of Tulsa, and reports on the Chamber's sales pitch to prospective members:

    Last year, Tulsa Today, Inc. considered membership in the Chamber and was visited by such a sales person. She asserted that the Chamber “runs” Tulsa, a surprise to gathered Tulsa Today staff. For anyone knowledgeable of public policy issues, that was an assertion of public corruption. The Chamber is a private lobby group and while they may contract with the City of Tulsa to execute specific functions, they do so only at the will of public officials legally elected by the will of the people as outlined in the United States and Oklahoma Constitutions.

    And here's an article from 1998 about the hotel / motel sales tax fund and whether the Chamber was effective at what it had been hired to do.

    Tuesday's Tulsa City Council committee agenda is full of interesting topics: Economic development oversight, appointments to authorities, boards, and commissions; a change to the noise nuisance law; a change to the zoning code regarding modular housing; and a rezoning at 15th & Utica. If you have time, this would be an interesting day to see what's going on at City Hall.

    Two items that address recent controversies will be considered in the Legislative and Public Safety Committee meeting at 1:30 p.m. (All committee meetings take place in the conference room on the 2nd floor of City Hall.)

    An encouraging sign

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    Mikki spotted this earlier today, south of 41st on Sheridan, and I went back this evening to take the pictures.

    A tip of the mortarboard to Community Care College for their show of support for Councilors Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock. Community Care College was named Small Business of the Year for 2004 by the Tulsa Economic Development Corporation.

    Community Care College sign reads: Support Councilors Medlock & Mautino

    Community Care College sign reads: Say NO To Recall

    Several people have emailed in response to my comment about the various numbers being thrown around by Mayor and the FOP about the arbitration of police pay increases. FOP Lodge 93 has a website, and they have posted the text of the arbitration judgment here. They have a few comments at the top of the page, and have highlighted passages they find significant. Their home page has links to additional comments.

    I haven't had time to read through it yet, but I wanted to give you a chance to read it yourselves. By the way, the Michael Bates mentioned in the text is Michael S. Bates, Director of Human Relations for the City of Tulsa, and no relation whatsoever to me.

    Don Burdick, chairman of the Tulsa County Republican Party, emailed the following statement to me this morning about his meeting with the President and the Chairman of the Tulsa Metro Chamber, and asked me to post it. Here it is:

    I would characterize my meeting with Jay Clemens and Bob Poe as a healthy discussion between business and political leaders. In very strong terms, I expressed my opposition to a recall effort for any City Councilor, or Mayor, simply based on policy disagreements. Mr. Clemens and Mr. Poe stated their primary concern was the business climate in Tulsa, and they believed some of Councilor Medlock's positions were detrimental to promoting regional economic growth. My recommendation was for a meeting between these individuals, hoping for a solution to the existing problems. We all agreed that attempting to resolve these differences through articles in the newspaper, on the radio, or on websites was not working... and that face-to-face discussion was the only way. The chance of success may be low, but for the good of Tulsa, it was worth trying. For the record, no chamber official offered to get Councilor Medlock any job for any reason. I left the meeting hopeful that a solution other than a recall effort could be accomplished, and was very concerned that if the recall effort continued, it's impact would be bad for Tulsa. I still have that hope.

    I commend Don for trying to make peace and for his strong stand against recall, and he's right that a recall would hurt Tulsa. I'll save further comments for a later entry.

    More notes on the recallers

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    Did some digging to learn more about Jon Davidson, the Chairman of the Coalition for Responsible Government 2004, which is backing the recall of City Councilors Chris Medlock and Jim Mautino.

    The Whirled story mentions that he recently resigned from the board of the Tulsa Metro Chamber, but the October newsletter (PDF) still lists him as vice chairman of the Chamber for the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

    Davidson is general manager of the Sheraton Tulsa Hotel. I wondered whether the hotel's owners were aware that their employee is launching himself into a divisive political controversy that could hurt the hotel's image in the community. So I went to find out who owns the hotel.

    The Sheraton Tulsa Hotel is not owned by Starwood, the parent company of the Sheraton brand. Behind the desk at the Tulsa Sheraton is this sign, which is probably required by the franchise agreement:

    The Sheraton Tulsa Hotel is indpendently owned by Tulsa Garnett Hotel Ventures and operated by Regency Hotel Management under a license issued by the Sheraton Corporation.

    Some further digging revealed that Tulsa Garnett Hotel Ventures and Regency Hotel Management are both South Dakota corporations, based in Sioux Falls, and owned by the Ramkota Companies. They acquired the hotel, formerly a Marriott, in 1995, renovated and rebranded it as a Sheraton, and installed Davidson as general manager in the fall of that year.

    Here is the website for Regency Hotel Management, which currently features the Sheraton Tulsa on the website banner. A link on the home pages reads, "Regency Hotel Management & it’s [sic] affiliates own more than 60 properties in 21 states..." and when you click on the link, then click on the south central region, you will see that the Sheraton Tulsa is listed as one of those properties owned by Regency or one of its affiliates. David Sweet is the registered agent in South Dakota of Tulsa Garnett Hotel Ventures, LLC. Sweet is also the CEO of the Ramkota Companies, Inc., and of Regency Hotel Management, Inc. All three companies share the same registered address of 3211 West Sencore Drive, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

    Would a South Dakota-based hotel chain with 60 properties really want to be involved in a political controversy in Tulsa? I think it very unlikely that the home office in Sioux Falls has any idea of the controversy and bad publicity the manager of their only Tulsa property is going to be generating. Here is a link to their contact page. If you support Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock, you might want to let Regency CEO David Sweet know, as politely and gently as you can, that their Mr. Davidson is heading up an effort to overturn the election of two members of the City Council (elected with 55% and 59% of the vote, respectively), that you support these councilors, and that you don't appreciate Mr. Davidson's efforts to remove them.

    UPDATE on an earlier item: I mentioned the connection between the Coalition's treasurer, Herbert P. Haschke, Jr., and Lou Reynolds, one of the two members of Tulsa's water board who was denied reappointment to the board by the Council majority. Haschke also has a connection to Jim Cameron, the other board member denied reappointment. Haschke and Cameron were co-incorporators, along with Ken Underwood, of IHCRC Realty Corporation, which was incorporated in 1996 and dissolved in 2000.

    The Whirled's page one headline this morning (jump page here) is the formation of a PAC to prosecute a recall against Tulsa City Councilors Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock.

    Come back later to read my comments on it.

    Who's behind the recall?

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    The recall effort against two members of the Reform Alliance majority on the Tulsa City Council appears to be moving forward, with backing from leaders of the Tulsa Metro Chamber and an attorney with connections to R. Louis Reynolds, the real estate attorney whose reappointment to the city's water board was denied by the City Council majority.

    Councilors Chris Medlock and Jim Mautino received phone calls Saturday afternoon from Tulsa Whirled reporter P. J. Lassek, asking for comment on news that an organization has emerged to push for a recall of Medlock and Mautino. The group is calling itself the Coalition for Responsible Government 2004, and the registered agents for the group are Herbert P. Haschke, Jr., and Jon Davidson. (UPDATE 10/10/2004: According to the Whirled's story, the group has filed as an issues PAC with Davidson as chairman and Haschke as treasurer.)

    Here's what we know so far about Mr. Haschke. He is a member of the board of the Tulsa Authority for the Recovery of Energy (TARE), which controls the city's trash system and the trash-to-energy plant. Haschke was first appointed to the board by former Mayor Susan Savage and confirmed on October 8, 1998, and reappointed by her in 2001. His term expired on July 1, 2004, and so far Mayor LaFortune has not reappointed him or appointed a replacement for him. Stephen Schuller and Sharon King Davis are two of his current colleagues on the TARE board. Lou Reynolds, the attorney who was rejected for reappointment to the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority (TMUA), served with him on TARE until Savage appointed Reynolds to the TMUA in January of 2002.

    Haschke and Lou Reynolds have another connection. On March 27, 1995, Haschke, Reynolds, and David Cox incorporated The Commercial Real Estate Association of Tulsa, Inc. Haschke is also listed as registered agent for the association.

    Haschke, 65, is registered to vote at 4311 East 68th Place. That address is on the same block as 4345 East 68th Place, the address at which City Council Chairman Randy Sullivan is registered to vote. (It is believed that since his divorce, Councilor Sullivan no longer lives at that address. Sullivan's current address is not known, but he has been spotted frequently in the 91st & Yale area, outside his district.)

    Haschke is president of the board of directors of Hospice of Green Country. You can see a picture of him here. (The list of guests in that article is interesting -- a who's who of leading Democratic activists and donors, including Coleman and Sharon King Davis, Jim and Sally Frasier, Jim East and Kim Holland, Norma and Steve Turnbo. And Tracy Lorton Salisbury, daughter of Whirled publisher Robert Lorton, receives a prominent mention.)

    Here's a Google cache of a Texas Monthly article that mentioned a Price Waterhouse partner named Herb Haschke, who was named in a 1990 lawsuit by Willie Nelson for leading Nelson, in the early '80s, to invest in tax shelters that proved to be financial disasters that only deepened Nelson's problems with the IRS. Tulsa's Herb Haschke is a tax attorney, so this may very well be the same person.

    An interesting coincidence: A search of voter registration records turns up someone in Wagoner County named Terry Haschke Studenny. We don't know at this point if this person is related to either Herb Haschke or J. Richard Studenny, attorney for the Tulsa Industrial Authority, Tulsa Airport Authority, and Tulsa Airport Improvement Trust.

    (Studenny's dismissal was to be considered last Thursday, but the special meeting of TAIT -- called by Mayor LaFortune -- had to be canceled for lack of a quorum, when board member Ron Turner was prevented from returning to Tulsa because of inclement weather.)

    Jon Davidson is the Vice Chairman of the Board of the Tulsa Metro Chamber overseeing the Convention and Visitors Bureau, and he is general manager of the Sheraton Hotel Tulsa, a position he has held since the fall of 1995. Some of the City of Tulsa's hotel/motel tax dollars go to the Chamber for support of the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

    Earlier this week, Tulsa Metro Chamber CEO Jay Clemens and Chairman Bob Poe (a lifelong Democrat) met for three hours with Tulsa County Republican Chairman Don Burdick, trying to persuade Burdick to support the recall of Republicans Medlock and Mautino or at least not publicly oppose their
    recall. Burdick has publicly stated that he opposes any recall and worked to get the support of Republican elected officials for a statement opposing any recall. During the meeting the chamber officals suggested (perhaps in jest) that they should get a high paying job for Medlock so that he wouldn't spend so much time and work so hard at being a Councilor. Asked to comment on this, Medlock joked that if the job was to replace Jay Clemens, and it would get Clemens out of town, he might take the position. (UPDATE 10/11/2004: Don Burdick has sent me a statement about the meeting, which you can find here.)

    Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.

    Let's you and him fight

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    Here the Reform Alliance on the Council and Mayor LaFortune are trying to work together to move the city forward, and KRMG seems to be trying to get the Mayor and Council to start fighting each other with a poll on their homepage that sets LaFortune against "Chris Medlock & 4 other city councilors". Here's the question:

    What's Best For Tulsa? Chris Medlock & 4 other City Council members are calling for reforms; Mayor Bill LaFortune & the Tulsa Chamber say they're trying to stunt Tulsa's growth. Who's right?

    Medlock
    The Mayor
    Neither

    When I voted, the totals were Medlock with 58%, the Mayor with 30%, and 12% undecided.

    Interesting that they are singling out Medlock rather than referring to all five in the list of allowed answers. Also interesting that they say "The Mayor" for the second answer rather than "The Mayor and the Chamber."

    You suppose someone out there has an interest in ensuring that the Mayor and the City Council majority never get along?

    Studenny not fired?

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    There was a report that Richard Studenny, the attorney who works as a contract employee of the Tulsa Industrial Authority and the Tulsa Airports Improvements Trust (TAIT), would be fired today at a meeting of TAIT. It didn't happen, and the word is that the Trust didn't have a quorum present, because board member Ron Turner couldn't make it back from Chicago because of weather.

    I apologize for the delay in posting this.

    I started Tuesday evening at Tulsa City Councilor Jim Mautino's District 6 town hall meeting (written up here), then made it to Hicks Park about 20 minutes into Councilor Sam Roop's meeting. There were about 40 people there, plus a couple of news cameras, and I was pleasantly surprised to see Mayor Bill LaFortune sitting in the back row. A dozen or so were people I recognized as being from outside the district, there just to give Sam their support. Mona Miller of Homeowners for Fair Zoning held a sign saying "Sam's the Man!"

    Councilor Roop's talk covered public safety, the proposed general obligation bond issue for infrastructure, and the negative impact that passage of the tobacco tax and the gambling propositions will have on city sales tax revenues. Mayor LaFortune expressed agreement that these propositions would hurt the city's bottom line.

    Roop expressed support for the idea of taking a portion of the "third penny" and using it as a dedicated revenue source for police and fire. He or the Mayor (I forget who) pointed out that we are nearing the end of our sewer obligation -- an unfunded Federal mandate that has required us to dedicate a large portion of the third penny funds to sewer system improvements. As that obligation goes away, that could free up enough of the next third-penny to fund public safety and still fund the same amount of long-term capital improvements as in the past, without raising the overall tax burden.

    Councilor Roop mentioned that he and the Mayor and some other councilors had had a meeting on Monday, and that there had been a frank but constructive exchange of views. When Sam yielded the floor to the Mayor, I think we got a sense of what was discussed.

    The Mayor reaffirmed his opposition to any and all efforts to recall city officials and he spoke of signing a pledge to that effect and pledging to cooperate with the Council for the good of the city.

    The Mayor expressed his agreement with the Council majority that candidates for appointment to authorities, boards, and commissions should provide full disclosure of any potential conflict of interest.

    Regarding the issue of water lines to the suburbs, the Mayor praised Councilor Chris Medlock's idea that a higher rate of return on new water lines (13% instead of 10%) could compensate the City for lower sales tax revenue resulting from suburban retail growth, and could be used to build out the water and sewer system to connect areas within the city limits that are still unserved.

    In speaking of the friction between the Council's Reform Alliance majority and the administration, the Mayor said there were times when the administration should have done a better job of getting responsive, relevant, and timely information to the councilors in response to their questions, and that he should have involved the Councilors before controversial matters like the north Tulsa County annexation proposal were made public. He said that the bond issue is an example of the right way to do it, meeting with Councilors early in the process to get their input.

    The Mayor defended the new pay scheme for the police -- the arbitrator chose the City's plan rather than the FOP's plan. I found it hard to follow the figures without being able to see anything in writing. It would be nice to see a chart showing what the officers make now, what they would make under the administration's plan, and what they would make under the FOP plan, and all of it in dollars, not percentages, just to be clear. The Mayor pointed out the sacrifices that non-public safety city employees have made, and said we had to find some money to restore part of what they have lost over the last few years of shortfalls.

    The Mayor and Councilor Roop spoke of a proposed charter change that would remove civil service protection for managers in city government above a certain level, basically those managers in a policy-making position, so that they would serve at the pleasure of the Mayor rather than be insulated from accountability by civil service protections. Right now, the Mayor has very little leverage to ensure that city departments are carrying out the policies we elected him to pursue. If a department manager won't or can't comply, the Mayor has very little recourse, which means that the people who are directly in charge of city government aren't even indirectly accountable to the citizens. This is a great and long-overdue idea, and I stand ready to give it my full support.

    (There's a theory going around that some City Hall bureaucrats are deliberately feeding conflicting information to the Mayor and the Councilors to get them fighting each other, as part of a strategy to discredit them both and help usher in a Democratic mayor like State Secretary of Commerce Kathy Taylor or maybe even old Slewfoot Savage her infernal self.)

    I came away encouraged that the Mayor understands what is at stake and that he is prepared to work with and publicly show support for the Reform Alliance councilors, our "Five Star Councilors".

    Tonight I attended parts of two town hall meetings, held by Tulsa City Councilors Jim Mautino and Sam Roop. Mayor Bill LaFortune was at Sam Roop's meeting too, both as a listener and as a speaker. I came away feeling hopeful and optimistic.

    Councilor Mautino's District 6 meeting at East Central High School started at 7, a half-hour before Councilor Roop's meeting, so I started out there.

    If you've been around Jim Mautino for any length of time, you know that he has a passion for seeing east Tulsa developed. He looks at open fields and sees untapped potential. But he is not willing to see east Tulsa's rolling terrain filled with whatever junk the rest of the city doesn't want. East Tulsa's development can be done in a way that results in a pleasant place to live, work, and do business. It can be done in a strategic way that makes the most of 200,000 cars a day that travel I-44 between the I-244 junction and the US 412 / Creek Turnpike junction -- the busiest section of road in the state -- and translates that traffic into retail sales and sales tax revenue for the city. That's Jim's vision, and as a councilor he's working to ensure that the planning and infrastructure are in place to make this happen.

    Councilor Mautino began his town hall meeting -- about 60 were in attendance, a good turnout -- with a presentation, centered around a map of the district. He pointed out areas where new sewer and water lines are going in. He talked of a couple of industrial businesses that were going to be forced to relocate out of Tulsa unless they could get hooked up to the city sewer. The sewer is there now and should help encourage more industrial development in the same area.

    Councilor Mautino explained Owasso's retail development strategy, using the roads as a funnel to capture shoppers' dollars from the north, before the shoppers can get to the stores in Tulsa. He pointed out that the road network in east Tulsa could be used to create a similar funnel to capture retail dollars from people traveling through Tulsa or coming into the area from the northeast and east.

    Councilor Mautino talked about the former town of Fair Oaks in Wagoner County, annexed to Tulsa in 2001. He's working with the principal landowner and INCOG on planning for connecting roads to encourage retail development along our section of Creek Turnpike. Jim sees the retail potential of the I-44 corridor in east Tulsa -- now mainly auto auctions and trucking related. He'd like to make five-laning Admiral Boulevard a priority, to encourage retail development. He wants Tulsa to work aggressively to get outdoor outfitter Cabela's to locate a retail store in east Tulsa, instead of letting Owasso or Jenks get it and all the sales tax revenue. He spoke of a variety of infrastructure priorities for the upcoming general obligation bond issue, and asked for his constituents' input on projects that matter to them.

    I had to leave to go to Councilor Roop's meeting, but in the 40 minutes I was there, I was impressed by Councilor Mautino's mastery of policy details and the clarity of his explanations, working without notes -- just the map on the screen and a laser pointer. While Jim seemed a bit nervous at Wednesday's rally, tonight he was quite relaxed. In dealing with some of the controversy, he tried to steer clear of us vs. them language and to focus on the substance of the matter.

    I'm too tired to write any more, and Councilor Roop's meeting deserves its own entry. I'll just say again that I was encouraged, particularly by what I heard from the Mayor.

    KFAQ has added to its page on last Wednesday's town hall meeting -- in addition to a story and a slide show of photos, they've posted audio of Councilor Chris Medlock's speech, and hope to add more speeches in the next few days. The speech is here -- it's an 18 MB MP3 file.

    Councilor Sam Roop wasn't able to attend last Wednesday's town hall meeting with his reform allies, because of a previous commitment, so he's holding his own meeting Tuesday night (October 5) at 7:30 pm, in the Hicks Park recreation center near 34th & Mingo. This is a chance to give Councilor Roop your support and encouragement in thanks for his long record of working for good government at City Hall.

    But if you're a resident of Council District 6, Councilor Jim Mautino would like you to join him at a District town hall meeting, a chance to hear about progress around the district, to hear about the proposed capital improvements bond issue, and to get your questions answered. Councilor Mautino's meeting will be at 7 p.m., Tuesday, October 5, at East Central High School.

    Listening to the audio and attending either of these district town hall meetings are three more opportunities for you to hear for yourself what these "Five Star Councilors" are all about, unfiltered by media bias.

    GOP leaders?

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    A sidebar to the Whirled's story on the Reform Alliance's town hall meeting (PDF here) announced that "GOP leaders plan rally backing Mayor's efforts". It was curious that the list of "GOP leaders" mentioned in the story -- ORU President Richard Roberts, Bama CEO Paula Marshall-Chapman, Howard Barnett, Nordam CEO Ken Lackey -- did not include any Republican public officials or any Republican party officers.

    President Roberts has been largely quiet about politics until recent years. Paula Marshall-Chapman was chairman of the Tulsa Metro Chamber a few years ago, and was one of the signatories on the letter warning elected officials and party leaders not to get in the way of the Vision 2025 juggernaut. Barnett is part of the Jones family that once owned the Tulsa Tribune, and was Governor Frank Keating's Chief of Staff. I'm not aware of Ken Lackey's political involvement.

    From what I could see, Republican grassroots and leaders alike were at the Reform Alliance's town hall meeting on Wednesday: Three of the six members of the Tulsa County Republican Central Committee -- Chairman, State Committeeman (that's me), 1st District Committeeman -- plus many people who volunteer for candidates and attend monthly Republican club luncheons, and many folks I didn't know who came to the event wearing Bush-Cheney, Tom Coburn, and John Sullivan campaign T-shirts and hats. I'm not aware that any of us were notified about or invited to this "Republican leaders" event.

    This looks like something hastily assembled in response to the Reform Alliance's event, in anticipation that the Reformers would focus their fire on Mayor LaFortune. But the Reformers didn't make a target of the Mayor, and they expressed hope that they could work with the Mayor on the issues facing our city. The Reformers also expressed support for the upcoming general obligation bond issue, which the Whirled story said was mentioned prominently in the press release about the event for the Mayor.

    I've heard that the Mayor's event was sparsely attended -- maybe 50 people present -- and that several of the speakers mentioned that the Mayor had personally called them to ask them to come and speak in his behalf. I'll pass along more info as I learn it.

    Reform Alliance Town Hall: Part 2

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    Last night's town hall meeting for the City Council's Reform Alliance will be continued next Tuesday, at 7:30 pm, at Hicks Park Recreation Center, as Councilor Sam Roop speaks on his vision for the City and answers questions about his decisions. I encourage you to plan to be there and show your support for Councilor Roop, just as you did last night for the other four Reform Alliance councilors.

    (UPDATED -- see note at the end of the entry.)

    In my earlier entry, I guessed that there were about 2,000 at last night's town hall meeting on the Civic Center Plaza. This morning's Whirled's story claimed the number was 300, but we had at least that many packed into Aaronson Auditorium at 5:45 p.m. when it was decided to move up to the plaza, something that the Whirled's reporter must have observed as she tried to find her way into the room through the crowd at that time. Far more were up on the plaza already, and people kept arriving as the 6 p.m. start time approached. A teacher at the event told KFAQ that she sent out several people to count the crowd, and that they counted just shy of 3,000. I was told that someone with the library estimated 2,500. Obviously, it's in the Whirled's interest to downplay the rally and the strong show of support.

    KFAQ has a story about the event on its homepage, headlined "Taking Back Tulsa". There's a slideshow hotlinked from the page. (The link doesn't work in Mozilla -- you can get straight to start of the slideshow here.) There are some great shots of the creative signs people brought to the event.

    MORE: Although I take great exception to his characterization of Michael DelGiorno, "Average Joe" has a great summary of the event over in the Tulsa Now forums, and you'll find it here. He's been skeptical and critical of the Reform Alliance, but he clearly gained some insight from attending last night's event.

    If you haven't already done so, I encourage you to register (it's free) and participate in the conversation.

    UPDATE 10:00 pm: I am informed that the Whirled's estimate came from a fire marshal and a library official, that they have these estimates on tape, and that the fire marshal's count was taken as Chris Medlock concluded his remarks on the plaza. I am also told that there were only 147 chairs in Aaronson Auditorium, which would mean that fewer than 300 were in the room before we moved up to the plaza.

    My point in what I wrote above was not to accuse the Whirled's reporter of deliberately low-balling the attendance, which I don't believe she would do -- although I could believe that higher-ups at the Whirled might -- but to say that with the crowd already present in Aaronson when she arrived about 5:45, a final, maximum crowd estimate of 300 doesn't pass the common-sense test. I've changed my first paragraph to clarify that. I do find it hard to believe that the number present on the plaza during the heart of the event was almost identical to the number present 15 minutes before the scheduled start of the event. As we moved upstairs, there were people on the plaza who hadn't yet made their way downstairs, and more who arrived before and after things got underway at about 6:10, as it took time for people to find a parking spot and make their way to the plaza.

    I misunderstood the source of the estimates of 2,500 and 3,000, which I have second-hand, and I've corrected and clarified the first paragraph above to reflect that. I hope to be able to track the estimates back to the original source.

    Whatever the actual number, it was a strong turnout, and it reflected the diversity of Tulsa's citizens.

    Poor sports in a plain brown wrapper

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    Tuesday witnessed the gratuitous intrusion of politics on the Tulsa Whirled's sports pages. Dave Sittler, once a key member of the team that produced the city's best sports section in the late lamented Tulsa Tribune, has now been reduced to inserting irrelevant criticism of local politicians into his column:

    STILLWATER -- You're familiar with the "Gang of Five," right?

    No, not that city council Clown Band that seems hell bent on stunting Tulsa's growth. The group I'm referring to doesn't pose as serious a threat as those five 20th century-thinking city council members, who apparently would like to turn Vision 2025 into Vision 1925.

    The Clown Band plays in the real world, which in this case they've turned into a five-ringed circus of nasty politics. Here in journalism's "Toy Department," we deal with the games that people are supposed to play for fun.

    "Clown band"? It's obvious that Sittler hasn't done any original thinking here. He's just parroting phrases he's heard from Ken Neal and the rest of the inhabitants of the rubber room that houses the Whirled's editorial board.

    I figure someone on the top floor thought, "We have some readers who only read the sports section. We need to make sure we properly indoctrinate them as well. Have Sittler insert some irrelevant slams at the Council majority. Better yet, send Sittler home and have a copy editor cut and paste a few grafs from an old Ken Neal editorial."

    Or does this opening reflect Sittler's own view of the conventional wisdom? Ordinarily, you don't want to alienate half of your readers before you even get to your topic. Would Sittler open a column with some crack about Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard? Or some snide reference to Kerry's Purple Heart Band-Aids? Political humor usually finds its way to the sports page or the comics page once a characterization has become generally accepted as accurate. If Sittler believes that all of his readers have contempt for the Council's bipartisan Reform Alliance majority, he needs to get out more.

    Forget the fact that it repeats inaccurate charges that apply more to the Councilors' critics than it does to them: How rude of the Whirled to inflict their political opinions on people who just want to relax and read about college football.

    As Councilor Chris Medlock quipped on KFAQ Tuesday morning: "Penalty on the offense. Unneccessary roughness. Piling on. 15 yards and loss of subscription."

    Elsewhere in the sports section, we see evidence that the Whirled is becoming more desperate for ad revenue, resulting in another unwelcome intrusion on the sanctity of the sports section. An alert reader pointed me to Tuesday's scoreboard page -- click here then scroll down to the lower right.

    Here's the text of the ad starts off this way:

    Tulsans take a stand

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    (NOTE: If you can't see the pictures, it's because your firewall or Internet security program doesn't permit "referrer" messages to be sent to the web server for this site. I have "bandwidth protection" enabled, which prevents another website from directly incorporating images from my site, and unavoidably a browser request without a referrer is handled as if it were an attempt at bandwidth theft.)

    It was a magnificent sight. By 5:45 Aaronson Auditorium was packed to capacity -- easily 300 people in there, and more already gathered on the Civic Center Plaza, where KFAQ had their van parked. Michael DelGiorno was doing a live "emergency broadcast", preempting Laura Ingraham's syndicated show and setting the stage for the town hall meeting hosted by four members of the City Council's bipartisan Reform Alliance majority. At about 5:50, Councilor Chris Medlock addressed those gathered in the auditorium, and asked for a show of hands -- stay put or move outside to allow more people to hear. By a two-to-one margin they voted to move up to the plaza.

    In the middle, you can see Councilor Roscoe Turner speaking. He was the first of the group to address the crowd, followed by Jim Mautino, then Jack Henderson, with Chris Medlock batting cleanup. As you look at that picture, keep in mind there are hundreds more off the right edge, going west into the plaza at least as far as the library entrance, more behind me, and more all the way to Denver. I'm guessing we had about 2,000, but that's just an educated guess. Here's another view, from behind the councilors looking west:

    I couldn't take notes -- I had my daughter on my shoulders a lot of the time -- but there were many memorable moments. Jack Henderson went down a list of institutions that have come after the reformers, following the same pattern: "We don't have a personal problem with the Chamber of Commerce, but the leadership of the Chamber of Commerce seems to have a personal problem with us. We don't have a personal problem with the Tulsa World, but the leadership of the Tulsa World seems to have a personal problem with us." This group is not out to get anyone, but the fact that they ask questions seems to have a lot of people out to get them. Henderson pointed out that there had been councilors in the past who would ask tough questions. He thanked God that there were now a majority who would ask the tough questions.

    Chris Medlock started by responding directly to the charges that have been leveled against them, then moved on to speak about the positive aims the reformers have for our city. Medlock made it clear that he was and is a supporter of Vision 2025; he simply wants to make sure that it's done right. Medlock pointed out that the city is very different than it once was, but we are still operating under plans drawn up in the 1970s. When our zoning code was developed, retail was dominated by Froug's and C. R. Anthony's and OTASCO and TG&Y; today, it's Home Depot and Lowe's and Wal-Mart. We can and must work together, without hateful rhetoric, to adopt reasonable reforms so that city government will work as it should for our people.

    None of this is verbatim, but hopefully there someone will make audio available online before long.

    I was impressed that the councilors stayed positive as much as they could, while defending their record. There were no verbal attacks on those who had been attacking them. There was no demagoguery. Medlock rebuffed a suggestion that DelGiorno made about marching on the VIP reception for the arena unveiling.

    I'm fading fast here. It was a great event, and the Councilors, their families and supporters, the citizens who came out, and KFAQ radio should all be proud of the part they played in making this important event successful.

    Bob Poe: A gift for making enemies

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    A reader reminded me today that Bob Poe's wild rants against the City Council's Reform Alliance majority are nothing new. It's just the way he does business. His approach to conflict resolution seems to be, "If you don't agree with me, you're evil and must be destroyed."

    At the beginning of his term as Tulsa Metro Chamber Chairman, Poe, a lifelong Democrat, attacked Republican state legislators who had taken a pledge not to raise taxes. His tirade puzzled and offended conservative Republican legislators, who are focused on helping Oklahoma businesses prosper. These legislators expected to be working shoulder to shoulder with the leadership of Tulsa's Chamber of Commerce on crucial economic development issues like lawsuit reform and workers' compensation reform. Instead they find themselves dealing with an organization whose leadership is obsessed with raising taxes and boosting gambling as the solution to Oklahoma's problems.

    Of course, Ken Neal and the Tulsa Whirled just love Bob Poe's tax hikes, and they love it when Republicans bail on their principles and support feeding more of your tax dollars to a bloated state government:

    Poe called on Republicans to avoid signing "pledges" to oppose any tax increase whatsoever. ...

    Poe said lawmakers ought to vote for taxes “now,” and promised he would support any Republican or Democrat criticized for a tax vote or any other
    measure the Legislature might pass to help Oklahoma through a rough economic
    time. ...

    Did Poe’s public scolding of legislators help? Maybe.

    Will the other major chambers in the state follow his lead?

    Will they back him and pressure lawmakers to put aside partisan gain
    (for once) and work for Oklahoma?

    It’s hard to say. It’s seldom happened in Oklahoma history.

    But Poe has certainly given them their marching orders.

    Did you catch that? Poe gave the legislators a "public scolding" and gave them their "marching orders." Not private discussions, not cool reasoning, but public scolding. Isn't that the way to get off on the right foot with elected officials? Who could blame a Republican legislator for wanting nothing more to do with the Metro Tulsa Chamber as long as Poe is chairman? Hopefully, for the sake of all the Chamber's members, the next chairman will be able to mend some fences and build a cooperative working agreement with legislators and city councilors. Or perhaps the membership should take action now and rid themselves of a leader who is bringing their organization into disrepute.

    (Side note: Ken Neal misidentifies Poe, a lifelong Democrat, as a "solid Republican." Who needs factchecking when the facts are inconvenient?)

    There's been a lot of talk about how public "bickering" and harsh words are making the city look bad and frightening away potential employers. But all the harsh words and divisiveness seem to be coming from Bob Poe, the Tulsa Whirled, and other Cockroach Caucus stalwarts like Council Chairman Randy "You're Toast" Sullivan. Meanwhile, the Reform Alliance councilors ask questions, pursue their oversight duties, and work for fairness and oversight with a calm demeanor, and they're accused of "badgering" and "trickery."

    Wouldn't the city be better served by Chamber leadership that respected the will of the people as expressed at the ballot box? The people of Tulsa said we no longer want a rubber-stamp City Council. The Chamber leadership and members of the good-old-boy network had the option of reconciling themselves to this change and working in cooperation with the new Council. Instead they are pursuing a scorched-earth policy, and they don't seem to care how badly it reflects on their city.

    More Poe

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    Here's another tidbit making the rounds. Although I don't have dates of service, I am told that Bob Poe, chairman of the Tulsa Metro Chamber, used to be the chairman of the Oklahoma Transportation Authority (OTA), formerly the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority. This is fascinating, because Poe's firm has been a contractor to the OTA for over 10 years, serving as consulting engineer. Poe and Associates served as chief engineer on the Creek East Turnpike. It seems strange that someone could be both a board member of the OTA and the head of a company with large contracts with the OTA.

    A similar situation existed with former OTA board member Bob Parmele, who is co-owner of Cinnabar, a company that, among other things, specializes in right-of-way land acquisition for roads and turnpikes. Parmele's Cinnabar has also done acquisition for Tulsa County projects, while Parmele has been a long time member of the Tulsa County Public Facilities Authority (the fair board).

    Makes you shake your head.

    Time to take a stand

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    Tonight (Wednesday the 29th) at 6 pm, four of the five members of the Tulsa City Council's bipartisan Reform Alliance majority will give their perspective on the state of the city. The Mayor's "state of the city" address was delivered at a fundraising luncheon for the Tulsa Metro Chamber. The Reform Alliance's remarks will be in a public place -- Aaronson Auditorium on the first floor of the Central Library, 5th & Denver downtown -- to the general public, with free admission.

    Councilors Jack Henderson, Chris Medlock, Roscoe Turner, and Jim Mautino will be speaking. Sam Roop, the fifth member of the alliance, has a conflict with a college course he's taking, so he'll be speaking at a town hall meeting the next night. Roop's absence will also help alleviate any possible issues with accidentally having a quorum present in violation of the Open Meetings Act.

    It is important that everyone who supports their efforts on our behalf show up tonight and show that support publicly. As Michael DelGiorno said this morning, it's no longer a time just for praying and forwarding e-mails, it's time to show up and stand up. You might even want to bring a small sign -- emphasize the positive, why you support what these councilors are doing.

    These five councilors have been under a sustained and coordinated attack. Why? Simply for doing their job -- asking questions, exercising oversight over city departments and boards and commissions. Like a dentist discovering a rotten tooth, the Council's gentle probing has produced screams of pain as it finds pockets of decay.

    And yes, the Whirled's spinning notwithstanding, the probing has been gentle. Watch the Council meetings and committee meetings on TGOV channel 24. (This week's schedule is here.) The Reformers ask their questions and raise their concerns politely and with a calm demeanor. When questions are dodged, the Reformers press for answers firmly, but without losing their cool. They have demonstrated grace under intense pressure, and I think all of them would credit God's grace for sustaining them through all of the attacks.

    Last week's debate over the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority's (TMUA) $18.5 million revenue bond issue is a great example. (You can catch this one last time Thursday morning on channel 24 -- the rebroadcast begins at 8 am, and the bond issue discussion starts about an hour or so into the meeting.) The Reformers asked questions of Paul Zachary from the Public Works department, Owasso City Manager Rodney Ray, Tulsa Deputy Mayor Steve Sewell, and the head of Owasso's economic development agency.

    In the course of the questions, Chris Medlock and the other Reformers made it clear that they do not want to cut off water to the suburbs, and they are willing to sell more water to the suburbs, but they want to ensure that it is at a rate that is fair to Tulsa. At the Mayor's request, the Council voted to delay considering the TMUA bond issue for at least two weeks. Some councilors wanted to proceed with approval for the non-controversial items and defer consideration of the suburban water lines only. After receiving assurances from Paul Zachary that the two week delay would not jeopardize critical projects such as dam repair to Lake Spavinaw and Lake Eucha, the Council voted 6 to 3 to continue the issue to a future meeting. The Reform Alliance split on the issue, with Medlock and Roop agreeing to delay the issue, Henderson, Turner, and Mautino not wanting to delay the projects that have unanimous support, demonstrating that these men are truly exercising independent judgment, not marching in lockstep.

    Who is Bob Poe?

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    Robert C. Poe is the current Chairman of the Tulsa Metro Chamber, who has gained attention recently for his denunciation of the Reform Alliance majority on the Tulsa City Council. He is the owner of Community National Bank and Trust Company, Poe & Associates (a civil engineering firm), Penterra Co., and Pittman Poe and Associates, Inc.

    Poe is a lifelong registered Democrat and an outspoken advocate of higher taxes, such as a gas tax increase (to build roads that would create work for his engineering firm), as well as the proposed tobacco tax that would eliminate city sales taxes on cigarettes, hurting the City of Tulsa and other local governments. That's probably why the Whirled editorial board praises him for his tireless efforts lobbying the Legislature.

    Randy Sullivan: "You're toast"

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    At about 9:30 Sunday evening, Tulsa City Councilor Chris Medlock was relaxing, watching a movie and eating ice cream with his family when he got a call from Council Chairman Randy Sullivan.

    We've written about Randy Sullivan before. He is not related at all to Congressman John Sullivan or to Dan Sullivan, who is running for election in State House District 71. Randy Sullivan is serving his second term as City Councilor for District 7. He was elected chairman this year over significant objections, and despite the fact that his side, the Cockroach Caucus, was defeated in the city elections. He made threats that ended a private school's efforts to buy the old Children's Medical Center for their new campus. He was F&M Bank's point man on the 71st & Harvard rezoning and tried to prevent homeowners from getting a fair hearing in that case.

    So in his phone call to Chris Medlock Sunday night, Randy Sullivan had a simple message for Medlock, which managed to be understood, despite his slurred speech: "You're toast." The recall effort is going forward and Medlock and Mautino are the targets. Randy Sullivan said he had been asked by the Tulsa County Republican Party chairman to join other Republican city officials in signing a statement pledging cooperation and renouncing all efforts to recall city officials. He refused. He would only sign such a statement if Medlock would agree to four concessions. Medlock stopped him at that point. (Through another source, Medlock learned of the concessions -- approval of the Owasso and Sperry water lines and approval of the reappointment of Jim Cameron and Lou Reynolds to the TMUA.)

    Randy Sullivan had already publicly expressed his contempt for the Reform Alliance majority on the Council, in response to a question at last Thursday's Tulsa Press Club luncheon, at which Tulsa Metro Chamber Chairman Bob Poe spoke. Sullivan expressed his agreement with Poe's attacks on the reformers.

    Back in May, Randy Sullivan incorporated Lake Sunset LLC, which is a real estate development company. You don't suppose he stands to benefit financially from new water lines into north Tulsa County?

    Wouldn't it be nice if someone else were head of the legislative branch of our city government?

    Recall phone survey: whodunit?

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    I have received confirmation from multiple reliable sources about the source of the funding for last weekend's automated phone survey targeting the five Tulsa City Councilors who comprise the bipartisan Reform Alliance majority. The clear intent of the calls was to identify voters who would be willing to sign a recall petition to bring down one or more of the reformers. The ultimate goal appears to break the Reform Alliance majority, and replace it with a majority which will preserve the special deals and special privileges that have dominated Tulsa city government over the past two decades.

    I have been told that the phone calls were funded by the Home Builders Association of Greater Tulsa (HBA). They've decided to target Councilors Chris Medlock and Jim Mautino, and the only thing that would get them to stop is if the Council confirms the reappointment of Jim Cameron and Lou Reynolds to the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority (TMUA) board and approves funding for a new water line to Owasso and a feeder water line to Sperry. The message has been passed on to the councilors in question. (I am told that Council Chairman Randy Sullivan is the message boy.) Needless to say Councilors Medlock and Mautino and the rest of the Reform Alliance have too much character and courage to go along with what amounts to extortion.

    What we appear to be seeing is an attempt to overturn the City of Tulsa's election results because the City Council majority is looking out for the interests of Tulsa. Whoever is ultimately behind this wants to continue to control Tulsa's water supply to their own financial benefit. In all likelihood, they've been joined by those who want to derail the investigation of the airport in order to protect their business interests. It appears to be a coup d'état funded and led by people who believe that the City of Tulsa should be their own cash cow.

    Why would the Home Builders Association be involved in this effort, especially when the two councilors in question have been strongly supportive of extending infrastructure and encouraging new development in east and west Tulsa?

    Why does reading a Whirled editorial invoke the same reaction in me as getting a whiff of dirty diaper? It's an annoying and disgusting task, but it's gotta be dealt with. Especially when, in the course of shooting off their mouths without getting their facts straight, the editorial board accuses the Reform Alliance councilors of shooting off their mouths without getting their facts straight. Yes, the Mayor is in Germany on an eight-day Chamber-funded junket, right after his "State of the City" speech before the Metro Tulsa Chamber, and at a time when the City is reconsidering how best to oversee the way the Metro Tulsa Chamber bureaucracy spends our tax dollars for economic development.

    Details and a point-by-point rebuttal after the jump.

    The Reform Alliance majority on the Tulsa City Council is pressing ahead with efforts to reassert the City of Tulsa's oversight of the millions of hotel/motel sales tax dollars that the City gives to the Tulsa Metro Chamber bureaucracy every year. The money is to pay the Chamber bureaucracy to promote economic development, conventions, and tourism.

    Please note the phrase "Chamber bureaucracy". I don't have a quarrel with the hundreds of local businesses that join the Chamber in hopes of supporting local business or networking with other businesses. What's controversial is the Chamber's bureaucracy -- the full-time staff who spend the money that comes from chamber dues and government contracts, like the economic development contract with the city.

    As happens with many organizations over time, particularly organizations with paid staff, the Chamber bureaucracy has lost sight of its purpose and seems more concerned with preservation of its perks and power than with providing the services it ostensibly exists to perform.

    Mayor LaFortune in his "State of the City" attack address last week did his best to blur the distinction between the businesses that pay dues to the Chamber and the Chamber bureaucracy, trying to characterize the desire of the Council's reform majority to oversee the Chamber bureaucracy as an attack on the integrity of the Chamber's membership. He knows better, and he has whispered plenty of comments, directly and through surrogates, to make reform-minded Tulsans think that he didn't trust Chamber bureaucracy and planned to reform its relationship with City government. But now it appears to serve LaFortune's purposes to make the City's business community think that the Reform Alliance is hostile to their interests. (LaFortune is currently in Germany on a Chamber-paid junket.)

    The Chamber's economic development bureaucracy is led by Chamber Senior VP Mickey "No Idea" Thompson, who said last fall that he had "no idea" how to attract the kinds of information technology jobs that we lost in the thousands at WorldCom and Williams.

    For over 20 years the Chamber bureaucracy has served as a vendor to the City of Tulsa, providing economic development services, at a cost to taxpayers of over $70 million dollars. During that period Tulsa has suffered two major economic downturns -- the oil bust in the mid-'80s and the tech wreck and aerospace downturn of the last three years. During that period, most of the corporate headquarters we once hosted have slowly drifted away. Some have suggested that it's time we fired this economic development vendor and hired someone who can do the job.

    It's funny too that city tax money is paying for a regional economic development effort, which may or may not benefit the City of Tulsa's growth and the growth of its sales tax base. It is interesting that the CEO of the Chamber, Jay Clemens doesn't even live in the City of Tulsa -- he lives in Broken Arrow.

    While it may be able to handle the nuts and bolts of wooing businesses, the Chamber bureaucracy has demonstrated an inability to think and act strategically. That's why the Council wants to put the Economic Development Commission, a board appointed by the Mayor and confirmed by the Council, in charge of developing an economic development strategy and coordinating and overseeing the various city-funded economic development efforts.

    To the Mayor's credit, he did reactivate the EDC, as required by city ordinance. The Council majority wants to make sure it will have the authority to do what needs doing. Too much money has been spent, to too little effect. The Mayor has seemed strangely reluctant to support the Council's efforts, and in his speech he denounced any reappraisal of the City's relationship with the Chamber bureaucracy, as noted above.

    There's a concept called SMART goals -- the acronym stands for Sustainable, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Tangible. It's an approach to goal-setting that focuses on concrete results, not pie in the sky. The Chamber bureaucracy seems to have focused on inputs -- what it has attempted, as opposed to what it has achieved in the realm of economic development. (The lack of achievement, we are expected to believe, is entirely due to circumstances beyond its control.) The EDC should set SMART goals for what the Chamber bureaucracy will accomplish with the taxpayer money it receives. If it can't measure up, time to look for someone else to do the job.

    One more thing: The City Council should require a full annual audit of all the Chamber's finances. I have worked for companies that are Federal contractors, and the Federal government has the right to look at balance sheets, hourly rates, and timesheets to ensure that the government isn't paying for work the contractor is doing for other customers. Because money is fungible, and there is the potential for redirecting government funds from the intended government project to something else, the government must be able to look at records for the contractor's entire business. The City should apply the same standard to major City vendors like the Chamber bureaucracy.

    Those mysterious phone calls

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    More about those Saturday phone calls targeting certain Tulsa city councilors for recall -- here's another report from Council District 6:

    "This is a brief survey about Tulsa city government. Do you support the decisions being made my your city councilor Jim Mautino? Press 1 for yes and 2 for no."

    Caller ID was blocked.

    Also learned that these calls were received in Council District 1, directed at Councilor Jack Henderson, which means that all five members of the Council's Reform Alliance majority are being targeted.

    Channel 2 reported on the phone calls tonight on their 5 and 10 PM broadcasts. The story included an interview with Tulsa County Republican Chairman Don Burdick, who denounced the targeting of the three Republican councilors and asked for those responsible to come clean. Democratic officials were unavailable for comment. The story led off the 5 pm news. (Channel 2 archives the last two weeks of news broadcasts, and the September 19th broadcasts should be up in the next day or two, linked from this page.)

    Finally this pithy comment from the TulsaNow forums, by someone going by the handle "sendoff":

    Whoever is behind this is squirming like a leech with salt poured on it. These attacks are beyond absurdity, and are becoming downright comical.

    The attack moves to the phones

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    Just got word that an automated phone survey is going out today. So far it has been received by people in four Tulsa City Council districts: 2 (Chris Medlock), 3 (Roscoe Turner), 5 (Sam Roop), and 6 (Jim Mautino). The number is showing up on caller ID with a 212 area code, which is Manhattan. The survey is a single question asking for a touch tone response: "Do you have confidence in your City Councilor, ? Press 1 for yes, 2 for no." I haven't heard whether anyone is receiving more than one question, but it seems that different households are getting asked different questions. Another question that was received: "Do you agree with the tactics used by Councilor Chris Medlock?"

    It's obvious this is connected with a recall effort. We don't know yet who is behind this and how comprehensive the coverage is. Are they targeting registered voters, people who vote in city elections, or random voters? With some help from you, we can figure it out pretty quickly.

    By the way, it would be useful if you answer the question as if you oppose the councilor. Then it will be possible to learn what they are doing with this information. It would also be interesting to learn if a "no" answer leads to further questions.

    If you get such a call or know someone who did, please e-mail me at blog AT batesline DOT com, and provide the following information:

    • The exact question that was asked -- word for word, if you're able
    • The number on caller ID
    • Your name, address, zip code and phone number -- this will allow me to analyze the pattern of the calls

    This looks like a very expensive operation. It would be interesting to know who is paying for it. If the money is coming from the Chamber, it is effectively being paid for with tax dollars, since the Chamber commingles money from the City and money from other sources. It may very well be an attack in response to Council efforts to bring some accountability to the way the Chamber spends taxpayer funds on economic development efforts. Whoever is behind it obviously feels they have a lot to gain financially by getting rid of the Reform Alliance.

    UPDATE 6:00 PM: A call received by a voter in District 6, who relays the gist of the phone call. This is not necessarily verbatim because of background noise:

    This is a brief survey about Tulsa city government. Do you support the decisions being made my your city councilor Jim Mautino? Press 1 for yes and 2 for no.

    [After pressing 2 for no, the following two questions were heard.]

    Would you support a recall election for Jim Mautino? Press 1 for yes, press 2 for no.

    Would you sign a petition for a special recall election? Press 1 for yes, press 2 for no.

    Pretty clear what the Cockroach Caucus is after.

    My question is this: What are the roaches so afraid of that they would spend huge amounts of money on this campaign? Some of the roaches are Republicans, if in name only -- why risk party unity at a time when the party needs to pull together to elect Tom Coburn and gain the majority in the State House?

    The motto of the Cockroach Caucus seems to be "rule or ruin".

    To whom does the Mayor answer?

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    Tulsa Mayor Bill LaFortune delivered the annual "State of the City" address today.

    When the President reports on the State of the Union, he addresses a joint session of Congress, the elected representatives of the people of the United States of America.

    When the Governor delivers a "State of the State" address, he addresses a joint session of the Oklahoma Legislature, the elected representatives of the people of the State of Oklahoma.

    But when the Mayor of Tulsa speaks on the State of the City, he speaks not to the City Council, the elected representatives of the citizens of Tulsa, but to the Tulsa Metro Chamber, at a fundraising banquet for the Tulsa Metro Chamber.

    You'd think he would want to demonstrate some independence from this organization, which is, after all, a vendor to the City of Tulsa (as Councilor Jim Mautino rightly identified it), providing unsuccessful economic development services to the City, which are paid for by $1.5 million annually in hotel/motel sales tax revenue. As a private organization, the Chamber is not required to give a detailed accounting of how that money is being spent, and is not required to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not commingled with dues and privately-raised funds. Money is fungible.

    As always, keep in mind that when we speak of the Chamber, we don't mean to disparage the thousands of Tulsa area businesses and institutions that are members of the organization. Most join simply because it's what you do. But the Chamber as an institution, particularly the economic development department, seems to have long ago lost track of its purpose and has become a stagnant organization focused on maintaining its power and perquisites.

    The Chamber is paying to send the Mayor on a trip to Germany in the name of economic development. Is the Chamber lobbying the Mayor with taxpayer dollars to keep the taxpayer dollars flowing its way?

    I could not be at the speech, which was not open to the public anyway. I did hear a few audio excerpts of the speech. I understand from eyewitnesses that the Mayor was introduced by Chamber President Bob Poe, who delivered a vigorous verbal attack on the City Council's Reform Alliance. Unfortunately, the person recording the event for TGOV 24 (the staffer referenced here) didn't happen to record that segment for our enlightenment. The Mayor didn't refute or disagree with anything Mr. Poe (a Democrat) said and in fact piled on, declaring his commitment to keeping the Chamber on the City government teat and denouncing anyone who disagrees.

    I would welcome additional details, and would welcome a recording of the event (including Poe's remarks) even more.

    There is more to be said, but the most important question is this: To whom does Bill LaFortune answer? To what constituency does he consider himself accountable? From what I heard of his speech, he gave an unequivocal answer today. Too bad for the rest of us.

    Why these two men?

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    The full-throttle media campaign to reappoint Jim Cameron and Lou Reynolds to the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority continues at the top of the front page of today's Metro section in the Tulsa Whirled (jump page here). Mayor LaFortune wants to call a special meeting of the City Council to specifically respond to Councilor Sam Roop's stated reason for refusing to support the reappointments, namely that the TMUA's settlement of the water-quality lawsuit against poultry producers succeeded only in enriching the attorneys who handled the case and failed to get any money to reimburse the City for the extra expense of treating chicken-poop-befouled water.

    Clearly, the Mayor is hoping to get Roop to break his public commitment not to support the reappointment of Reynolds and Cameron. Roop, along with Chris Medlock and Jim Mautino, signed a letter to the Mayor communicating that commitment.

    Why this insistence on getting these two men back on the TMUA? Surely the Mayor could find two other Tulsans to nominate as replacements. Cameron and Reynolds would probably be glad to move on to other things at this point. The Mayor's (and the Whirled's) refusal to move on is odd.

    Also odd was this week's unprecedented letter from Richard Carter, the Mayor of Broken Arrow:

    Normally, I would not comment about happenings in our neighbor city, but the treatment of Jim Cameron and Louis Reynolds by some of the Tulsa City Council members went far beyond my tolerance level.

    As chairman of the Regional Municipal Utilities Authority this past year, I have worked with and come to know both gentlemen quite well, and have witnessed firsthand their dedicated service.

    They both spend many uncompensated hours working for the benefit of Tulsa citizens and have always demonstrated to me the highest level of competence and integrity.

    Mr. Cameron and Mr. Reynolds deserve kudos, not condemnation, and it puzzles me as to what self-serving motive some city coun cilors think they will satisfy by denying the reappointment of these two dedicated, public-spirited volunteers. I sincerely hope that Tulsa Mayor Bill LaFortune will submit both their names again and that the Tulsa City Council will approve them both.

    I don't have a problem with Mayor Carter praising these two men, but his slap at the City Council makes no sense. No one on the City Council has condemned Cameron or Reynolds. The majority simply voted no when their names were submitted for reappointment. No one has mistreated these men. They aren't losing salary or benefits. They aren't being deprived of anything to which they are entitled. Their terms have expired and the majority on the City Council believe it's time for a change. Next, please.

    At the heart of the reappointments dispute is a debate about whether the TMUA's policies are fueling suburban growth at the expense of the City of Tulsa. And given that fact, it doesn't bolster the case for reappointment to have the mayor of Tulsa's biggest suburb writing to criticize Tulsa's elected officials.

    Recall process

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    During my appearance this last Tuesday on KFAQ's Michael DelGiorno show, I was asked by Michael to look into the City of Tulsa's recall process. While Mayor Bill LaFortune, Councilor Chris Medlock, and I were all up in New York at the Republican National Convention, there were a number of people calling Michael's show wanting to launch a recall effort against the Mayor.

    A recall is not a tool to be used lightly, but it does provide a check against official wrongdoing or neglect of duty when such conduct falls short of criminal conduct. Having supported Bill LaFortune in the 2002 Republican mayoral primary over other worthy candidates, it grieves me to think that he has become so estranged from the city's grassroots that some are unwilling to endure his continuation in office for another 19 months. It appears to many observers that he has not fulfilled the promises of reform and cooperation with the City Council which won him the support of so many Tulsans. In fact, it seems that he has aligned himself with those who want to preserve the status quo at City Hall regardless and set himself in opposition to the Council's Reform Alliance majority.

    Article VII is the article of the City Charter dealing with recalls. Here's the timeline of the process, using maximum times for each step:

    The Outsiders

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    Ken Neal's weekly rant in Sunday's Whirled takes a new tack in his ongoing campaign against the Tulsa City Council's Reform Alliance. (Nice to see that the term I coined is taking hold -- let's see if the Whirled starts referring to the rest of the Council as the Cockroach Caucus.)

    He has now concluded that this majority of meddlesome troublemakers is the result of a structural problem with our form of government -- it makes it too easy for the wrong sort of person to win:

    When the average voter turnout per council district is but 2,500 or so, outsiders can shape the election with relatively small amounts of money and that is what happened last spring. Tom Baker, Tulsa's former fire chief and one of the most knowledgeable and reasonable of councilors, barely won with a 24-vote margin.

    There was a concerted effort to beat all the sitting councilors because of zoning decisions at 51st and 71st Streets and Harvard Avenue. In both cases, councilors had little choice under the law but to approve the zoning changes.

    A slight change in the way Tulsa elects a council would make it much harder for a few well-heeled activists to shape the election.

    I could spend all night dissecting the internal contradictions in those three paragraphs. Ken, are they "well-heeled" or are they spending "relatively small amounts of money"? Either way, the point is clear -- the current system makes it possible for well-organized grass-roots campaigns to succeed, and in the Whirled's eyes, that's a bad thing. It means that the Council might be run by "outsiders", strangers to the corridors of power, who will interfere with all the cozy insider deals and relationships that have traditionally characterized Tulsa city government, certainly over the last 20 years.

    So Ken's solution is to change the City Charter dramatically, by making five of the Council seats elected at-large, with the remaining four seats elected from much larger districts. Instead of council districts of 44,000 population (already bigger than a state House of Representatives district), five of the councilors would represent all 400,000 residents of the city -- more than half the size of a congressional district -- while the four district councilors would represent 100,000 each, as many people as in one and a half State Senate districts.

    Setting up a strawman

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    Mayor LaFortune opened a new front this morning in the PR offensive against the City Council's Reform Alliance. It took the form of a news story that ran at least once an hour on KRMG. The story was reported like this in the 10 pm newscast:

    Some City Hall observers believe continuing opposition to Vision 2025 is the real reason behind feuding on the Tulsa Council. If that's true Mayor LaFortune has a warning for those who may have that agenda: "From their perspective, they should be careful in terms of any kind of roadblocks to 2025 implementation, because within the city of Tulsa two of the propositions passed by 65%, and that is a mandate and a supermajority, and the other two propositions passed by 62%." Recent disputes are pitting one faction against another and against the Mayor on issues from appointments to annexation.

    This is toned down considerably from the first version I heard during KRMG's noon newscast. (Sorry, KFAQ, but I can't stand Bill O'Reilly.) The original version used the term "Gang of Five" -- the Tulsa Whirled's term for the Reform Alliance -- and quoted these unnamed observers as saying that four of these five councilors opposed all or part of Vision 2025 at one time or another.

    It seemed very odd to me that KRMG would go to the Mayor for a soundbite reaction to a concern raised by anonymous City Hall observers. It also seemed odd that he would have a well-rehearsed answer to this off-the-wall question. Clearly the point of the story is to create an association in the minds of those who hear it, to plant the idea in the listener's mind that behind every debate, behind every difference of opinion at City Hall -- behind the airport investigation and the disputes over northward annexation, extending water lines, reappointments to trust boards, and allocation of Federal block grant funds -- lurks a secret scheme to sabotage Vision 2025.

    I learned later that the Mayor had been at some Chamber-related event and took questions. Someone (don't know who, as I write this) made some comments akin to those reported in the story, and the Mayor had a ready response. It has all the hallmarks of a planted question and manufactured news, and I expect there will be a story in tomorrow's Whirled, followed by an another hysterical editorial in Wednesday's Whirled.

    I suspect that the PR flacks running this coordinated assault have finally figured out that Tulsans admire councilors who do their job and ask tough questions on behalf of their constituents ("meddle," in the Whirled's view). So on to the next attack. Vision 2025 is popular, they must be thinking, so let's create the impression that these councilors are out to derail Tulsa's express train to prosperity. I suspect they are using focus groups and polls to see which accusations will do the most damage to the Reform Alliance.

    The assertion which is the foundation of this story -- that four of the five Reform Alliance councilors opposed all or part of Vision 2025 at one time or another -- is so broad as to be meaningless, as it would include anyone who publicly expressed, for example, a moment's doubt about the wisdom of the $350 million subsidy proposed for Boeing or the value of building new swimming pools when we can't open the pools we already have.

    Of the Reform Alliance, only Sam Roop was the only one publicly and uncritically supportive of the entire package. Chris Medlock supported propositions 2, 3, and 4. Medlock opposed the Boeing proposition -- which didn't come to fruition anyway -- and expressed concern only about matters of oversight and the handling of money with both City and County involved. He is also concerned that, as key decisions are made about City of Tulsa Vision projects, that the elected representatives of the people, not the unelected advisory committees, have the final say.

    Jack Henderson started out in opposition, but ultimately supported the entire package. I don't know where Roscoe Turner and Jim Mautino stood -- they weren't elected officials when the package was before the voters, and they weren't involved publicly in the debate. By the time the election came along, the debate and election was in the past. I do know that they are very concerned about infrastructure problems in their underserved districts, and I suspect that they would place basic infrastructure well ahead of lifestyle amenities on the city priority list. Whatever concerns these councilors may have about the projects and their implementation, everything points to a desire on their part to make these projects successful at accomplishing their purpose of reviving Tulsa's economic prospects.

    The notion that someone who opposed part or even all of Vision 2025 would work to frustrate its completion is nonsense, unless you buy into the paranoid notion that those who opposed Vision 2025 hate our city and want to see it die. (For those who do buy into that, you might want to make yourself a tinfoil hat for protection against mind-control rays.)

    As a spokesman for the opposition to Vision 2025, I think I am qualified to speak on this matter. We didn't oppose Vision 2025 because we opposed the individual projects per se -- if we could have had them without raising taxes and without raising government operating expenses, our objections would disappear. We opposed Vision 2025 because we believed (and still believe) that raising sales taxes is not the right way to grow the economy; because we believed that the projects would not solve our short term jobs problem nor lay a foundation for future prosperity; because we believed that public improvements should be funded within existing revenue streams, as existing sales taxes and bond issues expired; because we were concerned that a new arena would be a drain on the public treasury, not a boon; because we oppose favoring certain companies with hundreds of millions of dollars while neglecting the needs of homegrown small businesses; because we think it unwise to put entertainment and leisure facilities ahead of basic infrastructure and public safety.

    Now that the tax has passed and all but the Boeing part has gone into effect, those of us who opposed Vision 2025 are committed to making sure that the projects are built as promised, that there is adequate oversight on how the money is spent and managed, that Vision 2025 contracts aren't distributed based on political favoritism, but based on who can provide the best value to the taxpayer. I don't think the arena will fix downtown, but I made suggestions on places to put it that would create more synergy with developments in Brady Heights and the Blue Dome District, and I am pleased that a world-class architect was chosen to design the facility.

    In the same spirit, the Council's Reform Alliance is simply concerned that what Tulsa city government does is done right, for the benefit of all Tulsans, not just a favored few. Why would the Mayor, the Cockroach Caucus, or the Tulsa Whirled have a problem with that?

    In the full-court press to secure the reappointment of Jim Cameron and Lou Reynolds to the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority, the Whirled and others have repeatedly praised the two for their role in settling the lawsuit with poultry companies over poultry waste pollution in the watershed of Lakes Spavinaw and Eucha, major sources for Tulsa drinking water. Their leadership, we are told, is why the City must have them continue their service on the TMUA board, and why it was irresponsible for the City Council to reject their reappointment.

    Just how good was the settlement they achieved for the City of Tulsa? Here's the front page from the July 17, 2003 Tulsa Whirled (jump page here):

    The city of Tulsa and its utility authority will receive $7.5 million from six poultry companies the city sued over pollution in creeks and streams that feed two city water-supply reservoirs, Lake Spavinaw and Lake Eucha. The money will be used to pay the city’s attorney fees and litigation expenses, with none left to reimburse the city for the $4 million it has spent treating taste and odor problems in its water supply.

    Of the $7.5 million, $200,000 will go to the city for out-of-pocket expenses, and the remaining $7.3 million will go to Oklahoma City law firm McKinney & Stringer. The firm is receiving $600,000 for out-of-pocket costs and the rest in cash and deferred payments, said Jim Cameron, Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority chairman.

    Some deal. $7.3 million in attorney's fees but no reimbursement for the the cost of dealing with the damage the City of Tulsa suffered. The spinners argue that we got the poultry integrators to agree to clean up the watershed -- or rather, not to make it worse -- but it remains to be seen whether that will come to pass. The money Tulsa spent to make its once-pristine water palatable again is a tangible loss that was not addressed by the settlement. As long as the lawyers are happy, right?

    400,000 people live in Tulsa, and there is no compelling reason why these two gentlemen should be selected over the remaining 399,998 to serve on this board.

    Full court press on Roop

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    Will he or won't he? Will City Councilor Sam Roop continue to stand firm with the bipartisan majority alliance which is working to open and clean up Tulsa city government? Or will his knees buckle under the pressure of a coordinated PR effort to get him to abandon the reform process which has been his goal throughout his long tenure on the Council?

    The Whirled has run an article or an editorial nearly every day over the last two weeks trashing the City Council's majority, principally over their refusal to approve Mayor LaFortune's reappointment of Lou Reynolds and Jim Cameron to the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority (TMUA) board. Sam Roop figures prominently in every article, including being the one councilor whose name appears in a David Simpson cartoon portraying the Council majority as running a torture chamber. Early this last week, KRMG talk show host John E. L. Frette (who uses the stage name "John Erling") phoned staffers at the City Council office to inquire about the process for recalling a councilor, and then launched an on-air campaign focusing on turning Councilor Sam Roop out of office.

    Last Sunday Tulsa Whirled editorialist Ken Neal called the Council majority a "wrecking crew" and urged Mayor Bill LaFortune to use his "bully pulpit" to pressure the Council into approving the reappointment of Reynolds and Cameron. Lo and behold, Mayor LaFortune spoke to the Tulsa Rotary Club this week and made a special point to praise Reynolds and Cameron and urge their reappointment. Either the Mayor is doing Ken Neal's bidding, or they are both part of a coordinated offensive to break the Council majority and get Cameron and Reynolds reappointed.

    (Anyone else find it ironic that the Whirled would call anyone else a wrecking crew when the Whirled is in the process of wrecking two more downtown buildings?)

    And now today, Janet Pearson of the Whirled's editorial board, in a display of Olympic-class synchronized smearing with Mr. Frette, threatens that there is a groundswell of support to remove the majority councilors by recall, in an opinion piece with the subhead, "Is there a people's revolt in the making?" She repeats in a single paragraph the same old slams. Once again, at the end of the piece, the focus is on Sam Roop:

    There's some reason for hope in the short term. Some observers think Roop, who showed he has genuine leadership and statesmanlike abilities in previous years, might come to his senses and distance himself from the fractious faction. There have been recent signs he is willing to rejoin the progressive and rational side.

    Janet's playing "good cop" to Ken Neal's "bad cop", evidently.

    What you are seeing is a full-out PR offensive to trash the Council, to cast doubt on their investigation of the Tulsa Airport Authority, and to pressure Sam Roop into joining the Cockroach Caucus. The offensive appears to be coordinated by Schnake Turnbo Frank, the politically-connected PR firm that ran the Vision 2025 campaign. Earlier this week, a businessman told me that his firm pays what he described as exorbitant monthly consulting fees to Schnake Turnbo, because of the firm's connections with the Tulsa Whirled -- it's a way to ensure that favorable stories are published about the company and that unfavorable stories would be suppressed. We can certainly understand why you'd want to have a firm like that beating the drum for you.

    Steve Turnbo, the firm's CEO, headed up the PR effort to get public funds for for Great Plains Airlines, also serving as the airline's spokesman. He was seen recently at the City Council offices with Great Plains CEO David Johnson, looking to speak with any City Councilors they could find.

    Margaret Frette (alias "Margaret Erling") is the wife of the radio talk show host mentioned above, who uses his stage name in her career as a lobbyist, is a lobbyist for Great Plains Airlines at the State Capitol. She had a key role in persuading legislators to subsidize the startup airline. The investment made by Great Plains in hiring her appears to continue to pay dividends, as her husband is using his microphone to put the pressure on Councilor Sam Roop, who happens to be heading the Council investigation into the Tulsa Airport Authority and their dealings with Great Plains Airlines.

    (Another interesting connection: She was with Schnake Turnbo before going out on her own. And here is her most recent lobbyist registration form, filed on June 24, 2004, and links to all the forms she has filed since the beginning of 2003.)

    So why the focus on Sam Roop? Not only is Roop the key councilor on the airport investigation, but he is seen as the likeliest to break with the rest of the bipartisan Council majority. Roop is by temperament conciliatory. He does not like what he calls power politics. Just before this spring's city elections, he refused to press the issue of the zoning protest petition process because the timing would make some of his colleagues, who opposed this basic protection for property owners, vulnerable to defeat in the elections.

    Following the Council's July 29 vote to deny reappointment to Cameron and Reynolds, Roop was approached by Council Chairman Randy Sullivan to persuade him to move to reconsider the reappointments at a special meeting on Thursday, August 5, at 4 p.m. Roop attempted to put the item on the agenda, but due to a posting error, the item could not be considered because there was not sufficient public notice. Roop actually made the motion to reconsider, which was seconded by Sullivan, who was chairing the meeting -- an unusual departure from tradition. Councilor Roscoe Turner called attention to the posting error, and Council Attorney Drew Rees noted that this was the same situation as the motion to reconsider approval of the Owasso water line, when City Attorney Martha Rupp Carter ruled that acting without proper notice put the Council in danger of violating the open meeting act.

    (Mayor LaFortune showed up at this same meeting to denounce the Council for their refusal to approve his reappointment of Cameron and Reynolds. Sadly, the performance was not captured by the TGOV camera -- it was already in the Council room for the 6 p.m. regular meeting.)

    I've followed Sam Roop's career closely, and I've seen him withstand an amazing amount of pressure from the Whirled, from Mayor Savage, and the rest of the city establishment. He has suffered in years past from the lack of a majority of councilors to support his efforts to scrutinize and reform city government. Now that he has the support of four other reform-minded councilors, I am hopeful that he will remain a pillar of this bipartisan coalition, rather than seek refuge in the empty promises of the enemies of reform. Time will tell.

    "I'm melting! Melting!"

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    "Who would have thought that some little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?"

    The Tulsa Whirled editorial board is madder than the Wicked Witch of the East when Dorothy doused her with water. Read over the witch's speech -- that's a pretty good fit with what the Whirledlings, the Chamber Pots, and the whole Cockroach Caucus must be thinking right now. They just don't have total control of City Hall any more, and does it ever frustrate them.

    You need to keep in mind that in the months to come the Cockroach Caucus will do anything and say anything to restore things the way they were before the voters of Tulsa voted to take their city back and elect leaders who would look out for all Tulsans, not just the favored few. They may stop short of outright lies, but remember that media bias expresses itself most forcefully in the selection of what will be reported, and in the careful selection of descriptive words to insinuate meanings that can't be supported by the plain facts.

    The Whirled whined today about the Council's allocation of this year's Community Development Block Grant funds. The Whirled's main problem seems to be the fact that there was a debate over how to allocate the funds and this debate was held in full view of the public.

    It's funny that the Whirled takes the opportunity to condemn the Council's majority (they call them the "Gang of Five") when the final allocation passed by a 7-2 vote. The only two holdouts were the Whirled's most favorite Councilors. They passed up the opportunity to condemn Councliors Christiansen and Sullivan, who also participated in the reallocation of funds from the original recommendation.

    CDBG is a chunk of money from the Federal Government to be used to help people who live in low-income areas of cities. As a "block grant", it's left up to the city government to decide, within Federal regulations, how the money is to be spent. Some of the money goes for projects which will be run by non-profits, other money is spent by the City itself, for example through the Tulsa Development Authority for "urban renewal" projects.

    Under Mayor Susan Savage, the allocation process was simple: The Mayor decided how all the money would be split up and submitted her recommendation to the Council. For the Council to deviate from the Mayor's allocation, it would mean taking money from an organization already expecting to receive it, therefore making the Council the bad guys. To get CDBG money, it helped if your organization's director traveled in the Mayor's social circles. It helped even more if your organization was NOT faith-based in any way.

    With the change in administrations in 2002, the Council adopted a new process that has worked to ensure that the same sorts of organizations continued to get the money. A committee run by the Whirled's favorite Councilors -- Susan Neal and Tom Baker -- and staffed by the aide they share, and including "subject matter experts" selected by Neal and Baker, made the initial recommendation for allocations. The Mayor's Office had a hand in this initial recommendation as well. The recommendation then went through the normal Council committee process, and like any other motion, was open for amendment when it came up for consideration by the full Council.

    Councilor Medlock had this to say about the process on the TulsaNow forums:

    The ultimate problem is, there are far too many worthy programs and projects chasing too few dollars. Many of our more successful social service programs have become reliant on CDBG for most, if not all, of their operating expenses.

    As such, it becomes very difficult for new programs to get funding, as well as one time projects like what the Arts & Humanities Council and Neighbor for Neighbor are proposing.

    The difficult choice we are left with is, defund ongoing programs to fully fund one time projects, or offer a small percentage of what is needed and hope that each group can leverage the public infusion of funds with enough private and foundation money to be successful.

    Never a fun time of year.

    One observer says that Baker and Neal, who represent affluent areas, approach the process as if the social service agencies are the target beneficiaries for these funds. In other words, they tend to see the agencies as ends in themselves, and in terms of the people who run them and work for them, rather than means to an end. Councilors like Henderson, Medlock, and Turner, who represent most of the poorer neighborhoods, regard the poor and needy as the people who should be served by this money, and aren't necessarily concerned about the impact on an agency, which is just a means to an end.

    "Grilled" Schuller?

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    UPDATE 8/9/2004: After viewing the complete segment of the hearing on TGOV 24, I've added some detail and reorganized this entry somewhat. The conversation between the Council committee and Stephen Schuller was so bland, so calm, and so brief that it makes the Whirled's hysterical editorial look even more ridiculous. Just as C-SPAN began to destroy the mainstream media's monopoly on coverage of Congress, TGOV (channel 24 on Cox Cable) gives Tulsa citizens the chance to see for themselves how the Council is conducting itself and to compare reality to the Whirled's spin and bias.

    UPDATE 8/16/2004: Received an e-mail from J. Scott Dickman, who is mentioned below, with a correction about his employment.

    Your comments dated August 9, 2004 stated that I am the Chief Financial Officer of Avalon Oil plc ("Avalon Oil"). Please be advised that I resigned as an officer and member of the board of directors of Avalon Oil effective June 30, 2001. I remain Of Counsel with the firm of Titus, Hillis & Reynolds as well as Chairman and C.E.O. of Pinnacle Packaging Company, Inc. here in Oklahoma and Oracle Packaging Company in North Carolina, Georgia, Illinois & Ohio.

    I have made appropriate changes below.

    "Appointee grilled by city councilors" was the headline over the Whirled's Wednesday story about Tuesday's Council Committee meeting, in which attorney Stephen A. Schuller was presented to the Council for reappointment to the Tulsa Authority for the Recovery of Energy, which handles trash collection in the northwestern part of the City and oversees operation of the controversial trash-to-energy incinerator on West 21St Street. He was first appointed in November 2002 by Mayor LaFortune. Schuller is a zoning and real estate attorney who appears regularly before city boards representing clients seeking zoning relief or amendment.

    From what I saw of the committee meeting, the Councilors asked a few questions about Schuller's background. Here's the way it was recorded in the meeting notes on the Council's website. (No way to link directly, but search agendas for "Schuller" and you'll find it.)

    CM [Chris Medlock] asked about Schuller's specilization as an attorney. Real estate and international law was the answer. He was also asked about the scope of the TARE. Supervises in the trash collection of the NW quadrant of the City. Contract for renewal for energy expires soon. He gave a brief operational history. Positive comments were made as well as a remark on his attendance. Bankruptcy issue in the past has been resolved.

    The positive comments came from Councilor Randy Sullivan, who spoke of his personal knowledge of Schuller. Christiansen made the comment about his attendance record, missing only one meeting since his appointment. "Bankruptcy issue" refers to the bankruptcy of the company operating the trash-to-energy plant.

    The Whirled's story adds that Schuller was asked about "a specific client of the law firm for which he works." I'm not sure why the Whirled story omitted this detail, but the question was from Councilor Roscoe Turner, and it was whether Schuller's law firm still represented the Tulsa Whirled. (See below.) Schuller replied that the attorney who represented the Whirled left the firm about the time Schuller joined the firm in 1998.

    The Council didn't reject Stephen Schuller's reappointment, the first presented to the Council under their new rule for appointments. They've just asked some questions. No one's voice was raised. No accusations were made. Medlock said that the Council may want to have Schuller reply to written questions, in accord with the Council's new approach to vetting appointments to and authorities. Schuller replied that that he'd be happy to answer further questions. The agenda item was complete in about 10 minutes. No one was upset or distressed.

    The facts don't provide any justification for the use of the word "grilled" in the headline, nor does the text of the Whirled's own story, but that doesn't stop the editorial board from fulminating about a "witch hunt" in the following day's lead editorial:

    The latest outrage was on Tuesday, when two members of the Gang of Five needlessly and shamelessly grilled an authority member about his work and background for no good reason. The latest witch hunt comes on the heels of the council’s 5-4 rejection of two long-time authority members who were treated in a similarly contemptible fashion....

    If there were some reason to suspect Schuller is unfit to serve on the TARE board, that would be one thing. But there is not. In fact he, like the two others receiving shabby treatment in recent days, has served respectably and honorably.

    So from the Whirled's perspective, asking polite questions about an appointee to a board -- an important city board which regulates trash rates and will soon be deciding whether to renew a contract with the operator of the trash-to-energy incinerator -- is needless, shameless, and contemptible. As we know, the Whirled's standard for the ideal city councilor is a lobotomized monkey, wired up to be controlled from the Whirled's offices.

    The Whirled also treats an appointment to a board as a right -- from their perspective, the burden of proof should be on those who wish to take it away. Instead, the burden of proof ought to be on the Mayor to make the case for any appointment he presents to the Council. The Council should diligently inquire about a nominee's business interests and look for any potential conflict of interest regarding the nominee's interests or those of his partners and associates. In fact, the Council, on July 29th, amended their rules to lengthen the time between when the Mayor presents a nominee and when the nominee may be considered by the full Council, so that there is time to vet a nominee properly.

    The Whirled maintains that Schuller, Reynolds, and Coleman have served respectably and honorably. Perhaps they have, but do they expect the City Council and the people of Tulsa whom they represent to accept that assertion as fact?

    The Whirled's hissy fit about this is suspicious. At the very least, this is part of a campaign to discredit and defeat the members of the Council's working majority in 2006, and also to discredit any results from the Council's investigation of the Tulsa Airport Authority.

    SO who is Stephen Schuller?

    Mr. Schuller has some interesting connections: Mr. Schuller is with the law firm of Boone, Smith, Davis, Hurst & Dickman. The late Byron V. Boone, whose father founded the firm, was a partner in the firm and was also for 30 years the publisher of the Tulsa Whirled. The "Dickman" in the firm name is J. Jerry Dickman, who is the father of J. Scott Dickman, who is of counsel with Barkley Titus Hillis and Reynolds, the current law firm which represents the Tulsa Whirled. J. Scott Dickman was (prior to June 30, 2001) also Chief Financial Officer of Avalon Oil Plc, of which Council Chairman Randy Sullivan is CEO. It's a small world.

    Schuller is a former law partner of Brent Mills and together they incorporated Spartan Aviation Industries, which now owns Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology (formerly Spartan School of Aeronautics). Mills is Spartan's chief operating officer, is registered agent for Spartan Housing Industries, LLC, and was a classmate of Councilor Susan Neal in Leadership Oklahoma Class XV.

    Schuller represented the Guier Woods neighborhood in F&M's 2001 attempt to get zoning approval for a branch at 71st & Harvard. He was a planning district co-chairman back in the early '90s and represented some of his own neighbors to stop Southwestern Bell from installing a cell tower in the bell tower of Southside Christian Church.

    The TARE board is very important. Decisions by previous boards have resulted in big trash rate increases in recent years, and the upcoming decisions on the trash-to-energy plant will have an impact on Tulsa's fiscal health and environmental quality for decades to come. The Council should continue to do what we elected them to do back in March -- ensure that the people running our city agencies are doing so with the best interests of the citizens at heart. There's no harm in asking and answering some polite questions.

    Tulsa's own C-SPAN

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    Long before Fox News, before Rush Limbaugh did talk radio, before the emergence of the blogosphere, even before CNN, there was C-SPAN, which gave America the opportunity to see for themselves how Congress works, unmediated by newspapers and TV networks, and unmodified by unanimous consent requests to "revise and extend" remarks in the Congressional Record. C-SPAN marked its 25th anniversary this year. Without even trying, C-SPAN deserves a lot of credit for the end of Democrat rule in the House of Representatives in the 1994 election.

    For many years, Tulsa's weekly City Council meetings were broadcast using C-SPAN's channel, preempting the network's programming for as long as the meeting lasts. Now the City has a dedicated channel on Cox Cable Tulsa, TGOV channel 24, which broadcasts the regular City Council meeting, City Council Tuesday committee meetings, and meetings of the City of Tulsa Board Of Adjustment and the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission. The channel also features some specially produced programs, like "This Week at City Hall" and "Talk of the Town". Last week's schedule is online here. I suspect they will follow this general pattern, although adjustments may occur as meetings in a given week are longer or shorter. Up-to-date listings should be on the TV Guide Channel (channel 2 on Cox Cable); TV Guide Channel's listings are also online -- free registration.

    This is a wonderful development, as it gives us a chance to see for ourselves what goes on at these meetings and how our public officials are conducting themselves. Bright light tends to send the cockroaches scurrying away, and we've noticed that a camera in the room has an interesting effect. And I imagine this meeting might have been different had the cameras been running.

    Speaking of bugs, there are still a few to be worked out. Remember the Saturday Night Live parody of C-SPAN's coverage of a 1992 Democratic Presidential debate? The intro included the line, "Our C-SPAN camera -- the only one we have -- is there." It seems that TGOV only has one camera at its disposal, which it must use at the Council Committee room for those meetings and over at the Francis Campbell Council chambers, where the regular meetings of the Council, BoA, and TMAPC are held. Remember this -- it will be important in a later item.

    Catching up with the Council

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    Between celebrating my son's birthday and playing hosts to some friends passing through town, I've gotten behind on filling you in on all that's been happening down at City Hall. It's been an eventful week or two, and if you only get your local news from the Tulsa Whirled, you don't know the entire story. (Why should that surprise anyone?)

    In the next few entries, I'll cover the Council's "grilling" of Stephen Schuller, the awarding of Community Development Block Grants, the attempt to get the Council to reconsider their rejection of Lou Reynolds and Jim Cameron, and the issue of the arena location and eminent domain. If I have any energy left, I'll tackle Ken Neal's hysterical opinion piece in today's Whirled.

    A Council that can say "no"

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    Tulsa is a city where the conventional wisdom says the only way to accomplish anything is to agree with everything. Many public figures who opposed the Vision 2025 tax increase kept their opposition to themselves for fear that their opposition would jeopardize the projects and causes they supported. I'm amazed at the number of times a public official has told me he felt unable to vote according to dictates of his conscience.

    So it was heartening to see the City Council decline to reappoint two members of the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority (TMUA). I have nothing against Jim Cameron and Lou Reynolds, but the recent discussions over annexation and extension of water lines to Tulsa's booming suburbs have revealed a difference of basic philosophy between the Council majority and the TMUA board members. The Council majority believes that the City of Tulsa's water authority ought to be first and foremost concerned with promoting the City of Tulsa's growth and prosperity. The TMUA seems bent on promoting growth outside Tulsa's city limits.

    Article V of the City Charter describes a Tulsa Utility Board, a board of six members plus the mayor ex-officio. This board has a great deal of power -- if the board passes a rate increase, the Council is bound by charter to approve it.

    The Tulsa Utility Board may exercise full, complete and exclusive rights, powers, and duties in performing each and all and every of the things to be done and performed in the construction, extension, improvement, operation, management, and maintenance of the waterworks system and system of sanitary sewers and sewage disposal plants of the city. It shall be the mandatory duty of the Tulsa Utility Board to fix and establish rates and prices for services rendered and commodities sold sufficient to meet the mandatory provisions elsewhere provided in this Article and it shall be the mandatory duty of the Council to approve all such rates and prices herein authorized to be fixed and established by the Tulsa Utility Board. The Tulsa Utility Board may enter into such contracts necessary for the performance of its duties and may appoint, employ, and contract for the services of superintendents, attorneys, managers, hydraulic, civil and management engineers, and such employees necessary for the performance of its duties, all subject to the approval of the Mayor.

    In 1984, the City of Tulsa signed a 50-year-lease with the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority to operate and maintain the city's water system. The TMUA was created as a public trust with the City of Tulsa as the beneficiary. You can read all the details, including the lease agreements and amendments, here, in Title 39, Chapter 3 of Tulsa Revised Ordinances. I haven't gotten all the way through it yet. I have the impression that the membership of the Tulsa Utility Board and the TMUA are identical, although I don't know that for sure. But it appears that they always meet together.

    Given the power wielded by this board, when unelected board members are at odds with the City's elected representatives, it makes sense for the elected officials to use the power at their disposal to effect change, since the elected officials are directly accountable to the voters. In this case, the City Council used its power not to ratify the Mayor's reappointment.

    The Cockroach Caucus was scandalized by this development, according to articles in Friday's (jump page here) and Saturday's (jump page here) Whirled. The common thread of their comments seemed to be that mayoral appointees deserve reappointment by default. There were complaints, too, that the rejection came without any indication that the reappointments might be in jeopardy, although as I watched a rerun of the committee meeting (on Tulsa Cable channel 24) earlier in the week, I noticed that councilors were asking some detailed and pointed questions about the operation of the TMUA. It was funny to read Tom Baker's complaint that the five voted "no" without hesitation or discussion, given that his vote and the votes of others in the 71st and Harvard case came without a coherent explanation of their decision.

    By a 5-3 vote last Thursday night the Council established an investigation of airport operations. Henderson, Medlock, Turner, Roop, and Mautino voted in favor; the usual members of the Cockroach Caucus (Baker, Sullivan, Neal) voted against, seemingly on the grounds that it would be effective at uncovering wrongdoing. Bill Christiansen expressed his support of the investigation but abstained -- his business is an airport tenant. If you don't believe elections make a difference, look at that list and realize that the vote would have failed if David Patrick and Art Justis had been reelected instead of Roscoe Turner and Jim Mautino.

    The Mayor's response has been interesting. Not long ago he had threatened to veto the investigation unless the Council passed his annexation plan. Now he says he's fully committed to the investigation and has his own fraud investigator looking into it, and he wants to see coordination and cooperation between the Council's investigation and his own. A cynic might wonder about the commitment of someone who was willing to treat an investigation into fraud, waste, and abuse as a bargaining chip. An even more cynical cynic might wonder if the purpose of hiring an investigator and asking for cooperation was to be able to learn where the investigation was headed and to tip someone off before the investigation gets too close.

    In any case, the Council's investigation will move forward. The question now is who will make up the committee. I would hope for a lineup of Roop, Medlock, and Turner. Medlock in particular has the kind of analytical mind and an eye for spotting patterns and connections that the investigation will need. He will not shy away from asking tough questions and cross-examinination, as we saw in the F&M Bank hearing. I don't know how much confidence I'd have in an investigation that didn't include him.

    There have been some calls to exclude Roop and Turner from the committee since they voted for the city's support of the Great Plains deal. I don't see that as a problem, and I'd be concerned that they would be replaced by other councilors who won't be as determined to get to the bottom of things. Roop and Turner believed at the time that Great Plains would be a good thing for Tulsa; they realize now something went terribly wrong and so they support the investigation, which will not, in any event, be limited to the Great Plains deal. In no event should a councilor who voted against the investigation be made a member of the panel -- I would be concerned that said councilor would obstruct rather than aid the investigation. And keep in mind that the Council will only be investigating -- any leads on criminal activity would be forwarded to the appropriate prosecutor.

    Oddly pleasant, as I walked through the Tulsa International Airport late Friday night, to be able to put two quarters into a paper box and pull out a copy of the latest Tulsa Beacon, with the headline, "Feds will help with local airport probe." This story and the other above-the-fold story ("Councilor thwarts annexation") tell the tale of a City Council majority that is working to protect the city's investments, despite the sniping of the Whirled and other establishment voices.

    The Council will likely move ahead with its own probe of the airport, with assurances from the U. S. Department of Transportation's Office of Inspector General (OIG) that the Council's investigation will not be a hindrance, but will be welcome. The City has interests in the operation of Tulsa's airports that aren't matters of federal concern, and the OIG appears to be eager to pass along information about matters that fit this description. (Jim Myers of the Whirled's Washington bureau wrote about this last Wednesday -- jump page here.)

    The Beacon's story has a very concise and comprehensible explanation of the land transaction that the OIG is interested in:

    The City of Tulsa transferred 344 acres of land adjacent to the airport to the TIA so that TIA could use the land as collateral for the loan to Great Plains. On December 21, 2000, the Bank of Oklahoma and TIA entered into a loan agreement to issue two revenue notes of $15 million each. TIA then provided a loan totaling $30 million to Great Plains.

    Also on December 21, 2000, the Bank, TIA, and Tulsa Airports Improvement Trust [TAIT] signed a separate “support agreement” in which the airport agreed that if Great Plains defaulted on its loan, the airport would purchase the property for an amount equal to the outstanding debt owed by Great Plains plus any other unpaid amounts due under the loan agreement (i.e., interest and collection costs, attorney fees).

    In 2001, Great Plains paid back one of the $15 million revenue notes using state-issued tax credits. Since the agreements were signed, the bank has disbursed $8.25 million to Great Plains from the second $15 million note. The remaining $6.75 million was held in an escrow account to protect the Bank’s interest in the loan. Under the terms of the note, Great Plains was required to make monthly payments until December 21, 2003, at which time it was to have paid the outstanding loan amount in full.

    On the annexation issue, there was and still is potential for a compromise that will protect the City's investments without trampling on the property owners who don't want to be annexed and without committing the city to expensive infrastructure improvements. Unfortunately, rather than working toward that compromise, Council Chairman Randy Sullivan went back on his word and put the item on the agenda when one of the councilors opposing annexation was scheduled to be out of town. Although Sullivan's proposal would not have annexed all of the north annexation area, it would have created a wide enough fenceline to allow forced annexation after November 1 (the deadline created by new state law), and it would have committed the City to building infrastructure in the area even before it is annexed. (For whatever reason, the proposed ordinance is not accessible online.)

    There is an area we should consider annexing or leaving Tulsa the option of annexing forcibly at a later date, and that's the Cherokee Industrial Park, which represents a significant investment by the City in infrastructure. We also ought to consider annexing (with landowners' permission) a strip along US 75 where commercial development would be encouraged. That's the kind of development we need to boost city sales tax receipts. Housing and industrial development will only help the city to the extent that it indirectly encourages retail development. These facilities don't generate sales tax -- industrial facilities may generate some use tax receipts -- but they do generate property tax, which would mostly go to help the schools in Owasso and encourage more people to live and shop in Owasso.

    We missed the chance to annex a commercial area at the principal highway entrance to Tulsa -- I-44 east of the Turner Turnpike gate. Owners would have preferred to be taken into Tulsa if they had to be annexed, but instead Sapulpa lassoed the area with its fenceline and recently annexed it, prompting a group of property owners to sue Sapulpa.

    Berryhill residents reportedly would prefer to be in the City of Tulsa rather than in Sand Springs -- we should take advantage of that willingness while we can.

    The Whirled's editorial board -- the propaganda arm of the Cockroach Caucus -- pooh-poohed the efforts of the City Council to formalize the powers granted to it by the City Charter to conduct investigations into the operations of city government. The investigatory power is one of the three critical roles the Council plays in our system of government -- representing the diversity of the city, making the laws of the city, and overseeing the execution of those laws. The Whirled labeled the members of the Cockroach Caucus "the grownups on the council" for resisting progress. The real grownups are the majority bipartisan coalition which continues to work toward the maturation of the City Council as an institution, the full realization of the City Council's role in the checks and balances of city government, something that was promised to the citizens of Tulsa when we approved the new Charter in 1989.

    If the Council is going to exercise its responsibility to investigate, it must be able to enforce lawful orders, such as subpoenas. "Subpoena" comes from two Latin words which mean "under penalty." In the absence of a penalty for failure to comply, a subpoena is not a subpoena.

    The Whirled incorrectly states that the Council would become judge and jury in cases of contempt or disruptive behavior. That indicates the Whirledlings haven't bothered to read the ordinances. (They actually get paid for their opinions. I don't get paid a penny for this, and I still take the time to read something before I comment on it. It's not that hard, but it does mean they'd have less time for sipping whiskey and swapping stories down at the Press Club.)

    For you Whirledlings reading this, I will make it easy for you.

    Here is a link to the text of the proposed ordinance to define contempt of Council and set penalties for said offense: CLICK HERE, KEN!

    Here is a link to the text of the proposed ordinance to define disorderly behavior in Council meetings and set penalties for said offense: CLICK HERE, JULIE!

    Notice that a charge of contempt of Council is simply referred to the City Attorney, who must decide whether to press charges. If filed, the charge would be heard in municipal court. The Council merely makes the charge, the roles of judge and jury are filled, appropriately, by a judge and a jury, not by the Council.

    Article II, Section 4 of the City Charter empowers the Council to issue fines for disruptive behavior. (CLICK HERE, JANET!) The proposed ordinance defines the kind of behavior that qualifies as disruptive. The terms and conditions specified in the ordinance line up exactly with the terms of the Charter.

    This is a typically lazy slap from the Whirled editorial board. They're uncomfortable with the idea of a Council committed to making government work for all the people, not just a favored few. We know what kind of councilors the Whirled likes, and we're glad their choices aren't in the majority any longer.

    We are hopeful that the days of Tulsa as a banana republic -- a land of Marcos-style crony capitalism -- are numbered, thanks to diligent public servants like Councilors Henderson, Medlock, Turner, Roop, and Mautino.

    The Tulsa Beacon has an extensive article detailing more problems with the management at Tulsa Airport, reported by the supervisor of landscape maintenance. There's a recurring theme: Governmental authority puts out a request for bids with estimated value so low and requirements so stringent that most potential bidders are deterred. One favored bidder applies -- perhaps the sole bidder, or else the other bids are disqualified on one technicality or another, or else the favored bidder bids less than he needs to do the job -- and is awarded the contract. Then the winning bidder isn't required to meet the terms of the contract, or is granted "change orders" to raise the ultimate value of the contract well above the original bid. That's the accusation anyway, and you hear stories like this about many public authorities in the area.

    I love this quote from the whistleblower:

    “The foxes are watching the hen house at the Tulsa International Airport,” Johnson said. “The Mayor believes if he supplies training that these foxes will become vegetarians and therefore they will stop eating the chickens. I do not care how well or how long you train a fox – he is always going to eat chickens. The foxes at the airport have believed for too long that they own the chickens and can do whatever they want with them.”

    Is the Mayor hamstrung?

    |

    Mayor Bill LaFortune acted late Wednesday to place Tulsa Airport Authority director Brent Kitchen on administrative leave with pay, apparently with a view toward removing him entirely. A lot of people, particularly those who were part of the Mayor's performance review team, have been asking him to clean house at the airport for months.

    Because the Tulsa Airport Authority is a public trust and not directly a part of city government, it was unclear to me whether Kitchen was an employee of TAA or the City. Since the Mayor acted to suspend Kitchen, it appears that he is a city employee and therefore under civil service protection.

    Here's the Mayor on why he acted and why he waited so long (jump page here:

    Speaking at press conferences before and after a two-hour executive session of the Tulsa Airport Authority, LaFortune said the federal investigation yielded troubling management issues at the airport.

    LaFortune said civil service regulations prevent him from going into detail about what triggered his decision to remove Kitchen. Likewise, he said, he couldn't estimate the timing of a settlement or the process the city would use to name a new airports director.

    The mayor, however, said the federal investigation was key in his decision to remove Kitchen, who has been airports director since February 1988 and an airport executive since 1986. ...

    As a former prosecutor and judge, LaFortune said, "You have to have all the evidence in your file. There are people who have opinions and people who can act on opinions in a public forum. I have to act on facts.

    "You don't just fire people. It can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in litigation costs if I don't act on facts."

    Now, this gives us a useful insight into the Mayor's mindset. He seems to be applying a presumption that a city employee deserves to keep his job unless there is some iron-clad proof of malfeasance. That must be why nearly all of Susan Savage's department heads are still in place, more than two years after Susan Savage left office.

    A lot of us who supported LaFortune expected him to start fresh with the best new ideas borrowed from successful mayors like Rudy Giuliani, Indianapolis' Steven Goldsmith and Jersey City's Bret Schundler. We also expected him to clean house and and replace the department heads with a team of people who believed in those ideas and would work wholeheartedly to carry them out.

    The City Charter is an obstacle to cleaning house. Article X target="_blank">Article X includes a lot of detail about the civil service system that ought to be in an ordinance, where it would be easier to adjust. The charter enshrines the notion of seniority -- if jobs get cut in a department, first hired is first fired, even if the newest hire has needed skills.

    Nevertheless, there is a system for dismissing or reassigning or demoting a civil servant, and hopefully the members of the civil service commission understand that the TAA administration is ultimately responsiblity for the mess there, and that failure of leadership is sufficient cause for removing those in charge.

    But the Mayor must take the initiative to remove a department head. No one else can do it for him. Is his reluctance to act swiftly because he's a natural people pleaser, hesitant to make anyone mad at him? Or is he caught between a rock and a hard place, between the political imperative to respond vigorously to the mess that has been uncovered on the one hand and on the other hand, the desires of some of his political backers to maintain the status quo. Who was it who said, long ago: "So-and-so may be a crook, but he's our crook." There may be some powerful people who find it pleasant and profitable to deal with the current TAA administration and these folks would strenuously object to any changes. The Mayor may be looking for a way to say that his hand was forced -- he didn't pull the trigger, the FAA or the US DOT Inspector General or the Civil Service Commission did it.

    No surprise that the Whirled would heap praise on departing City Attorney Martha Rupp Carter. It was under her leadership that the City Attorney's office intervened in the 71st & Harvard F&M Bank zoning case, putting forth a far-fetched opinion regarding the deadline for protest petitions that contradicted the plain language of the city ordinance. (The publisher of the Whirled is the chairman of F&M Bancorporation.)

    I am informed by a reliable source that the following sentence from Saturday's paper is misleading:

    In January, Tulsa County District Attorney Tim Harris ruled that a dispute over legal bills for work on the black officer's discrimination suit did not violate the state's budget laws.

    Rereading the Whirled's story from January 10, it appears that Harris is saying only that the city only paid the Atlanta law firm what it had contracted with the firm to pay, and in that regard the law wasn't violated. The problem is that the law firm believed the city owed it for the additional work Rupp Carter had authorized beyond the contracted amount, and the firm sued the city to recover that additional amount. That was the issue raised by some city councilors in 2002 -- by obligating the city for money that had not been authorized, Rupp Carter had violated the Municipal Budget Act. In the end, the City had to pay $625,000 to settle the lawsuit. Perhaps because it is a legal settlement, it technically doesn't count as payment for unauthorized services, but that is effectively what that amount represents.

    We understand that the OSBI report spells all this out and makes it clear that Rupp Carter is not blameless in her handling of the matter. We also understand that Rupp Carter's resignation comes within a day or two of renewed efforts to seek the release of that report.

    It would be easy for public officials to let the matter go, as Rupp Carter is no longer going to be a city employee. That would be a mistake for a couple of reasons. Pursuing justice in the matter could deter future City Attorneys from treating the public and their elected officials with contempt. And not dealing with the outgoing City Attorney could come back to haunt us. So many Tulsans were relieved to see Susan Savage apparently leave public life, only to be appalled by her resurrection as Secretary of State. It would be a shame if, by failing to drive a stake through the career of Savage's jogging buddy, city officials allow her to "fail up" into a more prominent and influential position, after her legal advice cost the city and its taxpayers so much.

    Word has reached me that Tulsa City Attorney Martha Rupp Carter has submitted her resignation effective July 1, and will be spending most of the next month using accumulated vacation time. This is great news for our city, and a great opportunity for Mayor Bill LaFortune.

    Rupp Carter, appointed to the City Attorney's office by former Mayor Susan Savage, had a knack for getting the City into expensive legal trouble. The list of decisions which either got the City sued or could have is a long one: handling of outside legal support in the Black Officers' lawsuit, the 71st & Harvard ruling against the neighborhood's protest petition, allowing ex-Councilor David Patrick to remain in office despite the fact that he had not been lawfully elected to a new term, speaking to the press about election allegations against Councilor Roscoe Turner. The City Attorney's office under her direction always seemed to be working in the interests of some person or persons other than the ordinary citizens of this city.

    Some City Councilors tried to give her the heave-ho a few years ago, when she authorized additional legal services to be performed by an Atlanta law firm in the Black Officers' lawsuit, without obtaining budget authorization for the expenditure, in apparent violation of the Oklahoma Municipal Budget Act. She dodged a bullet at the time, and those Councilors, who were doing their job to hold a city officer accountable for the expenditure of taxpayer money, were roundly condemned by the Tulsa Whirled and the rest of the Cockroach Coalition. There is word that an OSBI investigation of Rupp Carter indicates that those Councilors were correct, and that the possible release of that report was a motivating factor in her resignation.

    When I and many others supported Bill LaFortune for Mayor, we never expected him to agree with us on all points, but we did expect him to clean out certain holdovers from the previous administration who had been leading our city down the wrong path. We haven't seen much action in that regard, but Rupp Carter's resignation is a great opportunity, and who is appointed by the Mayor to replace her will speak volumes about his direction for the remainder of his term.

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