Cover Story

Can’t Tell the Players Without a Scorecard? (Printable Version , E-mail to a Friend )
Be informed and vote in the March 7 city primary election
by Michael D. Bates

Primaries are our most unjustly overlooked elections.
A comparison of voter turnout for federal, state, and local elections shows that only about a third to a half of general election voters bother to cast a ballot in the primary. Some of those primary non-voters are registered independent and are ineligible to vote in a party primary, but that doesn’t account for most of the turnout difference.
Trends indicate that most voters who don’t show up for the primary are registered Democrats and Republicans who decide to leave it to other voters to narrow down their choices for the general election. 
One problem with that approach is that in many cases there won’t be a general election. Republican primary voters will choose the next councilors in Districts 2, 7 and 8; Democratic primary voters will have the only choice of councilor in District 1. 
In three more districts, the partisan balance is such that the primary winner is very likely to win the general. District 3 has a Republican candidate, but Gerald Rapson will have an uphill battle in that heavily Democratic northeast Tulsa district against either current incumbent Roscoe Turner or former incumbent David Patrick. In Districts 6 and 9, the Republican nominee is very likely to be the eventual winner.
That leaves only two districts, 4 and 5, and the Mayor’s race where there’s likely to be a competitive general election.
Another reason primaries are important is because the fault lines in city politics don’t neatly follow national party decisions. People who would be political enemies at the state and federal levels find they have common ideas about city priorities. There are factions and subfactions and shifting alliances. If you let others weed out candidates in the primaries, you may find that they’ve left you with a choice between two candidates with different party labels but equally unacceptable views on how to run City Hall.
Here at Urban Tulsa Weekly, we consider the primary election important enough to devote most of this issue to the topic. We hope to provide you with some perspective on the candidates that you won’t find anywhere else.
Because this is a primary preview, we’ve focused on candidates who are in primary races. As for the independent candidates and those Republicans and Democrats who got a bye to the finals, we’ll leave them until next month.
But independent voters shouldn’t feel left out. Everyone will be able to vote on important proposed City Charter amendment which will be on the March 7 ballot, and UTW will tell you all about it.(See accompanying piece, “Independents Can Vote, Too!“, page .)
To dig deeper into the thinking of our candidates, we asked them to respond to a list of 10 tough questions. We weren’t just after a short answer. We wanted them to “show their work,” to engage the issues, and to give us an idea of how they approach a difficult decision. A number of candidates seem to have adopted Rodney King’s slogan--“Can’t we all just get along?”--but the reality is that every significant decision is going to make someone mad.  Voters need to know whose ox an aspiring official is likeliest to gore.
We gave candidates only a few days to get back with us, and in a busy campaign season many punted the assignment. Their lack of participation might in itself might be construed as a statement, or lack of one. Judge for yourself.
There were a few we couldn’t reach by e-mail. (But we ask, if you can’t handle e-mail, do you really belong in city government in the 21^st century?)
We summarize their responses in the articles that follow, but we’ll be posting their full responses on our website, www.urbantulsa.com.
 
 
 
(second piece)
 
 
The UTW “City Campaign 2006” candidate questionnaire
 
Dear candidate for city office,
 
This questionnaire will be different from most others. We aren't as interested in getting short answers as we are in understanding how you think and make decisions. There is no word limit. Use as many words as you need to explain your thinking. We're going to try to find a way to publish complete candidate responses on our website.
We understand that, as a candidate, you're trying to offend as few voters and contributors as possible, but as an elected official, every important decision you make will anger someone. We want to give our readers a preview of how you operate under those conditions.
You may be tempted to answer a question with, "I would have to see the specifics of the proposal before I could tell you what I think." You may be tempted to answer, "That decision will be made before I'm in office." We will treat those sorts of responses as evasions. Instead, we encourage you to tell us what specifics would make such a proposal acceptable or unacceptable. In other words, what are your must-haves and deal-breakers for that initiative?
With that said, here are the questions:
 
1. Suppose the City has $20 million dollars available to build new water and sewer lines. Your choices are to use that money to build new water lines to the suburbs, to build water and sewer mains to undeveloped parts of Tulsa that have been in the city limits for 40 years and still lack city utilities (making it more affordable for developers to build new subdivisions), or to increase capacity and replace lines in parts of Tulsa where the old lines are inadequate. How would you allocate the money among these priorities? Explain your choice.
2. By a 5-4 vote the U. S. Supreme Court said it's constitutional for a city to condemn private property in order to let some other private entity have it for its own use. The Oklahoma legislature plans to limit this use of eminent domain, and the Tulsa City Council has approved a one-year moratorium on this type of condemnation. What limits should be placed on the government's eminent domain powers? Under what circumstances is the use of eminent domain abusive?
3. Thinking of the current members of the City Council, whose work as a member of the Council do you most admire, and why? (If you are a sitting councilor, pick someone other than yourself.)
4. There's a measure of neighborhood livability called the "popsicle test"--"An eight-year-old in the neighborhood should be able to bike to a store to buy a Popsicle without having to battle highway-size streets and freeway-speed traffic." Most Tulsa neighborhoods don't pass this test, and every trip to the store requires the use of a car. Do you think this is a problem, and if so, what would you propose to do about it?
5. Tulsa's homicide rate is twice the national average, and our violent crime rate is 1.83 times the national average. Police investigative units are shorthanded, and the street crimes unit has been disbanded. The suburbs pay their police officers better than Tulsa does. What should the city do to fix this? Where should the city get the money to fix this?
6. The Brookside neighborhood infill plan calls for design guidelines to ensure that new residential and commercial development is compatible with existing development, to preserve the character of the neighborhood. Right now, these design guidelines don't have the force of law. Many cities, including Oklahoma City, have special neighborhood conservation districts in which design guidelines become part of the zoning code. Would you support doing this in Tulsa? If not, what would you do to preserve the character of Tulsa's traditional urban neighborhoods while allowing for new development?
7. Some say that there should be at least one part of Tulsa that is truly urban, where it is possible to live, work, and shop without having to own a car. Do you agree, and if so, what should the city do to help make it happen?
8. In 2008, Tulsa will host the National Preservation Conference, the annual meeting of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Meanwhile, downtown buildings continue to be demolished and paved over for parking. Downtown Tulsa is on Preservation Oklahoma's most endangered list. Does this embarrass you? What should the city do to ensure that there are still some historic buildings around when the preservationists come to town in two years?
9. Some have called for adding "sexual orientation" to the list of protected classes in the City of Tulsa's human rights ordinance (Title 5, Chapter 1). Would you support or oppose such a move?
10. Each year, Tulsa gets a chunk of money from the Federal Government called Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), which it distributes to local non-profits for various projects. In the past, some controversial groups have asked for CDBG funds for non-controversial purposes. Supposing the local chapter of Planned Parenthood, which engages in abortion rights lobbying at the State Capitol and refers clients to abortion providers, sought CDBG funding for their pediatrics clinic. Would you support or oppose such funding, and why?
 
Bonus question for Council candidates: Who is your choice to be Tulsa's next mayor, and why?
 
 
 
(Third piece)
 
 
Independents Can Vote, Too!
 
Zoning protest charter amendment on March 7 ballot
 
It isn’t sexy stuff, but if citizens want to reclaim their rights as property owners, an informed vote is a first step
 
By Michael D. Bates
 
Just because you’re registered independent doesn’t mean you’re left out of the March 7 city election. All Tulsa voters will finally have the chance to decide a charter change, one that was supposed to have been on the ballot with last April’s general obligation bond issue.
Calling it a change is a bit misleading, however. The charter amendment would restore a protection to property owners that had been in place for decades, a protection that was invalidated by a City Attorney’s decision in the wake of the 71^st and Harvard zoning controversy.
Here’s how it works: A zoning change normally passes with the support of five councilors, a simple majority. The proposed charter amendment would boost the number of required votes to seven, a 75% supermajority, if the owners of a majority of the property within 300 feet sign a petition protesting the change. Proponents call it a protection against arbitrary rezoning that would harm neighboring property values.
This provision is part of Tulsa’s zoning code (Title 42, Section 1703-E), dating back to before the adoption of the new City Charter in 1989. A similar provision in state law applies to all Oklahoma cities that haven’t adopted their own charter.
A protest petition was successfully deployed on November 4, 1999, in an attempt to rezone a low-intensity single-family residential parcel for townhouses. (Case Z-6690/PUD-622; you could look it up.) Council records show that Jay Stump, then land use planning director for INCOG, told the Council that a supermajority would be required to pass the amendment, because a sufficient number of protest signatures had been submitted.
In 2003, when F&M Bank sought a zoning change from residential to commercial for a new branch at 71^st and Harvard, neighboring homeowners circulated a petition in an effort to trigger the supermajority.
Although the protesters gathered a sufficient number of signatures, INCOG staff and the City Attorney’s office tried to invalidate as many signatures as possible on technical grounds--for example, one of two joint owners named on a parcel’s deed failed to sign the petition, on account of being dead. The council voted 6-3 to throw out the protest petition, then voted 5-4 to approve the rezoning, an insufficient vote if the petition had been accepted as valid.
As the Council set out to clarify the rules for validating protest petitions, in January 2004 the City Attorney’s office came up with a new legal theory: The supermajority provision was incompatible with the 1989 City Charter, which requires a majority of councilors to pass an ordinance. According to the City Attorney’s office, a charter amendment would be required to reinstate the provision. Until then, it would be considered null and void.
Once the City Attorney’s formal opinion was issued, councilors promised concerned homeowners’ groups that they’d put the required charter change on the ballot at the next citywide election. The Council voted to put it on the ballot with the April 2005 general obligation bond issue.
Mysteriously, the required legal notice announcing the election failed to be published, while the legal notice for the bond election appeared. The City Attorney’s said that the election could not legally go forward.
During the City Council’s biennial charter change review last fall, the Council voted to place the amendment on the March primary ballot. The remainder of the proposed charter changes will be on the April 4 general election ballot.
Homeowners for Fair Zoning, an organization that emerged from the 71^st and Harvard rezoning battle, has led the charge in support of restoring the protest petition supermajority.
You can read more about the issue from their perspective at http://www.hffz.org. There is no organized opposition to the change.
 
The Races, The Candidates
 
Responses to and analysis of the UTW Questionnaire
 
District 3 Democratic primary
Candidates: Roscoe H. Turner, 74, 3415 E. Haskell St., http://www.roscoeturner.com, 834-7580; David Edward Patrick, 54, 5712 E. Tecumseh, 836-2357.
This marks the sixth time Turner and Patrick have faced each other in a Democratic primary. Turner, a leader of the Sequoyah Area Neighborhood Association, was a candidate in the 1996 primary, when Patrick defeated incumbent Darrell Gilbert in 1996 to reclaim a seat briefly held by his late brother Mike Patrick.
Turner unsuccessfully challenged Patrick in 1998. Patrick resigned later that year to run for state house; Turner defeated Patrick’s sister in a special election that November, then won re-election over Patrick in 2000. In 2002, Patrick defeated Turner to retake his seat.
Then came 2004. Patrick appeared to win re-election in the Democratic primary by three votes--no Republican filed for the office. But it turned out that more than 50 Republicans had been allowed to vote in the Democratic primary. Because the number of invalid votes was greater than the margin of victory, Judge Tom Gillert threw out the election and a revote was held on April 6, the day after the rest of the Council was sworn in. Turner won the revote with 54%, a 222-vote margin.
Turner has been aligned with the Council’s reform alliance, working closely with Councilors Mautino, Medlock, and Henderson. Turner was voted “most believable City Councilor” in UTW’s 2005 “Absolute Best of Tulsa” competition.
According to his response to the UTW questionnaire, Turner would split money for city utilities infrastructure between areas with older, inadequate service, and areas in the city without service at all. “Older areas need to be improved and undeveloped areas must be upgraded to entice developers.”
To deal with crime, Turner suggests taking capital funds to deal with the immediate shortage of police officers. In the long term, he writes, “we need to come up with a method to use our third penny tax monies for emergency services and remove them from the budget and use that money to spread to other services.”
Turner writes that eminent domain “should only be used as a last resort for public purposes. To use it for private gain is abusive.”
Turner would support changing zoning laws to allow small neighborhood, mom-and-pop businesses near residential areas and to allow the creation of an area where car-free living is possible. He would also support establishing neighborhood conservation districts to enforce the design guidelines contained in Tulsa’s infill development studies.
Here’s Turner’s response to the continued demolition of downtown Tulsa: “Yes it embarrasses me!  People go to Europe to look at old buildings and we tear them down to look at nothing. 
“We should create an ordinance requiring buildings in older areas of the city to be evaluated by the Historical Society before they are set for demolition.”
Turner finessed the two tricky social issues questions, writing simply, “I support everyone’s human rights,” and “I would support providing funds that benefit the health of our children.” 
For Mayor, Turner supports Don McCorkell, state representative for most of Council District 3 for 18 years, calling McCorkell a man who “knows the plight of my constituents.” Jim Mautino is the fellow Councilor he most admires “for his integrity and his sincere effort to work for his constituents.”
 
The Bank Candidate
 
Patrick did not submit a response to the Urban Tulsa Weekly questionnaire.
Patrick has a reputation among neighborhood associations citywide for hostility to homeowners’ interests. In 2003 he was the lone Councilor to vote in support of rezoning a residential area for a Wal-Mart neighborhood market at 41^st and Harvard.
In the zoning dispute over F&M Bank’s 71^st and Harvard location, he voted (with Councilors Baker, Sullivan, and then-Councilor Art Justis) to prevent homeowners from speaking about the city’s mistreatment of the protest petition they had submitted, then voted to reject the petition itself.
More than half of Patrick’s 2004 campaign funds (as of the March 2004 report) came from registered Republicans, and all of his contributions over $200 came from residents of wealthy south Tulsa neighborhoods.
F&M Bank board members rewarded his support for their zoning application with $7,300 in contributions, over half of his war chest.
 
 
 
District 4 Democratic Primary
Candidates: Maria Barnes, 45, 1319 S. Terrace Dr., http://www.mariabarnes4tulsa.com, 510-5725; John E. “Jack” Wing, 62, 1373 Riverside Dr, http://www.jackwing4tulsa.com, 289-9577.
Democrats in District 4, an open seat being vacated by Tom Baker, will have a choice between Maria Barnes, a neighborhood leader involved for many years with issues of neighborhood improvement, zoning, and redevelopment, and Jack Wing, a Realtor, American Airlines retiree, and long-time race chairman for the Tulsa Run.
Barnes, a married mother of three children, is president of the Kendall-Whittier Neighborhood Association, vice president of the Midtown Coalition of Neighborhood Associations, and a member of the Vision 2025 Neighborhood Fund Task Force--the group that selects which neighborhood improvement projects will get a share of the $2 million allocated for Tulsa.
As president of a neighborhood association that covers over two square miles, Barnes has made frequent appearances before the Board of Adjustment and Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission representing the neighborhood’s interests on zoning issues.
As part of her service in Kendall-Whittier, Barnes was involved in the late ‘80s with shaping the neighborhood’s master plan, which encompasses thorny issues like the expansion of the University of Tulsa’s campus, the consolidation of two elementary schools into a new building, and the cleanup of Whittier Square.
As part of the Kendall-Whittier task force, she has been involved with monitoring the city’s follow-through and handling updates to the plan.
In 1999, she served on the Mayor’s Infill Task Force--a panel of developers, city officials, planning commissioners, and neighborhood leaders--to consider issues relating to redevelopment. Since 2000, she has served on the City’s Human Rights Commission.
Dissatisfied with the lack of responsiveness from incumbent City Councilor Tom Baker, Barnes decided to run for Council even before Baker announced his abortive run for mayor.
Barnes responded to UTW’s questionnaire with a note that she had been suffering with the flu and would be confined to bed for several days under doctor’s orders. She said she hoped to respond, but at press time had yet to do so.
Jack Wing is Baker’s anointed successor. In his response to the UTW questionnaire, he put updating substandard infrastructure at the top of his list, particularly District 4 sewer and roads. He opposes using eminent domain “to steal a person’s property for the use of another individual.”
Wing sees “no coloration between officer pay and the homicide rate,” but nevertheless believes Tulsa should pay public safety officers “as much as we can.”  
Getting around without a car in Tulsa is an unattainable ideal in Wing’s view--“just not feasible in this day and age”--so he’ll devote “as much resources as I can to obtain the best quality roads.”
On downtown preservation, Wing doesn’t want downtown to be blighted by empty shells of buildings that have an inadequate physical plant or telecommunications capability that are too expensive to upgrade. “You can’t let romantic views shape policy.”
Wing approves of the neighborhood conservation district concept, pointing out that Oklahoma City uses this approach successfully.
On adding sexual orientation to the human rights ordinance, Wing begs off, saying that he is “still talking with the constituents of District 4, on issues such as this.” When it comes to CDBG funds, he says he won’t vote against a grant “because the provider is faith-based or if they support another issue that [I] personally oppose.”
Wing skipped the mayoral endorsement question and declined to name his most admired councilor, writing, “The City Council is not Miss Congeniality contest or some silly grade school exercise where we play favorites.”
 
 
District 4 Republican primary
Candidates: Rick Brinkley, 44, 1722 S. Carson Avenue, #3000, 492-1266; Kent Morlan, 62, 410 West 7th St., #926, http://www.kentmorlan.com, 582-5544. (Robert C. Bartlett is on the ballot, but has withdrawn from the race.)
The two Republican candidates running for the open District 4 seat both have a birds-eye view of this diverse district, which includes most of Tulsa’s historic preservation districts as well as prime examples of ‘50s suburban development.
Rick Brinkley, president of the Tulsa Better Business Bureau since 1999, lives on the 30th floor of University Club Tower. Alfred Kent Morlan, an attorney, lives on the 9th floor of one of the towers of Central Park Condominiums, just south of City Hall.
They both have short commutes, too. Brinkley’s office is two floors up in the same building. Morlan has a short walk to his office at 4th and Boston.
It makes sense that both would be concerned about the ordinance requiring Tulsa’s high rises to have sprinkler systems by 2010. Both candidates oppose the ordinance, concerned about deterring reinvestment in and reuse of downtown Tulsa’s buildings.
Brinkley has been active in the Tulsa County Republican Party, serving on the executive committee. Last year he held a seminar for potential candidates on how to deal with the media. He’s the immediate past president of the downtown Kiwanis Club and is the national judging consultant to the Miss America Pageant organization. He has been an interview coach to pageant contestants. Miss America 2005 Diedre Downs flew to Tulsa to appear at a fundraiser for Brinkley.
Brinkley grew up in Collinsville, worked in television in Baltimore and New York, including a stint as a producer for the Sally Jessy Raphael Show in the early ‘90s, then came back to Collinsville, serving on the staff of Community Church, including five years as senior pastor.
Brinkley is single, but 12 years ago he adopted a 16-year-old-boy who had been in the foster home system for much of his life. His son has since married and given him a grandson.
Morlan was an assistant city attorney. As a part of his private law practice, he has represented governmental bodies in condemnation proceedings. He also provides Internet hosting services to attorneys (morlaw.com) and leases executive suites, providing independent attorneys and small firms an office environment like that of a larger firm.
In the early ‘90s, Morlan was on the board of Morton Comprehensive Health Center, serving as chairman during a contentious period in which the executive director resigned under pressure.
Morlan was an early and vocal advocate of making the University Center at Tulsa a full-fledged branch of Oklahoma State University, writing a number of letters to the editor on the topic in 1991 and 1992.
Last June, Morlan wrote an op-ed for Urban Tulsa Weekly tracing the decline of downtown since World War II and expressing skepticism about the effectiveness of revitalization efforts.
He wrote, “We have to quit operating Downtown Tulsa like it was being operated in 1945.” Morlan points to downtown’s Home Depot as a pattern for successful retail in downtown – “easy access, competitive prices, and free parking.” (http://www.urbantulsa.com/ArticlePrint.asp?id=2675)
Neither candidate submitted responses to the Urban Tulsa Weekly questionnaire.