Bob Ball Says: Screw Checks And Balances!
Not in so many words, of course. But it’s true nonetheless. At this evening’s League of Women Voters forum on Charter revision, Bob Ball — member of the Charter Review Commission and public representative of Team Potter — presented an argument that not only amounts to telling Portlanders to “just trust the executive” but also undercuts his own proposition that the Charter proposal would increase accountability and responsiveness to citizens.
In recent weeks, opponents of Curiously-Strong Mayor have been making what I think it a critical point: With so much executive and administrative power given to the Mayor and his unelected Chief Administrative Officer, it’s likely that City Council, to properly exercise its legislative and oversight responsibilities, would need its own budget office, independent from that controlled by the Mayor’s office.
They’re almost certainly correct, for much the same reasons that the United States Congress has its own budget office, separate from that of the Presidency, whose mandate is to “provide Congress with objective, nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget and the information and estimates required for the Congressional budget process”.
That office exists because in a system of checks and balances achieved via a separation of powers it would be the height of irresponsibility to leave the legislative branch at the mercy of the executive’s budgetary figures and analysis.
It would seem like a no-brainer: Clearly, a similar legislative-branch agency would need to be created under Curiously-Strong Mayor, so that City Council was not left at the mercy of the Mayor on budgetary matters.
But based upon tonight’s forum, Bob Ball beleives otherwise “We don’t necessarily need to [have] a new budget office,” he said, “if the Mayor and Council work together well”.
In other words, Ball doesn’t believe — doesn’t notice the absolute necessity from the standpoint of checks and balances via a separation of powers — that the City’s legislative branch should have access to any budgetary information beyond that provided to it by the City’s executive.
Members of Council should just trust the Mayor. They won’t have any choice, anyway.
Unfortunately for Ball, not only is this a nearly-insane proposition, it directly conflicts with what he and the rest of Team Potter claim about Curiously-Strong Mayor. Again and again, they argue that having a purely-legislative branch will increase citizens’ access to Council members and make City government more responsive.
But how, exactly, would that purely-legislative Council be able to respond to citizen concerns in any realistic or productive manner if they were unable to access for themselves, or provide to citizens, an independent analysis of something as basic to the functioning of government as the budgetary plans coming out of the Mayor’s office?
For example: If the Mayor were to provide to City Council a budget estimate for a major project, and a neighborhood association approached Council members with serious concerns about that estimate, Council would have access to nothing except the Mayor’s figures.
Period, that’s it, end of story.
Is that accountability? Is that responsiveness? To citizens? To anyone at all?
Not so much.
April 12th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Tom Potter is spending much of his day campaigning for Charter reform by visiting the city’s many retirement homes and nursing facilities. He is making his pitch to older voters, many who don’t understand what he’s talking about, hoping our seniors will just do what Potter ask because he too has silver white hair.
This is a very clever political move because seniors actually vote and tell their friends how to vote more often than young and middle-age people, who assume others will make the right decision for them.
Former Mayor Bud Clark and other senior against Potter’s power grab better start making the senior trek or Potter will have the power to exploit this city and its people for his personal agenda.
Potter is not to be trusted by anyone for any reason.