Some people blamed Mayor Jan Hill for the firing of Haines Borough Manager Debra Schnabel.
Hill cast the deciding, tie-breaking vote, but I’m sure she hated doing it. Hill has carved a long career in local politics by dodging bullets. The law of survival in politics is to show your cards only when it’s safe or when you must. Otherwise, smile a lot and be all things to all people.
Most of all, avoid making enemies.
Voting on Schnabel’s termination was the last thing Hill wanted to do, as evidenced by a recent letter-to-the-editor in the CVN penned by a Hill ally who absurdly alleged that the assembly tie vote on the firing was a set-up, presumably to force Hill into a vote that would make some enemies.
Assemblies are capable of some types of chicanery but rigging a tie vote among six members isn’t one of them.
The public doesn’t see much of the mayor’s politics because, by law, the mayor doesn’t have to reveal her views. The borough’s charter says the mayor “may participate” in assembly discussion.
In government-speak, that means she’s allowed to speak about the items on the agenda, or she can remain silent. Silence is Hill’s golden rule and a key to her longevity in office.
Besides presiding over meetings, breaking tie votes, and making appointments to boards and commissions, the mayor’s actual responsibilities are relatively few, and intentionally so, according to Dan Humphrey, who participated in the creation of the current borough government 20 years ago.
According to Humphrey, the role of the mayor was deliberately left vague. The idea, Humphrey said, was to allow the mayor’s role to evolve.
What evolved was a ceremonial-monarchial mayor, dignified by an impressive title and conveniently unburdened by any heavy lifting. It’s the ultimate government job, all authority – including veto power over assembly decisions – with little responsibility.
Plus, during the town’s slushiest months, the mayor gets to travel around the state and occasionally to Washington, D.C., at taxpayer’s expense.
Former borough mayor Mike Case once famously told the Chilkat Valley News that the mayor’s job was to do nothing. (Perhaps it was in this vein that the assembly voted to reduce mayor pay in 2017 from $15,000 to $7,000 annually.)
But Case’s quote was deceiving. A look at recent issues shows that assembly ties typically occur over the town’s most momentous decisions. In those cases, the mayor gets to do much more than nothing.
Besides Schnabel’s termination, Hill broke the tie to stop reconsideration of the harbor expansion design in 2016. She also broke a tie to effectively reject an assembly attempt to bring former Juneau manager Dave Palmer on as an interim Haines manager in 2017, an opportunity that would have modeled how a successful, professional manager operates.
Some people who blame Hill for Schnabel’s firing said that Hill should have been keeping the peace between Schnabel and the assembly, but why should she have been? That’s also not in the mayor’s job description.
In short, we have obligated borough mayors to do virtually nothing, actually empowered them to sit on the sidelines until they get to decide a crucial issue. Why should we expect more than that in return?
Here’s an idea: The assembly could put on the ballot a proposition to change the government charter to add to the mayor’s duties, “The mayor shall assist the manager in carrying out the directives of the assembly.”
In government-speak, “shall” means “must.” Such a change would directly make the mayor – who has an office at city hall – responsible for keeping a manager on task. It would also indirectly make the mayor responsible to seeing that the manager and assembly are getting along.
At the very minimum, the assembly should send to voters a charter change that would require the mayor to participate in assembly discussions. That would allow assemblies to cipher out a mayor’s politics in advance of their voting. It would foster more deliberative and democratic decisions than those made under the current system, which allows a mayor to sit silently, then single-handedly decide major issues.