The recent Haines Borough election was a disappointment to some of my liberal friends, but they ought not fret much.
It’s unlikely this assembly will do much because they’re like most assemblies – spoon fed by an administration and a staff that’s not interested in changing much.
That’s unfortunate because the world around us changes every day and success goes to those who adapt most quickly.
In addition, making big changes in a small town requires rocking the boat and most small-town politicians are more interested in maintaining popularity than in fighting difficult campaigns to win over hearts and minds. Politicians who can crusade move quickly to the big leagues.
The other reasons assemblies don’t do much are both cultural and institutional. Many people in town incorrectly assume that the mayor and the manager are the leaders of our government. According to borough law, the town’s leadership rests solely with the assembly. But the misunderstanding demonstrates how much power comes with impressive job titles and how few people take the time to understand the particulars of local government.
The handcuffs on the assembly are many. Here are a few:
- Assembly members aren’t paid much so they don’t do much homework outside of what they’re told by the manager and staff.
- Action requires four assembly votes and no more than three assembly members can talk together outside of assembly meetings. At assembly meetings, there’s constant pressure to speed up discussion for the sake of “efficiency.”
- The borough mayor and clerk establish agendas for each assembly meeting. Assembly members don’t even control what gets discussed at the meetings they preside over.
- During discussion, borough staffers and managers – who not only control borough information but can spend borough money and time developing and arranging that information to suit their arguments – can easily cast enough doubt on an assembly member’s idea to keep it from gaining the support of three other assembly members.
- Politically motivated mayors, who by borough law serve as chair at assembly meetings but vote only in the event of an assembly tie, can control assembly discussion by deciding which assembly members get to speak, about what, when and for how long.
- Because they’re dependent on staff for information, assembly members rarely challenge staff. During my term on the assembly, we learned through back channels that staff was pursuing a grant to acquire a drug-sniffing police dog. When I and other assembly members asked who authorized a police dog, staffers complained that we were “micro-managing” them.
- Staff can be influential enough to make themselves out to be government’s constituency rather than its servants. After my assembly fired manager Bill Seward, staff warned us that not much was getting done at city hall due to “low morale” caused by the firing. The workers, essentially, put their boss on notice.
To appreciate the power of the staff, consider assembly member Heather Lende’s attempt to paint the firehall. Heather accomplishes more in a day than most people do in a week but when she was elected in 2016, her platform was modest. Perhaps more than anything, she wanted a new coat of paint on this prominent building, which had become an embarrassment of peeling and bare patches.
The staff wasn’t interested in Lende’s idea, delaying action by saying the building shouldn’t or couldn’t be painted, including that the paint wouldn’t stick or it would be prohibitively expensive. Eventually, staff recruited contrarian assembly member Sean Maidy around to its point of view. Maidy called the painting idea — as well as ideas to comply with federal law by adding restrooms to the assembly chamber there — “lipstick on a pig.”
Today, we’re still stuck with an ugly pig of a firehall. Six years after Lende’s election, the building looks worse than ever.
Putting borough power where it rightfully and legally belongs – into the hands of the assembly – would require legal, institutional and cultural changes to our government, as well as an ambitious assembly. That’s a tall order. Don’t expect it in our lifetimes.
In the meantime, it’s more than likely this assembly will approve bigger budgets for items that benefit government workers and their friends – things like industrial megaprojects, and more money for borough employees and favored departments like the police.
Government doesn’t always take care of our citizens or our community, but it always takes care of its own.