Stop picking on me!

The U.S. Conference of Mayors is a Washington D.C. based lobbying/PR group that represents the interests of mayors from city’s with a population of over 30,000 people.  Today, I read a rather entertaining article about how an increasing amount of mayors are feeling all kinds of picked on because the number of recall elections increased from 23 in 2009, to 57 in 2010.  Of the 57 that faced recall, 15 of them either were recalled, or resigned prior to being recalled.  That’s a .264 average, which isn’t bad for a power hitter…and I think we can consider getting a bad mayor out of office a home run.

The best part?  According to the mayors, it’s all our fault. 

Tom Cochran, Director of the Conference, identified the enemy: 

‘Today we have the social media.  The bloggers are out there every night and every day.’ 

Yup…you should see the watch bill we had to make up.  Enough patting on the back though…while all most of the article did was whine about poor picked on mayors, there was a little section that talked about WHY some of these mayors were being recalled, and it’s worth discussion, and further looking into.

The mayors in question say they are being target for being realists…raising taxes and cutting budgets.  Akron’s mayor, who survived a recall last year, made a pretty good point:

"Do you want mayors who take the positions that are necessary to do the right thing for the community, or do you want to listen to the naysayers?"

Mr. Cochran suggested that maybe a simple majority voting for a recall might be too low…and stab out my eyes…I think I agree with him.  In this time of impending financial ruin, sometimes a mayor is going to have to do things that make him unpopular…and he should not get voted out of office just for being unpopular.  Unpopular and stupid?  Well…let’s consider the case of former Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez . 

Mr. Alvarez made himself unpopular by raising property taxes 12%, which made him unpopular AND stupid, because previously he had given some of his staffers pay raises, and un-froze their benefits.  Asking for more money while spending more money is Not Smart. 

Norman Braman, who spent more than 1 million of his own money, leading the charge to get Alvarez recalled expressed his opinion of what the Conference of Mayors was doing:

"They should try to improve the quality of the mayors they represent instead of trying to protect them,"  "These are difficult times, and it's not time to raise taxes and give staff salary increases. That's what it was all about. If the mayors were more responsible to the needs of the county, they wouldn't need to face the risk of a recall."
Not sure I could say it much better.