Dear Folks,
This week I’m writing the newsletter instead of Gloria.
As I’m sure you’re aware, nine members of the City Council co-sponsored an ordinance on Thursday that would place severe restrictions on would-be volunteers for the city.
Even a casual read of this proposal reveals it to be bad policy.
For instance, there are 7,694 volunteers in our Parks Department alone. This ordinance would require those generous citizens – even the ones who give up a Saturday afternoon to clean their neighborhood park – to undergo hours and hours of antidiscrimination and harassment training and a criminal background check.
And it would stipulate that not one of those thousands of people be related to anyone in the Parks Department. So if a city worker is short on help for a special event, they can’t ask their spouse or kids to lend a hand. It would be illegal.
In fact, my colleagues on the City Council wouldn’t be allowed to have their kids come in and stuff envelopes, help answer phones or even move furniture around.
So, yes, it’s bad policy.
But smart policy is not the point here.
This ordinance is a bald-faced, mean-spirited political attack on me.
To understand this, you only have to ask yourself one question: Why now?
This ordinance is obviously a reaction to a lawsuit against the City, me and my wife. Yet if it were to pass, it would have no impact on that lawsuit. Worse, it would essentially render a guilty verdict in that lawsuit without due process. And this is America. I’m sure that if we could somehow strip this whole situation of petty personal politics, my colleagues would agree that conviction without fair trial is fundamentally wrong.
It’s especially wrong in a case such as ours, in which the allegations are absolutely false. I am very confident that we will prevail through the judicial process.
But when you ask, Why now? You have to take into consideration everything that is happening in this administration, the progress that is being made.
In just 14 months, we have adopted a fiscally prudent budget, a debt policy and an economic development and incentive policy, which the city never had. We’ve passed two important sales taxes – one for infrastructure and another for transportation – by historically wide margins. We’ve placed on the November ballot the best light rail proposal this city has ever seen, and we’ve made so much progress toward a regional transit system that I predict we’ll see portions of that system up and running before my first term is complete.
And now we’re starting to move forward on bold new initiatives that will have a profound impact on the future of our city. Over the last two months, I’ve reached out to my fellow mayors across the metro area and across the state – all the way to St. Louis – in an effort to build alliances. As result, we’re now taking the first steps toward creating a metropolitan mayors caucus and a statewide urban partnership through which we can impact lawmaking at the state and federal level to improve conditions in our city. Since May, I have been working with leaders from across the city to develop new ideas for economic development in the most distressed areas of our city. In the coming weeks, I will appoint a group of leaders to move those forward, turn them into plans and policies which greatly improve the quality of life in neighborhoods that have been left out of recent revitalization efforts.
With this ordinance, some of my colleagues on the City Council are diverting attention and energy away from these efforts and toward something that has very little impact on our city.
I know that some of you are skeptical about that statement. Some would say that I’m the one who is stirring unnecessary conflict because I insist on having my wife up here. If she would only stay home, all of this would go away.
And that might be true, were it not for one stubborn fact: Gloria has been essential to all of our successes.
She is a vital member of my team, every bit as important as my chief of staff, my writers, policy analysts and scheduler. In fact, she’s the primary reason why we’ve pushed all of these big initiatives in such a short period of time. Because the biggest, most unique contribution she makes is to constantly push me to keep moving forward on my agenda.
So, in short, she’s your standard elected official’s spouse: the driving force behind the leader. What makes us most unique is that we don’t hide it. We don’t pretend that she’s just an adornment to my public life, someone who surfaces now and then to smile at a banquet. Instead, we are who we are: a man and woman who have been deeply in love and partnership for 29 years, and who will continue to be so for 30 more, should we have the grace to live so long.
And if you value what this administration has accomplished, if you share hope and faith for what we aim to accomplish, you will help me oppose this vicious political attack.
I urge you to contact you to contact your City Council member and tell them not to enact this bad ordinance. Tell them it will hurt the city’s ability to work with volunteers, and it will hurt this City Council and Mayor’s ability to make ours a city that works for you.
In faith,
Mark
The first public hearing on the ordinance will be before the Finance and Audit Committee of the City Council at 8:15 a.m. Wednesday, August 20 on the 10th Floor of City Hall.
The contact information for city councilmembers:
