5 Words for Our City Council

Yesterday morning, three members of the Kansas City Council's Finance and Audit Committee voted for new restrictions on volunteers in Kansas City. I would love to link to the language of the ordinance, because, as citizens of this city, it is your right to know what is happening, but the drafters of this ordinance are far too embarrassed and timid to put their backroom-drafted ordinance into the public eye.

Since they have hidden the new ordinance, the actual words of the ordinance are unavailable to this blog. So, it's up to us to come up with our own words this morning.

No single word accurately and completely describes the actions of councilmembers pushing this ordinance, and yet so many words apply to aspects of their behavior. So, I'm going to offer up five words which I think are near the target, but I'd really appreciate your help in choosing which one is best. Or choose your own . . .

1. Arrogant: Please watch the videotape of the behavior of the Finance and Audit Committee. Have you ever seen such arrogance at this level? Come on, Councilpeople, at least act like you care what the voters think! Obviously, the only action that the majority cared about was going on in the backroom, out of the sight and hearing of the lowlife citizens who dared to intrude on the precious time of the majority. Wow. Some of us knew those council people when they were mere mortals . . . I wonder if the ghost of Pendergast was holding court in that back room?

2. Fraudulent: While we elected a Mayor who has sought to be smart with the money, somehow our council has decided to be dumb with the money. The Fiscal Note attached to this ordinance claims that the only expense it generates will be up to $100,000 for police reports. That was never true - it was a lie covering up the vast amounts of money (millions?) which the council could have directed to their consultant friends to pay for all the training volunteers would go through. But now, according to the paper, they have restricted their ordinance to apply only to volunteers for elected officials, though it still apparently requires the City Manager to make all department volunteers to go through training. How much is this costing us? That's the dirty little secret that the majority keeps hidden. Why?

3. Cowardly: As described before, the genesis of this ill-conceived effort was the constant drum-beat of a single, repetitive blogger. Yesterday, the blogosphere chortled at Tony's victory. Tony has proven himself a stronger influence on Kansas City than any single councilperson. And certainly much stronger than the voice of reason. (As a blogger, my hat's off to Tony. That was honestly impressive. What will your next trick be? Can you get them to stand on their heads?)

4. Intellectually Dishonest. Was this ordinance focused at Gloria Squitiro? One admits "yes", one says "of course not". They claim that this is an ordinance focused on protecting volunteers, but first excluded the largest user of volunteers, and now are (apparently) excluding virtually all volunteers. Would you please make up one story, and stick with it?

5. Ineffective. The funny thing is, they have accomplished absolutely nothing. They've gone through all these contortions, and they won't get the change they want. They sought to regulate volunteers, and now they've excluded virtually all the volunteers from the ordinance. They sought to eliminate Gloria Squitiro (No, they didn't! Yes, they did!) from City Hall, and to run the Mayor's office, but it's not going to happen. All they've done is waste a lot of time and resources that could have been spent on real Kansas City priorities. While they're playing around with a dishonest ordinance that regulates volunteers but doesn't, all the priorities they were elected to address remain on the table.
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Well, I could probably come up with more words than 5 to describe the debacle in the Finance and Audit Committee, but 5 will have to suffice. Fortunately, these councilpersons are not really the corrupt and inept cowards that they behaved like yesterday. These 5 words are intended to describe their actions yesterday, not their personalities nor their typical behavior. Yesterday, they behaved as I describe them, and I suspect they'll do the same thing today. They deserve our condemnation, and they will, I assure you, come to realize that they've made a mistake, just as they know they made a mistake in foolishly extending Cauthen's contract.

When they regain their sense, and look around, perhaps this will be the time that they realize that Mayor Funkhouser was right again. Their volunteer ordinance is a sham. Their extension of Cauthen was a mistake. And Funkhouser was right on both counts. It's not too late for them to start learning from their mistakes.