A solid minority

So here's the roster for the new ethics committee Mayor Al of the City of Monroe set up. For some reason, the Mayor decides he needs this now, though in 12 years in office previously it wasn't really necessary. The belief is, I guess, that the most recent Mayor (Iacoangeli) started talking about ethics because it was just going to be a ruse or a tool to play politics with future appointees or department heads he didn't favor.
So it's admirable that Mayor Al would follow through on this idea. But his appointments seem to guarantee that any policy devised merely will assure business as usual when it comes to so-called "ethics" in city government.
Let's take a look at the players:
Sue Wetzel: This former city councilperson will head the group. She did not run for re-election because her bosses at the community college feared she would have periodic conflicts of interest doing city business. Apparently no one thought of that -- including herself -- when she first ran for office. And apparently no one figures she'll have a conflict -- including herself -- heading up a city ethics committee.
Assistant city manager Ryan Solomon: Hey, wasn't this the same guy who got caught posing as a reporter so he could infiltrate a gathering of disabled citizens who were suing the city over handicapped accessibility? Or was that just someone impersonating him?
Kathleen Costello: She's a real estate agent. Word is she has no ethical questions in her past.
Former County Judge Paul Braunlich: As a judge, no one openly questioned his ethics.
Hospital boss Daniel Wakeman: Heard no one complaining about his ethics.
Councilman Ed Paisley: Poor Ed has been smeared with all sorts of unfair allegations in recent years by gossipers and rumor-spreaders. Man, if I was him I would have sued someone and been retired by now. Forget those issues though. Should the city council really place someone on an ethics committee who is being investigated by the state police for being part of a closed meeting?
DTE's Doug Gipson: No problem here, unless you consider it unethical to earn your livelihood by running a nuclear plant that some would argue puts most of southeast Michigan at risk.
So that's it. A committee that's pretty well balanced between people with ethical issues and a solid minority who don't seem to bring such baggage with them.
Can't wait to see what kind of policies they might come up with.
One thing the group might want to remember is that a good ethics policy prevents situations from developing that would lead people to perceive a conflict, even if there clearly is no conflict.
Good luck with that.

Democracy: A messy business

Man, the Monroe City Council meeting Tuesday was pretty interesting. Seems a lot of people still are p.o.ed about the way Debbie Manns was fired and the fact that the city council wasn't moved to explain its actions. It was looking pretty dicey for Mayor Al and his Civilian Conservation Corps (they conserve their energy by doing nothing). Citizens, some of them ordinary, were heaping abuse on the councilpersons who were a party to the public execution. But then, who should arise to defend the mayor? Sue Wetzel, the former councilperson, who decided not to run again under questionable circumstances. Sue basically recited a number of transgressions of the former Iacoangeli mayoral administration. detailing how the resignation of the former finance manager was the result of some sort of closed door skullduggery by Iacoangeli and his cronies. Her message seemed to be that Iacoangeli was wrong and did things badly, so Mayor Al had a right to be just as cutthroat.
Sue apparently listens as well to the citizens as she did when she was on city council. She missed the point, completely. Citizens wanted to know the reason for the Manns firing. There really wasn't any reason why someone couldn't give even a made-up reason -- those at-will contracts are designed to afford councils the right to fire on a whim without fear of legal problems. Put it this way: If Iacoangeli had fired someone in the same way and was asked about it, he would have given a reason -- even if it wasn't a plausible one. At least he was smart enough to appear responsive to public questions. Mayor Al always has been one to stonewall questions from people he considered political foes. Ironically, Sue's speech Tuesday night was longer than any discourse she gave while she was on council. In fact, she should become the poster-girl for constituent non-responsiveness. She decided to not run for re-election without ever stating publicly why, even when asked point-blank during a council meeting. She didn't owe an explanation to anyone, so Mayor Al's style seems compatible with hers. That's probably why he named her to a city ethics committee Tuesday (more on that later). It's kind of ironic. Her bosses asked her not to serve on council due to possible conflicts between community college and city business. Instead of standing up to them, she caved. What better person to sit on a committee to develop a personal ethics policy?

He doesn't know much

Jeepers! Didya see the weird love-post Tom Treece wrote about Mayor Al in the Monday issue of the Monroe Snooze? The gist of it was that Mayor Al is a decent guy because he lets little girls slap him in the face with a pie for charity. Because he's that cool, he should have the right to have a car at taxpayer expense, let his cronies have a closed meeting and fire top employees without any public explanation necessary.
It would make sense that these two are fans of each other. Both have elevated themselves to stations in life higher than the average county resident, but with half the talent.
Mayor Al is a career trough-feeder. To hear Tom tell it, though, he turned over his whopping United Way salary to feed the poor each year. Tom for his part, has bounced from job to job. He's an expert on his relationship with God, his relationship with his beautiful wife Renee (and previous wives) and his relationship with Vietnam. But I'm not sure he's an expert on Monroe. Heck, he's been living in Luna Pier for years. In fact, he recently got demoted from his job as Luna Pier administrator.
Hey wait, maybe that's it! Maybe he's angling to be the new Monroe city manager. He's got experience and can even spin the discs at those K of C lounge gatherings. You know, those private club meetings where the public's business really is decided.
But what do I know?

New planner suggestion

With Ben Tallerico announcing his plan to leave as Monroe city planner, the Observer has a suggestion for someone to fill that spot: Former city planner and former mayor John Iacoangeli. This would be the perfect appointment if the city council wants to mend rifts in the city. Former city planner Jim Tischler could be his assistant. Former city councilman and a community planner Jim Sabo could be Tischler's assistant.

Wal-mart: How (s)low can we go?

Looks like the long-time rumors might be true -- wal-mart seems intent on building a super wal-mart across the street from its current store in Monroe. And maybe they'll convert the store they're in now to a Sam's Club. This is probably good news for people who will drive an extra two miles to save $2 on garbage bags, but it won't be good for all the merchants with a global conscience that draw the line at squeezing every last penny out of their supplier chain. Wal-mart is ruthlessly competitive and small towns suffer in many ways whenever they breeze in. But who can blame them? So what if their prodigeous imports of third world products increase our trade deficit? Who cares if their lower level employees have to use taxpayer supported Medicaid for their health insurance? Why shouldn't they hire illegal aliens for their cleaning staff? The whole idea here is returns to shareholders.
Unfortunately, it's a little short sighted. Eventually, Wal-mart's prices won't be low enough for even middle class families to afford because the standard of living probably will slip well below that of China or India, which will enrich themselves by feeding Wal-Mart's insatiable appetite for cheap, foreign made goods.
Meantime we can buy garbage bags dirt cheap and count our pennies while we pass the time in the incredible traffic snarls between the super Wal Mart and Sam's club. Hopefully, they'll have a gas station out in front of the new place.

What next? A fax machine?

Amid all the strange turmoil at Monroe City Hall in recent days comes the news that Ben Tallerico, the city planner, is planning to resign. This is a new wrinkle. Usually one would expect people to filter away when a new administration takes over. Tallerico was appointed when Mayor Cappuccilli was mayor before. He continued on under the term of John Iacoangeli. Now when Cappuccilli is back in offce, Tallerico decides he's going to leave. And surrounding all of this were rumors that he was going to be fired. But he apparently wasn't going to be fired. What a strange mystery. Maybe the city's finally taking the advice of one of the city's most vocal citizens and most strident critics of Tallerico. He's told both the past council and this council that Tallerico was useless and could be replaced with a fax machine.
So if you see a Staples truck pulling up to city hall, it might signal the arrival of a new planning director.

What happened to the news?

Sometimes I wonder what the nation's priorities should be, and what the "general public" really is concerned about. I was catching bits and pieces of "news" all day long from different sources -- radio, TV, even the Internet. What would Martians think were important to us if they landed and monitored our information channels today? 1. Wal-mart and the number of Valentine's Day cards they expected to sell. 2. The new Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition (it has a bunch of models on the cover instead of just one). 3. How the late night talk show comedians were treating Dick Cheney for his accidental shooting of a hunting partner.
This stuff all was presented as the most important things we needed to know today. All Wal-Mart did was send out a press release sayiing how many Valentine's they were selling and they get priceless publicity out of it from news outlets desperately looking for a Valentine's day story.
The SI swimsuit edition also was an announcement from the magazine. Again, tons of free promotional publicity.
The Cheney story -- later in the day we actually heard that his hunting partner was having heart problems due to the injuries he suffered. The late night shows came close to the truth. One of David Letterman's top 10 excuses for the Cheney shooting incident was "it finally got that damn Iraq war off Page 1." We got a horrendous war, escalating national debt, a major lobbyist scandal and thousands of firms, including Wal-Mart, exporting jobs and money to gradually erode the quality of life in America. And all we hear about are Valentines, swimsuits and birdshot.
Is this the sign of a healthy republic?

Fuel for fools

You know how some people drive a few miles out of their way to save two cents a gallon on gas? We look at gas prices that range from $2.20 to $2.80 give or take a dime or so and figure we're getting ripped off. Then we go into the mini-mart/gas station and complain over the $1.25 coffee what a ripoff the gas prices are. The funny thing is, it's the coffee you're getting ripped off on. You can make it in your own home for a few cents a cup, but you're too damn lazy. If that's not bad enough, you might stop buy later in the day and give a big company like Aquifina (owned by one of the cola giants) another buck to $1.75 for a bottle of WATER! Someone figured it out. At a price of more than $1 a bottle, you're paying about $10 a gallon for water. Gas looks mighty good in that context, doesn't it. Who would ever think anyone would pay that much for water? What's really weird is that the gas is inspected more thoroughly than the water.

Sloshed Milosch

Didya hear former state representative Matt Milosch got nabbed for drunk driving in our fair village of Carleton? Seems he failed to signal when turning and a sharp-eyed cop pulled him over. It was 2:15 a.m. on a Wednesday morning. Cop said as soon as he approached the PASSENGER WINDOW he could smell booze. Milosch blew a .13 and admitted he had a few beers at a local establishment and thought he was under the legal limit. That's the problem with getting drunk ... by then, you don't even realize you've had enough, or where you are or where you're going. Matt comes from a good Republican family in Carleton. So much for Republican family values, I guess. Maybe he should switch parties. After all, wasn't it former Democrat state rep Lynn Owen who always was getting drunk while in the Legislature?
It's kinda ironic. Matt's still on a national profile of legislators on the Web and one of the ads on Matt's page is for wine.com.
Maybe he was drinking beer because he's already too familiar with the wrath of grapes.

Poor county, rich county

In the fine spirit of Voodoo economics, the county of Monroe is exhibiting some kind of budget schizophrenia. For most of the last half of last year, all we heard about was how poor the county is. We still hear about how terrible its fixed costs are, especially the huge expense that has to be set aside for all us retirees. Next thing ya know, it's a new year and the county starts talking about how it would be great to build a new Central Dispatch center outside of the Fermi ring of death, that 10 mile radius around the nuke plant that presumably would be safe if the old plant exploded. Seems like nobody's batting an eyelash about the fact that the county somehow would have to come up with a few million to pay for this thing that we've managed to do without through some of the worst operating periods of the atomic plant. Now it's an imperative. Looks like the only thing we really have to fear now is a financial meltdown in the county.

Government efficiency

The new Monroe City Council is wasting no time eliminating waste in city government. The most recent episode was the unceremonious firing of city manager Debbie Manns. It also seemed to come up as an afterthought during the Monroe City Council meeting. Came up under member's time when council members usually talk about the free dump day planned in their precincts. The funny thing about this was that the action was so quick and efficient. Almost too quick for some citizens. Council eliminates a $100,000 post without any discussion -- as if the deed was decided before the meeting even started -- and all they get are a bunch of whiners about technicalities like open meetings law. That's the problem with this country today -- too many whiners about due process. Listen, folks, America always was meant to be the land of the free. If you want to spy on someone without a warrant, you should be free to do that. If you want to fire someone without discussing it before the public or giving them a chance to make their case, you should be free to do that. This is government efficiency. Get with the program, whiners. You don't like it here? Go live in some place where they have a dictator who thinks he's above the law and public executions are held unceremoniously. Wait a minute ... that sounds a little too much like Monroe now, doesn't it.

Now she has a reason to take drugs ... or kick her dog

What's the deal with the French woman who had the face transplant? I heard about this and figured this was a woman who was in a car accident or got beat up real bad. Turns out the transplant was to repair damage caused after she was mauled by HER OWN DOG! How'd that happen? Did she have the smell of a McDonald's quarter-pounder still on her lips and the cur just jumped on her and attacked her?
NO! She had fallen unconscious AFTER AN APPARENT DRUG OVERDOSE!
Think of all the time and money wasted on this. It's almost like paying $2,400 for a Super Bowl ticket.

WMDs found in Monroe?

NEWS FLASH! Reports of a prankster stinking up Monroe City Councilwoman Compora's car apparently were unfounded, according to Monroe police. The cops now say that a dead skunk was found in the city the night that Compora reported to police that someone put skunk oil in her car's vents while she was at a city council meeting. This was after a city police officer investigated and reached a conclusion that the smell was the result of some malicious work and not a real dead skunk (no skunk fur, blood or signs of a carcass on her car). But then when his report went to higher ups, it got destinktified. Other people (wonder who would report encounters with a road skunk to police?) said they had encountered a dead skunk the same night. Maybe the discovery of a carcass could be considered a Weapon of Mass De-Stink-tion. If only the Bush Administration had followed this tactic. Plant a WMD to discredit doubters. Plant a dead skunk -- or say there was one -- to discredit dissidents.

Something smells at city hall

Did you hear about the juvenile prank someone played on Linda Compora, the city councilwoman. Apparently, she raises such a stink about the way some of her council colleagues govern that someone put skunk oil in the vents of her car while it was parked in the city hall parking lot. Rumors are though that a jail camera caught the culprit on film and you can clearly identify him by the broad YELLOW stripe down his back. Ahh, political intimidation and dirty tricks. How truly American. How small-town Monroe. Maybe this story will make the rounds in Michigan and make us all proud to live here.