Richmond Government: They're All Wrong

Jon Baliles brings a different perspective to the whole School Board eviction furor, and backs it up with some facts. And while the facts speak for themselves, and I tend to agree with John on a few minor points, I think his dismissal of Wilder's Friday night eviction strategy as "a bad move certainly in the public relations realm" is naive at best.

What has the past three years of the Wilder administration been if not a long series of obtuse public relations initiatives? PR is what created Richmond's move to an elected mayor, and navigated Wilder into the office. PR and political theater are the elements of genius that Wilder's longtime adviser Paul Goldman used to navigate the man's political career, and -- combined with Wilder's smooth tongue and disarming charm -- it made for some very attractive governance.

But public relations, clever ripostes and smooth talking do not make for good leadership.

During my many months of knocking Doug Wilder's poor leadership as Mayor of the City of Richmond, I've never seen a series of moves as baldly calculating and disingenuous as the hand played by his administration last week.

And calling bullshit on Doug Wilder's poor leadership does not excuse the other groups involved in the running engagement of posturing and one-upsmanship.

The current City Council's leadership -- especially that of glad-hander Bill Pantele -- has been utterly lacking in this and many other instances; even in its worst years with Roy West and Chuck Richardson and Leonidas Young, the Council made half-hearted attempts of pretending to be accountable. The lack of oversight this council has provided is inexcusable.

The inability of a Superintendent Deborah Jewell-Sherman and the School Board (most of who appear to not only be competent, but well-intentioned -- see this exchange between TD reader and TD editorial staffer Cordel Faulk. Here's the nugget that lands for me:

This is probably Richmond's best School Board in two or three generations. To know George Braxton is to be impressed with George Braxton. He has a keen mind, and is probably the best School Board chairman in decades. The city is fortunate to have people such as Kim Bridges and Lisa Dawson, and I could go on. The board's great dissenter, Keith West, also adds a tremendous amount of value to the debate - its good that he's there to keep hammering the theme of fiscal responsibility. I will go as far as to say that no other jurisdiction in the region has a better board than the one Richmond has right now.

I've listened to Doug Wilder, and I've talked to George Braxton. They're saying many of the same things when you peel back the layers. At this moment Richmond has a terrific mayor, and a terrific School Board - but they are fighting each other instead of a rotted school administration.

Nice words, but still two more groups demonstrating a failure of leadership. And if the Mayor, the City Council, the Superintendent of Schools and the School Board are all at best fairly competent, moderately well-intentioned and pointed toward similar outcomes (all of which might be arguable) and are still unable to move the city forward, maybe it's time to stop apologizing for or defending any of them.

The sad reality is that the victims of all of this absurdity -- brought most recently to light by the inane public relations stunt of the Mayor last Friday -- pay taxes and want performance from their elected officials. The residents of the City of Richmond are the ultimate victims of this wave of failed leadership, and all the facts in the world don't release the Mayor, the Council, the Superintendent and the School Board from responsibility.

It's a shame we have to wait until 2008 before anyone pays the bill.