Danehy

It would be easy (and perhaps even justified) to go the ad
hominem route in pointing out just how stupid it was for four City
Council members to vote to fire City Manager Mike Hein.

I thought of doing a Wizard of Oz thing, but they all would
have been the Scarecrow. It could be argued that, collectively, they’re
dumber than a box of sticks, but these being lean economic times and
all, I don’t want to leave the Weekly open to a potential libel
suit from an offended stick. At least one of them, were she taken to a
public swimming pool, would wonder how that rope keeps the deep water
from spilling into the shallow end.

However, there is no law against dumb people serving on a City
Council or, once there, doing dumb things. In fact, it’s pretty much
the standard operating procedure in these parts. What they need to know
is that the consequences of their shortsighted action will send
negative ripples through the community they claim to care about for
years to come. When Steve Leal, Shirley Scott, Regina Romero and
ringleader Karin Uhlich formed their little Butt-Hurt Coalition to fire
Hein, they almost certainly guaranteed the death of Rio Nuevo. (That
may or may not be a bad thing, but the expenditure of millions with
little to show for it certainly is.) On the plus side, we all get to
watch in a mix of wonderment and horror as they now get to deal with a
projected $80 million budget deficit for which they had so conveniently
blamed Hein.

Here’s a tip, Ms. Uhlich: Public art isn’t the answer.

It must be noted that Mike Hein is a friend of mine, but I don’t
fret over his future. He got a severance package and will land on his
feet because he’s good at everything he does, a fact that the idiocracy
will soon learn the hard way.

A couple of days before the firing, state Sen. Jonathan Paton, who
was trying to help keep Rio Nuevo alive in some form, flat-out said
that the only reason the state Legislature hadn’t pulled the plug
earlier was due to the integrity of Mike Hein, with whom state
lawmakers had a solid working relationship. Paton went on to
say—quite unequivocally—that if the council got rid of
Hein, Rio Nuevo was dead.

After the firing, Uhlich tried to spin things in a diametrically
opposite direction, claiming that getting rid of Hein was the council’s
best chance of holding on to Rio Nuevo. Bold strategy: If you’re going
to lie, lie big.

Uhlich’s and Romero’s names appeared in the byline of a rambling
piece in the Sunday, April 5, Arizona Daily Star which
outlined potential steps that could be taken to make open and public
where and how Rio Nuevo monies were being spent. The uninformed reader
might have seen it as an attempt by the two to actually do their jobs
in a prudent and forward-thinking manner. What it was, however, was a
legislative example of the Stockholm syndrome.

As mentioned here before, new GOP members of the state
Legislature—including Southern Arizona’s Frank
Antenori—have displayed an almost religious zeal in avoiding
raising taxes to balance the state budget and are therefore
understandably hot to hack off what they consider to be that
gangrenous, money-sucking appendage that is Rio Nuevo. The Legislature
holds the Rio Nuevo purse strings and really doesn’t have much reason
to loosen them.

At first, some members of the council took an adversarial position,
trying to turn the Rio Nuevo funding debate into some sort of partisan
fight between an all-Democrat council and a GOP-controlled Legislature.
Even the dolts on the council realized the lack of wisdom in that
course; basically, you don’t get in a pissin’ match with somebody who
has access to a water cannon.

Antenori laid out a bunch of conditions that had to be met before
he’d even consider voting to continue funding Rio Nuevo. He’s a
no-nonsense former military guy who’s smart enough to know that when
you’re holding all the cards, there’s no need to bluff. It was the
equivalent of the bad guy in the movie saying, “Tell me all you know,
and I might let you live,” knowing full well that there was no damn way
the victim was getting out alive.

Uhlich and Romero took the bait, however, and started embracing
Antenori’s demands like hostages, thinking, “Y’know, these guys have
guns to our heads, but they’re not really such bad guys.”

I’m telling you right now: They can preach transparency until the
cows come home and meet every one of Antenori’s demands, and they’re
still going to get stiffed. Hein might (and only might) have been able
to pull it off; these amateurs have no chance.

So now, Tucson has lost one of the best city managers it’s ever had;
there’s a gaping hole in the budget; and despite their feeble
protestations to the contrary, nobody on that council is ready, willing
or, most of all, able to face the challenges ahead.

I guess the best way I could put it is this: On the current City
Council, Rodney Glassman and Nina Trasoff have emerged as the voices of
reason.

This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2009.