Council members should receive adequate pay for their full-time contribution
One former Councilman in the federal slammer; two current and one former Council memberunder investigation; observers speculate as to which ones will testify against the others.
Headlines from Chicago, Kansas City or New Orleans? Nope – these edifying news flashes are from right here in Dallas, Texas.
We’ve always enjoyed buying into the myth that Dallas, unlike other major metropolises, was somehow inoculated from municipal corruption by our council-manager form of government and our willingness to dutifully place government in the hands of “volunteer” pillars of the business community. None of that nasty partisanship or – horrors! – “ward politics” for us!
A big part of the myth we’ve subscribed to for decades is that if we pay our Council a paltry sum to serve, then only those who are motivated solely by a noble commitment to public service will want to be on the City Council. That may still be true in many cases, and our current mayor and Council are as fine a group as I can remember in my 30-plus years in this town, as well as being the most diverse (thanks to the 14-1 system). At some point, however, if we get a bad apple in the barrel, we get exactly what e pay for.
The reality is that service on the Council is essentially a full-time job. Think about not just the full meetings, but also committee meetings, meetings with staff, meeting with neighborhoods, town hall meetings, reading briefing material and memos, phone calls – it all can quickly add up to a 50 or 60 hour week. We expect all this for $50 a Council or committee meeting and, oh, we want our phone calls returned the same day, too.
How many of us middle class wage slaves could afford to serve our City in public office? Right now, the only way you can do it is to be independently wealthy, have some kind of special deal with your employer, or live the most basic kind of existence perhaps with the help of family and friends or, like Blanche DuBois, depending on the kindness of strangers. The problem comes when maybe those strangers want to do business with, or sell property to, our fair City. How many of you think this looks like the kind of ideal Jeffersonian democracy we heard about in school?
The majority of us are effectively precluded from serving on the City Council, unless we give up bad habits like food and shelter. Of course, those with a vested interest in the current system just might like that – it’s easier to control things that way.
Every few years some bold free-thinkers will float the idea that Council members, being entrusted with the public welfare of over a million people, might ought to be paid at least as much as a retail clerk or even a good secretary – and every time, opponents trot out a shopwork specter of ward-heeling big-city “professional” (oh, no!) politicians, chomping cigars and living off the public dole.
Well, folks, we need to decide if we want to grow up and be a big city or if we want to continue to operate like some mythical Norman Rockwellesque small town. The current system is fundamentally undemocratic, it absolutely guarantees a very limited pool of candidates, it causes severe hardship for those who do serve with the best of motives, and it places temptation in the path of those who might not be so pure.
It’s unfair and unintelligent not to pay a modest salary to people we expect to bear so much responsibility and , by the way, to be candidates for sainthood at the same time.
Think about it next time somebody has the chutzpah to put Council pay on the ballot again.
