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November 30, 2007
Governing while no one is looking
On Friday, November 16, the Chattanooga City Council added a new agenda item for the following Tuesday's meeting. The timing of the council session itself — two days before Thanksgiving — did not lend itself to a high degree of public attention, as people were busily readying themselves for the holidays. The agenda addition was announced at the traditional "bury it" time of Friday afternoon.
This week's Pulse features a look into why city government might not want to draw a lot of attention to the matter. The Council vote marks the city's first move onto the controversial homeless campus being championed by Mayor Littlefield. The Interfaith Homeless Network (IHN) was granted approval to move its operations across the street from their current location to the former Farmer's Market site.
Was there adequate time for public review of the proposal before a vote was taken? Of course not. The story has generated a strong reaction from blogger David Morton, who castigates the majority of council members for shrugging the matter off because it doesn't affect their districts, but instead affects the MLK neighborhood. (It should be, and has been, noted that the council member who represents the affected area, Leamon Pierce, cast the lone vote against the move.) Alice at 10,000 Monkeys and a Camera adds more thoughts.
While I often join those who moan against the length of time committees take to get anything done, the fact remains that the council had previously delayed action until the final recommendations from a homeless blueprint task force had been reviewed. This vote was a hasty, half-secret departure from that stated intent.
Another interesting fact, not covered in Angela Tant's article, is that a major donor, of cash, materials, and other resources, to IHN's relocation just so happens to be a major donor to Ron Littlefield's 2005 mayoral campaign: the Homebuilders Association of Southern Tennessee. (One wonders why, being homebuilders and all, and having all this money to throw around, they don't contribute directly to housing needs instead. But anyway..)
I don't in any way resent people for wanting to help the homeless, especially those that are children. That is, I hope, a given. My problem is with the processes by which the help is being provided. Our representatives, and powerful business interests with close ties to them, make it difficult to commend them for good deeds when those deeds do not adhere to the principles of open and honest government.
Finally, I want to apologize to readers for being just too busy to bring this up before it happened. Thanks to the Pulse, I did have the information on that Friday two weeks ago, and I failed to put it up here.
Government | By joe lance | 12:49 PM
