Spokane Can Surely Do Better Than This

Hypocrisy hangs over Spokane’s City Council like a February fog.

It is bad enough the newly elected City Council voted 4-3 to hire a man with no experience as a city manager and ask him to come to Spokane and try to guide city departments during a tremendously complicated transition to the strong mayor form of government.

A thoughtful, independent council would have searched for the best and brightest candidates. That didn’t happen.

The bigger question about the hiring of Henry Miggins, however, has to do with who is calling the shots at City Hall these days.

Is the current City Council truly acting in the public interest?

Or, is this new council beholden to the handful of monied interests that poured tens of thousands of dollars into members’ campaigns and now want a payback?

This city doesn’t need that. We need highly capable city administrators, chosen openly on the basis of proven ability, not special interest loyalty.

Every bit of infighting and backstabbing we inflict on each other makes it less likely that talented people and businesses will want to make Spokane their home.

Ironically, members of the new council majority made a big fuss over their own commitments to openness, independence and fairness. Only a year ago, in February, 1999, newly elected Mayor John Talbott said: “If the people elect a mayor they don’t want him run by the behind-the-scenes power brokers …” Now, Talbott appears to be guilty of the thing he railed against.

Metropolitan Mortgage acknowledges that before Miggins was hired as city manager, it gave its blessing to the choice.

Why did Mayor Talbott think he needed Met Mortgage’s blessing for his candidate? Was it because Met Mortgage has provided substantial support to Talbott in the form of campaign contributions, free staff and an administrative assistant who, public records show, was calling Met Mortgage on the telephone almost every day early in Talbott’s term?

And what happened to Steve Eugster?

Eugster rose to prominence by showing remarkable tenacity at being independent, even when he was all alone on an issue. Then last October, Met Mortgage and its PACs channeled more than $50,000 into Eugster’s campaign.

Suddenly, the man who constantly was calling for better leadership, who constantly said he could not be bought, voted for Miggins, the Met Mortgage man.

This is wrong. No one company, including the company that owns this newspaper, should strive to be “in charge” of Spokane.

Metropolitan Mortgage has done many good things for our community. It has as much right as anyone to a political voice.

However, local government needs to be independent, open and competent. The current cronyism at City Hall makes a mockery of these values and of any notion that City Hall is representing all the people or all the business community.