Doug Clark: If Spokane Valley-sized golden parachute comes with city manager job, sign me up

“I want to be like Mike.”

Remember that old slogan from back in the early 1990s?

Those were the days when Michael Jordan ruled basketball and the Nike shoe world and everybody wanted to be like Mike.

Well, I still want to be like Mike, although my hero has nothing to do with hoops.

(Or “rings” if you’re as big a basketball boob as Ted Cruz.)

I want to be like Mike Jackson, the canned city manager of Spokane Valley.

Jackson was fired by the Spokane Valley mayor and his cronies a while ago for reasons that are still murkier than a wastewater treatment tank. Practically everybody felt sorry for the poor guy until the news broke the other day.

The Spokane Valley officials gave Jackson a bucks voyage severance package of $411,000, or about three times what it should have been under his contract.

Wow! And I thought Spokane government was screwed up.

Granted, 400 Large isn’t up to the golden parachute standards of a Wall Street big shot or an overthrown corporate fat cat. It’s just walking-around money to what our Avista czar takes home.

But to average slugs like you and me, this is real do-re-mi.

Four-hundred grand and change for getting the boot?

Count me IN!

I’m confident that when my editor finally wakes up and gets around to canning me I’ll be lucky to get out the front door of The Spokesman-Review with one of Paul Turner’s reporter’s notebooks and an expired bus token to get home.

Being like Mike would solve everything.

So on Thursday afternoon I looked up the contact information for the city of Spokane Valley and punched the numbers.

I told the cheerful woman who answered the phone that I was calling to step in as her new city manager.

After a nervous pause I heard her say “um,” and then she told me she’d have to connect me to someone who sounded like Clarabelle.

After a short wait I got the voicemail for Spokane Valley’s public information officer. I left a message essentially repeating my offer.

“I don’t expect to last very long. Or do a good job, just ask my editors,” I added, noting that I wanted to hang around just long enough to get the Jackson jackpot kiss-off.

“I want to be like Mike,” I said again just to let everyone know how serious I am.

An hour or so later Carolbelle Branch, the Valley’s spokesperson, called me back with rather discouraging news.

First off, no process or timeline has been set up for the selection of a new city manager, she told me.

My guess is that they probably can’t afford another one.

Secondly, she said I would have to pose most of my questions to the City Council.

“Is there any left?” I quipped.

That stopped her a moment. In the wake of the Jackson debacle, two City Council members have quit their posts while holding their noses.

What cowards. They may be on the right side of this, but abandoning their elected positions is spitting in the face of every voter who put them there.

When I’m the Spokane Valley’s new city manager there’ll be no quit in me. Not until the going-away price is right, that is.

I asked Carolbelle if she expected to get a fat severance check when they fired her.

“Can me? What do you know?” she deadpanned.

This lady’s quick. I can definitely work with her.

I finished up by asking if she thought I should send Spokane Valley a formal letter of my intent or if she thought the column I was writing would suffice.

She assured me my column would be more than enough.

Before I finish it, however, I definitely want to extend some serious admiration to Milt Rowland.

He’s Jackson’s attorney. I figure he had a lot to do with the, ahem, financial proportion of this regal remuneration.

I’ve made a note to give Rowland a call when the time comes and I’m out on the bricks looking for a bus schedule.

“Milt,” I’ll say when he answers the phone, “I want to be like Mike.”

Doug Clark is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review. He can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or by email at dougc@spokesman.com.