A Murky Crystal Ball

illustration by Doug Potter

It's hard not to take personally, I'll admit. On December 16, two days before the final city council meeting of 1997, I e-mailed this invitation to each of the councilmembers and their aides: I am hoping that each of the council offices will be eager to participate in my "Council Watch" column for Jan. 9th. Each office would provide me -- by fax or e-mail -- with ONE wish, ONE prediction, and ONE New Year's Resolution for 1998 and I will print them -- verbatim -- in my column for that week. The "verbatim" has one caveat -- they must be 200 words or less.

Your participation in this would be greatly appreciated and my hope is that you would each look on it as an opportunity. The responses must be received by December 31 to land in the paper. Thank You!

Merry Christmases all around, Kayte

Pretty nice idea, I thought. And easy, too. I mean, these folks have got to have at least a few ideas and plans that they're willing to admit. Ah, how the innocence of my youth is slowly being chiseled away.

Like everyone else, I was busy over the holidays. Left town for a while. And when I returned to work this Monday... nothing. Zip. No e-mail, no faxes, no phone calls. Eh, big deal, I thought. Everyone procrastinates. I'll just remind them.

A few phone calls and it's hearty assurances all around. "Sure thing, just didn't get around to it. There's still time before the deadline? Great, great, get right on it. We'll have it out by tonight." I didn't reach everyone, but I left messages. And, after all, they'd had my note for three weeks. How long could it take to respond to my e-mail with a "no, thank you" or call and leave a quick message? I was beginning to get worried. My easiest column of the year was starting to unravel.

Tuesday morning, dangerously past deadline, there were still no replies. Another round of phone calls and finally the truth began to seep out. Councilmember Daryl Slusher's assistant, Ramona Perrault, left a message warning me that if I were a "betting person," I shouldn't stake much on Slusher sending in a reply. So much for nepotism, I shrugged. And then I got to thinking. They were shutting me down. Collectively. Not one single councilmember was going to send in so much as a how-de-do, much less some well thought out New Year's resolutions. My little assignment was just the type of thing these folks love, too. Free press and an open forum to pontificate with no danger of being taken out-of-context. Why weren't they biting?

Like I say, it's easy to take these things personally, but it went deeper than that. There were some lessons to be learned from this blanket refusal to respond. It's that united front thing again. No crack in the armor. A few disingenuous promises, perhaps, but only because I pushed for them. Kristen Vassallo, Bill Spelman's aide, assured me that she would bring my column up at a meeting of all the council aides Monday afternoon, so I was sure they all knew of my deadline. So, what was the missing piece?

Aha! The meeting itself. What were all the council aides doing in a meeting together, anyway? I have no illusions that these busy people got together just to conspire against little old me. But they sure were busy working together on a bunch of other New Year's projects. (Projects which, I might add, would make fine fodder for resolutions, wishes, and predictions.) This was the stuff of the New Green Alliance -- all this friendship and communication and joint decision-making behind the scenes. Surely they could come up with something.

Once there was a day when the 4-3 inevitability of council would have sent the members scurrying to compete for the opportunity to wish, predict, and resolve in a public forum, competing against one another to be heard and gain the upper hand for their pet projects. Nowadays, though, outshining each other is a bit of a no-no. Kirk Watson's the boss, and everybody else falls in line. Better him than Bruce Todd, right? So I should stop trying to divide them by asking individual opinions, right? No need to stir up a hornet's nest.

Then again...

The stone-faced unanimity of the council's silence seemed eerily familiar to the complaints of the recently annexed who shook their fists at meetings and on editorial pages for weeks at the city's unwillingness to debate or even divulge information about the suburbanites' redefinition as citizens of Austin. The council that nays together, stays together, seemed to be the going concept here.

At least I hoped that was the reasoning. the alternative was even more terrifying -- that they simply were completely uninspired, that they didn't have any predictions and resolutions for the coming year. Had Mayor Watson blazed so quickly through his goals for 1997 that all there was left to do was tidy up and wait for the next wave of political rhetoric to come rolling through when the county commissioners all come up for election in May?

Another possibility occurred to me. Perhaps the councilmembers were simply too tired to think. Despite the vacation, their mental batteries could be utterly dead, drained by the push for annexation, to say nothing of the battle to replace SB 1704, the tug-of-war over the BFI Recycling plant, the Tannehill Apartment complex... the hard work down at city hall never slacked last year, not even during the normally tame summer months. Maybe that whole council consensus thing -- the same force that kept even one of them from responding to the Chronicle -- had served to keep them sprinting through policy decisions until they were too winded to talk. In the past, when there was less consensus among the council, there were also lower expectations for getting things done. Now, Our Gang is having to keep up with the driving expectations of a man who doesn't know the meaning of the word "rest" -- Mayor Watson. In joining up as they have for a virtually united front -- they do occasionally disagree -- the council has worked itself to the bone. It appeared to me that they were either out of energy, out of ideas, or both.

I called up my editor and told her that I had been completely blown off. It wasn't the first time, she reminded me, and surely won't be the last. Then the phone rang. It was Susan Sheffield, Jackie Goodman's aide. She said that Goodman's handwritten submission would be faxed over within the hour. A sigh of relief. Of course, Jackie would be the only one to finally respond. She's probably the most original thinker in the bunch, anyway. Certainly the most independent. And this kind of creative Rorschach test was just up her alley.

Next, council aide Dwight Burns called. He had the decency to admit, though not too enthusiastically, that his boss, Willie Lewis, would not be participating. Then it was time for John Gilvar, Beverly Griffith's aide, to take his turn. He was apologetic, too. We chatted about the holidays. He said he'd try to get something to me in the next hour.

Those hours have all ticked past now, and the dark cloud of doom is hanging over my desk. I must turn in the column, with or without Goodman and Griffith's submissions. Fine, then. I can come up with a prediction. I predict that the little fissure in the dam built by this like-minded council is slowly widening, and I think that before spring is out we'll be treated to an all-out fight from the dais. It will emanate from the Beverly Griffith/Kirk Watson split. The two haven't had much to say to one another since budget talks began in August and they had a tiff over a quarter-cent of property tax. Griffith and Spelman will huddle closer together, while Watson and Slusher team up to rule the world.

Ironically, just as I was penning that last sentence I got two calls, one after the other. First, Gilvar to say that all the councilmembers might be joining up to turn in a joint submission. There's that "All for one, one for all" thing again, a more amusing result than I could have invented myself. Then a second call, this one from Larry Warshaw, the mayor's aide, apologizing for being purely exhausted and asking what I had gotten from the rest of the group. Hmmm... interesting that Griffith's aide was busy planning, while Watson's was out of that loop.

Meanwhile, as I finish the column, the group fax has never materialized, and I'm still left to my own devices. I hope that in following the twists and turns of this week's deconstructed column you've learned something about the government and the press. I know I have, and it's this -- from now on, I'm writing my own damn material.

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Epilogue: Oh look, it's Tuesday afternoon and the faxes are starting to roll in from Griffith and Spelman, and Garcia is willing to make some predictions. Goodman turned in an especially well-done list. But this breakthrough I nursed is all for naught -- according to my evil editor, the submissions -- for which I am sincerely grateful -- are all too late for inclusion in this column. My rants will remain as they are.