Vacationing out on the Left Coast, your humble scribe was going through mild wonk-withdrawl. Municipal government television to the answer! As you can tell from the picture, here in San Diego, the standards for city service are a little lesser.
A few random thoughts: San Diego city government has widely been renowned as wildly corrupt; from what I can gather, perhaps the biggest fracas now involves the SD city attorney, Mike Aguirre, who swept in on an anti-corruption platform. The rub against him is that he’s elevated his office above the day-to-day legal headaches the city faces, and into a bully-pulpit for himself. It’s a little odd; I’d shit a brick if David Smith had a webpage like this. (Oh, and there’s also the little thing about accepting campaign contributions from his employees.) As city attorney is an elected position out here, it’s an effective illustration of what happens when an administrative office is overly politicized. Not that we know anything about that.
Also, they have a strong mayor form of government out here. The mayor doesn’t even deign to attend council meetings; rather, he sends his delegates to give input, while council elects a president from amongst themselves.
I swear, it’s totally retarded.
This article appears in October 12 • 2007.