Monday, June 18, 2007

Calming Down, but still asking questions

So I asked several of my hysterical questions over at Bob Mayo’s blog (http://www.thebusmansholiday.blogspot.com/), and he responded calmly and rationally, maybe more so than my questions deserved . But still there’s a dynamic here that I find disturbing. The Mayor has sacked ten bosses, without giving specific reasons, except that those were the ten he didn’t appoint himself. Otherwise the Mayor has a vaguely expressed sense that the city is headed in the wrong direction, and that the status quo is not good enough. I don’t see how anyone, either the sacked bosses or an outsider, can apply for one of these jobs under these conditions. I guess it would be easier for an outsider, since you have no idea of the Mayor’s goals for the city, you could take a chance and just cite your accomplishments, see if they catch the fancy of this Mayor. But the current people would need private arrangements with the Mayor to even bother to re-apply. According to the Mayor, their resume contains whatever is wrong with the job done in their position. What would you say?

Considering that George Spector has been living in this situation for 11 months, we have reason to expect that some changes won’t come swiftly (which might make you wonder about why the requests for resignations were done at all). I watch a tape of Wednesday’s City Council proceedings on Sunday, and now I have to say I don’t believe they will do anything about this. My sympathies to the department heads, it appears your period of uncertainty could be a long one.

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