It is becoming apparent that Mayor Sylvester 'Boss' Turner might not be big enough to handle the challenges he is currently facing.
City Moves to Implement Prop B, Despite Uncertainty Over When Lay-offs Begin. HoustonChronicle ($$$)
If you're not at least a digital subscriber to the Houston Chronicle you might not be able to read this. If, say, you've already exhausted your reading of 3 free articles on stories about the Rockets, soft-porn slide shows or Erica Grieder trying to convince us and herself that she's the smartest, most bestest political writer EVAH and not just someone who wrote a book and then acted erratically at both her last job and on Twitter.
If you can't, that's too bad. Because the article is starting to paint Boss Turner as a diminutive figure in a place of power during a time when big challenges are at hand.
Granted, the Houston Fire Fighter's Union SHOULD want to negotiate at this point because they would be doing so from a position of power. From that standpoint Turner the Shrinking probably doesn't want to hit the negotiating table because there is increasing evidence that he's just not that good at it.
Turner understands the potential disastrous effects of his negotiating under the looming specter of Prop B. You have to at least give him that. But for the rest of his tactics, asking city departments to ponder budgets with cuts that are probably deeper than they should go, threatening mass layoffs of first responders, denigrating the work of fire personnel etc. These are signs of a man shrinking away from the challenge faster than a Ford F-250 barreling along a Houston freeway without care or concern for his fellow drivers.
Here's the thing. Houston NEEDS leadership right now. It needs a large-thinking individual with big ideas and bold solutions to a host of problems. What it has is a diminutive cypher, a life-long politician with little in the way of career accomplishment who is now refusing to even entertain ideas for solutions. Even the bad ones. His head could not be any further into the sand if only his ankles were still showing.
But, the lawyers are still getting paid. As are his other political patrons. Contracts with former business partners are paying them Millions of dollars and the only argument justifying this is that they are "former" business partners. As if friendships and patronage end when professional bonds are broken.
There is waste in the City of Houston budget, of that I'm sure. And while I have my doubts that there is enough waste to carve out to fully fund the fire fighter pay raise, fix Houston's dilapidated infrastructure, address flooding concerns, and increase the staffing levels for police officers, etc. the biggest problems for Houston right now are even deeper still, more problematic than fiscal disaster.
The biggest problem for Houston right now is that the Houston Area Leadership Vacuum seems to be centered around one very small man. A man whose current plan is to wait and hope. Hope that they get the right judge, the right court-order, the right decision that will let him continue on his path of busting the pillow-soft revenue cap, increasing taxes and using those funds to increase payments to his patronage.
The important thing to remember here is that "Houston Mayor" has been described in the media and by himself as being Turner's "dream job" his life-long aspiration. The gold-ring in what he has imagined to be his storybook political career.
Some story books are horror stories, and they don't end well. Unless the hero of the story has a transformative moment that provides him the courage to rise up and defeat the demon.
Right now we're half way through the Turner story and there's scant evidence that a heroic transformation is in our near future.
But he's having his in-front-of-the-looking-glass "Eat me, Drink me" moment.
Here's hoping he chooses the cake, but lately he's been drinking the potion.
