Lenny Curry’s HRO punt and the process going forward

I knew something unpopular was about to happen Thursday night when I saw this Facebook post from Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry quoting Harry Truman.

“Fame is a vapor, popularity is an accident, riches take wings, those who cheer today may curse tomorrow and only one thing endures. Character.”

Truman’s motto: the buck stops here.

The irony: that quote is a variant on a Mark Twain chestnut: “Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.”

Since he issued a statement Friday saying that further HRO legislation wouldn’t be “prudent,” after a largely symbolic gesture of banning discrimination in city and vendor employment, Curry’s critics have taken the gloves off and put the brass knuckles on.

Curry, say people familiar with the thought process, wrestled with the issue in a way not evjdent in the media release, which will be best remembered for his use of Bush 41’s favorite adjective.

He heard and read the stories of discrimination against LGBT people. He felt for them. But he also took the religious objections to heart. And he was unable to find a way to split the difference.

There was talk about the partial HRO expansion, one that would defer the question on extending provisions to protect transsexual people. In the end, what was seen as the path of least resistance by watchers ended up being too heavy a lift.

So what happened?

He didn’t think Jacksonville was ready. From terrorist threats to pornographic memes about Councilmen, the HRO debate has been brutal to watch, perhaps especially for an essential introvert that reads theology in his spare time. In his memo, he noted that the Community Conversations created dialogue between two distinct groups, many for the first time.

He saw the dialogue, and he’s seen two rounds of public comment in front of Council, and it mirrors the polling on the issue; a hard 50/50 split, and apparently true in both parties, mirroring the discourse among Council members, where despite all of the attention on the issue in the 2015 campaign,  there are wafflers with Ds by their name, just as there are pro-HRO expansion stalwarts in Curry’s own party.

Meanwhile, Jacksonville faces an existential problem: The city is broke.

The Curry administration commissioned its 90 day audit, which identified the Unfunded Liability as choking the city out. Before that, Sam Mousa and his team did a comprehensive budget review, and found that most departments had suffered from zero-based budgeting that was a] born of Unfunded Liability driven necessity and b] beginning to have generational consequences in public safety and infrastructure.

That’s reality.

The pension bill has passed a Senate Committee and a House Committee, the latter with caveats. 2 more Senate Committees and a House Committee remain. Then, full deliberation, and the Governor’s ultimate decision.

It needs to happen this year. Jacksonville would very much like to borrow money at these current interest rates. Curry’s vow to use all of his “political capital” on this was not some empty statement. Pension and turning the city around financially will either make him or break him as a retail politician.

One could liken this to the John Delaney era push to sell the Better Jacksonville Plan. Delaney did media and town hall appearances incessantly. Why? To build consensus for a plan that took advantage of a finite window of transformation.

Even with all of that work, it was a second term deal. It carried handily in referendum, but damned if it didn’t take political capital, and damned if Delaney won’t hear everything that didn’t go exactly as promised as long as he’s with us.

That’s reality.

Curry didn’t think he could get the pension tax referendum through with the HRO circus on at the same time. That’s also reality. And I can see it: Jacksonville is a town with a lot of low-wattage brains with the right to vote.

But the questions everyone is asking — all your Chamber types and your Civic Council types — is why didn’t Curry try? Why didn’t he “be bold”?

And another question: does this tarnish the luster of One City One Jacksonville, as happened with The Next Level?

One could go off in that vein for a couple more of these. Cynicism about the symbolism never fully went away, and now it’s back to stay.

The real, immediate question, however, is this: what will next week look like?

Bill Gulliford could pull a political coup by withdrawing his referendum bill, and issuing a “thank you to the mayor for this courageous step.”

This would leave the HRO expansion of Tommy Hazouri, Aaron Bowman, and Jim Love to be considered alone.

Hazouri and Bowman are two of my favorite Council members, but they have bucked against the Clique that dominates Council, and they have kept it real at the expense of the hierarchy.

And Jim Love is not typically the best at the procedural jiu jitsu exercises that Gulliford does like they’re sudoku puzzles.

People who seemed like reliable co-sponsors to proponents of the bill, such as John Crescimbeni and Joyce Morgan, have held their fire.

As has Anna Brosche.

One wonders how Council President Greg Anderson will process a change in the process that he spent weeks planning out.

It’s about to get real.

The irony is that a referendum may now be in the interest of the pro-HRO side.

Well, one irony.