A.G. Gancarski
As the old saw goes, victory has many fathers, but defeat is an orphan.
In that context, a decision to postpone a decision — such as that made by the Jacksonville City Council during yet another attempt to push through a referendum that could scuttle current term limits (changing limits from two consecutive terms to three) for Councilors, School Board members, and constitutional officers — is somewhere in between.
In the context of the metaphor established in the lede, it’s almost like a possible father seeing a box containing a pregnancy test and jumping out the window, running to his car, and then driving away, while hollering that “I’ll see you in a month, K?”
The bill isn’t on its first trip through the Council — like a dead fish atop a fetid retention pond, the bill keeps floating up.
Sponsor Matt Schellenberg pushed it a year and a half ago, only to pull it back because the referendum would have competed on the 2016 ballot with referenda pushed by more important parties.
No way was Mayor Lenny Curry going to have his pension tax referendum share the ballot with this quasi-populist referendum. And no way was Best Bet going to screw up its margin for the slots referendum (which it paid $2 million to promote) by mixing it up with the kind of turnout driver term limits are.
But Schellenberg always intended to bring back the bill — and it was telling that its cycle through committees and the City Council coincided with his political ally Anna Brosche, who said she supported the bill when we asked, taking over the presidency this month.
Schellenberg is on the Finance Committee, where the bill prevailed by a 5-2 margin, a spread abetted by the 3 of the 4 members of the new-to-real-power group of Democratic councilors from Districts 7 through 10, including Finance Chair Garrett Dennis.
In the only other committee of reference, the Rules Committee, the spread was again 5-2. Councilman Reggie Brown was a yes vote just as he was in Finance.
But while the number was the same, the passion seemed to have waned from one committee to another … as if people were becoming aware that this bill looked, to those who are mere subjects of government whims, like yet another attempted power grab by entrenched politicians who owe their careers, by and large, to a few dozen donors and a few dozen cliches.
The calls and emails began to pour into Council ahead of Tuesday evening’s meeting. If there were calls in favor of putting this on the ballot, we didn’t hear about them. Yet media and City Hall types not on the Council expected the bill to sail through anyway.
Yet it did not. The smart people didn’t read the room correctly before the vote. So, in that context, some thoughts on what the bill’s deferral for two cycles reveals about how the City Council addressed (or failed, if you prefer) its first test of the Brosche Presidency.
John Crescimbeni is back!
After Crescimbeni lost his race for the Council Presidency to Anna Brosche, it was as if a storm cloud was over his head. He had worked and maneuvered for the position, strongarming his way into the VP slot a year before, and attempting the same with the Presidency.
However, there was an obvious problem: Crescimbeni’s support, by and large, came from mostly white males who had a lot of tenure: folks either in their second terms on Council, or on Council as one stop in a long political career, or — like Scott Wilson — a Councilor who had served previously as a Council Assistant.
The people who voted for Brosche, by and large, were not the ones the press seeks out for quotes. Backbenchers, to use the phrase of one veteran City Hall insider. And there were more of those on the outside looking in than on the inside.
Crescimbeni, among others, was marginalized on committees — excluded from the prestige Finance and Rules Committees. So he didn’t get a chance to weigh in on Schellenberg’s bill until Council night.
And at the very least he forced the deferral — if not mortally wounding the bill altogether.
Unlike many of the most strident advocates, who made the point (without any tangible proof) that the people of 2017 would be more inclined to remove the protections 82 percent of them sought a quarter century ago, Crescimbeni was around then and knew how it went.
Not only did the referendum sail through with an incredible mandate, six of the ten incumbent Councilors who opposed term limits got bounced in the same election.
Crescimbeni put the fear of political oblivion in at least some of the current incumbents when he told them that fate could await them if they pushed the green button. It was a bravura performance from Crescimbeni, who was restrained during debate as VP/President-in-waiting, but made a glorious return to form Tuesday.
Institutional knowledge matters
Crescimbeni was perhaps the biggest dispenser of “institutional knowledge” on Tuesday night — but a number of other Council veterans weren’t far behind, and collectively they did a fair impression of Banquo’s Ghost, telling uncomfortable truths to puncture the self-delusions of certain colleagues.
Councilmen Bill Gulliford and Tommy Hazouri — who found themselves, like Crescimbeni, marginalized in Council Committees — bookended the 19-seat dais on Tuesday.
Each of them played important roles in helping to stall out the progress of Schellenberg’s bill, throwing cold water on the process, one riddled with hollow and half-baked sophistry.
“It’s going to go down in flames anyway,” Gulliford said, bemoaning the “futile debate” around the bill.
Hazouri — who was Mayor in 1991 when the “throw the bums out” attitude was at its zenith — wondered if anyone beyond some on the Council dais actually clamored for more terms for Council members.
Ultimately, there was no effective counter for their arguments. Hence, the deferral, to stop the bill from going down in flames.
Big loss for Team Brosche?
Brosche has made a point of outreach to Northside and Northwest Jacksonville Democratic Councilors, giving them a majority on the Finance Committee and showing up at events where all are in attendance, such as Rep. Kim Daniels’ town hall this week.
There has been a conscious “changing of the guard” mentality of late in Council Chambers, with Brosche rewarding supporters with strong committee assignments. And those supporters, up until Tuesday night, reveled in the power.
Tuesday night showed that leading Council often means a lot more than simply being on the right committees, however.
Brosche’s allies — Schellenberg and the aforementioned Democrats — got routed, in their first real test of their ability to shape the Council decision making process to their will.
How did it go? It was the legislative equivalent of watching Blake Bortles play quarterback. Messy and mistake prone.
The best quotes came from Katrina Brown, the multi-year Finance Committee member whose family BBQ sauce business faces a Thursday “motion to default” and “final judgement for default” hearing, after taking over $600K economic development money from the city of Jacksonville in 2011 to create jobs that never manifested.
Brown, the proud owner of a newish Porsche SUV with all the options, asserted that just because she wanted a chance to serve twelve years on Council without interruption, that didn’t mean she was “self-serving.”
“If all of you guys decide you don’t want to run tomorrow, it’s your choice. But don’t make it seem it’s self serving because we want — we want to put it on the ballot.”
“I’m not self-serving, and I’m not going to let my colleagues say I’m self-serving,” Brown continued.
So, is the bill dead?
Theoretically, the bill has been deferred for two cycles, allowing Council members time to pray on it, or talk to constituents, or talk to Shad Khan, or to attempt to mouth the talking points of the Consolidation Task Force, which made a case a few years back that three terms for Council members may help with “continuity.”
Practically? If it’s not dead, it should be.
There is no way — not in Jacksonville, with its outcome gaps and inequities, and generally overstretched and underperforming government — to make the case that more terms for the same recycled pols is the cure for what ails the city.
Yes, referenda have been sold recently; 2016 saw the pension tax push on the August ballot, and the slots push in November.
Each of those pushes cost millions of dollars, and were driven by an energized donor class — the same donors who typically pick the winners in contested elections already.
Each of those pushes also saw the best political team in the city — Tim Baker and Brian Hughes — masterminding the effort.
Are Baker and Hughes going to carry Schellenberg’s water for a year, selling this referendum? Could Schellenberg even afford them?
Failing the ability to hire the A-List operatives in the city, how is this referendum to be sold? Does Schellenberg get on TV and push it? Does he take calls from listeners on radio? How might that go?
The problem with the push for the referendum is pretty basic: the best talkers, the best politicians, and the smartest people on Council all realize that this bill is sheer fantasia, a poison pill as likely to end careers as to prolong them.
In a Council not known for being profiles in courage, instincts for self-preservation and common sense would seem like they eventually would prevail.
Failing that, as John Crescimbeni said, maybe someone will commission a poll for those ahistorical types who can’t read the tea leaves.
