Some 4,100 feet in elevation below me and 25 miles distant, in the county seat at the very foot of the mountains here, a most interesting scenario is playing out. The dramatis personae are, in descending order, San Bernardino Mayor Carey Davis; his departing chief of staff, Mike McKinney; city manager Alan Parker; the city council, the most prominent of whom in the current scene is councilman Fred Shorett, an erstwhile Davis political ally; and an assortment of lesser courtiers, courtesans and liegeman…
Davis is a political neophyte and naïf, if ever there was one. I do not dislike him for that, and actually, I am in favor of installing our political posts with non-politicians. I cannot resist liking Davis. He appeals to me on several levels. As an accountant by trade he is sensitive to the need for parsimony in the management of government. He has gamely taken on a formidable assignment with San Bernardino, mired in financial challenges, and I cannot help admiring his fortitude. What’s more, he is a Republican, which elevates him in my estimation…
Yet, despite all these advantages, he has shown himself as something of a stumblebum when it comes to running his city and riding herd on the city council. The first indication that something was amiss came shortly after he took office, when he prevailed on the council to allow him to hire Mike McKinney, or more accurately, Mike McKinney’s public relations firm, MICA-PR, to serve in the role of his chief-of-staff. This is troubling because one should never make the mistake of substituting public relations or propaganda for policy. Running a government, as in running a corporation, requires substance before  form. Form and beauty and window dressing are luxuries you can afford only after you have addressed basics. And the hiring of McKinney and MICA-PR were doubly troubling because McKinney had been recommended to Davis by a cabal of Democrats, the very group of Democrats who had championed the wholesale recall of the city council, the mayor and the city attorney in 2013. There are times, I will allow, that bipartisanship is called for. But I find more than questionable Mayor Davis’s reliance, indeed obsequious dependence, upon guidance from someone so obviously in the Democratic camp…
Lest I be accused of some form of partisan hair-splitting, bear in mind that I am merely observing reality and reflecting upon its impact.  One strong indication that Davis had gone in the wrong direction consists of the defection from his camp that came when his greatest ally on the council, Fred Shorett, parted company with him over the McKinney issue. In fact, it was Shorett that infused the remainder of the council with the backbone to refuse Davis’s request that McKinney’s contract as chief of staff be extended into 2015…
This debacle sunk to a yet further level this last week, when Davis, miffed over his isolation on the McKinney contract extension, took aim at city manager Alan Parker. The ostensible justification that Davis gave in calling to have Parker tossed out of his $210,000 per year job was that he had not made fast enough progress in formulating the city’s bankruptcy exit strategy. In 2012, which was well before Parker was brought in to manage the city, San Bertnardino had filed for Chapter Nine bankruptcy protection. Federal bankruptcy judge Meredith Jury has patently indulged the city as it is struggling to get its financial house in order but more recently signaled that she wanted San Bernardino to hurry things toward a recovery plan that will allow its debtors and creditors to be made whole…
Curiously, Davis had no problem with leaving Parker in place all these many months, despite the rather common knowledge that Parker was no stranger to the inside of a bankruptcy court, himself. Indeed Parker had twice filed bankruptcy personally, and his detractors and creditors have alleged that he was leading an extravagant lifestyle, both before and after his filing, including purchasing and receiving expensive items and services and thereby increasing his debt obligations as well as transferring property or assets just prior to both filings. Last June, when councilman John Valdivia was pushing for an exacting performance review for Parker with what appeared to be any eye for terminating him, Davis quashed that effort…
Davis’s timing in wanting to sack Parker now has eroded his political credibility. This week, the council held a special session to consider doing just that. Under the city’s charter he needed a 5 to 2 vote to accomplish that. He had to know going in that he was far short of that threshold. When the meeting was over, Parker was still city manager and Davis had one fewer friend at City Hall. With every move, it seems, Davis confirms what a political novice, and ineffectual novice, he is…