New London's big mistake

I told you so.

I submit this tactless indictment in response to the ongoing chaos of government in New London. Prior to, during, and following my service as city councilor I warned against the charter amendment repeatedly proposed to replace our council-appointed, professional, trained and tried city manager with a purportedly "strong" mayor, a politically nominated and popularly elected amateur.

My experience on the council confirmed a lesson I had learned some fifty years earlier as an undergraduate student of history and political science: service in the branch of government that makes the laws - the legislative - calls for less knowledge and precision of judgment than does holding the office that puts those laws into effect - the executive. At the local level this means that the work of a councilor, which includes making policy as well as resolving a plethora of minutiae, demands less time, study and relevant background than does that of a city manager or mayor, who cannot make policy but must supervise the multiple daily functions of government.

As councilor I participated in selecting a city manager. We reviewed lengthy curricula vitae, conducted exhaustive interviews, deliberated the sum of information. I asked each applicant the same question, based on lifelong observation of, and occasional activity in, New London's government: what would you do if confronted with low morale in every department? The question proved decisive. We chose Martin Berliner, who gave the most promising answer.

The contrast is striking between that thoughtful, unhurried, non-political procedure and our recent, hostility-infected election, replete with a surfeit of male bovine excreta. Not one candidate revealed awareness of the fundamental American principle of separation of powers, cemented in our federal and state constitutions and city charter. Contending for executive office, all candidates promised policy change, which they would have no authority to implement.

Their display of ignorance was compounded by proposals to rescue education. By charter, education policy lies wholly within the province of the board of education. The chief executive of the school system is the superintendent. The mayor has zero authority over either.

The contrast is also striking between the outcome of council appointment of a city manager and our present post-election predicament. Martin Berliner worked patiently, quietly, persistently to improve coordination among city departments, increase efficiency and enhance morale. Now, precisely as I had predicted, appointment and retention of personnel is politicized and performed with a distressing degree of favoritism. I do not join the chorus denouncing our new mayor for the consequent decline in competence. The loss is inherent in the system.

The charter revision endowed the mayor with asymmetrical authority. Although powerless to create policy, his veto, requiring six councilors to negate, grants virtual omnipotence to destroy policy. Though billed as innovative change, the new system will, through exercise of the mayor's veto, perpetuate the status quo.

Some who clamored for charter change claimed that a "strong", elected mayor, unlike members of the council, could be held accountable for the consequences of his actions. The argument is illusory. All individual actions interact with their social context, too frequently with unintended, unfortunate results. History is accountable for the web of suffering with which it ensnares all of us.

All in all, I draw no comfort from my opening - and closing - comment on our situation:

I told you so.

Charles Frink is a former New London city councilor, lifeguard and history teacher, and is currently the president and personnel policies chair of the New London Education Association.