Thursday, December 04, 2008

City Budget:  more than $1 million and climbing every decade to be wasted

Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati

Photo courtesy of here.

The more I examine particular line items in the budget, the more I realize the wastefulness of the strong mayor primary.  The Hamilton County Board of Elections estimates that this year’s primary, on an obscure date where nothing else is on the ballot, will cost $550,000.  In this decade, we will have had three of these expenses, and in the next decade we’ll have two.  So we’re talking well over $1 million dollars in just a few election cycles of spending that could be utilized for something actually useful.

Take what we currently have online from Dohoney’s proposed budget.  So many items could easily be funded by simply getting rid of this useless and obscure primary. 

Consider these new expenditures Dohoney says are investments to improve the City’s future:

Complete Count for the Census - $100,000
Citywide Comprehensive Plan - $500,000
Citywide Bicycle Plan - $350,000
Cincinnati Riverfront Park - $7,000,000
Citizen’s Survey - $52,000
Study for Implementing Automated Solid Waste - $300,000
Youth Jobs - $1,000,000

With the exception of the Cincinnati Riverfront Park, all of these could be paid for with the money that will be spent on just one of these excessive mayoral primaries.

Let’s remember that City of Cincinnati elections are non-partisan.  So, while political parties may endorse candidates, the ballot does not list party affiliation, as it does in other races, such as with Hamilton County.  Look, for example, at some archived results at SmartVoter.org.  The latest bid for County Commissioner shows which candidates were Republican, Democratic, Independent, and so forth. 

But with the last mayoral primary, it’s a different matter.  Here are the results, and as you can see no party affiliations are listed.

This discrepancy is significant in understanding how this pointless primary is wildly different from other primary elections.

Political parties, such as the Republicans and Democrats, will have primary elections for members of the respective parties to select their candidate for a general election—as we all saw this past March in the campaign for President.  But since the Cincinnati mayoral campaign is non-partisan, the political parties do not utilize this same process for deciding who to run.  That’s why last time, for example, two Democrats faced one another.

Also, there is a significant time differential between, say, the Presidential primaries and the general election, versus the Cincinnati strong mayor primary, and the general election.  For the mayoral race, all candidates will campaign for several months, and then at the very end of the race, less than two months before the general, an obscurely placed primary will narrow the field to two candidates.  This is completely unnecessary.

The City can just as easily directly elect a strong mayor by having all the candidates on the general ballot.  This is how it works for Presidential elections, too—there are not only two candidates on the ballot, but several (all the third party candidates, from Independents, to the Green Party, Libertarian Party, Socialist Party, and so forth).

What Cincinnati does would be analogous to the United States, two months before the general election—in the height of campaign season—hosting an election to take all the other candidates off the ballot.  It is a pointless and unnecessary step, and that’s why they don’t do it.

The recent campaign for Proportional Representation had nothing to do with the system our City has for electing the strong mayor.  It only focused on how we elect City Councilmembers.  But during that campaign, we were told by a majority of sitting Councilmembers that PR was a bad idea because it is confusing, and because it costs too much money.  By that same thinking, Council should work to eliminate the strong mayor primary.  Its obscure date makes it confusing, and the saved money could more effectively be utilized in the budget.

That’s why I just sent this letter to all members of City Council:

Dear City Councilmembers:

As you know, most of you maintained, during the recent campaign for PR, that the system was confusing to voters, and that it would cost too much money to implement.  I’d like to draw your attention to Cincinnati’s weird system for electing its strong mayor via an obscure mayoral primary.

According to the Board of Elections, this upcoming primary will cost $550,000.  The next decade of Cincinnati mayoral primaries, therefore, will see well over $1 million dollars in expenditures.  This is an ongoing expense that will only increase with time.

Facing a bleak economic outlook, these funds could be more effectively utilized in directly serving the citizens of Cincinnati.  In the interests of long-term planning, then, I’m asking that you take action to eliminate this needless primary in the future.  The mayor can still be directly elected with just one general election in November, saving money for an obscurely placed primary that many voters miss anyway.

As you know, you can place this on an upcoming, pre-existing ballot, so the voters can help you eliminate this waste.

Thank you, in advance, for your consideration, and I look forward to studying your replies.

Respectfully,

The Dean of Cincinnati

Socializer!

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ThatDeborahGirl says:
04 Dec 2008  at  08:24 am | #

A bit off topic but it does have to do w/ the budget:

I was watching the news this morning and they were going on about possibly having to close Queensgate Jail - the same jail that was so outdated they just had to build a new one. Now if they don’t even have operational funds for Queensgate - where were they going to get the funds to build a whole new jail? Oh yeah, a new tax on people who are already broke.

You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip and people are strapped. Their new tax might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back in these tough times. I’m glad it was voted down.

As for the extra elections: half a million is a lot of money to be wasting these days. What would we have to do to get it changed? Another vote? Another special election? Wasting more money to save half a million? Just asking, I honestly don’t know.

says:
04 Dec 2008  at  12:56 pm | #

Council can put Instant Run Off Voting on the ballot which could end Berding’s wasteful primary, but over $500,000 is going down the drain this election. I promoted IRV back in my 2005 campaign but the corporate media isn’t interested in covering new ideas unless they come from the big corporations or their shills at city hall.

The electoral process is supposed to be a deep discussion about the direction of our community. If the corporate media wasn’t getting billion dollar windfalls by only covering the horse race and taking issues off of the table-solutions like this could come to the forefront and be implemented even if the candidate that championed them didn’t win. We don’t have legitimate or democratic elections about real issues compared to Bolivia or even Haiti and our public servants are too comfortable with business as usual.

Since council won’t do it the citizens will have to pay a lawyer and a printer to create a petition, collect about 12,000 signatures and probably be demonized by the status quo politicians that fear even slight electoral reforms like PR or IRV. It’s just another example of the inverted priorities at city hall. It would be simple for a council member to introduce this, but that would take a little bit of leadership.

Boo-Hoo says:
04 Dec 2008  at  08:05 pm | #

You are never ever, ever going to get your way, and nobody cares about this except you anyway......

says:
08 Dec 2008  at  03:05 pm | #

Eliminating the Mayoral primary would be a very sensible way to save money in the City budget.  I don’t think it could be done for next year, because voters would have to approve a charter amendment to remove the requirement to have a primary, but it’s a change that Council should serously look at, with an eye toward saving the money in 2013.  That vote could happen this year.

I haven’t seen this mentioned recently, but the main reason for having only two candidates in November is to guarantee that the winner is supported by a majority of voters.  It’s open to debate whether that goal is worth so much money, and if the primary is the best way to achieve it.  Instant Runoff Voting would give you the same result, and it could be done more cheaply.

With or without IRV, though, it’s much more democratic to have all candidates on the November ballot, because turnout for the general election is significantly higher than turnout for the primary (especially when that’s the only thing on the ballot).  Also consider that our last mayoral election offered November voters a choice between one kind of Democrat and a slightly different kind of Democrat.  Conservative voters had to make the uncomfortable choice between voting for a Democrat or not voting at all, because there was no candidate who really reflected their views.  We’re not just talking about a puny 5% of voters who didn’t have a good choice.  The dynamic was similar in the previous mayoral election, and I could see it happening the same way again if we continue having primaries.  As Justin said, if Council won’t propose it, it’ll be up to us.