If I Were a Corrupt City Commissioner...

An exercise in political imagination, inspired by Paul Harvey's "If I Were the Devil."

If I were a corrupt city commissioner, I wouldn't begin by raising taxes.

Not yet.

I wouldn't begin by taking away the people's rights, either. That would be much too obvious.

No, if I were a corrupt city commissioner, I'd begin by convincing the people that I was trying to help them.

I'd tell them their city was growing too fast.

I'd remind them about the traffic. The overcrowded roads. The infrastructure that couldn't keep up.

I'd remind them about their property taxes.

And I'd tell them I had a solution.

I'd tell them that developers should pay their fair share.

Who could possibly disagree with that?

I'd make certain the people understood that I wasn't asking them for more money. Quite the opposite. I was trying to save them money.

But there would be a catch.

There would have to be a catch.

You see, my city would have something called Home Rule.

And Home Rule would present a rather inconvenient obstacle to my ambitions.

Under Home Rule, if I wanted to make fundamental changes to the city's governing charter, I'd generally have to ask the voters for permission.

Imagine that.

The people having the final say over the rules by which their government operates.

How terribly inconvenient.

But if I could convince those same people to surrender Home Rule, I could open another door.

With the cooperation of the state legislature, future charter changes could potentially be approved by a vote of commissioners instead of the voters themselves.

I'd still have laws to follow, of course.

But I'd have fewer occasions when I needed to ask the people directly.

And if I were a corrupt city commissioner, that would suit me just fine.

Naturally, I wouldn't explain it that way.

I'd talk about infrastructure.

I'd talk about growth.

I'd talk about developers and impact fees.

I'd point out that only a handful of Tennessee cities have Home Rule.

I'd ask how many times the city had actually needed to use its Home Rule protections.

And when someone answered, "Never," I'd smile.

Because I'd want the people to believe that a protection they hadn't needed yesterday was a protection they couldn't possibly need tomorrow.

I'd tell them the current charter would remain substantially unchanged.

And perhaps it would.

For now.

I'd remind them that they could still vote me out of office.

Of course they could.

But I'd much rather have them voting every four years on who gets to exercise governmental power than voting directly on whether that power should be expanded.

I'd frame the entire question as a choice between higher property taxes and making developers pay.

I certainly wouldn't spend much time discussing the other legal instruments already available to make development contribute toward infrastructure.

And I wouldn't encourage too many questions about whether those alternatives had been fully explored.

Because the longer people talked about roads, traffic, taxes, and developers, the less time they'd spend talking about their charter.

And their charter would be the whole point.

I'd want the debate to be about money.

Not authority.

About growth.

Not accountability.

About what the government promises to do next year.

Not what future governments might be permitted to do ten or twenty years from now.

And if someone questioned my intentions, I'd be offended.

I'd ask whether they trusted their elected officials.

I'd remind them that we were all neighbors.

That we all wanted what was best for the city.

And I'd be counting on one very important thing:

That the people would judge the safeguards of their government by how much they trusted the people currently running it.

Rather than by how those safeguards might protect them from the people who come afterward.

Because if I were a corrupt city commissioner, I wouldn't need to abolish elections.

I wouldn't need to eliminate accountability.

I wouldn't even need to break the law.

I'd simply persuade the voters that one of their existing protections was unnecessary.

I'd offer them the possibility of future financial relief in exchange for a definite change in how their city could be governed.

And I'd let them make that decision themselves.

After all, there's something rather elegant about persuading people to surrender a protection voluntarily.

Especially when they believe they're doing it to protect themselves.

But then, if I were a corrupt city commissioner, that's exactly how I'd do it.