Blowing the whistle on ‘weak mayor’

Now that the World Cup has been decided, the question of changing to a strong mayor form of Mat-Su Borough government may get the attention it deserves.

Apparently the present, so-called weak mayor is not much of a player, since he only has that pesky veto power and strategic vote-breaking role — something like the referee in a soccer match.

By now you catch a drift. What you have is a classic version of what’s known in math as the three-body problem. Mayor. Manager. Assembly. A change in anyone’s power leads to a change in other two. Unfortunately, figuring out just what the changes will lead to turns out to be really, really hard.

We are all familiar with the idea of cause and effect. In the physical world we see, feel and are comfortable with Newton’s laws, even if we may not be able to follow the math. The good news is that in very simple situations those ideas work enough of the time to confirm the cause and effect.

The bad news is that most systems and situations are not simple. We tend to apply the simple cause and effect explanations, failing to predict what will happen while explaining what did happen by cherry-picking “causes” we say were responsible for certain results. The proof of this bad news abounds. Note how economists and many individuals failed to predict the present economic downturn, but can now easily explain why it happened.

Since we’re talking about politics, let’s turn to elections, voting and campaigns. When a candidate appeals to a large number of voters through the ability to convey certitude in simple terms, he or she often carries the day. If a candidate has been able to appear to have been the cause for some effect a voter believes to be good, that candidate gets a vote. I’m suggesting the effect only has to appear to be tied to the cause.

Think back over your own experience as a voter. I’m not going too far out on a limb to guess that you have been disappointed in a candidate you voted for once he or she was in office and, facing more complicated situations over time, was unable to show how good outcomes were tied to their actions.

This is a big problem because some things really are complicated. Complex systems (and what is more complex than a group of people living in a community?) appear both orderly and disorderly. Basically, actions taken by politicians in office can seem to have an immediate result, but typically play out over a long period of time. That certainty we once enjoyed by looking at a simple situation begins to be tattered, especially when the situation is a complex project, affects a lot of people and takes time to complete.

Back to the future

The three elements of mayor, manager and assembly are somewhat like the hallowed Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches based in our Constitution. On a national level, suggestions to change the relative power of any one of those branches brings howls of protest. Changes in the structure of the system are rare.

Which brings us to our own three-legged milk stool model of borough government. Increasing the powers of one leg — the mayor — will necessarily require a change in at least one or both of the other legs. Therein lies the rub. Legislatively, the assembly has considerable power now, modulated by the present weak mayor’s role. The manager was thought to have too much power, so under the strong mayor system he will be reduced and essentially work for, hmmm, the no longer weak mayor.

So we will have taken one leg of the stool, cut it off and attached it to the mayor. If my example holds, expect to see the assembly have an “oh, no” moment when realization strikes that they no longer have a manager they can fire or beat up, metaphorically speaking, and a weak mayor they can override. It will have a strong mayor who in many ways will be more than the assembly’s equal. That often-maligned third element, the strong manager, may have actually been an important factor to help provide balance.

In many communities that two-legged stool becomes unstable and collapses onto the floor in a stalemate with an assembly and strong mayor unable to gain advantage. We will forget all the reasons why we opted for a strong mayor, especially when the occupant of that seat begins to inevitably demonstrate how complicated the world really is. The need for a new sewage treatment plant brings cries for yet another reform.

Should voters opt for a change to a strong mayor, a historian one day may be able to sift through the record and show the weak mayor/strong manager system was a victim of the human inability to admit that some activities are really complex, hard to deal with and take time to do right — and benefit from a referee.

Mike Chmielewski is a Palmer city councilman and candidate for Palmer mayor.