General Lee: City Council Whiffs On Checks And Balances

Citizen fiscal watchdog John Marshall Lee addressed the City Council Monday night, illustrating sports as a metaphor for the legislative body’s role with the executive branch.

Sport is important to Bridgeporters as participants, as viewers, as business, and as a source of positive inspiration. Sport can provide many lessons, or ‘take-aways,’ for those who pay attention. Tonight in Bridgeport as a matter of fact, a few moments from now, baseball legend Pete Rose, will appear as guest manager for the Bluefish.

You know the Spurs chilled the Heat in five games to end the NBA season, the Rangers lost the Stanley Cup last week, and the Yankees, Mets and Red Sox are having .500 seasons. But the World Cup is playing daily in Brazil and has the attention of the world. The best players and coaches are assembled to compete to discover which national team will take home the cup.

At your last meeting I spoke of “checks and balance” as the structure, organization, and tension of governance activities as they are meant to be lived. In Bridgeport we seem to have an executive branch that plays offense most of the time and a legislative branch, your Council, representing taxpayers, that fails to play for the taxpayers too often. If we used games or sport as a metaphor to represent the Bridgeport City Council in creative tension with the Mayoral executive branch, what best fits the current scene:

• Someone from Fairfield suggested badminton where the taxpayer is the ‘birdie’ or shuttlecock that is gently hit back and forth over the net. But where is the back or forth action of the Council? Tennis suffers the same objection.
• Another person proposed croquet presuming that we have plenty of sticky wickets as well as somebody sending your ball way off course but that still seems more descriptive of Greenwich.
• A realist thought the Council looks like a hockey team playing overtime (all season long) with two players permanently in the penalty box, a pulled goalie and the inability to get the puck out of their own zone. That has descriptive possibilities, I admit.
• Another referred to the ‘city game,’ basketball, and suggested those games where the Harlem Globetrotters come to town for a charity event that is played for laughs. The Globetrotter skills, training, and rigged script make you think there is a game, but the way they play with the officials and ignore the rules common to the sport make a joke of this as a real competition. Again, possibilities.
• Baseball as a metaphor offered more possibilities where the Council plays with no spring training or coaching support (unlike most legislative teams) although trips are taken, has occasional star performances but essentially goes completely hitless on offense. On defense the Council pitching staff is so weak the City does not have to hit any home runs, but merely keep ignoring the Council pitching, loading the bases and walking runs in as they use the consent calendar. You do not have to steal home to score in Bridgeport, though there happen to be frequent foul balls, which many locals think personally entertaining.
• The failure of the Council in the eyes of many to stand up, use funds to support their Council activities, and to pursue common cause with Bridgeport taxpayers in engaging in creative tension with the Mayor and his advisers, had a couple folks declare sports and games do not provide grounds for a metaphor unless as in Olympic weightlifting, it is the taxpayer, rather than the Mayoral team or the City Council who does all the work.

However, one Bridgeport old-timer said our governance can best be described as a game of “hide and go seek.” Here the Council and the public can look as hard as they wish and not find the answers to the real questions from that which is made available by the City routinely (even after FOI).

In my opinion the statement best describing the “sporting activity” most descriptive of Executive, Legislative and taxpayer citizen was the person who told me: “Imagine that the Mayor and his Cabinet had received some custom-made shotguns, enough for them and a few chosen guests. In this case they invited several Council persons who are employed by the City for an afternoon of shooting skeet. They go out to a secret site where the launchers are ready to toss the “clay pigeons” (representing taxpayers) into the air and take turns trying to blast the targets while airborne. They fire the cartridges loaded with dispersing shot, and lead enough targets to shoot down most of them until all the skeet are used. Fun for all, you bet, and time to retire for food and drink, right? Maybe it will get expensed to Legislative Department – Other Services line item. How would you know? How say you? Time will tell.

John Marshall Lee