Latest / Rick Outzen: (we don’t) color on the dog / Making the Case for a County Charter
Transcript
- Rick Outzen: Welcome back. I'm Rick Alson. This is Rick's Blog Live. Thank you for watching. We try to cover a lot of different topics. This is one that's been around for almost 20 years, and it's one that that is, I think, gonna come back before us again. Escambia County does not have a charter. What separates government from county government, the city of Pensacola has a charter. It's a charter that created strong mayor. it sets all the rules, how they govern themselves in their elections, their salaries. ⁓ there it it can go down even into what departments they are if they wanted to. the county doesn't have a charter. It's all dependent on state rule. the legislature decides ⁓ salaries, the organizational charts, and sometimes can pit constitutional officers against each other. one person who helped to make strong mayor, I think John, John Peacock, I think John, you and I were having this conversation long time about Strong mayor, I think I found a video that we did ⁓ WWF when we were talking about the whole concept of what having a strong mayor was. But county's in a worse shape because the at least the city had a charter at that time. now the the county doesn't. And there's a big difference when you get a charter you can do so much more control. John Peacock: Significantly. Right now everything's dictated by the state, Rick, which kinda makes no sense, right? We have no self control. When you have a a charter versus non charter, charter, whether it's you've mentioned salaries, et cetera, all dictated by the state. We get to pick all that stuff in a charter. We get to decide. The citizens get to decide. ⁓ counties have their own, you know, self-government. It's all state. We get to pick anything we want to. We get ⁓ recall provisions, any initiatives, referendums, all that's dictated by how we want to do it the state. There's significant differences and I think when you look at how progressed over the past twenty something years since the strong mayor effort since the Maritime Park, it's time some leadership, right? And now we have a difference we can visually see. Back when we charter before ⁓ People didn't really understand. Most people were from Askamie County. Now we have so many new people here. we've seen the the benefit of the city. You know, we have ⁓ the strong mayor leadership, which is responsible for ST Aerospace, Burdon, should I the Palafox project? There's so many things that have happened because the leadership from Ashton and ⁓ and and now and now DC, and we get to pick that leader, right? In in the in the co county, the downside, you've heard me say this a million times, Rick, is we get to for one of five. You can't affect change with your vote. If I'm county commissioner, if he was the best commissioner in the world, three four other people can do stuff that I don't agree with, and I have no say-so in that. If I'm upset with the county administrator, ⁓ I vote against that person. If I'm upset with the economic development or lack thereof, I can't vote for or against that. That's why we need that, Rick. Rick Outzen: Well I and I think some of the pushback against that is you're putting a billion dollar budget in the hand of one individual. That's the charter into effect. How you set in ⁓ the checks balances, which are gonna be probably have to be different than the checks and balances that you had at the city 'cause the city's a much smaller unit and definitely, you know you know, twenty percent of the population of the county, maybe a little bit more than that. But it it it's a different type of animal. The process though is the process you see needs to happen? Yeah. ⁓ John Peacock: It happened in one or two different ways. Let me address that other issue first. People go, Well, how would that work? I said, Well, remember Schoolhouse Rocks? You know, you have an executive branch and you have a legislative branch. And as you mentioned, that has to be checks and balances, right? Think about the governor and legislative branch, the president and congress. Same concept, right? In the mayor, we have a council. Do we need a strong checks and balances? Absolutely. But guess who gets to write that? We do. Right? We get to write that. Now we, John Peacock and Rick Altson, we as citizens, that appointed bot and we get to vote on it. As citizens, we get to vote on that. how it would work was one of two ways. Either we get fifteen percent of the electorate to sign a petition, which is a lot of work, or get the county commissioners to step up and go, we realize that maybe this of government isn't the right one. ⁓ So let's a county commission study and get some people eleven to fifteen people is what the state statute says, appointed by different folks, and get those people together in a room and let's figure out ⁓ a better way to do Then the electorate gets to vote on it. If we all want it, great. If we don't want it, that's great too. it's time to at least look at it. And it's been too long where we s been stagnant. I mean, even guys like Chip who's been a leader in this community for a long time, both in the city and the county, has said, and you quoted him, has said this community will never move forward ⁓ with form of government because there's no electorate. You know, in the two hundred and fiftieth year celebration of our country, I did some history work again and look back and our country originally founded with the Articles of Confederation. And quickly they realize, ⁓ shoot, there's no executive branch, nobody in charge. We need a we need to put an executive branch in there. So even two hundred and fifty years ago, figured out without an effective branch, executive branch, we're not gonna move forward. Rick Outzen: So and the other thing I think people need to realize is you're not talking about consolidated government. This'll this would be the city government stays its same with its strong mayor, then the county would have its own charter. Absolutely. And that would be so that takes some of haze off the issue. It sure does. Because that was the issue back in in twenty ten ⁓ when we had consolidation committee that it ended up getting you had All the constitutional officers got upset, ECUA got upset, yeah, because it was it was a huge swallow take. and ⁓ this not that. No, it's not. And I think that that's that's needs be pointed out. ⁓ John Peacock: protections now from the state level for constitutional officers they they remain separate right so is just about having us citizens have accountability to what happens in our community and we don't have that now ⁓ we get you know fired up about our county commissioner and all the things that happen there but again you only get the vote from one of five and that's crazy almost unamerican to me when I can't ⁓ affect with my vote. I want to be able to vote for a governor, a president, ⁓ a a ⁓ county county mayor, county administrator, whatever you want to call them So that that person leads. You know, DC Brews has been an effective mayor. we don't always agree, as you can imagine, we butt heads a lot, but I get to choose in August I said I picked one of he haven't got percent of our electorate. But if somebody else ran against him, they they they would won. And that's a great thing when you have s different ideas and different opinions. You know, often people rick say, Well, who could it be? Who could that county mayor? Well, we didn't think Ashton was gonna ⁓ We didn't think DC would emerge. And when I asked those people and people like Tom Murphy was the mayor of Pittsburgh, Joe Riley was the mayor of ⁓ Charleston, would you have run for office there wasn't an executive leadership role? And they said, Hell no, right? It doesn't make any sense. Tom was vilified in Pittsburgh when he was mayor because he did all these great things, what turned out to be great things, ⁓ the waterfront. F years they him a key to the city, but they wanna run his as butt out of of Pittsburgh, you know, and Joe Riley was mayor for forty years and look at Charleston now. So Rick Outzen: It'll be interesting to see how if a charter commission gets formed, would they do like the city and make the races So when would then open it up for everybody to be able to vote? ⁓ John Peacock: Wouldn't that be a great thing? It really would Because now we get everybody's input. Right now the minority community really don't get to vote for one. Right. You know, for the most part. I mean obviously we have minorities outside the S3, but certainly concentrated And it it's it's great to be able to vote for if I'm upset about how ⁓ are going on there in a minority community, I really don't have a say so on that. I can vote for my commissioner and he or may not do anything. I mean, look at the stuff going on at the beach. I mean, ⁓ twenty years ago when I was on the SRIA, we said we need a parking garage. Course nobody cared about that then, right? Now all of sudden we have a parking crisis out there and all this There's gotta be a leadership and a plan and that's what you have when you have an executive that's accountable. You have a five year plan. You used to push the ballsy the ballsy plans and those were leaders pay ⁓ Leaders pay to that though, Rick. When when when we get this hold leaders accountable for efforts, you know what we have in account is a manager. Managers kind of rearrange the the chairs based on what the committee ⁓ talks about, right? And the former government we have now is supposed to be a CEO with a board of directors. not how it works. Right. We gotta five people that think they're all c county county of our own little district and nobody ever 'cause they can't, Sunshine Law, and nothing ever really gets done. Rick Outzen: We've gone through it pretty quick. We have? We have. We'll see what happens. Hopefully, you know, the start pushing. I do think that it's time to be looking. ⁓ is the perfect time to do it. We're up on the the, you know, ⁓ we got two more years for another election. We have time to start the process. And it's a two-year process to do this. So ⁓ we gonna go ahead and break. John, thank you so much for joining me. Always a pleasure. We are Rick's blog. I'm Rick Altson. I'll be right back and try to wrap this up.