Wednesday, October 12, 2005

And this is another reason why people are pissed off at local government

As I am sure most of you have heard by now, Janet Hooks is resigning her District 4 City Council seat to accept a job as the city's director of Multicultural and Religious Affairs.

This does several things. One, (please correct me if I'm wrong) this will cause us to stage ANOTHER special election (THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE OFF-YEAR, PEOPLE!!!), spending lots of money for small amounts of voters to vote to replace Ms. Hooks.

Two, this will raise the level of her city pension, which could come in handy if we have a new mayor after 2007 and she is replaced, or if it turns out that she is involved in TENNESSEE WALTZ after all. I'm not saying, I have NO information about that, so calm down.

However, this just smacks of the kind of cronyism that we bitch at the Bu$h Administration about day in and day out. It gets mighty hard to convince people that we are the party of good government when this kind of crap happens.

She may well be extremely qualified; I am not commenting on that at all. But it LOOKS fishy, and SMELLS fishy, so I broke out my filleting knife.

UPDATE: David Holt reports below that a special election will not be necessary; if a fill-in election is held, it will apparently be in concurrence with one of the primaries next year, and the Council will appoint someone to hold down the seat in the interim. Thanks!

7 comments:

David Holt said...

There won't be a special election. It will either stay open until next year or more likely the council will appoint an interim member.

Chris Davis said...

So what does the director of multicultural and religious affairs do exactly?

polar donkey said...

The director of multicultural and religious affairs is the point person to prevent sectarian violence between Kurds, Shites, Sunnis, Fords, and Chisms in the volatile but oil rich region of District 29. Hooks replaces Ahmed Chalibi, who now runs MLGW. Hopefully, electricity production will reach pre-FedEx Forum levels.

Chris Davis said...

Donkey, THAT'S FUNNY!

Steve Steffens said...

Indeed; I sent it to my email list!

Steve Steffens said...

Well, for one thing, that caught me (and other people I know) by surprise. Also, there weren't any rumors that she was being investigated.

I know, rumors are rumors. I never said Janet was or was NOT qualified to hold this office; it's all in the timing that makes this suspicious.

Steve Steffens said...

One other thing: what's the difference in Manager & Director here, that it's not a Division Director level post?