This week in UTW, I'm writing about Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor's vanished campaign promises and her failure to deliver on one of them in particular: a more collaborative relationship with the City Council. Her refusal to keep them in the loop about the hiring of an interim and a permanent police chief, her use of private dollars for public actions (like the recruitment of a new chief) to try to circumvent the Open Records act, and her unilateral decisions to commit Tulsa to radical positions on gun control and anthropogenic global warming with which most Tulsans disagree.
Two weeks ago, Kathy Taylor became the 500th mayor to sign the U. S. Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement, which you can read in PDF form here, and you can read more about the agreement's development on the website of Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels. And here is the Climate Protection page on the U. S. Conference of Mayors website. Taylor's action came without any consultation with the City Council.
And here's a belated link to the previous week's column about the last-minute agreement reached on Fairgrounds annexation, negotiated by Taylor behind the Council's back, and the need for the Council to defend its institutional prerogatives for the sake of checks and balances in local government. In the same column, I also covered an apology by a Tulsa Whirled reporter to the Tulsa Minuteman Project for underestimated their numbers at a Cinco de Mayo counter-rally, and I make my recommendations for Absolute Best of Tulsa Spiritual Leader and Best Family Fun Spot.
MORE: Here's an interesting thread on a national police and law enforcement forum about the Tulsa Police Department and Taylor's criteria for a new chief. The pseudonymous officer posting there claims Taylor is only looking at female candidates. If true, it would be another example of Taylor putting left-wing politics ahead of the public interest.
Comments (2)
Gaaaaah! I'm so sick of this global warming idiocy. It doesn't take more than an seventh-grade education to see right through it.
Ya gotta wonder, after reading that PDF, if the Mayor's read anything on the subject other than Greenpeace press releases. So much--most--of what was in that PDF was ripped to shreds in just one book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism. I typed up an excerpt from the book dealing with one claim, that with 5 percent of the world's population, we are putting out 25 percent of the world's manmade GHG's, and it reveals that claim to be utter nonsense. Wonder if the Mayor'll bother to read anything like that?
Posted by Dan Paden | May 26, 2007 4:17 PM
Posted on May 26, 2007 16:17
Of course the Mayor's signature on this "Agreement" has absolutely no force of law. But I'm curious Michael, aside from her annoying presumption of authority, what beef do you have with this?
The list of measures seem to dovetail quite nicely with the New Urbanist philosophy that you commendably champion. What's not to like?!?
Posted by Mark Sanders | May 27, 2007 8:49 PM
Posted on May 27, 2007 20:49