Earlier this month the city in which I live held an election to recall the mayor and to vote on two city council seats. The recall effort was one of the more contentious local elections I’ve ever seen and the entire process dragged on for more than six months, from petition to campaign to voting day. The mayor and his supporters were claiming the city’s public safety unions were attempting a power play and wanted to install someone as mayor who would take orders from the unions. The public safety unions were claiming the mayor and the city manager were trying to close one of the city’s six fire stations and take a fire truck out of service, endangering the citizens and putting the city’s ISO insurance rating in jeopardy. Whichever side was right is irrelevant for the purposes of this post, but the result was the mayor was recalled by an overwhelming margin.

The relevant thing to note about […] → Keep reading