From the Roundtable: Stormy seas await city and county government crews

Heading into winter, I have feelings that the next year or two are going to be pretty rough ones for the city of Columbia and Boone County.
The local governments are sailing through the waters of arguably the worst recession since the Big One of the 1930s, and there are more than a few icebergs to avoid in the oceans of governance.
For the city, the problem has to do with navigation. The captain, City Manager Bill Watkins, is leaving March 1, and his financial first mate, Finance Director Lori Fleming, will be gone in December. Then in April, two new City Council members will be elected. All this change comes as the city leadership faces complicated budget shortfalls and the biggest of the financial icebergs — pension funding — that threaten the city’s fiscal solvency.
Meanwhile, Boone County’s ruling hierarchy is about to find a Republican in its midst after Ed Robb’s come-from-behind victory in the presiding commissioner’s race, in which the former state representative talked up home rule, salary adjustments for elected officials and other revolutionary thoughts.
In my opinion, the expensive mid-term election cycle we’ve just been through represented a typical realignment of the political landscape, a reaction to the ideological turn the country took two years ago. Observing GOP fates and fortunes during my lifetime, this evokes memories of the elections of 1946, 1952 and 1994, when voters reacted to both actual and perceived Democratic Party excesses.
Are Republicans capable of absorbing the lessons of previous mid-term elections? We will see. Although I remain optimistic about the future of this great country, the political landscape appears more polarized than ever as governments at all levels are confronted by a galaxy of challenges.
I’m very concerned right now about the future of Columbia. Many of us were stunned when Watkins decided to step down as city manager and set a relatively hard date for his departure that precedes the April 5 City Council elections. The business community has been comforted by Watkins’ balance of talents during the past five years as he has successfully confronted the increasingly squeaky budgeting process.
With only a few months available for an outside selection team to cull the country for his successor, the City Council itself will be in transition. Two incumbents — Paul Sturtz in the 1st Ward and Laura Nauser in the 5th — recently announced they will not be seeking reelection and could be leaving the Council before the group chooses the city’s new manager.
Then there’s the more recent resignation of Lori Fleming. The virtual right arm to the city manager on budgets and finance, Fleming’s 17-year financial stewardship guided both Watkins and his predecessor, Ray Beck, as the complexity of city finance grew almost exponentially.
With both Watkins and Fleming poised to leave City Hall, can we be optimistic and hope the right people are out there and ready to ease into these crucial positions. One senses a sort of paralysis around City Hall these days. That’s why the correct successors should be lined up as quickly as feasibly possible.
Stressing budgets and administrative experience, I worry about the pension iceberg, the underside of which is just now assuming form.
It looks like a different form of drama is about to unfold in the County Government Center as Robb prepares to replace Democrat Ken Pearson as presiding commissioner.
Robb talked about reforming the county government and cracking the Democratic Party’s dominance of elected offices, and he came from behind with a surge of support from rural residents.
County government has been overwhelmingly modernized over the years, and most of us appear to be satisfied with the system as it exists today. But there’s a significant flaw. Earlier home rule charter efforts have stumbled due to their complexity as they swept away existing political alignments. From the errors of the past, maybe Robb and his fellow commissioners will further modernize county government through a home rule charter that a majority of us will approve while preserving most of the system we seem to be comfortable with.