City Hall — A Political Education

A Political Education

At the June 11 council meeting, as Mayor Kincaid ignored her and studied the material before him, Councilor Carol Reynolds offered apologies to District Two constituents and fellow councilors for the controversy surrounding her attempt to cut a deal with the Mayor. Weeks earlier, Reynolds had offered to swap her vote in exchange for an appointment to the Birmingham Airport Authority Board. The vote would have been to approve an ordinance that would raise the amount the Mayor could spend without approval from the Council to $50,000. At the June 4 council meeting, Reynolds made a motion to delay the ordinance because the council had not yet finalized the Fiscal Year 2002-2003 budget. After that meeting, Kincaid played a voice-mail recording that Reynolds had left for him weeks earlier in which she offered the trade. The rift made headlines the following day.

At the June 11 meeting, Reynolds expressed regret that the issue had become public and worried about the public misreading her “lobbying” efforts. “Lobby [sic] has been acceptable procedure. . . . I just failed the course, I guess,” said Reynolds. The councilor said that the representative of the council’s Transportation and Communication Committee has traditionally served on the board. She added that it is a nonpaying position for which she is qualified, due to her work to save homes in East Lake Park from airport expansion plans. Asking forgiveness from fellow councilors, Reynolds pledged, “I will serve this city. I will serve this mayor or any other mayor while I’m here.” Reynolds concluded, “I’m a rookie, I’m not a politician. I don’t understand that you don’t have friends anymore when you do this. And I don’t want to come out cynical at the end of my next three and a half years, and I’m going to work really hard not to become a cynical person. I love you Birmingham.”

Expressing surprise at the fall-out from the controversy, Councilor Roderick Royal said he voted for the delay because the proposed ordinance increased the Mayor’s spending limit from $10,000 to $50,000 without a cap (an unlimited number of contracts, in other words). Royal emphasized that he was not using Reynolds’ rationale for delaying the measure. “I make my own decisions,” said Royal. “Let’s move this city forward and drop the petty politics, no matter what.” The councilor added, “I’m sorry that Ms. Reynolds’ feels that her trust, somehow or another, was violated. . . . I think I would have felt the same way. But unlike Ms. Reynolds, I certainly would have dealt with it.”

Disturbed that decisions are being made at City Hall that are not beneficial to communities, Councilor Gwen Sykes balked at excusing controversial civic involvement as simply political. “It’s just not politics. We have a responsibility to treat one another right. And we can name it anything that we want to name it.” As usual, her line of reasoning is difficult to follow. Criticizing those who behave as if they have no life outside the political ring, Sykes said, “We act like we don’t have nothing else or nowhere to go once this life is over with. And doing the work and the business of this city should not be worth losing our lives!” She then profusely thanked the Birmingham Airport Authority for hosting valedictorians and salutatorians at a recent luncheon. In her next breath, though, she condemned the blight and devastation that has resulted from airport expansion. Sykes urged the airport to be more sensitive to the needs of its surrounding neighborhoods.

Councilor Elias Hendricks thanked Sykes for addressing the necessity for cooperation with the airport and offered Reynolds his support. “It would be a heck of a lot easier if we had a sitting council member on the board. It would really facilitate our work getting done, and we have a lot of work to do out there.” Hendrick’s wife presently serves on the Airport Authority Board.

After the July 11 council meeting, Mayor Kincaid at first refused comment on the matter, but did offer a final word: “The Council was led to believe that there were genuine concerns for the budgeting process as to why a request to put this off for six weeks was requested and passed. My intent solely was to show that there were ulterior motives to that, not the sanguine motives of checking with the budget.” Kincaid added that the council “backhandedly admitted that they had been misled as to the reasons for [the delay].”

As for Reynolds’ response to Kincaid’s assessment that councilors were misled, her reply was direct. “He can’t speak for the whole council,” said Reynolds, adding that Kincaid had been discussing the Airport Authority Board appointment with her since she took office in November 2001. &

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>