Sometimes you need a bulldozer. When a stubborn bad habit needs to be gotten rid of. When the road is bumpy and needs to be smoothed out. When bad habits lead to a dysfunctional muddle. That’s when you need a bulldozer.
Enter Pat Cotham. She may be a small woman, but she’s also a highly energetic go-getter with a long history of active public involvement, creating jobs and helping the disadvantaged. Her history is one of corralling whoever is interested in getting things done, regardless of ideology, and then look out, she’s coming through!
And that’s what eventually got her into trouble.
- Flickr Creative Commons
Cotham was chair of the Mecklenburg County Commission for one year and provided an example for future chairs of how to get things done. When she was named to the post, public respect for county government was as low as Charlotte has seen since the early ’90s brouhaha over arts funding. The main reason public confidence had sunk to a new low was simple: Harry Jones, the county manager who thought he’d been elected king and paraded his arrogance for all to enjoy. The 2011 property revaluation was a disaster? Let’s hide the facts and deny there’s a problem, he said. DSS is involved in one scandal after another? Stonewall the press. Old cronies getting secret payments from the county without the commission being informed? Yeah, well, so what? That’s my style, said the king.
Within a year under Cotham’s leadership, the commission ditched the failed revaluation overseen by Jones, and had a more accurate one produced, and started DSS on the road to some semblance of organization and sanity. And, of course, she cobbled together a bipartisan coalition and got rid of the county government’s lingering major problem: King Jones. When she didn’t allow Jones to make a comment after his firing – something an attorney had told her was how the situation needed to be handled legally – lots of people thought it was a bit much, but she was unapologetic. As a result, a substantial part of Charlotte’s African-American community was outraged for what they saw as disrespect for Jones.
After Jones’ departure, Democrats on the commission who supported the former county manager (Dumont Clarke, poster boy for the “go along to get along” philosophy of governance; Kim Ratliffe, an effective activist with a temper and a tart tongue; and George Dunlap, the eternally smirking grouser, whether on county commission or in his former public trough, um, position, as school board member) did little to mend fences with Cotham. She, in turn, being the bulldozer in the equation, responded by cutting the Pissy Trio out of important discussions, and thus she was left trying to govern with a coalition of two Dems and three Republicans. Of course, that further enraged the Pissy Trio who then worked on Cotham’s lone remaining Democratic ally on the commission, Vilma Leake, finally convincing her to vote to ditch Cotham as chair.
The kind of power struggle we’ve seen on the commission, complete with vengeful motives and vicious backstabbing (and naturally, behind the scenes accusation of racism from Cotham’s opponents as well as Bill James) is as common to politics as dog shit is to suburban lawns. Cotham is on the outs now, but that doesn’t change the fact that she came in like a whirlwind and got the things done that voters were most concerned about: a new revaluation and ditching Jones. We owe her a debt of gratitude for being the bulldozer who got the job done. She may not have the requisite tact to permanently lead a political lawmaking body, but she sure was the right person at a critical time.
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This article appears in Dec 4-10, 2013.
Does anyone really think that the failed revaluation was not the king’s carefully designed method of ensuring (purchasing) his subjects’ ‘(county workers) continued support with raises paid for largely by the residents of Riddenhour’s, James’ and Bentley’s districts while largely sparing Dumont’s, George’s, and Vilma’s constituents? Oh, for a Woodward and a Bernstein and a Katherine Graham.
Perhaps the least informed article ever to appear in Creative Loafing. Do some research Grooms. The new DSS director was hired prior to Jones being fired. Cotham had zero to do with it. “Secret payment?” Name one. “Pissy” commissioners? Read Bill James’ twitter feed.
At least be objective and factual.
In response to above comment, here are some facts….Former DSS Director terminated by Harry Jones week of September 4, 2012. Cotham quoted in Charlotte Observer March 14, 2012 that not having hired a replacement DSS Director was “Bizarre” and a leader was needed which resulted in Commissioner Dumont Clarke writing editorial on March 17 saying it was a good thing to not have a leader at DSS for months. Cotham continued to push for a replacement leader for DSS. Jones Terminated May 7 and new DSS director hired June 17, 2013.
Thanks for the comment, carolyn. Another commenter has already corrected your assertion that Cotham didn’t have anything to do with hiring a new DSS director. The “secret payments” were for a former county employee who kept receiving checks on Jones’ orders. I can’t find my notes on the matter right now, but it was well reported and documented at the time by the Observer. As far as “pissy” commissioners, of course I agree that Bill James can be as pissy as the best of them. This time around, though, I wasn’t writing about Bill James but rather Dunlap, Ratliffe and Clarke. They got pretty pissy about not being consulted by Cotham on choosing a new county manager, that’s hardly up for argument, so I don’t see what the problem is with referring to them that way.
One more thing: this is a blog, not a news article. Blogs need to be factual (at least newspaper blogs do), as was my blog post in question. Blogs are generally also where a writer gets to state opinions, so your comment to “be objective” is rather beside the point.
Some folks just like to steal…even screen names, as did the poser who posted at 9:54. I am guessing it is a he who is pretending to be a female. Perhaps his real name is Harry or maybe it is a George. Likely he has used the name CarolinaDawgone in previous postings. Oh, well, what can one do.
I really like this article but since I’m anal about the reval I’ve got to ask for some facts. If you have them or want to talk about it I’m available:
“2011 property revaluation was a disaster? Let’s hide the facts and deny there’s a problem, he said”
The 2011 reval was far more open as far as data goes than what is current. You (like me) simply have no idea what has happened with the redo because we aren’t allowed to see the data. The BOCC has no idea either. The attitude is that Bill Deaton is satisfied so there’s nothing left to see even though BOCC did nothing for Deaton. Look at the spreadsheet given to BOCC for neighborhood A101. It shows that Deaton’s 12K house on the lake has not changed in value. Check his 2013 tax bill. It’s exactly the same as what you can see for 2012 and (shock) 2011. So what happened? No one cares because the public is being hoodwinked in to thinking it’s fixed and BOCC will not release the data. If you have it I’ll buy you a grand dinner to share it. Otherwise the data certainly is more hidden now (Deaton actually got his value reduced under the OLD plan. In other words, the system worked for him not the changed law therefore it had no effect on his neighbors). If Deaton’s property is valued at 350K less than it was when it was first looked at in 2011, why did the tax group tell BOCC it didn’t change and why can’t you see the change online?
“Within a year under Cotham’s leadership, the commission ditched the failed revaluation overseen by Jones, and had a more accurate one produced”
What basis do you have to say that the current version is more accurate? Sorry, but I really have to call you out on this since hardly anything has been “produced”. A few neighborhoods with misleading data have been released for the richest in the county but no one on the outside (including the BOCC) can judge it’s success except for the lack of screaming and I bet you that will start back up. They are trickling the numbers out and won’t be done until 2015 so you certainly can’t judge it by the slither that is out there especially since the assessor refuses to release any raw data.
Deaton got his BIG break under the old system and yet the law changed because of his lobbying. The new law did ziltch for him and most of his neighbors saw less than a 2% change in value because they were under the NEW system and therefore didn’t see the refund he is getting under the OLD.