Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
The Tucumcari City Commission faces a delicate balance as it considers whether to adopt a code of conduct for the commission and city government employees.
While the rest of the commissioners and Mayor Ruth Ann Litchfield, not to mention City Manager Britt Lusk, are in favor of the code, District 1 Commissioner Ralph Moya is dead set against it.
He thinks it’s aimed at him.
There is reason to believe that. Moya seems to think he was elected to fight City Hall, not to cooperate with an otherwise agreeable governing body.
Other commissioners often chafe at his often brusque questioning, his frequent interruptions of discussions, his habit of bringing constituent concerns to Lusk at commission meetings, blindsiding the city manager as often as not, and his bristling at any questioning of his authority.
Maybe Moya’s orneriness was a catalyst for the code, but maybe there should have been a code of conduct in place a long time ago.
There should be a standard for civility, or at least courtesy, in the conduct of public meetings, but democracy generates competing interests in any elected governing body. That’s what we call politics.
When interests conflict, voices rise, and any code of conduct should recognize this fact.
To stifle spirited debate because sparks might fly could be tantamount to censorship.
That’s what Moya, who was also a commissioner in the 1980s, is afraid of.
I think it’s just his nature to be brusque and impatient. I knew Ralph in a former life, and he was fighting then to start a rehabilitation center in Santa Rosa, a fight he lost apparently without good reason.
My personal dealings with him are cordial. We often compare notes on Santa Rosa, where I also do some work.
Sometimes voters, especially in a high-poverty area where many feel authority has betrayed them, favor the feisty.
That’s how Donald Trump got into the White House.
Before Moya joined the commission nearly four years ago, city commissioners and the city manager enjoyed a few years of nearly unanimous agreement about nearly everything. All seemed to share the same enlightenment and vision.
The late Commissioner Robert Lumpkin was the most likely to register dissent, but with calm and unrelenting persistence.
While much of the current draft of the code represents guidelines we might think don’t need to be written down, it still might be a good idea to have them stated in ink on paper.
The current draft covers subjects like conflict of interest, acting to represent the city rather than private agendas, and keeping up high ethical standards, avoiding even the appearance of impropriety.
People who achieve even minor power can be prone to thinking some unwritten rules no longer apply to them. That, too, is human nature, and a written code may help to harness a few untoward ambitions.
That, I think, is the main reason the city should adopt the code, but the commission should use extreme caution to ensure that good, healthy dissension can receive a full airing, even when voters elect the cantankerous.
Steve Hansen writes about our life and times from his perspective of a semi-retired Tucumcari journalist. Contact him at:
