City Council President Bill Bishop assumed the leadership role of the 19-member Council July 1 for a one-year term following a unanimous vote by his peers in late May.
An architect by trade with the Akel Logan Shafer firm, Bishop is serving his second term serving District 2, which encompasses much of the Arlington area.
Bishop, a Republican, served as Council vice president the past year. He has been president for a little more than a week.
He met with Daily Record staff writers Monday.
A week from today, City Council will have Mayor Alvin Brown’s proposed 2012-13 City budget. What’s next?
They have to file it by the end of the week. They’re going to do the official dog-and-pony show on July 16. Jessica (Deal, Council liaison) sent me a note asking if we could do it at 1 p.m. because that’s between committees. They said they were going to get it done sometime during the week and then file it.
What are you hearing about what the administration is proposing?
I don’t know yet. I haven’t heard anything and in fact I talked to Karen Bowling (Brown’s deputy chief administrative officer) on Friday and said I really wanted a briefing on how they were going to do things before it just showed up in our laps. Other than they’re going to yank a lot of money out of different departments, that’s all I know. Potentially the Sheriff’s Office, Public Works. It’s just in vague terms.
What we will not accept is a budget that relies on some type of future anticipated pension savings. He’s said that by December, he will have his pension reform rollout. We’re not going to accept a budget that uses anticipated pension reform savings in the latter part of the year.
Is that a stance similar to conducting the pension contribution study last year?
The pension study, they wanted to put that off, because we knew the results were going to come back saying the anticipated rate of return was too high, needs to be lowered and we need to make an adjustment and they didn’t want to do it last year. This is similar to that. We don’t want to see this ‘anticipated $20 million savings because we are going to make all these changes to pension.’ There are state laws, there are contracts, there are all these pension laws and contract obligations you can’t unilaterally change. There are steps you have to go through and the timeline is too iffy. I mentioned that to Karen (Bowling) and she said that’s not going to happen, so I am going to take them on their word for that.
Describe the relationship between Brown’s administration and Council. Is there contention?
Some of that you can chalk up to a new mayor coming in and a Council that half of it has been there for a term, so you get some of that natural dissension. In my opinion, and I have expressed this, there are 14 division chiefs that have not been filled with permanent appointees one year into the term. The question at this point is, why? That’s just a commentary on what is going on along the other side of the hallway.
If you don’t have people in place, you can’t get the work done. There are issues with that.
I’m not trying to feed the fuel of contention, but there is an element of, why won’t they talk to us?
What do you anticipate from pension talks?
At some point, you either get a contract negotiation that says we’re all in agreement or you get some changes in state law that allows you to do something unilaterally. And if that were the route, that wouldn’t happen — at best — before the next legislative session.
What’s Council’s role?
Council’s role, officially, is to simply give them advice on what we’d like to see. All the negotiations start and are under control of the administration. When they reach an agreement, we vote on it up or down. If there is any impasse, we become judge and jury for a one-year period.
There are a couple of parts of reorganization still out there, mainly the Downtown Investment Authority and the speeding up of incentives. What’s the plan, given the budget is coming soon?
I asked them (Rules Chair Clay Yarborough and Finance Chair John Crescimbeni) to continue the joint meetings on both. I want to get that DIA thing done and done before the budget hearings. It doesn’t mean it will, but I will be at all of them.
How close are you?
I think we’re pretty close. We have killed off a lot of the problems and have a pretty good bill written. (Council member) Lori Boyer has an amendment that she is going to introduce that will clean up a lot of the language we were debating. But remember, that only puts the structure in place. The board has to be appointed, put in place, get to work and do their thing. I think that’s the key piece, with respect to focusing on Downtown. That’s not the key piece of reorganization.
The second phase, where all the meat was supposed to be with monetary savings has not happened. And that’s entirely in Alvin’s court. Reorg phase one didn’t do a heck of a whole lot. For all practical purposes, nothing changed.
Phase two was supposed to be going into those departments and reorganizing how they do business. Flattening out their organizational charts is the No. 1 priority in making that happen. Eliminate so many layers of management and get down to where things happen. That hasn’t happened for a variety of reasons. No. 1, I think inexperience. The people at the time making decisions, not knowing their system. They all came from the private sector, which is good, but they knew nothing of civil service structure. All the work rules, union contracts, all the baggage — they just haven’t been able to do it. Consequently, the 10 percent to 15 percent budget savings Chief Administrative Officer Kevin Hyde touted back in December haven’t materialized.
Have you received your response from Council member Kim Daniels on her appointment as chair of the Public Health and Safety Committee?
Yes. She is going to do it.
Have any of the other black Council members rescinded their letters of resignation from committee assignments?
I haven’t heard of anyone taking those letters back. As far as I am concerned, they are still on those committees. If they want to come and participate, I encourage them to do so.
What happens if they don’t?
All the committees have quorums and we are not in danger of losing that. My position is, they are on the committees. I cannot compel them to show up, but if they do, they are on the committees and I want their participation.
Are the Rules and Finance committees set?
The committees are set.
How do you plan on addressing the anti-discrimination legislation regarding sexual orientation?
I intend to let the new committee chairs and committees run their course for a while to see if they can get it out in the normal fashion. My personal belief is that there is not much more that can be added to the discussion. We have heard from hundreds of people on it. My own belief is that some of this stuff is more anecdotal than real, but again I don’t live in that world so I don’t have firsthand knowledge. Then again, we all have anecdotes on all sorts of things. My hope is that it gets done soon. It is a distraction that we don’t need to be dealing with anymore.
What will be the Council’s role moving forward with the new Duval County Courthouse project?
We still have the State Attorney’s Office to get built. The (Council) Courthouse Oversight Committee will remain in existence until the whole program gets closed out. (Council member) Greg Anderson is chairing that committee. The courthouse building itself is not finished. There are still a lot of issues associated with that. There is an audit we need to do on that to find out exactly where all the money got spent. Turner (Construction’s) contract still has to be completed. There are issues of did we get what we paid for in a lot of cases.
What would you like to accomplish?
Obviously, I would like to see — and I am 100 percent with the mayor on this one — something done with pensions. We are on a slow death spiral, financially, if we don’t. It’s going to happen one way or the other. We can do it together, or we can do it through the bankruptcy court.
It’s going to happen and I would choose to think that doing it collectively is the preferred method.
There are other things. I want to see the DIA done. It’s far past time we got serious about dealing with Downtown because as it goes, the city goes.
The other thing that has to happen is we have got to get back in the transportation planning business. We haven’t done it in the past 20 years. The past few years it hasn’t been a big deal, but as we grow we have to be in the position of how we get people and stuff around.
What is the difference between a business leader and a government leader?
A business leader has a more narrow focus. Your goal is to make a profit. Your goal is to serve your customers and it’s more a direct relationship of cause and effect.
It’s the difference between running a business and running a volunteer organization. I can tell people what to do in my office because I sign their paycheck and they do their job. If I’m running a volunteer organization, I can’t order you to do something. I have to motivate you to want to do it, give you incentives to inspire you to do something. Government is more like that. I can’t tell a department director what to do because he doesn’t report to me.
At the end of the day, we control their budget, but even that is a very tenuous tie because if I didn’t like the way you ran your department I would still have to get 10 votes to cut you off on something. I can’t do it myself. I have to convince others of the merit of my argument. There is more of that in government than in business.
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