ON THE AVENUES: Party time in the trickle-down, one-party city.

ON THE AVENUES: Party time in the trickle-down, one-party city.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

In late July, just prior to commencing my northern holiday, I was walking westbound down Market Street, and stepped from the curb onto 4th Street at the designated crosswalk.

Yes, folks, crosswalks actually exist, and when you park your car or 18-wheeler smack in the middle of one, you’re trespassing on a walker’s legally mandated street space … but I digress.

A vehicle was approaching, traveling southbound, and it's a good thing I was paying attention to it the whole time. Not only did the vehicle fail to make a complete stop, but the driver's eyes remained fixed on the one-way traffic on Market Street approaching him, eastbound.

I never once saw his eyes.

He never once looked in my direction.

Not even once.

Since the vehicle’s window was open, verbal agitprop seemed both appropriate and salutary, and so as he rolled through the intersection, I yelled twice, as stentorian as I could muster:

"You have to look both ways, pal."

In the temporary absence of unconstrained monster trucks roaring past at speeds far exceeding our unenforced limits, he quite obviously heard me and was startled, which makes perfect sense considering that he had not looked in both directions, and had absolutely no idea a person OUTSIDE of an automobile was anywhere near him. He pumped the brakes and could be seen peering quizzically into the driver’s side mirror, but he kept going, on to Main Street.

This sort of thing, and of course far worse, is a regular feature of New Albany’s one-way street grid. Usually I don’t know the oblivious drivers involved, but in this case I do. Lamar Dowell is a Democratic Party elder and grandee -- a funder, and an anointer. I've been told many times that he's one of the partisan kingmakers in town. My guess is that he's a good fellow, and perhaps it is improper of me to identify him in this fashion, but you see, as a walker and cyclist, I experience the dysfunction of one-way streets on a constant basis, and as a Democratic Party stalwart in a Democratic Party one-party town, Mr. Dowell is among those in a prime position to influence a resolution.

It’s a resolution that never seems to occur. If I were to ask Mr. Dowell what he thinks about two-way streets, what do you think he would say? My guess is that in large measure, he'd mouth the generally cowardly and evasive response we've received from city officials to date:

"We need a comprehensive study to prove that the bad driving you witnessed from me today really was as bad as it seemed, precisely at the tipping point of me coming very close to running you over because I couldn’t be bothered to drive safely."

As for myself, I tend to believe my own eyes, and what I see is that the collective mindset of our local Democratic leadership remains profoundly conservative and reactive, particularly among its elders. There comes a time when one cannot ignore the fact that when such flagrant dysfunction, of which one-way streets are merely a prominent and glaring example, is perpetuated over long periods of time, the political party most often "in charge" must be the entity doing the bulk of the perpetuating.

There is no other plausible explanation, and if I could break its back, I would.

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However, we must give the Democratic Party’s one-party municipal patronage machine full credit for functioning at peak efficiency of late. The city council’s 8-1 “Democratic” majority has been absolute, with lone Republican Kevin Zurschmiede obviously disinterested, maverick Diane Benedetti completely isolated and the body’s president, Pat McLaughlin, performing supinely as de facto City Hall shop steward.

In the absence of upper echelon communication, this is a problem. Even card-carrying Democrats on the council can’t remember the last time Mayor Jeff Gahan stooped to attend a meeting, and if you think such appearances aren’t important, visit YouTube and watch as British prime ministers are questioned in sessions of Parliament. Rotating underlings simply cannot fill the shoes of the man who was chosen by voters to lead the city, and yet month after month, they’re all we get.

This absence of substantive civic dialogue extends to those bodies which specialize in knowing where the bodies are buried. The Board of Public Works and Redevelopment Commission (to name just two) are duly packed BY the operatives of the dominant political party, WITH the operatives of the dominant political party. This is what patronage is all about, after all. Their meetings are held at the same time as working people work. Meetings are recorded with audio, but not filmed, and meeting minutes, while posted on-line, often appear weeks and sometimes months after the fact.

In a 24-7-365 world, this simply isn’t adequate. However, it’s surely intentional, both from the perspective of the local Democratic Party and the current mayoral administration. Mayor Gahan’s administration is guarded, non-transparent and generally unwilling to engage with the public apart from carefully scripted appearances.

It verges on paranoiac, and we have become a veritable Newalbanystan on the Wild West Bank of the Ohio. When “advise and consent” usually occurs out of public view in a one-party city, and when the second pillar of the two-party system is crippled and inert, there exists a fundamental duty to dissent.

Sigh. It might as well be me, I guess.

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The newspaper politely records what it is told, on rare occasions when it is told things.

The city’s social media presence is outsourced and functions mostly as a one-way, top-down information portal, not a two-way interactive space.

The executive branch is not available for public questioning by the legislative branch, but even if it were, the stage-managed legislative branch wouldn’t be asking any meaningful questions, and by its own recent admission, it waits helplessly for guidance from above, as channeled by the Democrats – the dominant political party.

Periodically, grandiose public works projects are announced, creative financing measures deployed, and finished plans presented for approbation and approval – not desiring of public input in any consistent or contextual sense, but presented in largely final form, to be ritualistically praised and quickly implemented without any need to offer explanations according to a larger, more comprehensive plan … and subject to John Rosenbarger’s usual Orwellian rewrites, in the redevelopment dungeon, whenever the mood strikes.

And yet the one solitary time when City Hall has certifiably slammed on the brakes, refusing to present the finished objective, and insisting it just MUST wait for consultative guidance from elsewhere, the topic at hand is “complete” street grid reform and two-way conversions, this being the very fundamental “cardiovascular” infrastructure prerequisite that, if offered FIRST, from the beginning, might have unified all the other grandiose public works projects into a coherent whole.

This is why I say that even if we assume City Hall’s private reassurances of street grid intent are sincere, and trust that reform merely awaits the comforting finality of Jeff Speck’s street study, the mayor’s unwillingness to speak publicly about this issue in advance of Speck’s report – to advance, lead and engage from the front of something that is critically important, rather than skulking to the rear – is quite simply ominous.

You can be sure that the local Democratic Party, as supported by shadowy grandees like Mr. Dowell, effectively has the mayor’s back.

And that’s why one-party governments like ours are so odious.