Mayor Danny Avula is at a defining moment. The same for the 2004 Elected Mayor law. Here’s why. Then a win-win-win.
The 16-year era of the race-baiting politics of former Mayors Dwight Jones and Levar Stoney needs to come to an end. They and their cronies have used race to enrich too many, for far too long, with contracts they don’t deserve, jobs they can’t perform, patronage positions the city doesn’t need, and projects offered on a racial basis to folks who don’t actually respect the integrity of Black citizens. ENOUGH ALREADY.
It is time the Black community stopped blaming the white community for anti-Black policies of Jones and Stoney. But at the same time, it is time for the white community to realize the key promise made to the Black community by Democrats who have always run RVA but not kept. Democrats acknowledged the fundamental importance of equal educational opportunities to a child’s hopes and dreams. But never delivered it. Indeed, it would appear never intended to be kept.
Race-baiters on all sides have used this reality to feather their own nest, so to speak, by playing people off against each other. ENOUGH ALREADY.
Danny knew, as did his transition team, of the need to face the long-standing reckless neglect of city infrastructure needs. The neglect started in the 1980s. I found this out by reading old newspaper stories. City government leaders were open about it. They purposely cut back on infrastructure maintenance during the recession, promising to catch up when city revenues increased. They never did.
Danny told me when we met at his request last year that he agreed privately with my lonely opposition to the $130 million baseball stadium bond issue. He got my infrastructure argument. I was the only one who had publicly and legally been willing to challenge Stoney and Council. I tried to point out governing is about choosing. Anybody with fiscal sense knows a city with the most crumbling school buildings in the state, outdated police and fire equipment, aging water and gas facilities, has to make these matters a higher priority than a new sports arena.
I don’t recall whether we discussed why Tim Kaine, Doug Wilder, myself, and a few others created the job Danny wanted. The old system of letting Council pick the Mayor and the City Manager had failed. Richmond had one of the highest crime rates in the country. City Council members were going to jail. Property rates were $1.50–$1.60 or higher, I think. I could go down the list. The public pleaded with the City Council to do something. But they refused.
So a few of us took matters into our own hands. We knew City Council was too tied to the corrupted politics of the city. In fact, they had created a cesspool of corruption and inefficiency in city government. We needed to let the people pick the leader, not the Council. Tim Kaine and Doug Wilder and others asked me to be the leader of the necessary Charter referendum campaign. First, we had to get the signatures needed to get the Elected Mayor Charter Change on the 2003 election ballot. This took myself and a few others three months. We got the Circuit Court to put it on the ballot. We got the voters to pass it. Then got the General Assembly to approve the Charter Change allowing the voters to choose the Mayor. The 5-of-9 system was a compromise worked out to stop certain special interests from blocking the public from getting the voting right it wanted. Not a perfect system. But as I predicted: it could eventually produce the leader RVA needed. The old system could not.
Doug Wilder was the first elected Mayor. As Kaine, myself, Don McEachin, and others had hoped, Doug immediately made the changes needed to remove RVA from its status as one of the top 10 murder capitals of the country. He had the guts to fire the Police Chief and bring in a new one. He took other anti-crime measures. Wilder teamed up with then-City Council President Bill Pantele to slash the property tax rate. The last such cut. No services suffered. Wilder and Pantele pushed the “City of the Future” infrastructure plan through Council. The first long-term visionary approach to modernizing infrastructure school facilities without raising taxes. All you needed was better management of the city’s improving revenue stream.
Then, as we say in politics, stuff happened: Bill, representing the legislative branch of city government, got into a face-off with Doug, representing the executive branch. This is par for the course historically when new government approaches are first used. These turf battles continue today nationally—as will be clear once President-elect Trump is sworn in—238 years after the Philadelphia Convention fought over them. It goes with the territory.
Doug and Bill eventually went toe-to-toe in Court, I believe. Or at least their lawyers did. But in hindsight, the good fight over important legal concepts had a bad result.
It further enabled former Mayors Jones and Stoney to play the race card in city politics to the city’s detriment. This is my view. I am sure Jones and Stoney will disagree. But I am a recognized expert in helping this state and nation move past the racial politics of the past. Jones and Stoney are old-style politicians who use the race card to get their way or try to get their way. I thought they were bigger than that. But they weren’t.
Both used it not to help RVA—indeed, how could it—but for political and financial benefit in terms of their allies, campaign cash, and hoped-for higher state-level offices. They think the politics of division benefits them. So if it hurt RVA, that’s too bad for the poor Black kids, the city, the people.
But Danny didn’t play the race card to win. He proved the new system could elect a Mayor not tied to the failed politics of the past.
Now comes the more important test: can we move past the race-baiting governing approach of the last two Mayors? A governing approach the City Council, School Board, and RPS leadership all too often have enabled.
My reading of history suggests those elected to executive positions invariably get a small window of time wherein to make their history. The best leaders not only sense the moment but seize the moment. They know it’s not going to come again.
The current water crisis presents Danny Avula with this moment. The folly of issuing $130 million in city general obligation baseball stadium bonds—when we have so many far more important infrastructure investment needs—is hopefully clear now. I had proposed a smarter way to do it. Stoney and Council refused. They saw their legacy as a Stadium after their failed Casino fiasco. So foolish.
Right now, I’m quite certain they wish their legacy had been a brand-new water treatment plant.
Mayor Avula has an obvious imperative here: Dramatically cut the cord with the Jones-Stoney era.
This water fiasco shows we need to do what we all know needs to be done: Come up with a long-term plan funding the necessary fix to RVA’s increasingly crumbling infrastructure. An infrastructure robbing Black kids of any hope to be all they can be. That’s risking terrible consequences in public safety and fire protection. That’s driving up the cost of public services.
Former governors Wilder and Warner are well known for their fiscal acumen. History will show they took my advice in this area on many occasions. I believe the core of an idea Warner adopted would be particularly helpful for Mayor Avula.
Mayor Avula needs to create an independent committee to review the finances and government operations of the city. He should choose people whose knowledge of government finances is beyond question. They should additionally be individuals who are not afraid to step on whatever toes may need stepping on. This is not intended as a feel-good report or one to be considered politically correct. Quite the opposite.
Nor is the report intended to single out any Mayor or any past government official. The job of the group is simple. Issue a public report telling us how we got into the current mess. Show us what must be done in the short term. Lay out a vision that will get the thing fixed in the future.
Once completed, give it to the Mayor and Council. And the people. The straight skinny. Then we all know the score. The politicians can no longer hide. The ball is in their court.
This committee can surely begin operating by February 1, 2025. Likewise, the report should be ready no later than June 1, 2025.
It’s time the people of Richmond got the truth. Any honest solution to this long-time failure to properly invest in infrastructure will be costly. I believe it can be paid for by slashing and remodeling the incredibly costly city government created in the last 16 years.
The solution will not be completed while Avula is in office. It will not be completed while his successor is in office. And very possibly not while his successor’s successor is in office.
But as the famous proverb says, even the longest journey begins with the first step.
I am merely recommending Mayor Avula make a virtue out of the necessity. He needs a plan to fix it all. The longer he waits, the more it’s going to seem he had to be forced. The longer he waits, in my experience, the less likely it will get done right.
I do hope he seizes the moment. If he does, all the hard work to get the elected Mayor passed, and all the abuse I took about it these last 20 years, will be worth the effort.
Danny is a good man. But taking a bold step is never easy in politics. I understand.
But now is the moment.
