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Updated: September 22, 2023 @ 4:47 am
It might have avoided your notice, but there was a revealing flap this past week about an appointment to a local government board. It veered into matters of race and gender, although that all struck us as nonsense. Back to that in a minute.
The Manhattan City Commission appointed three people to the board that oversees the police department. Those three included BeEtta Stoney, Patricia Hudgins and Linda Morse, who is also a city commissioner.
Commissioners Mark Hatesohl and Wynn Butler, generally the conservatives on the commission, tried to sub Kaleb James in for Ms. Stoney. Commissioner Butler at one point tried to make the case that Ms. Stoney had served on the board “for a pretty long time,” but that’s just silly. She’s been on the board since 2017.
Commissioner Butler said his main purpose in nominating Mr. James was that he’s good with the budget; presumably, this was to suggest that he is better at that than Ms. Stoney. That is, of course, simply a matter of judgment, and neither we nor anybody else can conclude whether that’s true. What we would note for certain is that Mr. James has run for the City Commission three times, positioning himself as a conservative, allied with Commissioner Butler and Commissioner Mark Hatesohl. Those two voted for Mr. James to join the police board, but they were overridden by the other three commissioners, who supported keeping Ms. Stoney there.
Commissioner Butler noted in making his case that Mr. James is Black, and would therefore bring diversity to the police board. That argument was blunted by the fact that Ms. Stoney and Ms. Hudgins are also Black.
Mayor Usha Reddi pointed out what she considered the unfairness of Commissioner Butler’s maneuver, noting that the proposal was to sub out a woman for a man. Commissioner Morse said that appointing three women, by contrast, to the board represented “progress.”
All of this strikes us as a bunch of gauzy pose-striking on both sides, trying to make this about irrelevant issues. The job at hand is to oversee the police department. If the only point is to have a board made up of a certain number of women and/or a certain number of members from racial and ethnic minorities, then just appoint people based on DNA tests or photos.
The real issue is that Commissioners Butler and Hatesohl wanted a conservative ally on the police board, in part for policy reasons and in part to help Mr. James’ resume for public office in the future. The other three commissioners, meanwhile, didn’t want that. Those three are not universally liberal, but collectively they had no interest in handing the gig to Mr. James.
All the other arguments? Flimflammery.
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