Stop the Presses; Ogden City Council Disagrees with Mayor

In what amounts to a true local "man bites dog" story, John Wright reported yesterday in this Standard Examiner Story that an actual disagreement has arisen between the Ogden City Mayor's office, and the almost universally-agreeable Ogden City Council majority. Although there seems to be no disagreement at all about the object of hiring of a professional lobbyist to browbeat the state legislature into returning to the city the power to seize the private property of Ogden citizens -- in order to transfer it to giant multinational corporations like Wal-mart -- it seems some kind of turf-battle has now developed.

Whereas Mayor Godfrey desires that our new paid legislative-relations professional report to, and receive his orders directly from his office, the suddenly-obstinate Councilman Kent Jorgensen has gotten his hackles up, and insists that Ogden City's new lobbyist become the City Council's sock-puppet.

The true sticking point appears to be Mayor Godfrey's pet project, the proposed intra-city gondola. Mayor Godfrey has been outspoken in his support for such a system, and he plainly enjoys vigorous support for it from at least a portion of the Ogden community. Councilman Jorgensen, on the other hand, is employed by the UTA, which frowns on unusual projects such as this. It certainly wouldn't "sit well with the powers that be" in the UTA power structure if Councilman Jorgensen failed to put his foot down on something like this now, would it? After all, whose special interests was he elected to represent, anyway?

I swear you couldn't make up a story like this if you tried. The fact that someone from our notably slavish "rubber stamp council majority" is having any kind of disagreement with the Mayor's office at all would be news in and of itself. The fact though, that City Councilman Jorgensen actively and vocally promotes his employer's agenda, even while running as a candidate for re-election, prior to any significant public discussion of the issue, makes this story one well worth savoring.

It's my belief that our Ogden City lobbyist, (if we're going to have one at all,) should serve under the direction and control of the Mayor's office. The Mayor is our city executive officer, after all, and any arrangements or proposals that he might make for alternative forms of public transit would still be subject to the advice and consent of our city's legislative body, Councilman Jorgensen's Ogden City Council.

This whole brouhaha smells of political posturing to me. Any argument that the Ogden City Council should employ its own professional lobbyist is well beyond preposterous. My bet is that this is just another way for Councilman Jorgensen to put his name in the public forefront as November approaches.

What say our gentle Weber County Forum readers about this?

Update 8/30/05: 9:14 a.m. MT: The Standard-Examiner editorial board chimed-in on this issue Sunday in its lead editorial, advocating my concept of putting the new city lobbyist under the direct management of the Mayor's office, with the City Council maintaining legislative oversight and control, in the same manner as Salt Lake City's lobbyist arrangement. This is how it ought to be, I think.

Notably, The Std-Ex Editors wasted no opportunity to whine again about restoration of the City RDA's eminent domain power,which is actually the main objective in hiring the new professional lobbyist.

In a nation where recent polls have shown that upwards of 95% of the citizens oppose the use of the condemnation power for economic development projects, it's truly astounding that the editors of our home-town paper (and our Ogden City officials) can be so completely out of touch.