Editorials

Editorial: Berkeley Blame Game

Becky O'Malley
Friday November 28, 2003

There’s a best-selling book with a title something like Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. As far as I’m concerned, I learned most of what I need to know in my ninth grade English class. One semester of ninth grade English in my school was devoted to what we called “Mythology,” that is, the stories that the ancient Greeks and Romans used to explain the universe. It never fails to amaze me how often contemporary human behavior can be described in terms of what I can remember from the old stories I learned fifty years ago. People haven’t changed much since ancient times. 

A quick Google search reveals that publications all around the world have had experience with newsmakers blaming the press for reporting bad news. The articles on this phenomenon inevitably refer to the Greek custom of killing the messenger who brought the news. Berkeley’s mayor seems not to be immune from this historic human tendency. 

He told the Daily Planet’s reporter that articles about opposition to the proposed parcel tax were responsible for the decision not to put it on the March ballot. When pressed, he amended his statement to include just “editorials” and “letters,” not news articles per se.  

First, we here at the Planet would like to make it clear that we have never come out in opposition to the parcel tax, either for the March ballot or for the November ballot. We have, Cassandra-like, suggested in editorials that things were not going well for tax supporters. Our correspondents have been much more forthright with their opinions.  

We print almost every letter and commentary piece we get that’s not completely illiterate or overwhelmingly obscene, and during the whole discussion of the tax proposal we received no more that two or three letters favoring the tax, plus a commentary from Revenue Task Force Chair Dion Aroner. We printed all of them. 

We also received and printed a lot of letters opposing the tax. Like many others in Berkeley who are on e-mail trees, we got even more letters from opponents reluctant to have their names appear in print because they feared (rightly or wrongly) retaliation from city officials.  

The citizens of Berkeley need to pull together to solve our fiscal problems. Here are a few suggestions for where we should go from here: 

First, having the main discussion of the revenue shortfall in the unpublicized venue of the Mayor’s Revenue Task Force was a lousy idea. Public hearings should have been at the beginning, not at the end of the process. We can start, now, with more and better open public conversations about what’s gone wrong.  

And this whole discussion started much too late anyway. The Santa Cruz city council was warned in late 2001, maybe earlier, that declining state revenues would require substantial cuts, so they went right to work on trying to figure out what to do. 

Berkeley, on the other hand, went on believing that the future was rosy for much too long. A UC pundit, with cooperation from official sources, authored a glowing description of Berkeley’s purported budget surplus which was widely and approvingly reprinted in the progressive press. Behind the scenes, among Berkeley progressives who understood what was really going on, that piece was greeting with much gnashing of teeth. The Daily Planet received first drafts of two different commentaries which attempted to set the record straight, from local activist writers who later withdrew the pieces, again because they feared political retaliation.  

City unions are getting a major share of the blame from tax opponents. Whether that’s justified or not should be openly evaluated in the public arena. There was a very modest discussion of whether or not contracts should be re-negotiated, but it took place in the Council’s afternoon rump session, mostly behind closed doors, with a very short public session held only after Councilmember Worthington insisted.  

So here we are, late in the game, with no game plan. Killing the messenger isn’t going to make the crisis go away. (Don’t even think about stealing this paper!) There’s no way that the city won’t have to go to local taxpayers for more money, probably in November 2004, in competition with the schools, who are also suffering. But between now and next November, let’s talk. The pages of this paper are open to all points of view. 

Becky O’Malley is executive editor of the Daily Planet.