Working Miracles In Tulsa
Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor is a miracle worker.
Over the course of her administration she has and continues to do the impossible in making former Mayor Bill LaFortune look good by comparison.
Taylor’s latest effort to make Bill LaFortune look good by comparison, while not as dramatic as spending about $70 million for a unneeded and grossly over-size ‘city hall’ when the city can not afford to open the majority of its swimming pools, repair its pot-holed streets, keep its weeds mowed or its expressways lighted, is none the less significant.
For months Mayor Taylor has been trying to find a new police chief for Tulsa.
In the process she managed to get sued by the three qualified internal police department candidates whom she refused to appoint to the position; Deputy Chief Bill Wells, Maj. Rob Turner and Maj. Paul Williams.
In spite of the Tulsa City Charter which mandates that Taylor appoint from within the department when qualified candidates are available, she evidently felt that none of the three were ‘good enough’ to be Tulsa’s new police chief, so she hired an Interim Police Chief, David Bostrom, a law enforcement consultant from Wilmington, Delaware who is bailing out of the job on November 1st.
Finally, at long last, she has settled on the right man for the job, only he doesn’t want it. At least not under the conditions that Mayor Taylor wanted to impose upon him.
So who is it that Mayor Taylor wanted to appoint as Tulsa’s new Chief of Police?
None other than Deputy Chief Bill Wells.
Say what?
Yes, after previously deciding that Deputy Chief Wells was evidently not ‘good enough’, Taylor offered him the job but with a ‘Catch-22′ aspect.
Taylor wants to break the long standing tradition that the Police Chief of Tulsa be a member of the Tulsa Police department and instead make the new police chief an ‘at-will employee’ of the Mayor of Tulsa.
Such an arrangement would make the police chief a ‘toady’ of the Mayor, subject the chief to her whim and fancy with the chief’s continued employment dependent upon keeping the Mayor happy and with absolutely no protection what-so-ever under the civil service system.
Deputy Chief Wells wisely told the Mayor, “no thanks” and who can blame the 32-year police department veteran who is retiring on November 1st?
Mayor Taylor insists that she is going to appoint a new police chief on an “at-will” basis, so evidently it’s just a matter of finding someone foolish enough to take the job under the conditions imposed by the Mayor.
It would appear that the primary qualifications to be Tulsa’s new Chief of Police are being highly proficient at ‘butt kissing’, playing politics and having a overwhelming desire to do what ever it takes to keep Mayor Taylor happy.
Any takers?
