By Thomas Warren III, Editor-in-Chief
When things go wrong in Amarillo, and our local government is taking advantage of us, I see a lot of people quick to blame Ginger Nelson. And, believe me, she does deserve the blame for a lot of the problems at City Hall and she deserves to be called out for her bad governance. However, I often see people failing to give former Mayor Paul Harpole his credit for enabling our current local government and future local governments to take advantage of the taxpayers.
Harpole was elected as mayor in 2011, emerging from a wide field of candidates to replace Debra McCartt as the city’s top leader. From the moment he took office until the moment he left, Harpole was bad news for the taxpayers. Harpole’s style was a lot different than Nelson’s, as when Harpole screwed the taxpayers, he would look you in the eyes and defend it, whereas Nelson will often just dodge questions and pass the buck to city staff or city manager Jared Miller. Still, while there are distinct differences between the two mayors, Harpole deserves credit for the precedents and actions he took while in office that have given us the problems from Nelson.
Like Nelson, Harpole was a tax-raising mayor, but he went a step further, as the mayor who aggressively pushed the downtown catalyst project that added millions of dollars in debt to the city’s ledger. When Harpole’s City Council proposed numerous charter amendments in 2013, which all passed without much fanfare, some made it more difficult for taxpayers to petition their local government, ensuring that the number of citizen-led petitions for ballot referendums would be drastically reduced for future councils.
I have seen many people blaming Nelson for the rejection of Alex Fairly’s civic center petition, but I believe much of the blame should fall on Harpole and his 2013 City Council — made up of Ellen Robertson Green, Brian Eades, Lilia Escajeda, and Jim Simms — for making it more difficult for citizens to lead a successful petitioning effort in the first place. If it wasn’t for Harpole, Green, Eades, Escajeda, and Simms, citizens would currently have a much greater ability to have a say in their government than they do right now.
With that being said, don’t let Nelson and her City Council off the hook. This City Council — with the exception of Cole Stanley — has pushed an expensive and unnecessary civic center plan, despite voters having rejected similar plans twice in recent years. They want the project, regardless of whether voters want it, and that is a huge problem. Voters need to remember their actions to go around the taxpayers at election time.
However, just because Nelson’s City Council has taken these actions, that does not mean that Harpole should be let off the hook for his City Council’s efforts to make participation in local government more difficult. He does not often get the credit he deserves for screwing the taxpayers, and that needs to change.