HomeMy WebLinkAbout7/7/2020 Item 08, Schmidt
Wilbanks, Megan
From:Richard Schmidt <
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:Agenda item C-8
July 4, 2020
RE: Consent Item 8 -- Papp firing
Dear Council Members:
This is a terrible thing you are about to do, and you shouldn’t do it.
Please think about this carefully. Here are a few things to consider.
1. Your beef with Dr. Papp seems to boil down to annoyance with his vigorous use of his First Amendment rights, to wit
speech rights (he fearlessly speaks his personal truth to power) and his right to appeal for redress of grievances
(participating in legitimate appeal actions before you that you consider nuisances). These are fundamental American
rights and values, in fact they are the very rights that set America apart from other nations, and they are not surrendered –
nor can they be denied or taken away by you – just because someone serves on a city committee. To make such
demands of your underlings has you behaving exactly as Trump, who fires people who have the temerity to speak truths
he disagrees with. Are you really wanting to be like Trump? I certainly hope not.
2. It appears from the relevant section of your council’s update of the Advisory Body Handbook (to wit, the statement
prohibiting disagreement!), which staff cites to justify firing Dr. Papp, that you have reinvented the ancient crime of
seditious libel, in which speech that displeases the King constitutes a crime. This of course was tossed from our legal
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practice via jury nullification (Zenger case) way back in the 18 century, and has not been a part of American practice for
well over 200 years. Jefferson’s ill-conceived partisan attempt to revive seditious libel for application to his enemies was
slapped down by popular anger. Yet you, “the King,” now propose to depose (“punish” and disgrace via public declaration)
one of your advisors purely because you determine his speech offensive to your sensibilities. That, dear Council, is a
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pretty good demonstration of a newly-reinvented crime of seditious libel. Are 21 century “progressives” really going to
reinvent the offensive persecutions of monarchs whose tin-headedness led to popular revolutions resulting in their own
political demise and the rise of democracy? I certainly hope not.
3. Implications of the above on public decision-making are profound. This cuts to the very basis of how truths are
established. Our nation’s politics is based on a libertarian notion of a free marketplace of conflicting ideas, in which free
and vigorous disputation results in chaff being blown away by the winds of reason while the grain of substance survives.
But lately, on both political right and left, an intolerance towards reasoned disputatious truth-finding has resulted in a
different, authoritarian model of governance in which might alone makes right. This is undermining the very foundation of
our democracy. And it appears your proposed action against Dr. Papp is part of this undermining. You hold the power to
fire him; you must be very cautious and much more thoughtful than your agenda packet indicates you’ve been in using
that power. Actions have larger meanings than may at first be apparent.
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4. The proposed action against Dr. Papp is of a piece with the narrow-mindedness of the current city regime, who’ve
propagated the idea that in a good organization there is one orthodoxy and there should be no conflicting ideas about how
to do things. Or what to do. That, in other words, everyone should think alike, or else be excluded from having a role in
shaping decisions. The problem with organizations in which everyone thinks alike is that not much thinking takes place.
When there’s no disagreement, ideas go unquestioned and untested, so junk ideas get before you for junk decisions. It
need not be this way, and in an effective progressive organization it must not be this way. Further, it didn’t used to be this
way in our city. When I was a kid, for about 3 years I was the news reporter covering all your council’s meetings (and
everything else that happened at city hall), and those meetings were enlivened by spirited give and take among
disagreeing staff members; the council, which joined in with comments and questions, found this most enlightening, as did
I, a kid who didn’t know much about government, but saw first hand how conflicting perspectives freely expressed and
hashed out in public informed and improved council decisions. In your current organization, with group-think one-sided
one-dimensional “staff recommendations” from a “team” in which “all oars row in the same direction,” you are deprived of
the most basic conflicting insights that could help you reach good decisions. You need more disagreement within your
decision-train, not less.
5. What you really need, then, is more Dr. Papps to put more grit into your decision-mill, to help you do a better job. To
fire him because he makes you uncomfortable is more a reflection on your insecurities than on his misdeeds. To fire him
because you disagree with things he says is a reflection of excessive pridefulness in your own wisdom rather than a
demonstration of the humility that undergirds true wisdom. That he has repeatedly been elected chairman by his
committee peers demonstrates the perceived problems are your perceptions, not theirs.
6. Firing a committee member of Dr. Papp’s stature will send a very clear message to future applicants for city advisory
bodies: their independent thought and research are not valued, so they should not apply unless ready to ratify whatever’s
in the staff report and applicant’s pleadings. Good people will not bother to apply under such conditions. Good decisions
will likely not be made.
7. You need not only toss this firing idea in the trash, but you owe Dr. Papp a public apology for dragging his good name
through this proceeding.
Richard Schmidt
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