Here’s hoping one city councilor stays put
Bigger ponds don’t always showcase talent. They can drown it. I say this in a particular context. JoAnne Vigil Coppler, one of the better Santa Fe city councilors, is considering a run for the state House of Representatives.
She plans to decide next month whether to enter the 2020 primary election for the seat longtime Rep. Jim Trujillo, D-Santa Fe, is vacating.
“I need to make a decision. I can’t dillydally,” Vigil Coppler said Tuesday.
My hope is that she bypasses the state election to remain in city government. Vigil Coppler has done exceptional work in her 19 months in office.
Most notably, she flagged the impropriety of a secretive plan to hand pay increases of
10 percent or 15 percent to three dozen handpicked municipal employees. A city manager, since demoted, authorized the special raises without the knowledge or approval of city councilors.
After word of the plan leaked last year, new Mayor Alan Webber initially downplayed the seriousness of this veiled maneuver. He said his administrators were trying in good faith to assemble a team of workers to handle a technology upgrade.
Webber was prepared to let the pay raises stand. But Vigil Coppler instinctively knew the plan was wrong. She told the mayor she believed it violated longstanding city policy.
Webber’s administration checked and discovered she was correct. Vigil Coppler, previously a human resources director for the city government, was a freshman councilor savvy enough to slam the brakes on a bad idea.
Fallout was heavy. Webber asked for and received the resignation of the city manager, though he found a soft landing spot in another city department.
More important, confidence in the city governing body improved a bit, thanks to Vigil Coppler. She rocked the boat instead of staying silent, the way many a rookie officeholder would have.
Vigil Coppler would be a good state lawmaker. But she can do more as a city councilor and perhaps as mayor.
At City Hall, a newcomer on the nine-member governing body can make an immediate impact. The statehouse is bigger, stodgier and less receptive to fresh voices.
Vigil Coppler would be one of 70 state representatives. Even the most skilled newcomer can be relegated to obscurity while mediocre or inept politicians run the committees that advance or cripple legislation.
Seniority matters more than talent at the Capitol. It shouldn’t be that way, but idealism is no match for hard-eyed political reality.
Members of the majority party
who have been in the Legislature for six or eight years feel entitled to a committee chairmanship. They usually get it, regardless of whether they’re best qualified for the job.
This tradition has given clout to corrupt members, such as former Sen. Phil Griego, D-San Jose. He chaired the Senate Corporations and Transportation Committee before landing in prison.
Another drawback is the chaotic nature of state government. The time-limited legislative sessions — either 30 or 60 days a year — don’t give newcomers much opportunity to be heard.
Vigil Coppler, who has worked in state government, knows all this. Her background is one reason she finds the possibility of serving in the Legislature intriguing.
So far she is conflicted.
“In the morning I’m leaning one way. In the afternoon I’m leaning the opposite way,” she said.
The opening for Trujillo’s seat will probably draw three or four Democratic candidates. Republicans, as always, will complain about the choices but offer no candidate to take a beating in a district filled with Democrats.
Vigil Coppler could win it. But she knows she would then have to give up her job as a city councilor.
The public is in no mood to tolerate those who say they could handle two government jobs simultaneously, as Santa Fe’s school superintendent recently learned. The superintendent, Veronica García, quickly abandoned her plan to run for a seat in the state Senate.
Lou Cannon, a terrific newspaperman, used to counsel cub reporters on how to evaluate political candidates. What they promise they will do in office, he said, is less important than what they have done.
What Vigil Coppler has done is prove she’s an earnest and effective city councilor. I hope she sticks with it.
Back benches at the statehouse are a hard place of initiation.