Recently, there’s been a short video posted to the internet which summarizes the reasons why people object to the nomination:

[link]

We now have a DDA appointee who made a public internet post in which he called voters crazy:

“If you live in Ward 3 or Ward 4 then your primary on Tuesday is extra important as it will decide who represents you – so make sure that person represents you and not the 200 crazy people with nothing better to do that live in your ward.”

Our Council has voted that the following McWilliams post is acceptable public speech for our public officials:

“Hey Everybody, TODAY DON’T FORGET to shove an ice cream cone up your ass.”

These sort of posts don’t meet the cultural standards of our community or our nation. The mayor and his supporters have demonstrated that they feel it’s more important to insist on control than it is to support well established values.

The details of what occurred are not particularly pertinent. What will be remembered is that Council has endorsed inappropriate behavior. The cost of forcing our community to accept this appointment outweigh any gains the members of the mayors coalition might have realized by supporting this appointment.

I asked him abou this, and the council member was someone who opposed his nomination. It was a move that he describes as an attempt to show good faith prior to his vote. That’s a very different story than the one put forward that he went through a massive “sanitization” of his blog after the fact on the advice of his supporters.

Apparently, in an effort to protect Mr. Greden from more public scrutiny of his inappropriate and immature email messages during Council meetings when he represented the Third Ward, his name was quietly withdrawn. It is likely that he would have been confirmed with more support than Mr. McWilliams received. He was instead spared the renewed scrutiny of his prior misbehavior, even though everyone already knows about that conduct.

Mr. McWilliams nomination was treated differently. After the Mayor received a quiet heads up about McWilliam’s blog, McWilliams removed content. That cleansing indicates to me that McWilliams or his supporters agreed with his critics that the content was offensive or inappropriate. Unlike the Greden appointment, the McWilliams appointment was allowed to proceed without regard to his possible embarrassment.

In addition to his blog postings, there were questions about potential conflicts of interest. If he had some compelling skill that would justify ignoring these problems, it might have been worth exposing him to the public debate over how old you can be and still assert a youthful indiscretion defense. But really, there are a lot of young adults with his skill set who work in the downtown area.

If this episode about the confirmation of Mr. McWilliams has a chilling effect on the willingness of those who would objectify women or demean them, those who would disparage someone on the basis of their race, someone who is homophobic or anyone who diminishes others on the basis of an immutable characteristic from seeking appointment to a public board where they represent our city, then so be it.

The initial objections were (a) that his company worked for the AAATA so that might present a conflict of interest, and (b) he supported the DDA so might not work to reform it from inside. Read coverage of the September 3rd meeting here: [link] There seemed to be a compelling argument that ‘conflict of interest’ was not a valid objection (or rather, that if it arose it could be dealt with in known ways).

When his appointment came up again on September 16th, Kunselman brings up the subject of his tweets; some others agree with this reason to object to him while others separate “online irreverence” from ability to perform on a public board.
blow-by-blow live reporting: [link]
final article: [link]

I can’t find it now, but I have read objections to the appointment because the process is not “transparent” and that this is another sign of the mayor’s secret back room padding of boards with like-minded individuals. (I almost never read the dot com / mlive so it was probably here on the Chronicle, but I can’t be positive.)

So is the problem that he might have a conflict of interest, that he might not challenge/reform the DDA’s standard operation procedure, or that he is an immature misogynist who might bring ruin to the DDA?

Back to Teacher Patti’s point: if opponents are going to dredge through an individual’s online presence to come up with mud to throw when initial objections don’t stick, that could have a chilling effect on who agrees to serve on public boards.

If McWilliam had constantly used derogatory language towards another racial or religious group would we be as callous? It is not the foul language that he constantly uses that has bothered so many, but objectifying women and using derogatory terms towards women and people who he disagrees with is what is at the core of this strife. A man who seems to have no respect for women is going to actually treat dissenters of the DDA with respect? Is this the kind of an addition we need for a shadow government that has no respect for its citizenry? I think not! He has been appointed to be a rubber stamp of the mayor, nothing more, nothing less!

I believe that the public’s issue with Al McWilliams is not that he has has per se used foul or immature language – but rather he has publicly posted it on his website.

Also, the public perceives that the selection process for this extremely important DDA seat was not rigorous enough nor did it give the citizenry reasonably adequate and timely notice so as to allow informed commentary on the issue by such citizens.

Even though the McWilliams nomination and confirmation may have been technically legal, many people are disapppointed how it was handled by the Mayor.

I don’t know Mr. McWilliams and I have no skin in this particular game but the uproar scares me a little.