Would You Like Some Syrup With That Crow, Ms. McBride?

I have to call Bullshit here. Whatever Ms. McBride’s intentions were, they most certainly did not include a sincere effort to bring a serious issue to the forefront. There is a proper, legitimate way to do that in a City Council session, and she did not follow that way.

She brought up in open Council session what she perceived as a Public Health issue without any prior announcement or consultation with her colleagues or the Administration. She did this in precisely the same way that she tried to outlaw when she was Council President.

If you will remember, back in August of 2011 while serving as President, she unilaterally attempted to muzzle the ability of her fellow members to speak with or to city Department Directors or the Business Administrator. In the words of then-Business-Administrator-Du-Jour Eric Berry, “(A)ll employees are directed to politely ask that Council member or members to make their request through the procedure established by Council President (Kathy) McBride.” [My emphasis.] That procedure being to clear any requests for information through the Council President who, of course, was Ms. McBride.

This “procedure” was quashed pretty quickly, once word got out to the other members of Council, as well as to the public. So for someone who was all about going through channels and observing protocol – when she was in charge, that is – going rogue with an unvetted and unprepared question, is pretty darned ironic, I think. And the fact that she got so badly burned by the attempt is just icing on the cake.

So, how should she have proceeded? Well, if she was really concerned that what she wanted to do was call attention to a serious public health matter, she should have first contacted James Brownlee, the city’s Health Officer and Director of Health and Human Services, and said something like this:

“Good Morning, Director Brownlee, Kathy McBride here. I received a call from a constituent that expressed a concern that we may have the makings of a public health crisis developing in the city. I think this is an important issue that has gotten no attention or press up until now. I would like to shed some light on this at this evening’s Council session.

I would like to ask you or a colleague about the matter in open session. Now I have never heard of this before today, and don’t know anything about it. I am reaching out to you now so that you can prepare a response to my question. It’s an important matter, and I don’t want to sandbag you this evening without warning you. If this is anywhere as serious as my constituent suggests, it’s too important to go into Council with inadequate or wrong information. That’s why I am giving you this heads-up now.

I have spoken with Council President, and even though it does not appear on the Agenda, she has agreed to let me raise the issue.

As I said, I know nothing about this. What can you tell me, Director?”

You know, had Ms. McBride made such a call beforehand, she would have saved herself – and the City of Trenton – a lot of grief.

But she didn’t. She acted on her own like a person out to win some headlines for herself, taking the lead among her colleagues to stake out an important issue for herself. If she also managed to embarrass the Business Administrator and the Administration by catching them unprepared to address a serious public health matter, so much the better in making her look good.

If over the last few days, Kathy McBride and Dan Toto had just laughed, admitted they were pranked and said “Oops” to the press, I’d have been willing to let it go. But in their efforts to make it look like what she said was not only OK, but marked her as a Serious Public Servant, they go too far.

McBride wanted to grab the spotlight for herself and exclude her colleagues, which was bad enough.

But if she really thought she was on to a serious health problem with the potential as she said the other night to be a disease breaking out faster than AIDS, then she what she did was no less than a cynical attempt to make political gains for herself on the  coattails of an epidemic. And that is despicable.

Yes, this was embarrassing and funny in a dark way. But the lesson we should take away from this is that Kathy McBride is out to promote Kathy McBride. As one of seven council members, she represents Kathy McBride. If she is Council President, she wants everything her colleagues do to funnel through the President. When she is not, she acts on her own without even the courtesy of advance notice.

She doesn’t have a chance. For one thing, she no longer can be taken Seriously.

But if she does choose to run, here’s a campaign theme song!