The city attorney is, by his own admission, incompetent and without an understanding of his role in Charlotte city government.
First, for McCarley to forget to tell Mayor Anthony Foxx about what the city charter — according to McCarley — permitted with regard to mayoral votes on city executive compensation until a few hours before the vote is inexcusable. And given McCarley’s actions to make sure that his compensation was twinned with that of City Manager Curt Walton, frankly a little unbelievable. But let’s take Mac at his word: He forgot to perform a very basic function of his office.
OK, say you let that slide. To me the most glaring sign of McCarley’s incompatibility with the job of city attorney is not the money angle it is the power angle. McCarley maintains that he always held that the mayoral could not vote, per the charter, on executive pay increases, even as he repeatedly allowed former Mayor Pat McCrory to cast votes on that very thing.
(McCarley’s claim here has led to a pointless he-said-he-said round with McCrory over whether the city attorney ever told the mayor such a thing. I don’t care one way or the other.)
McCarley explains those McCrory votes thusly: “”His vote still did not change the outcome. Again, I chose not to publicly dispute Mayor McCrory’s action in voting on the matter.”
Ahem. That is not your damn job, Mac. Law is about process, not just outcome. You do not get call no harm, no foul — not unless you have a whistle and striped shirt.
And why does Mac throw in the public dispute angle? His job is not PR. We pay buckets of money to Tim Newman, Michael Smith, Ronnie Bryant and all their various flunkies to spin Charlotte. Why does the city attorney think that hiding conflicts from the public is part of his job? Wait don’t tell me — one of Mac’s buddies at the UNC School of Government says it is.
This little episode explains so much about Charlotte city government. Let’s do everyone a favor and fire Mac McCarley so he can run for office based on his lengthy track-record of policy making and political infighting down at the GovCenter.
