Citizen Journalist: From Schoolyard to Hillyard: The bullies are back

by Mike Martin

June 26,2009

Mike Martin, a Columbia resident and science journalist, can be reached at Mike.martin@weeklyscientist.com

As any businessperson knows, running a for-profit enterprise is all about dealing with hands in your pockets.

Tax and bill collectors take money out; customers put money in.

At least, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. But if the customer suggests that getting paid means getting a payoff, it’s a whole different ballgame, as local janitorial supply firm Hillyard, Inc. discovered during last year’s push for a school district tax levy.

“On April 8th of this year, our community will be asked to support a tax levy increase to help the district continue to do what is right for Columbia’s children,” began a letter from then-Columbia Public Schools (CPS) superintendent Phyllis Chase, asking CPS vendors for donations to the cause.

When Hillyard failed to respond, Norris McKinzie, the CPS assistant director of building services, failed to do what was right for Columbia’s children. He sent a letter scolding and in so many words, threatening the company.

“In reviewing the responses for this request for help, I notice that there wasn’t one from the Hillyard Co.,” wrote McKinzie. Expressing “concern and disappointment,” McKinzie told Hillyard manager Mike Bond that he could “only assume from the ‘no response’ that a two hundred fifty thousand dollar a year account is not as important” as it once was.

The long list of vendors who did contribute includes Professional Contractors & Engineers, Inc.; Engineering Surveys and Services; Naught-Naught Insurance Agency; and Lifestyle Homes. It’s an indication that local business people don’t question these tactics nearly enough. The result: government officials almost take for granted that they can beg from their private sector cohorts, with impunity in some cases.

Virtually every local public agency follows the same high-level panhandling playbook: Establish a “volunteer” committee of mostly prominent businesspeople to raise money for wish list campaign and browbeat elected officials (city council, school board, county commission) into going along (and in the case of Norris McKinzie, browbeat private sector donors as well).

The Columbia city hall and Boone County courthouse expansion efforts followed this routine almost to the letter.

There’s Bob Roper, then vice president of Boone County National Bank and chairman of the city’s “Public Building and Finance Committee” (read: City Hall Expansion Cheerleading Team), standing with planning director Tim Teddy and assistant city manager Tony St. Romaine in a 2006 Columbia Daily Tribune photo, looking “troubled” in a City Hall hallway “crowded” with a big filing cabinet.

Roper’s group and city staff mostly ignored a public outcry that the $23 million construction project be put to a vote. And despite a long line of opponents in city hall chambers, it passed the council 7-zip.

There’s former state senator and now Shelter Insurance public relations director Joe Moseley, speaking in opposition to Grass Roots Organizing (GRO) as co-chair of the Boone County “Space Needs” Committee.

To fund the expansion, which included a massive dose of new county office space, a proposed sales tax increase “was not very onerous,” Moseley told reporters, shortly after the Columbia Chamber of Commerce endorsed it. Maybe the tax hike wasn’t onerous to Senator Joe, but to the average Joe – as GRO was saying – it most certainly was.

And that’s part of the problem with this oxymoronic situation – the business-supported tax-increase campaign. Average Joe rarely sits at the committee table, crowded as it always is by banking, marketing, accounting and development honchos who, ironically, are often the first to squawk about state or federal taxes.

Needless to say, the courthouse expansion passed a county commission vote, despite vocal opposition to the exorbitant price tag from northern district commissioner Skip Elkin and Jim Crocker, a Centralia businessperson. Crocker left the space needs committee because “members ignored ways to solve the space crunch that didn’t require a tax. I could see they weren’t listening to some of us.”

Pitching in to support political causes is the American way. But politics aside, how fair is it, really, when powerful government officials come knocking, with all the strength of an 800-pound gorilla? Isn’t it a lot like the old power differential problem, when the boss hits on the newbie, or the president has (something like) sex with an intern?

There’s Boone County Judge Kevin Crane – then county prosecutor Crane – looking “troubled” in another Tribune photo, this time in a courthouse office “crowded” with files, “evidence,” and instead of a big filing cabinet, a big Pepsi machine.

With the stroke of his pen, Judge Crane can sentence you to life in prison, or death, and wreck your company with an unfavorable ruling.

You, Mr. or Mrs. Businessperson, are going to tell Judge Crane; or city manager Watkins; or the CPS building services honcho who can yank your $250,000/year contract, that you can’t help?

You, Mr. and Mrs. Entrepreneur who stress out over taxes, regulations, employees, debts, and the constant feeling that there’s never enough time, all to make your customers happy are going to refuse the demands of a powerful, big-spending customer?

If you answered “yes” to either of those questions, I have some janitorial supplies the school district no longer wants (quite suddenly, mind you) I might be able to sell you. No kickbacks required.