Though county commissioners have blatantly shunned public participation in the selection of an interim county mayor, it has become clear that they have submerged themselves in back-room deal making and insider lobbying involving the top two candidates — Commissioner Jim Coppinger and Mike Carter, special assistant to outgoing County Mayor Claude Ramsey.
A piece of the deal making became apparent when Carter, himself an insider candidate, accused County Commission Chairman Fred Skillern of attempting to engineer a three-seat round of musical chairs that would elevate Coppinger to the county mayor’s position, install the county school board’s controversial Rhonda Thurman in Skillern’s own seat at some unknown date, and put a volunteer chaplain in the Sheriff’s Department, Mitch McClure, in Coppinger’s seat.
Carter’s claim was preceded by revelations of lobbying by Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield and former Chattanooga Mayor Jon Kinsey.
Kinsey acknowledged that he has been encouraging commissioners to appoint Coppinger, who as Kinsey’s fire department chief led the modernization and re-organization of the Chattanooga Fire Department. “I do have a lot of knowledge of Jim Coppinger’s abilities,” he said. “I have shared that with commissioners on different occasions.”
Littlefield, by contrast, has been trying to persuade commissioners to appoint Carter, with whom he has worked in coordinating city-county economic development plans. Insiders’ political chatter tied to Mayor Littlefield’s lobbying for Carter led Littlefield and County Commissioner Greg Beck to deny rumors that Littlefield had tried to woo Beck’s support for Carter by offering him the City Court Clerk’s job.
Their denials had hardly settled before Carter lambasted Skillern’s alleged attempt to install Coppinger through what he suggested was a sneaky back-door political maneuver.
Though all three subjects of Carter’s accusation denied any awareness of such a scenario, it presents a plausible deal for resolving the current standoff that emerged last week, when the eight voting commissioners split twice in 4-4 votes for Carter and Coppinger. (As a candidate, Coppinger couldn’t vote for himself.)
State law allows the County Commission’s chairman to fill an interim vacancy in the county mayor’s office, and the chairman apparently may continue in that role if the commission fails to appoint an interim mayor with 120 days of notice of the mayor’s resignation.
Skillern, for personal reasons, isn’t interested in the job, but he was one of the four who supported Coppinger in the two tie votes last week. If the other commissioners remain fixed in their preference, Skillern could step down as chairman and help Coppinger win support to become the commission chairman. He and his supporters presumably could then allow Coppinger to continue as interim county mayor. Despite the denials to Carter’s charge, County Attorney Rheubin Taylor has confirmed that he has put questions pertaining to that scenario to the state’s attorney general’s office. One asks whether the commission would need to appoint a temporary commissioner during the period when a chairman is serving as interim mayor. Another asks if the chairman still could vote on a permanent replacement for mayor once the chairman assumes the interim mayor’s position.
Regardless of the outcome, there are several potent ironies in the current circumstance. One is that both Coppinger and Carter are quality candidates who could have demonstrated their skills and qualifications had the commission allowed the candidates to make a case for their selection in public forums held by the commission itself as part of the selection process. Adhering to the public’s right to be informed and to participate in the selection process would have demonstrated the commission’s willingness to remain accountable to the public in selecting the county’s highest public official.
Lastly, a public process would have avoided the taint of petty, back-room politics that now haunts the selection and makes every single commissioner look arrogant, untrustworthy and disrespectful of the public trust their office involves. The only way for county commissioners to recover lost trust is to back up and start over. But given what’s already happened, there’s not much hope of that, which confirms how little commissioners care about public accountability.