[BLOG] Insider | OPINION - Paging the Governor: Your Election’s Overdue

[Jolagh]

 

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Paging the Governor: Your Election’s Overdue

Written by Hank Miller 23/03/2025

 

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Let me be clear I’m not in the habit of applauding government overreach. I believe in rules, I believe in process. I believe that power, when left unchecked, tends to rot from the inside. But I also believe in common sense, and there wasn’t a single ounce of that in the City Council chambers this week mostly because there wasn’t anyone in them.

 

So, when Mayor Hank Preston stepped in and signed the budget without a quorum, I didn’t flinch. I exhaled.

 

He didn’t throw a tantrum. He didn’t give a speech. He didn’t grand stand. He found the clause in the charter, the emergency line in the rulebook, and he pulled it like a fire alarm. Because it was a fire. The kind that burns through city services, police salaries, paramedic support, and fire department funding. 

 

And while I can already hear the howling from the procedural purists, spare me. This wasn’t a power grab. This was a hand on the wheel when the rest of the crew abandoned the bridge.

 

But let’s not get too comfortable patting backs. Because when I opened the appropriations report, what stared back at me wasn’t a city on the brink, it was a city already knee-deep in broken priorities.

 

Davis High School received over $31 million in payroll.  That’s not me rounding up, that’s the math: thirty million in salaries, one and a half in overtime, two hundred grand for extra hires.  And for what? Show me the positive educational outcomes. Because the only thing I see is kids fighting outside the school and a rise in gang recruitment that’s starting to feel systemic. Do you want a future for Los Santos? It starts in the classroom. And if this is what we’re paying for, we need to seriously rethink the invoice.

 

Meanwhile, down in the Southern and Central Districts, the places that are usually last to get paved and first to get policed, the budget handed them nothing. Zilch. Payroll: zero. Investment: zero. Hope: dwindling. These are neighbourhoods with potential, but potential doesn’t pay for streetlights, encourage small business, or put support services where they need to be.  This budget was a copy and paste job, no development, no progress, stagnation.  You want to be tough on crime? Try providing actual solutions to parts of the city where crime breeds, not with speeches, but with actual dollars and practical ideas.

 

And here’s where I take off my journalist hat, just for a moment. Because if I’ve learned anything in the years I’ve spent sitting through city council meetings and wading through campaign promises both in Los Santos and Chicago, it’s this: being a spectator to civic failure starts to feel like complicity.  I care about this city. I care about safety, I care about jobs, and I care about education that does more than checkboxes. I want a city that works for everyone. Maybe it’s time to stop shouting from the sidelines and start thinking about how I help to change the playbook.

 

Here’s the thing, democracy doesn’t just vanish because it’s inconvenient. You don’t get to freeze the process and still call it governance. Preston held the line, but a city can’t be run indefinitely by one man with a pen and a charter clause. We need a City Council, not someday, not eventually, but now. Debate, dissent, compromise, remember those? That’s how the job gets done. So if the Governor’s waiting for the perfect moment to call the election, let me help: it was yesterday. Do the right thing. Call the vote. Let the people speak.

 

 

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