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Wednesday, March 05, 2003

Last week I goofed. I stepped over a line that I wish I hadn't and in doing so, I became guilty of one of the things I have criticized.

In a column explaining why the sheriff's attempt to take over the county police department is an insult to Allegheny County taxpayers, I insulted the sheriff's deputies. I regret this both because it was bad manners and because it was bad strategy.

Why it was bad manners is self-explanatory. Why it was bad strategy is this: The insult drew some people's attention away from the cogent and compelling argument that followed.

(Don't you like how I can apologize and compliment myself at the same time? Thank you -- it's just one of my gifts.)

The insult, for the record, was not in the first paragraph where I called the deputies' referendum efforts "small, backward and mean." That's the unvarnished truth as I see it, and I'll stand by all three of those adjectives.

But the next paragraph continued, "It's no surprise that the deputies were able to gather so many signatures so quickly. Allegheny County's Democratic Party ranks may be weakened by decades of inadequate competition, marginal literacy and inbreeding, yet many of them can sign their names."

Now that's just rude. As one e-mail put it, "I tried to finish reading your column today, but I couldn't get past your juvenile description of the sheriff's deputies. I take offense."

Therein lies my problem.

First, I didn't intend to insult the sheriff's deputies, I intended to insult the rank-and-file members of the 19th-century Democratic Party machine who lined up to sign so rank a referendum. And second, although the insult was, judging from the bulk of my e-mail, widely regarded as well-deserved, it nonetheless repelled some people who otherwise might have been persuaded.

The danger in revisiting this issue is that it focuses yet more attention on Sheriff Pete DeFazio. As he pointed out in a front-page article in Monday's Post-Gazette, his ongoing dispute with county Chief Executive Jim Roddey "is probably making me really stronger than I should be."

That's true, but apart from his own efforts to make himself stronger than he should be, my contribution to this mistake may be temporarily unavoidable. The issues here are much larger than the agenda of Pete DeFazio; he simply happens to embody a problem that has plagued the region for decades.

Most of the people who built Pittsburgh were laborers working at the mercy of incredibly wealthy capitalists. Union politics were necessary to protect the have-nots from stingy haves, to wrest a more humane life from tight, often merciless hands. Progress for the average man demanded unity and uniformity.

That frame of mind found a home in the Democratic Party and has dominated local politics for more than a century. We have long had, in practice, a one-party system. Once a shelter for the have-nots, it has become a haven for the privileged few. The Democratic machine treats local government as a spoils system for loyalists, friends and family.

But that insular and corrupt view can't sustain a healthy civic life. Local leaders in both parties worry constantly and publicly about how to attract new settlers, new business and new ideas. A power structure that makes decisions based on what's best for the insiders is not hospitable to necessary change.

Look no further than the sheriff's department itself to see this principle in action. DeFazio described the weeping deputies he had to lay off when he finally bowed to economic pressures and closed the satellite booking centers. The sheriff and his deputies' union collectively decide what their wages will be. Couldn't some of those laid off have kept their jobs if others were willing to forgo their hefty overtime wages? Can't three men work just 40 hours each and allow what would have been their overtime to provide a job for another deputy?

Does a deputy need to earn $90,000 a year -- twice the nation's median family wage? Could someone from this department utter a single word to indicate they're aware that taxpayers are signing their paychecks?

It is an act of supreme chutzpah that DeFazio would try to annex a larger, more competently run department and then accuse the Republicans of turning the situation into "a power struggle."

Representative democracy needs two healthy parties to stay alive for long. Democrats interested in good government should not get in line behind the sheriff's short-sighted personal crusade. He and like-minded partisans may win this battle but the rest of us had better hope they don't win the war.

One way or the other, we will get the government we deserve.