Parking Lot Conversation

This morning we had a meeting, the same as every Tuesday. Two Tribal members, relations of mine, came in to speak before Council regarding an employment matter at Spirit Mountain Casino. In hindsight, we probably should have gone into Executive Session, as names were thrown out, a hiring decision discussed. On thinking, I'm glad we didn't.
Our Tribal Vice-Chair left just as this discussion ended (Normally I avoid mentioning names, but since he is also Chair of SMGI and that is one reason why this matter got brought before us). A fellow Council member seated next to me leaned over and passed me a note, saying that he would probably wait outside for the two members and tell them who knows what, probably something I don't want to hear. I walked out to my pick-up during the ten minute break, and sure enough, as she predicted, there he was, bending their ears. If only I had Superman hearing.
In the big picture, or from the 30,000 feet view as a consultant told me years ago, I don't like to fret over this kind of stuff. That doesn't stop me from doing so, as this kind of activity is rampant and contributes greatly to the rumor mill and community wide misconceptions. Today it irritated me not so much because these were cousins of mine, but because I've been in this position long enough to know that probably little if anything will be done about the employment matter. But matters like this are jumped on and people are told something is being done, all because there are votes to be gained, and in an unpredictable election like this, two votes are worth a little time on the side schmoozing. I personally think this has more to do with why Council is so attentive to casino employment matters; with between 160 to 200 Tribal member employees, the vast majority voting age, there may not be a more accessible contingent of voters than SMC workers. There are votes to be had there.
My first year we had an audit done on our Tribe's Legal department by an outside consultant. Everyone on Council was interviewed. After my own interview, I sat with one of the consultants and shot the breeze. We both chuckled because I'd only been at this job for two months, and his firm had been hired right before I got elected. The organization was new to both of us.
"There seems to be a lot of parking lot conversations around here," is what he told me. I remember the phrase vividly, and even knew what he meant. My appreciation for that concept has only deepened with time. What he was saying, really, is that information gets passed around not always by memorandum or email, but conversations on the side, in the hallways, in parking lots, always off the record, and hard to trace back. With so little vital information in print, Tribal members go directly to the source, Tribal Council, and whether what they get told is truth or fiction will remain a mystery forever, or a few years. There are some of my co-workers, I believe, who like this system. Unwitting allies can get made.
Late last year at a Wednesday night meeting, a Tribal member form Portland stood up and made comments about our salary. That is hardly new, but what was unusual was that this person was a staunch and vocal supporter of the Council majority party. Yet here she was being unabashedly vocal in her criticism of us. The meeting ended with two Council members puzzled and hurriedly walking after this Tribal member as she left chambers. I could hear their conversation as I shuffled by "What's up with that? I gotta go talk to her." And much like this morning, who knows what was said or passed on.
I got my first real taste of the parking lot conversation theory early, at a Wednesday night meeting. But the one anecdote that stands out the most was later into my first year. A well-known employee was making what I thought was a reasonable request of Council. I was okay granting it, but for whatever reason getting buy-in form others wasn't so easy. He confronted me in my office later that day after learning the news, hoping to know what happened, or so I thought. Evidently he had already been given one version of the story. We didn't always make decisions in writing then, and the meetings weren't recorded. I explained to him what happened, i.e. who didn't support his idea. Angrily, he looked at me, breathing heavily, and said without hesitation "Yeah. Well, I heard you and Angie were the ones who were shooting this down."
He has never really trusted me since, even though I told him the truth. Say what you will about parking lot conversations, but in Grand Ronde they can have a bigger impact than anything said on the record.

Spoiling

Years ago, back in 2003, I ran for Tribal Council. The 270 votes I received in 2002 were something to build on, or at least that's what many told me. More importantly, given the incredible unpopularity and maybe even infamy that surrounded one Council incumbent that year, one seat seemed up for grabs. There was no way he would be re-elected, because too many people disliked him.
Now there is an old Monty Python movie that came out in the early 1970's, called "The Life of Brian". It is about a young man born at the same time and within the same area as Jesus, leading to a lifetime of confusion. One part of that movie stands out more now than when I viewed it as a teenager, the fueding rebel movements in old Israel. The Judean People's Front and the Peoples' Front of Judea all have the same goal, to destroy the occupying Romans. The problem is they also hate each other, and both break into the Roman stronghold intent on assassinating the Emperor, only to run into one another, scuffle, and botch the dual efforts, while the Roman guards arrive at the end of the melee to stare confusedly at bodies everywhere. Of course it is all depicted in the usual zany Monty Python comical style, not to be taken too seriously, if at all.
Enough time has passed since 2003 that I can honestly see the parallels between that old film and what happened during the Tribal Council elections that year. So many people wanted to see a certain Council member gone. But his support was more united than the opposition, and he was re-elected with the lowest vote total in close to a decade. You see, 17 people decided to run that year. I was one of them, and fell short by 40 votes.
Ultimately, some good did come of that debacle of an election. We ran a much more unified and organized campaign the following year, sweeping all three seats, though ousting two Council members who, while many might argue were ineffective, were harmless compared to some of the sitting members not up for re-election. It has been a roller-coaster ride since then.
But what 2003 introduced for me was the concept of a spoiler in elections, a Ralph Nader or Ross Perot if you will. There are candidates who might make a decent showing, but in the end their biggest impact is siphoning votes away from people who have a better shot of being elected. In times when you need serious change, the spoiler does more harm than good. They aren't the villains who spark calls for sweeping change, but they are obstacles.
Which brings me to this year's election. This may be the most uncertain I've ever been about an outcome. I hear the calls for change, but like in 2003, way too many people are answering that call all at once. It seems unlikely the incumbents will earn the record votes they did three years ago. Having 18 candidates all but assures that. But with 18 people in the race, votes get split, and a person might be elected with maybe less than 400 votes, which has happened only once since 2003.
I respect whatever the members decide. But I do believe we need to a run-off election or something similar. I don't generally take much stock in rumors, but if this year we really do have people running just to dilute the vote, then we've got to change our present system. Sooner or later, we've got to realize that getting leaders elected with a majority vote is a good thing. I can't be the first to think so.

34, part two

Continued...

34

Today is my birthday, 34 to be exact. We all know what that means: in one more year I can run for President. But it also means I am halfway through my 30's, which ten years ago seemed impossible.
I left work early today. Although I may not party it up in as in years past, as a habit I try to do something special and out of the ordinary. At this point I'm halfway there.
Also out of habit I still carry my new digital camera in my pick-up. You never know when something cool will appear and you'll wish a camera had been handy. Here is a medley of those moments from the last two months. Some of these photos are from the spectacular Tulalip resort north of Seattle, which makes Spirit Mountain look like an also ran. I've also included a sneak peak at our plankhouse, which should open up some time this year. The others are from the ride between Bend and Salem, a route I drove last week on the way to Sisters for the Candidates Forum.

Channel Chris

Okay, so it's not really called "Channel Chris". But YouTube, I guess, allows people to set up channels, which are really just like blogs, but rather than be writing-oriented, they are video-oriented.
I know it seems odd to be talking about another website of mine on this one. But it is easier just to go through YouTube for all the videos I've been producing as opposed to embedding them here. Perhaps this, like Twitter, will end up being just a fad or something. Nothing changes that in many respects, this new video thing has been fun, and while I am not ready to go primetime, a lot has been learned, about editing, sound, zooming, microphones, etc. Might end up being a new hobby.

The link:

http://www.youtube.com/user/cgmercier

Idle Hands

This week six Council members were supposed to be in Washington, D.C., for various reason, not the least of which is a meeting with Ken Salazar. I've never agreed with sending that many people on the same trip, especially one that revolves mostly around meeting with elected officials and political appointees. We tried that last year, and that is what turned me off to the idea. Try cramming six Council members and three or four staff along with the person you're meeting with and their staff, and the rooms can get crowded and half the people don't say a word. There isn't time.
And it costs a lot of money. The last time I went to D.C., April of 2008, we all stayed at the same hotel, the Hotel George, which charged roughly $400 per night, per room. Five or six Council members and your suddenly staring at a couple of grand per night just for our hotel rooms, and some of us don't even get in a word edge-wise in half the meetings. But sometimes these meetings turn into contests of who can impress people the most. So there is a little ego involved, which for me is all the more reason to not go.
Weeks like this, no quorum, are for me now a boon. I can catch up on emails, reports, letters, phone calls--all the things that go neglected while away from the office. My new G1, the offspring of T-Mobile and Google designed to provide an industry rival to the iPhone, helps me keep up somewhat; It's a defacto blackberry. But there just doesn't seem enough time, or maybe I'm just not good at rationing out my time. Probably both.
But the lack of a quorum means no meetings, except Wednesday when we will have a conference call to discuss the "Leno Letter" yet again, and that gives me time to try and get organized. But looking through my office, where to begin?
Wink Soderberg thinks I'm crazy to keep most of the reports and try and stay organized. Looking at all my shelves, he might be right. But a lot of this stuff I just can't bear to part with. It is more out of journalistic instincts than anything, I want reminders of past events, statistics that might be useful someday. Plus frankly, I saw a record years ago that looked tampered with, and some of the major decisions made before I got elected there seems to be no record at all, or if there is it might be hidden away who knows where. The words "needle" and "haystack" come to mind.
So this week will not be idle for me, even with the void of meetings and work sessions. I'll plug away at the unstoppable flow of information, file some of it away, shred the rest. Once in a while, I'll come across something important, even disturbing, that I knew about at one time, and then forgot. There is a lot of stuff like that.

Never Back Down

I just watched the 2008 film, “Never Back Down”, which in reality is just an update of a similar movie from my own childhood, “The Karate Kid”.  Towards the end of the movie, the hero and villain are about to slug it out in the parking lot, MMA-style, and the protagonist makes a keen observation while sensing the psychotic antagonist’s hesitancy.  The villain loves an audience.  It is not enough to win a fight convincingly.  He wants to beat somebody’s ass, and do it in front of a crowd of roaring fellow teens, and to have it broadcast on YouTube over and over and over.

He still has issues, that’s not questioned at all.  But he’s the kind of guy who whose hobby is to do exactly what he does in the movie, to pick fights and record the glory.  He goes to some considerable lengths at times too, using a girlfriend to lure the hero to a party where they can rumble.

There are some who will consider this idea far-fetched, but I don’t think it is.  Our Wednesday night Council meetings have become those fights.  The July 1 meeting felt, for all purposes, like a premeditated ambush.  Some of my co-workers already knew what they were going to say, chiming in right at Other Business.  Like the Karate Kid, Wink Soderberg and I happened to be around when others were itching for a fight.  The letter from our Director of Development about last year’s Leno Letter was like throwing down the fighting mats for a match.  Except I didn’t know it at the time.

When the ABC’s first got elected in 2004, that marked I think the start of these theatrical meetings, although the Tribe had its share during that period of legal struggles involving Ed Pearsall, Reyn Leno, Bob Haller, and Jan Reibach.  Poor Ed seemed all alone at some of those meetings, and I guess he was.  But I remember the first two meetings Angie, Buddy, and I had to endure as they were laden with accusations of…where to start, of buying the election, of being owned by “the Michigan Group”, and interfering in a hiring matter.  It took some getting used to, and I’m not sure one really does.

The trend continued into 2005, starting within weeks of Wink Soderberg and Kathy Tom getting elected as some anonymous flyer hit mailboxes describing our mythical plans to cut per capita, Elders’ security, etc.  The following meeting was packed, and there were a number of scripted comments that were also waiting in the wings, including one at me.  From a political standpoint, it makes sense.  There was a large audience then, all the more reason to try and make somebody look bad.

Last year might have been one of the worst, there was the matter of a letter some Tribal member wanted read into the record, a suggestion our acting Chair didn’t bother to mention until the onset of Other Business.  There was also the meeting where our acting Chair had the Tribe’s Human Resources Director stand up, sheepishly I might add, and refute the statements of a rival Council member.  It makes me wonder what will be in store for me this Wednesday, July 8, as we hold one ahead of schedule due to lack of quorum next week.

I ask myself this:  What is worse, that I’ve become so cynical and jaded as to expect these sorts of things, or that more often than not these things, these plotted attacks, can be counted on to happen?

All I can do is roll with the punches.