Folks who believe Adrian Fenty a wizard, capable of changing the District government into some warm and fuzzy steel bullet, cutting through an unresponsive corporation with a wave of his BlackBerry, don’t understand the contradiction of their desires. They certainly don’t understand the city’s entrenched, bloated and abusive bureaucracy.
Fenty, who swept the Democratic primary the way former Mayor Sharon Pratt (then-Dixon) promised to broom the government, may be able to do many things. But the radical changes required in the District will not happen swiftly, or magically — even with his ace assistant Dan Tangherlini.
Truth told, Tangherlini, whom Fenty announced he would appoint in January as his city administrator, comes with the same challenges as his boss. He doesn’t know the finer details of the internal decay; hasn’t developed a comprehensive municipal budget; and hasn’t run a bureaucracy of the city’s complexity. The movie “The Three Faces of Eve” is a metaphor for the District, which is at once a state, county and city government, often confused about who it is at any given moment.
“They both will need to get up to speed quickly,” says one municipal management expert, who, like others I spoke with, requested anonymity. “Dan [also] will need to ensure his staff is diverse, and includes people from east of the [Anacostia] River. ”
“I don’t know if he has the strength to take on the Suzanne Pecks of the world,” says a government insider. (Peck, a generous political contributor and a serial law violator, is the city’s chief technology officer, who has come under the scrutiny of the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, the city auditor and the inspector general. Yet none of the District’s elected leaders has called for her removal.)
Tangherlini, the former head of the city’s Department of Transportation and current interim manager of Metro, is praised for his work at both agencies. But the leap from there to chief operations officer of a $9 billion troubled corporation, facing a potential drop in revenues, is huge-though not impossible to make.
When asked about his role and management style, Tangherlini offered that he will be “chief sponsor and supporter of workers, and help managers get what they need.” He considers himself an admixture of former city administrators John Koskinen and Robert Bobb.
Anyone sees red flags?
During Williams’ early tenure, Koskinen was the primary obstacle to aggressive reforms. He managed by consensus and never allowed a nonperforming employee to leave the government without a bunch of taxpayers’ money. Koskinen redux is not desirable.
Naming appointees is just beginning. Whomever else Fenty taps, including those retained from the previous administration, should go through the council confirmation process — whether required by law or not.
Perhaps by then, Tangherlini will fully understand his role: principal advocate for District residents.
Jonetta Rose Barras is the political analyst forWAMU radio’s D.C. “Politics Hour with Kojo and Jonetta.”
