Council Should Upbraid Murray--Not Fire Him

The political highlight of this past week was expected to be the anticipated election of Maureen O’Connor as mayor. But O’Connor’s triumph was all but eclipsed by a fast-breaking controversy surrounding City Manager Sylvester Murray.

The brouhaha followed publication in The Times last Sunday of an article based on two lengthy interviews with Murray. In the interviews, Murray, who has been city manager since September, referred to his attitudes about the police while he was growing up in a Miami ghetto and made an injudicious comment about how excited he becomes at the thought that today he is “boss of police.” Murray, who is black, also expressed surprise at the conservative nature of San Diego’s black community, citing a lack of outrage over allegations of police brutality that have surfaced in the Sagon Penn murder trial.

Reaction to those and other comments contained in the interview was swift and negative. Council members reported receiving scores of phone calls critical of Murray. The president of the Police Officers Assn. wrote a letter of complaint to the City Council. And several council members themselves were angered.

On Wednesday, Murray wrote a memorandum to the City Council clarifying and apologizing for some of his comments, and on Friday, a similar memo from Murray was read to police officers. Nonetheless, by week’s end some council members were talking about whether he should be fired.

It’s impossible to know the true feelings of the upset council members--partly because little is being said openly and on the record--but it is clear that events are moving much too fast, and a cooling-off period is in order.

The dissatisfaction with Murray did not begin last Sunday when his quotes appeared in the newspaper. A difference of opinion already had emerged between him and council members over where his job stops and theirs begins.

Murray came here from Cincinnati, a city with a long tradition of strong city managers. There, the city manager not only runs the bureaucracy but is expected to be active in the community in a variety of ways. City government in San Diego, on the other hand, has been in a state of evolution since 1971, when Pete Wilson was elected mayor and began consolidating power in the mayor’s office. Wilson failed in his attempt to have the charter changed from a strong-manager to a strong-mayor form of government, but he succeeded in transforming the mayor’s job into the real political leadership of the city.

When Wilson left for the U.S. Senate in 1982, the City Council decided to weaken the mayor somewhat by taking for itself some of the mayor’s appointive powers.

Before last week, it appeared that the next evolutionary step in city government would be determined by a three-sided struggle among the brash and aggressive Murray, the popular but untested O’Connor, and the council members--emboldened during the months-long periods without a mayor that followed the resignations of Wilson and his successor, Roger Hedgecock. Now the situation is murkier.

The three-way tussle could still occur, of course. It may be that some council members are merely taking advantage of Murray’s self-inflicted wounds and trying to soften him up.

We hope it’s no more than that. For the council members to even discuss firing Murray at this stage makes it seem as if they are panicking and that they are intimidated by him to the point of being unable to deal with him.

The complaints against Murray fall into two categories--lapse of good judgment, as shown by some of his statements in the interview, and a perceived encroachment by the city manager into the council’s areas of responsibility.

For Murray to say in the interview, “I get an orgasm just being a boss of police,” clearly showed bad judgment. Those who have focused on the word orgasm, however, as Murray did in his apology memo to the council, miss the larger point that the comment seemed to show spite toward the police. Murray is going to have to work hard to gain the confidence of the Police Department.

The comments about the police, taken with statements having to do with race, indicate an activist mentality on Murray’s part that is unusual for most people in public life here, much less the city manager. One example was Murray’s saying during a council session that he wanted to name a surface street after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. rather than a freeway because people can’t parade on freeways. Another has been his emphasis on affirmative action in the top levels of the city bureaucracy. And then there was his remark about the reaction among blacks to the Sagon Penn trial. Nothing Murray said can reasonably be construed as inciting blacks to protest Penn’s treatment by the police. He merely observed that allegations of the sort raised by witnesses in the Penn trial would have stirred controversy in the black communities of other American cities. Murray isn’t the first person who has moved here from the East to comment on the relative conservatism of the minority communities in San Diego.

Then there is the question of whether Murray is trying to usurp authority that rightfully belongs to the City Council. “I will be powerful,” Murray said in The Times interview in response to a question about his role. “I will be no more powerful than the law allows, but I will assume all the powers of this office.” That’s hardly seditious stuff from a man charged with managing 7,500 workers and a budget of $616 million.

On this point, it’s the statements of the council members that provide Murray his best defense. Councilwoman Judy McCarty said she was troubled that Murray wanted to go out into the city and talk with community groups. “I see that as the elected officials’ role,” she said. Another council member, speaking anonymously, said, “We don’t appreciate being preempted by the city manager or his staff.”

In addition to feeling a proprietary right to handle constituency relations, the council members also feel Murray is improperly trying to restrict their involvement in putting together the city budget. What Murray sees as council meddling, the council members see as setting policy.

Soon to drop into this melange is Maureen O’Connor, whose views on Murray are not yet publicly known. It is to be hoped that even before she takes office she will exercise leadership and discourage any consideration of firing Murray. For her to adopt a hands-off attitude would be disappointing, as it would be for her to join the anti-Murray bandwagon without having first worked with the city manager and gotten to know his strengths and weaknesses.

The council has a previously scheduled meeting with Murray on Tuesday to discuss his performance so far--his first such review. At that time, it would be appropriate for council members to upbraid him for intemperate comments, to try to influence his management style and to further hash out disagreements over lines of authority.

To go further would not only be terribly unfair to Murray, but would make the council a laughingstock among the community of cities. No sufficient reasons for Murray’s dismissal have been established; no groundwork has been laid to prepare the community for such action.

Now is the time for the council members and Murray to maintain their composure. The rocky week just ended should go down as just another minor temblor in the evolution of San Diego city government.