I think there's merit to what Becky has said and to what Jerry has said. There are good and bad things about Emily Reilly. I really can't decide whether to vote for her. She is not as bad as some of the other candidates, but she is not as good as a true progressive might be, either.

I respect Emily as a person. She grew up in Western Pennsylvania. I can say, from spending my college years in Pittsburgh, that you haven't seen economic decline until you've spent some time in that part of our country. She was a single mom. She coped with the suicide of one of her sons. She started her own business. And she became mayor. Obviously, she is a strong and hard-working person.

Emily has told me that she does pay a living wage to full-time employees at her bakery. I haven't verified the details. I do know that she provides the employees with free transit passes. In general, these claims tell us that she cares a little bit more than the average businessperson. They do not indicate that her business is a perfect employer.

I don't agree with her political approach. She says she wants to please everyone, but doesn't really do it. I am most familiar with her record on transportation, and somewhat familiar with her record on downtown issues and her record on housing.

At Metro Emily has supported four service cuts and a substantial fare increase, all since 2002. By convention, these votes are unanimous, so there's nothing unusual about her record. What people miss though, is that she and the other Metro board members made no effort to keep unit costs down. Their inability to say "no" over the years made the service cuts inevitable.

Very specifically, Emily and the other Metro board members failed to balance the interests of senior union members with the interests of bus riders and junior union members. Senior union members wanted large raises. Bus riders wanted to keep their bus service. Junior union members wanted to keep their jobs.

The Metro board committed itself to a string of large raises, knowing that revenue (primarily sales tax) was falling. The 2002-2005 bus driver contract, for example, was signed long after the economy began to falter. It provided a 5.8% raise in 2002, a 4.2% raise in 2003, and a 4.2% (junior) or 9.4% (senior) raise in 2004. The cost of living, as measured by the local Consumer Price Index (which includes housing, health care, food, entertainment, etc.), rose about 2% in each of those years. The bus drivers were already being paid fairly. I don't want to single them out, though, because inside workers and (the very few, very overworked) managers had also received similar raises.

A service cut was necessary to pay for the first year of the drivers' contract. The Metro board approved the contract and the initial service cut, more or less simultaneously. Every year since, the board has been forced to approve another service cut. A service cut, it should be noted, harms riders (who pay the same amount of money but have fewer travel choices) and junior union members (who get laid off). A 25 to 50% fare increase was also necessary in 2003.

A leader like Emily, had she really wanted to please everyone, might have suggested that Metro limit raises to the cost of living. This approach would have offended everyone initially, but saved the day in the end. No senior Metro employee would have lost ground to inflation, no junior Metro employee would have been laid off, and no Metro bus rider would have lost service. (Fare increase would still have been necessary, to keep pace with inflation.) Emily and her colleagues picked the easy route and offered the large raises. Unions -- led primarily by senior workers -- are an important political constituency. Bus riders aren't. To the junior workers who lost their jobs, and to the bus riders who were left with 20% less service in the end, Emily and her colleagues just kept on saying "sorry" and pretending that the results were completely unexpected.

On housing, Emily is one of the people who initially voted against the Cardiff Place Apartments. The project called for 45 studio apartments across the street from the largest public employer in the County and a block away from the street corner with the most Metro bus service in the County. The units were privately financed, and marginally affordable because of their small size. Emily initially sided with homeowner groups, who didn't want scummy apartment-dwellers like me (!) living next door to the $500,000 homes that Becky Johnson mentions. (Becky's remarks about lousy housing policy are right on the money, I think.) Cardiff Place was scaled down and did pass on the second try, at least.

I think Emily and the others really mishandled the downtown "problem". If you're worried that the people hanging out in your downtown are scaring away suburban shoppers, it's probably not a good idea to announce this, convene lots of council meetings that last until midnight, and then pass lots of silly laws that can't really alter people's behavior. Instead, you talk quietly with the affected parties (business owners, the homeless, street musicians, political activists, etc.) and troubleshoot. You also extoll the virtues of your colorful and lively downtown, and tell the detractors to do their shopping at Walgreens in Scotts Valley.

Emily and the others made downtown into a "cause celebre", which really did have the effect of scaring the suburban shoppers away. Banning hackey sacks, putting up planters, shooing street musicians away and shutting down political tables didn't stop people from hanging out in their downtown. A visionary leader would have realized that there really wasn't a big problem, and would have tackled a few specific incidents/difficulties quietly.

I respect Emily as a person, and I acknowledge that she has done some good and bad things as a politician.