His remarks, as I understand them, arose during public discussion of a city ordinance addressing residency requirements for city employees. Unfortunately, our city council was not competently familiar enough with the ordinance in question to discuss it intelligently. However, Mack made it clear that he really did not care what the ordinance said because he was not going to enforce it regardless. Now, I don t give a rat s ass about residency requirements. If a city employee arrives at work in a timely fashion, does his or her job professionally and competently, and the taxpayers get a full bang for their buck, I don t care if he or she commutes in from New York City.
Good help is hard to find.
And, if there is such an ordinance barring nonresidents from city employment, this city council, as our legislative body, is most certainly empowered to review it and, if they, as our legislative body, determine that adjustments are in order, so be it. But until the legislative body acts, the executive branch, especially Hizzonner, needs to enforce the law as written. For a public official, either elected or appointed, to publicly state that he will not enforce a valid law on the books is an outrage. The mayor wasn t hired to pick and choose which laws would be enforced and which ones would be ignored at his whim or for his own personal political advantage. America simply was not designed to work that way.