Michael Moynihan: Directly elected mayors have a role that surpasses being a figurehead

Daley tackled downtown blight, and encouraged an unprecedented building boom in the Chicago Loop

The Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr Colm Kelleher.

I see our Lord Mayor is issuing challenges to his counterpart in Limerick about the whereabouts of Liam MacCarthy and the Limerick Mayor is responding in kind and so forth ahead of the weekend’s game.

May I point out a colossal breach of etiquette here before we go any further?

Unless I’m wrong — and I’m never wrong, to quote the dark-haired chap in The Princess Bride — there is no lord when it comes to the mayor of Limerick, so I’m not quite sure if the Corkman should be treating with him as an equal.

In any case, on with the exchange of quips. All good fun, and what else are mayors for, eh?

Interesting that you should ask.

It was in January this year, for instance, that the Government announced that it had “approved the drafting of legislation for the new role of a directly elected mayor for Limerick City and County with executive functions (responsibilities)”.

What does that mean, exactly?

It means the Government — according to the same press release on the irlgov.ie website — has decided “that the directly elected mayor will have many of the executive functions currently held by the local authority’s Chief Executive.

“These areas include: housing and building; road transport and safety; strategic development and environmental services . . . The Government today also sanctioned Government Departments to explore the potential transfer of additional functions to a directly elected mayor for Limerick once the role has been created.”

Park your objections — but just for a moment, we’ll come back to them — and consider what a directly elected Lord Mayor of Cork would be able to accomplish in this scenario. By “accomplish” I mean specifically addressing many of the issues raised in this column over recent months, from the arrival of our robot tree commandants cluttering up the Grand Parade to the demolition of the Sextant Pub and all points between.

The presence of a directly elected mayor would surely lead to personification of the decision-making process, for one thing. That kind of mayor has the capacity to embody his or her city’s spirit and personality along the American model.

The US, in fact, offers an intriguing glimpse of the possibilities involved. One of the top-rated mayors according to civic historians was New York’s Fiorello La Guardia: “A stouthearted fireplug of a man who built modern New York, La Guardia also fought ‘Murder Incorporated’, read the comics to children over the air during a newspaper strike, and was a symbol of ethnic probity and honesty.” 

The same book which rated La Guardia so highly, The American Mayor: The Best & The Worst Big-City Leaders by Melvin G Holli, gave a withering evaluation of others, such as William H “Big Bill” Thompson of Chicago, who received campaign funding from Al Capone. Enough said.

But then there are figures like Richard Daley of Chicago, a name that may be familiar to older readers.

“Probably the last boss of an effective big-city political machine in the land,” wrote Holli, “Irish- American Daley is credited with heading off downtown blight, encouraging an unprecedented building boom in the Chicago Loop while keeping the city solvent and the books balanced, and guiding his city through a turbulent decade, the 1960s . . .”

However, the same Daley “was also soundly denounced by his contemporaries for ordering police to ‘shoot to kill’ in the 1968 Westside Martin Luther King riots and for his crackdown on antiwar protesters at the Democratic National Convention the same year.”

This is one of the challenges when it comes to a directly elected mayor — not the corruption of a “Big Bill” Thompson, whose safety deposit box was found to contain $1.5 million on his death in 1944 — but the possibility that a mayor who is active and decisive in office may end up acting and deciding in a way that offends or alienates a sizeable part of his constituency.

Fair enough, you could make the same point about any politician, but a mayor — or even a Lord Mayor — is different for the reason mentioned above.

The holder of the office embodies the city. Nowadays that’s a symbolic role — witness the letter-battle going on this past week — but it carries a significance. Even casual Joyceans will recall the bitter dismissal of a Dublin Lord Mayor in Ivy Day in the Committee Room (“He told me: ‘What do you think of a Lord Mayor of Dublin sending out for a pound of chops for his dinner? How’s that for high living?’ says he. ‘Wisha! wisha,’ says I. ‘A pound of chops,’ says he, ‘coming into the Mansion House.’ ‘Wisha!’ says I, ‘what kind of people is going at all now?’”).

But if you take the recent imbroglio about the robot trees in Cork, would it not be better to have a first citizen who could articulate the reasons for their installation, embody the direction local government is taking in this case — and who would stand over their efficacy or otherwise, subject to the discretion of the electorate?

(Apologies for the slight sense of constipation in the last paragraph: I had a bit of a flashback to my years in Leinster House listening to debates which ran along similar tracks. Brr.)

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan.

By the way, regarding those self-same robot trees, I said last week they were approved at some meeting or other which was fatally short of one vital ingredient — a six-year-old child willing to pipe up and point out the obvious.

Little did I know that in one jurisdiction not too far from us, a directly elected mayor was moving in just that direction. 

I direct you to a July advertisement on the London local government website, which states: “Five lucky children aged between 8-11 will have the chance to work alongside The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, providing expert guidance in curating the most family-friendly and accessible activities in London.

“During their time in office, the Mayors of Play will share their recommendations on London’s best museums and outdoor spaces as well as their favourite galleries and activities. The Mayors of Play will also help reimagine London’s iconic tube map for their peers – it’ll be a summer of fun curated for kids, by kids.”

Don’t rush to call your sister in Shoreditch or that cousin in Kilburn — the application date has passed.

But hats off to incumbent London mayor Sadiq Khan for the initiative: “In launching my search for London’s first ever ‘Mayors of Play’, I want to hear directly from our young people about what we need to focus on most to make the capital even better for children.” I think it’s a terrific idea. 

And even if there’s any mission creep and the Mayors of Play find their responsibilities beginning to spread into less childish area like budgeting or transport for instance, there’s no real cause for concern if a small child ends up in charge of some aspect of London life which affects millions of people. Khan’s predecessor was Boris Johnson. Which may be a death knell for the elected mayor concept all on its own.