PURPLE: Tallahassee City Commissioner Allan Katz on the Greater Good
Journalist, novelist, former 60 Minutes Producer and U.S. and Purple State of Mind-er John Marks interviews Tallahassee’s very own Allan Katz for his new series: PURPLE: The Interview.
Welcome to Purple, the first in a series of Sunday interviews-slash-conversations that will become a regular feature on this website. The conversations will cover the gamut of subjects, but we will always circle back to the question of cultural, social and political division in this country and the world.
There are no simple answers, of course, but in our attempt to wrestle with the national wrestling match, we’ll feature thinkers, artists, musicians, politicians, pastors, journalists, judges, historians, novelists, scientists and playwrights, to name just a few.
For our first chat, we’re turning to the basics of civil society, a conversation with a veteran of American politics at the national, state and municipal level, and one of our sponsors on a recent visit to Florida.Commissioner Allan Katz is currently serving his eighth year as a Tallahassee City Commissioner. Allan formerly served on the staffs of Florida Congressman Bill Gunter and current Wisconsin Congressman David Obey. He is a former member of the Democratic National Committee and was one of President Barack Obama’s earliest and most active supporters in Florida.
In 2005, Allan was the lone City Commissioner to oppose City of Tallahassee buy-in to a proposed pulverized coal plant. Allan lead the opposition in a ballot initiative to approve the plant, calling the option to own part of the plant “like investing in the last buggy whip factory.” Ultimately, new events proved Allan’s opposition prophetic and the plant was not built. Allan recently found himself disagreeing with some of the very people he worked with opposing the plant in his support of a proposed Biomass plant.
He later joined with some of his most prominent opponents in the coal fight to form the nonpartisan public forum “The Village Square,” dedicated to civil discourse and fact-based decision-making across the partisan divide (http://www.tothevillagesquare.org). For “visionary leadership” on environmental issues, this April Allan was the first recipient of the “Champion for Climate Change Award” given by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Florida Wildlife Federation. He is a partner with Akerman Senterfit, one of Florida’s largest law firms.
Commissioner Katz was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to respond to our emailed questions.
Commissioner Katz, you’ve been in public service at the national, state and local level for decades. Can you remember a time when political opponents behaved toward each other with mutual respect? Or is that just one of those Golden Age dreams that never really happened?
I think that there was a time when there was a different type of dialog. There was always a shrill aspect out there but it was a less dominant sound, it was much more on the fringes and as a result there was a respectful dialog in the middle that basically tested the different ideas about the appropriate role of government was. Should we either be protected by government or left alone by government? I think those days have changed and our debate has evolved into something much more damaging. For example – if you are concerned that prayer in the public schools is a problem because of children feeling excluded or coerced, then you are attacked for being anti-religion. At the same time, people who believe that prayer in the public schools is appropriate are being branded as religious zealots. Unfortunately that has become far too much of the common lexicon among far too many of the people in our society.
How much civility do you see in Tallahassee politics now?
In our local politics, we have a fair amount of civility. As far as state politics goes – which takes place in Tallahassee – I think we have a remarkable lack of civility. Again, that varies with different leaders at different times. In Tallahassee, we have a pretty normal bell curve… On the extreme left and extreme right you have people who are demonizing everyone who doesn’t agree with them. But for the most part I think people have a relatively common set of values. And while I’m not particularly enamored of the way some people describe people who are on opposites sides of an issue from them – from time to time – but I think generally speaking, it’s relatively civil. It could be improved and hopefully what we’re doing with The Village Square will help us get there.
These days, our national dialogue on a wide range of difficult issues seems to get worse by the day. Partisanship has turned vicious. I know there are many roots to such a complicated and deep-seated problem, but in your mind, are there one or two factors that have been most influential in poisoning the atmosphere?
At the national level, in some ways, it is getting better. I give a lot of the credit to the new president, who has done several things that I think are interesting. First of all, he’s been willing to tell people things they don’t want to hear, which I think is always a good thing. Also, he’s been willing to deal with a number of volatile issues in a dispassionate way in an attempt to work with what you have to solve the problem. His speech at Notre Dame was a good example of this. He, on the one hand, chastised everyone for demonizing people who disagreed with them and at the same time recognized the obvious point that this is an issue on which some people will never agree. And that’s something we really haven’t had anyone the stature of the President do in a really long time.
Abortion is one of the top three most significant issues that have created this inability to listen to each other. People who are pro-choice think that people who are opposed to abortion are abortion nuts. And people on the other side think pro-choice people are pro-abortion. And no one I know is pro abortion, it’s a question of how we deal with the issue. As someone who considers himself pro-choice, I’m sympathetic with people who think abortion is murder. There is a significant diversity of opinion on abortion within our society so the issue isn’t really how we’re going to convince each other, it’s how we’re going to live with each other.
Another issue that has clearly helped create some of the nastiness is the issue of gay rights. While it has been used to inflame people ][to oppose gay rights] in a negative way, ironically, as you look around the country, clearly that paradigm is shifting and its almost done the opposite, particularly with younger Americans (who many believe have a sense of entitlement which is not particularly attractive). On the positive side they seem to be color-blind and, to them, a difference of sexual orientation is insignificant.
Continued tomorrow…
Add comment June 1st, 2009
