Editorial: Mayoral candidates need to be clear on issue stances
In April 2003, in an editorial endorsing then 16-year Lincoln City Council veteran Coleen Seng for mayor, we lamented the lack of depth of Glenn Friendt's campaign message.
We noted that Friendt repeated the word "jobs" so often in his campaign rhetoric that we pictured a meth addict reading the help-wanted ads.
"Jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs."
Not quite four years later, with Mayor Seng on the way out and Republican candidate Ken Svoboda, Independent Roger Yant and Democrat Chris Beutler vying for mayor of the Star City, we're in the same boat.
We hear rhetoric about job growth, bold leadership and cutting the budget - without, of course, increasing taxes.
We know it's still early in the campaign, but we want more policy details, particularly from Svoboda. As far as we're concerned, the mayoral candidates cannot err by giving too much information on how they would make our city better.
As in 2003, jobs and economic development are probably the main campaign issues. All three candidates have claimed these as some of their top priorities.
On Beutler's Web site, as part of his "Taking Charge" plan, he says more attention should be paid to "response times" when it comes to the city approving new business projects. He also advocates appointing project managers, looking to other cities for examples of good governance and the establishment of a regular "City Performance Report" with a citizen survey.
Beutler has also advanced a plan that would create "development districts" around the edge of the city. New sales tax revenue from the districts would be plowed back into area infrastructure projects, encouraging growth.
Svoboda's "Vision for Success" on his Web site is vague and, frankly, a little scary. His vision sounds very laissez faire, a minimalist approach to economic policy and city governance.
He says "government needs to provide the tools for growth and then stay out of the way" and Lincoln needs to "prioritize our city functions" because "taxpayers of Lincoln can no longer afford to provide everything for everybody."
Svoboda's Vision section of his Web site is long and broad. Click on the Issues tab on his site, however, and you're staring at a blank page.
With our city at stake, we need to know the exact details of how the candidates plan to balance police and fire department response times, tax policies that encourage business development, the protection of property owners from eminent domain abuse concerns, downtown development, education and transit.
Beutler, who served 24 years in the state Legislature, Svoboda, a six-year City Council veteran, and Yant, a magazine publisher, have some good basic ideas, but we'd like to see more concrete proposals for job growth.
If you pick up this paper in time, be sure to tune in to the three-way candidate debate today at 8:30 a.m. on 104.1FM. We hope that the candidates shed further light on their plans for the future of Lincoln.