The SacBee is reporting today Johnson wants Sac voters to decide on a new budget analyst position. Can you hear the crowd booing? Evidently this is a first in Sac politics. Course the mayor could have just asked the council for support, but ever since they swatted his free budget audit offer into the cheap seats a ways back, he’s been a little gun shy. Weird. He was never shy about pulling the trigger in his NBA days.

Anyway, it’s safe to say something has gone terribly wrong when the boss is suddenly deferring everything to the people for vote. This  “let the people decide” position iMayor has suddenly taken on everything is wonky. After all, this is the iMayor unit who said in response to the recent strong arm mayor initiative fail: “accountability has been asked to wait in line.” Weird because when he was stumping for votes back in October of 2008 he promised a vote for him would usher accountability to the front of the line. A vote for iMayor Johnson denoted a vote for accountability, right? Well that’s we THOUGHT.

Folks are perplexed. At this point they’re beginning to ask:  does this bot want to be mayor or not? Isn’t iMayor Johnson the one who told voters he was in a unique position to shake things up at city hall because he was NOT a politician? I remember him saying at his Natomas “town hall” (actually it was mostly a sales presentation)  “If I’m elected it won’t be politics as usual” in Sac town.. or something like that. He went on about how he didn’t have any lobbyist bread to butter or political ties. Fourth generation Sacramentan set to return decorum, accountability, and transparency to city hall.

Someone needs to tell iMayor that simply deferring decisions to voters does not an effective leader model make. That’s a populist approach to governance any donkey could perpetrate.  Why even have a mayor if he doesn’t want to facilitate key decisions ?  Where’s the accountable city government? Where’s the transparency? Where’s that stab into the heart of “politics as usual” iMayor  promised? We’re not seeing it. All we’re seeing is indifference and deference. Time for iMayor’s contingent to fix the bugs and restart the application pool.

But then maybe people are asking  too much from the mayor who recently referred to Willie Brown as his “idol.”  All due respect to Willie Brown, but he isn’t exactly “idol” material…. unless your idol bar is dangerously low … or your operating system is on the fritz…