Why it went sour for Suttle

Mayor Jim Suttle thought the hybrid SUV he leased on his first day in office would be a symbol of his commitment to making Omaha a greener city.

The Dodge Durango became a symbol, all right. But not the way he envisioned.

Instead, the SUV's pricey lease, with its initial 24 percent interest rate, helped forge an image of a mayor who spent too much money, made too many mistakes and was tone-deaf to public opinion.

Nearly 17 months later, Suttle is battling an attempt to remove him from office. The catalyst for the recall is Suttle's 2011 budget, which includes three new or increased taxes that especially angered restaurant owners and landlords.

Overall, Omahans were not yet sold on recalling the mayor, according to The World-Herald Poll. But a majority of Omahans gave him a failing grade for his job performance.

Suttle's troubles go beyond the tax hikes. Interviews with Suttle's allies and opponents, others and the mayor himself paint a portrait of a driven problem solver whose certitude can come off as infuriatingly arrogant.

A former engineer and executive for HDR Inc., Suttle brought his direct approach to City Hall.

Councilman Ben Gray said Suttle's mind-set is “Here's the problem. Here's what it's going to take. Let's get after it.”

Faced with serious city budget problems — some caused by the recession and others left by his predecessors — Suttle didn't hesitate to address them with spending cuts and tax hikes.

During a recent interview in his third-floor City Hall office, Suttle said that he doesn't regret any of those moves and that they were needed to stabilize the city's finances and improve its bond ratings.

Not only have his decisions been controversial, but Suttle also proved to be unskilled at delivering the bad news, explaining his reasons or mustering public support. He had little political capital when he took office and hasn't built it up or used it well.

“I don't know that he's a politician at all,” said former Omaha Mayor Mike Boyle, who hired Suttle in 1981 to be his public works director. “He's a very professional person, highly educated, highly skilled, who makes decisions and sticks to them. I think he believes that he's doing the right things.”

Suttle acknowledged he hasn't made his case well to Omahans — something he hopes to improve as he defends himself against the recall effort.

He knows that the car lease and his decisions to hire department heads at salaries much higher than their predecessors started his administration on the wrong foot.

“I think they are constantly in the conversation,” he said. “They became litmus tests. The car labeled me as a spender.”

The “spender” image continues to dog him. The Mayor Suttle Recall Committee cites “excessive taxes, broken promises and union deals that cost taxpayers millions” as reasons for the effort to oust him.

“He could have done a lot of things differently, but he decided early on that he was going to raise taxes,” said Jeremy Aspen, the group's spokesman and co-chairman. “His world view does not jibe with the world view of Omahans. We're fiscally responsible. He's a tax-and-spend guy.”

Suttle disagreed. He said he is wrongly accused of not listening to others.

The problem, he said, is that he can't do everything they want. He said people don't realize he can't change union contracts unilaterally or maintain city services without finding additional revenues.

“I've been ordered by certain people not to raise taxes,” he said. “I'm listening to their opinion, but I'm the guy who has to file the budget.”

If the recall group collects enough signatures, a special election will be held early next year — Omaha's first since Boyle was ousted in 1987.

Nationwide, recall efforts are targeting a growing number of mayors, although most are unsuccessful. As with the anti-Suttle effort, recall campaigns elsewhere typically have been spurred by anger over higher taxes or fees.

Suttle had served six years as public works director but wasn't particularly well-known. A West Virginia native, he spent the majority of his nearly 40 years in Omaha in the private sector before winning a City Council seat in 2005.

It was clear, colleagues and others say, that he had his sights set on the mayor's office — an ambition that caused tension at times with council members or then-Mayor Mike Fahey.

Suttle narrowly defeated former Mayor Hal Daub in May 2009 partly because he wasn't the controversial Daub, political observers said.

“A lot of people felt Jim didn't win, Hal Daub lost,” said Councilman Gray, a Suttle ally. “People didn't know all that much about him.”

Suttle's blank slate began to be filled almost immediately — and unfavorably — with the SUV lease controversy.

The initial lease had a four-year cost of $62,868. After World-Herald coverage of the lease, it was amended twice to reduce the interest costs.

Then, this year, Omaha auto dealer Mickey Anderson quietly slashed the annual payments to $1 a year, which brought the four-year cost of the vehicle to $13,748. Anderson said he and his father, the now-deceased Tal Anderson, wanted to end the controversy so Suttle and Omaha could move forward.

Mickey Anderson said his father, shortly before his death, told him: “Next year, give the city the car for $1. It's a small thing we can do to help out.”

At its most expensive version, Suttle's car lease cost the city $2,157 a year more than Fahey's lease of a Chrysler Aspen SUV. And Suttle's hybrid saves an estimated $500 a year in fuel costs.

The mayor, however, still takes heat about it.

The car flap was followed by Suttle's decision to pay big salaries to several new department heads. He wanted to hire top business executives to help overhaul city operations and found a way to fit their higher salaries into his budget.

For example, he hired City Finance Director Pam Spaccarotella from Werner Enterprises for $180,000. It was a pay cut for her, but her city salary was far above the nearly $100,780 her predecessor had earned. After a furor, Spaccarotella agreed to take the job for $40,000 less, but the damage was done.

“Here's how they got to know him,” Gray said of reaction to Suttle's early moves. “He made a series of bad mistakes.”

Those mistakes came as Suttle was coming to grips with the city's financial woes: falling sales tax revenue, an enormous police and fire pension shortfall, the Qwest Center Omaha debt and a looming review by bonding agencies that had downgraded the city a year earlier.

Suttle analyzed his options and took action. He laid off city employees, proposed closing swimming pools and libraries, pushed labor unions for a wage freeze, and proposed a new entertainment tax and a 2.4-cent increase in the city's property tax rate.

Some of the service cuts were restored after a public outcry and private donations. The City Council rejected an entertainment tax, which led to a bigger property tax hike.

Even critics acknowledged that a property tax hike was inevitable for repayment of the Qwest Center Omaha debt. But some wanted to put it off for another year.

Suttle concluded that the city shouldn't wait, even though the tax hike would hit during a recession. He feared that bond rating agencies would penalize the city if he didn't show the political will to deal with the financial problems.

Omaha's bond rating didn't drop. In fact, after the agencies overhauled their rating systems, the city regained its AAA rating.

“Problem solved. We move on,” Suttle said in the interview. “I will stand on that as being one of the best decisions we made. The Qwest Center debt is no longer a problem to this city.”

But last year's tax hikes didn't fix Omaha's underlying budget problems. This year, Suttle concluded that the public didn't want to lose services and that additional tax increases were essential.

He talked to leaders of the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce about possible tax hike options.

Suttle came away thinking that they understood the need and that they had indicated which taxes were preferable.

He came up with a property tax hike, a new tax on restaurant, bar and catering tabs, and a higher wheel tax to pay for street maintenance. He scrapped a possible occupation tax on Omaha workers and their employers because business leaders seemed most opposed to it.

But after Suttle unveiled his proposal, the chamber came out against raising taxes in the current climate. The chamber urged deeper — though unspecified — spending cuts, saying funding could be restored when the economy improved.

“I was flabbergasted,” Suttle said.

To the engineer, it seemed as though a policy analysis about the merits of various tax options had suddenly shifted into a political, anti-tax stance that didn't consider the city's budget needs or the limits of his mayoral power.

To the chamber leaders, it seemed as though Suttle had made up his mind to raise taxes and hadn't pick up on their opposition to any tax increase.

Others echoed that sentiment. At public budget forums, Suttle demonstrated a willingness to let citizens tell him he was wrong. He'd praise those critics for raising good questions — then tell them why he was right.

“I didn't see anything that would cause me to change my mind,” he said after one forum in 2009. “We're going to stay on plan.”

By summer, Suttle was facing catcalls from audiences at budget forums. After one session, a group of people surrounded him and peppered him with questions.

Suttle chalked up the opposition to natural hostility to tax hikes.

What he didn't appear to hear: concerns that tax money would be squandered on excessive pay, lavish pension benefits and wasteful spending.

Suttle's early decisions with the car lease and aides' salaries were still undermining his credibility on spending issues.

In fact, he had become a sort of magnet for criticism about spending, even on issues his administration didn't originate: the Qwest Center, the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge, the new downtown ballpark, large pensions for police and firefighters who retire in their 40s.

It didn't help that Suttle was selling a mixed message.

On the one hand, he contended, the budget was so tight that tax hikes were essential.

On the other, he proposed a $2.3 million advertising campaign to promote tourism and a $1.5 million effort to reduce school dropouts.

To Suttle, those would have been smart investments, boosting the economy by attracting out-of-town visitors and easing the demand on public safety by dealing with one of the root causes of crime.

To critics, those were frills, additional evidence that Suttle was too quick to spend taxpayer money.

His reputation took another hit when he talked about building streetcar lines — something that Daub and Fahey both had explored — or when he used federal money and donations to hire a $65,000-a-year employee to help make the city's streets safer for pedestrians and bicyclists.

Even supporters said those efforts were ill-timed, regardless of the merits.

Boyle, who now serves on the Douglas County Board, said Suttle's lack of political savvy hurts him at a time when the recession has the public in a restive mood.

“Compounding that mood of fear people have for their own well-being, then you have a city administration that's taxing your food, taxing your car and raising your property taxes,” he said. “There's no good news.”

Suttle said the political climate makes it harder for him to carry out his problem-solving approach.

“I'm running through the gantlet and can't see the end,” he said. “We're in a period of bitch, moan and complain. We need ideas, answers and solutions.”

Recall organizers say Suttle has proved he's the wrong person for the job.

Gray predicts Suttle will beat the recall because most people realize he is making an honest effort to solve the city's problems.

“His message may not be the best,” he said, “but his intentions are honorable.”

Even so, Gray said he doubts that Suttle will ever fully rehabilitate his image.

“It's hard,” he said, “to put Humpty Dumpty together again.”

Contact the writer:

444-1114, paul.goodsell@owh.com

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