They're the Old Guard who were spendthrift with our tax dollars, especially when it came to developers, labor unions, cronies and pension funds. They left us a huge mess.
Did they leave a mess or did they begin the long process of cleaning up the mess the city had gotten into? I think SSB, et.al. practiced a brinkmanship that I could not have done were I in their positions, but I think Mpls. and the entire state benefited from it.
Wizard makes a great point - the city circumstances under which Rybak campaigned against Sayles-Belton were very different from when she took office. Once the city was moving along the revitalization path, it was easy to label development subsidies as spendthrift, or worse. (The pension and unions issues, no matter one's stance on pensions and unions, are not unique to Minneapolis. Cities all over the country are facing the same issues. For that matter, Mpls. wasn't the only city that was throwing around TIF money like spare change at the time.) A mayor who would be visible outside of city hall, and who promised to open the decision making process to scrutiny by the public, seemed like the right choice to a majority of voters at the time.
Yes, the economic downturn and losing state and federal aid has had a negative impact on city finances. But are some of the problems the city is now experiencing attributable to trading a behind-the-scenes mayor for an in-the-spotlight mayor? (This is not a rhetorical question.)
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