It's Being Dealt With

It's now all over the San Francisco Bay Area that Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and his wife have some problems with the IRS.  The IRS has slapped a tax lien on some property they own, for $239,000 in back taxes covering 2005-2007, during most of which period Mr. Dellums has been Mayor of Oakland. 

The Mayor has recently told the Montclarion newspaper that "it's being dealt with."  I can't link this statement because, although some of the Montclarion is online, this article isn't; and a quick Google search for "Dellums tax" doesn't produce any online published response from the mayor.  But I have the paper in my hand.

There you go again:  the passive exonerative (sometimes called the passive evasive), so favored of politicians .  Heaven forbid that Hizzoner should say exactly who is doing what, or anything as direct as, "We're going to pay the money."  I've blogged about this practice before (Hiding behind the passive, March 2007).  What's really clear from the article is that Mr. Dellums doesn't want to talk about this:

"I told you that it's being dealt with," he said Monday night.  "We owe taxes.  It's now being dealt with, and it will be dealt with expeditiously.  Period ... P-E-R-I-O-D."

Well, I wouldn't want to talk about it either, but - I'm not the mayor.  This is unfortunately typical of Mr. Dellums' entire tenure as mayor - he doesn't want to tell people what he's doing, ever, about anything at all.  In this case, the situation he doesn't want to talk about could theoretically (if something goes wrong in those expeditious dealings) end up with the mayor of Oakland in tax court.

This is not the behavior that voters expect from the mayor of a large city.  I didn't vote for him, and I've only seen him do one thing in office that made me consider I might have been wrong - the negotiations over the garbage contract in his first year in office.  I recently read a speculation that he may be considering a run for a second term.  I think he should reconsider.  Based on the comments on his lifestyle in all the articles about this mess, I don't think he can afford this job.