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Toxic leadership led to IRS fiasco
To the editor:
Leadership has been described as the process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task. It is organizing a group of people to achieve a common goal.
Students of leadership have produced theories involving traits, situational interaction, function, behavior, power, vision and values, charisma and intelligence, among others. The search for the characteristics or traits of leaders has been ongoing for centuries. Underlying this search was the early recognition of the importance of leadership and the assumption that leadership is rooted in the characteristics that certain individuals possess. In other words, leaders were born, not developed. I believe that leaders are developed and must have certain characteristics. Good leadership requires several characteristics and they all go hand in hand to gain trust and respect from the people being led.
Honesty: Fairness and straightforwardness of conduct; adherence to the facts
Accountability: An obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actions.
Integrity: Adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character.
Responsibility: Reliability or dependability; the ability or authority to act or decide on one's own, without supervision.
There has been much written on the types of leadership. Toxic leadership is one of these; "A toxic leader is someone who has responsibility over a group of people or organization, and who abuses the leader-follower relationship by leaving the group or organization in a worse-off condition than when he/she first found them."
David Tennyson ranted a bit in his Feb. 10 column about our city's financial problems, and I quote: "We didn't have thieves running the city back then, just idiots. Complete, total, unadulterated, idiots." I think David was saying we had toxic leadership, David just stated it differently.
Our old leadership (administration) is still saying they do not know why the IRS was not paid these taxes or who made the decision not to pay them. The members of that administration will never gain any respect or trust without displaying the qualities of good leadership. Our current leadership has done almost all they can do to display the above qualities. This in turn has gained the current administration trust and respect from the citizens of Blytheville.
I did attend the meeting at the Ritz and it was informative as far as letting you know the accounting system was a mess and we spent more than we took in and have for many years. The legislative audit is just a service provided to our city -- they cannot enforce anything. They gave the answers to all the accounting information that was presented to them.
But the answers most citizens want answered were not provided:
1. Who was the responsible party(s) that made the choice not to pay the payroll taxes and use that payroll tax money to pay other bills?
2. Why would they make such a bad decision?
3. Did they realize the consequences of those decisions?
Bailing out our city by the .01 sales tax vote passing will need these particular questions answered. I believe the success or failure of that vote depends on those answers.
The IRS has now attached liens to all property that the city of Blytheville owns, including its bank accounts. Penalties and interest will continue to be charged on the outstanding balance until the city satisfies the IRS debt. These results are due to the "toxic leadership" of the old administration.