2009 grade: C
I’d love to play poker with Jerry Blumenthal, because he’s got a completely predictable tell: his tie. When he wears a loud tie, he’s strident and combative; subdued or no tie, and he’s reserved and agreeable.
When council discusses buses, Blumenthal wears a loud tie, and thrashes through the conversation like an elephant bringing a pachyderm stroller on the #10. He’s against the U-passes because, and I kid you not, people use them. He goes on extended rants against the 90-minute transfer policy, because somehow or another they amount to bus riders ripping off the city, and his wife takes the bus and has to sit next to those transfer cheats. Worse still, he wants the farebox price upped to pay for 80 percent of the cost of transit---that is, to $3.10 per trip, which would effectively destroy the entire bus system.
Blumenthal brings a, er, unique perspective to most council discussions, such as when he objected to the “no smoking in children’s parks” policy because blind people wouldn’t see the signs. For that he gets major points in the Twitterverse but, alas, nothing at all in the real world.
The anti-bus rhetoric should’ve dropped Blumenthal down a full letter grade, but he partially redeemed himself by voting against “tax reform.”
