What a spectacle.

And I don't mean that in a good way.

Sadly, this year's City Council budget hearings make the County Council of old look like the epitome of decorum, order and efficiency.

"Too often, the process is arbitrary and done without clear priorities," I wrote a decade ago about the County Council. "Too often, council members approach the task with the goal of taking out everything they can instead of determining what county government should do."

In 2002, three Young Turks knocked off three longtime council veterans in the Republican primary, and soon after, those council members brought about a sea change in the hearings. They set clear priorities and allowed department heads discretion in how to meet their budgets rather than having the County Council decide how many paper clips the auditor needs in a year.

Paula Hughes, then a freshman County Council member, played no small role in changing the process in a way that most people involved in county government viewed as a vast improvement.

Why, then, is City Councilwoman Liz Brown – who, as Finance Committee chairwoman, is running the current city budget review meetings – assuming the role of chief paper-clip counter and calling that an improvement?

Hughes could be pointed in her questioning of county officials. But in my 30 years of covering and closely following Fort Wayne and Allen County government, I have never seen anyone blatantly use a review of budgets in such a heavy-handed, partisan way as the inexorable Brown has, with the complicity of the council's president, fellow Republican Mitch Harper.

The budget review over the past two weeks has been the pinnacle – or, more accurately, the nadir – of a City Council that has turned its mission from serving the city and its residents to scoring political points by knocking down the other side.

Sure, council members have often pushed conservative or liberal agendas. But when Don Schmidt or John Crawford questioned a mayoral administration's spending, it was not a personal attack on a mid-level manager, and not reserved for administrations of the opposite political party.

Blame for the increasing partisanship over the past four years rests largely on the shoulders of two first-term council members, Brown and Harper.

Three-term Democratic Councilman Tim Pape has often taken Brown's bait and responded in kind, escalating and aggravating the war of words.

Councilmen Tom Smith, a Republican, and John Shoaff, a Democrat, have been civil and polite, but they've at times taken advantage of the partisan direction to land their own blows against the administration of Mayor Tom Henry on their pet issues.

Shoaff, for example, continues to rail against Harrison Square, long after most of it has been built.

Democrats Karen Goldner and Glynn Hines have largely stayed out of the fray but occasionally join in to defend the administration.

Republicans Marty Bender and Tom Didier, meanwhile, have watched the shenanigans but largely stayed above them, with both showing independence in otherwise partisan votes.

These roles were never more apparent than over the past two weeks.

The electric car

Too often, the budget review was a chance for Henry's opponents on the council to grill city officials on how they do their jobs, seeking to micromanage which handicapped parking spaces the city should patrol rather than examining overriding issues in a $180 million spending plan.

One example of the questioning came Oct. 6 during the review of the city clerk's budget.

The clerk's duties are relatively limited – serving as secretary to the City Council and running parking enforcement. Its budget of $1 million is just a fraction of the city's overall spending plan, and Clerk Sandy Kennedy has just 14 employees. Yet the council spent a full hour with Kennedy, and much of the time had nothing to do with her budget.

Consider this exchange about plans to add an electric vehicle to the parking enforcement staff, a move initiated and coordinated by the city's vehicle fleet department and a very minor detail in the budget:

Brown: "Is this an all-electric car?"

Kennedy: "I really don't know. I think so."

Brown: "Where will it charge? Is there a charging station?"

Kennedy: "I really don't know."

Brown: "Well, it kind of matters, because, I mean, that's part of the electric car rollout. The larger cities have charging stations around town. I mean, if this is going to be parked in the parking lot, it's got to have a charging station."

Kennedy: "I know, I know. But (fleet director) Larry Campbell will have to answer that question for you because he's in charge of them. …"

Brown: "If it's only downtown, it doesn't matter how far it goes, but you do have to have a charging station."

Kennedy: "That's true, that's true. They'll go 100 miles, I think, on a charge."

Brown: "Right. But you don't know where a charging station or how your officers are going to charge them?"

Kennedy: "I do not know. No. Larry would have to answer that question."

Later, Harper put Kennedy under interrogation over his desire for the clerk to post full transcripts of council meetings on the Web. At times, the discussion sounded like a Monty Python sketch, with Harper and Kennedy trading rejoinders of "Yes, I did" and "No, you didn't."

After the hearings

Not every department representative faced the kind of interrogation Kennedy did, and thanks largely to Bender – who has become a voice of common sense on this council – not every department had to appear. But those types of exchanges were not anomalies.

If anyone doubts whether this spectacle is fueled by the upcoming city elections, consider that the 2012 budget under the microscope now is – other than higher health insurance costs – virtually the same as the 2011 budget the council approved last year.

Look for some of the council members to make a show of recommending cuts in the already-austere budget. Expect some – but not many – to pass.