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GREENSBORO — A city government that aspires to quiet competence has, in recent years, looked a lot more like a daytime talk show.

With controversies surrounding the police department, calls for the heads of various top officials and whispers of dissent in other city departments, the turmoil marks a messy departure from the city's normal placidity.

The drama involves a blizzard of headlines, legal actions, accusations and counter-accusations all wrapped up in a storyline so complicated it makes an easy resolution look like a distant dream.

What led to this point? And what effect is this having on the city's ability to get things done — not to mention its psyche?

Whether the newly tumultuous politics are a good or bad thing, it's not something many Greensboro leaders are used to.

"I've never been through anything like this before," said former city Councilwoman Sandy Carmany , who lost a re-election bid in November after serving 16 years on the City Council. "I have never seen it get this nasty and personal."

But what some perceive as pointless noise, others see as a vital process of addressing real problems.

If the city's politics are suddenly rowdier, well, that's just the price of tackling those lingering issues rather than hoping they'll go away.

"If you don't address the problem and deal with it, you're always going to have that festering, so you can't accomplish anything," said Councilwoman Mary Rakestraw , who has led the charge to fire the city manager. "People like to walk around and smile and say everything is good and rosy, but not everything is that way."

What's going on?

On one level, the start of the chaos dates back to June 2005, when a city police lieutenant discovered a tracking device on his patrol car.

That discovery touched off a snowballing array of claims and a slow drip of information that led first to the resignation of police Chief David Wray and then to a sustained assault by Wray's defenders on City Manager Mitchell Johnson , whom they blame for Wray's fall.

"What this whole thing is about is a small group of people who support David Wray," said Tom Phillips , a longtime City Council member who decided not to run again last year.

But on another level, the drama has deeper roots that tap into broad changes in the way information is disseminated and consumed.

No longer do city leaders and larger media institutions have a monopoly on the flow of information. A new wave of alternative media, including weekly papers and bloggers, has given dissenting voices a much louder megaphone.

Sam Spagnola , a local blogger and Johnson critic who has written frequently about the Wray saga, said he believes he and other bloggers have helped keep the issue in the spotlight.

Although some city leaders are critical of the new media sources, saying they generate more heat than light, Spagnola sees them as reflecting broadly held views that previously went unheard.

Instead of writing a letter to the editor that might never be published, a critic can write something on a blog and be fairly certain that it will resonate in the small circle of people who closely follow city government.

"There's not a lot of people who read the blogs, but the right people do," he said.

Is all of this a bad thing?

All this fuss might not exactly be the Greensboro Way, but does that mean it's a problem?

Although garbage isn't piling up in the streets, some observers say the political mess is taking a more subtle toll.

"I do think it's a distraction. It saps energy," said former city manager Ed Kitchen , who preceded Johnson in the job. "We've developed a little bit of a tendency to wallow in things."

That effect might not be dramatic in the short run — it's not likely, say, that a business wouldn't locate here because of the controversy, Kitchen said.

But in another way, it can have the effect of marring the city's image, like a kind of political graffiti.

Young professionals want to be a part of a place that's dynamic and forward-looking, Kitchen said, much like he did when he was first attracted to Greensboro decades ago.

"If ... we let our warts and our dirty laundry dominate things, then we're not going to be that kind of place," he said.

But critics describe the dynamic differently. They're not wallowing in the dirt, they're sweeping it.

That might not be Greensboro's style, but that doesn't mean it's not needed.

"I think some things have just been left with a we've-always-done-it-this-way attitude. That's just not going to work for this council," Rakestraw said.

When are things going

to settle down?

Some leaders are saying it's time to move past what they see as the political equivalent of a skipping CD.

"At some point, you've got to exercise leadership and move on and let the past be what it is and focus on the future," Kitchen said. "I think we've probably got issues that are more important in the long run."

But the idea of moving on is more appealing to those who didn't see the fuss as that significant in the first place.

To others, it's not so simple.

Councilwoman Trudy Wade agrees the various controversies have been a distraction, but said that doesn't mean they don't involve real issues.

"I just feel like we have some problems we need to address," she said.

In the end, the debate might last until the last megabyte falls.

Information about much of the Wray saga and the related fallout has been hard to come by, Spagnola notes.

Bloggers and others are likely to be unwilling to move on until all the facts are on the table, he said.

"Until people know what was happening, I don't think they're going to let it go," he said.

And it's always possible that even with perfect information, a consensus might prove elusive.

Greensboro might be a quiet city, but it also tends to have a long memory, Carmany said.

"We definitely have a very long history of being unable to totally deal with an issue and move on," she said. "We do seem to do that more frequently in Greensboro than in some other areas."

Contact Jason Hardin at 373-7021 or at jason.hardin@news-record.com