City sqeeze
Published December 15, 2014
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, December 12, 2014.
It looks like the state legislature might meddle with another local governing body.
State Sen. Trudy Wade, R-Guilford, is considering a bill that would shrink the size of the Greensboro City Council from nine members to seven.
Wade said earlier this week she didn’t have a plan yet. Political insiders said the options include eliminating two at-large seats or dividing the city into seven districts and having the mayor picked by the council members.
Another idea being considered: Expand council terms from two years to four — a token, perhaps, to make current council members less likely to fight if the N.C. General Assembly restructures their government.
The current council breakdown has served the city well for more than three decades.
Residents get to vote for one district representative, three at-large members and the mayor.
It means every citizen has five direct representatives on the council.
And every two years, residents get to tell those five council members whether they’re doing a good job or not.
It holds leaders accountable for their actions.
In 1982, when the City Council adopted this government structure, local leaders spent months debating what would be an appropriate system.
The city was under the gun: The federal government blocked an annexation that would have brought more white residents into the city limits and further diluted the power of the city’s minority voters.
The city needed something that worked better.
This 5-3-1 council system was the solution. The controversial idea was vetted at public hearings and was eventually endorsed by both the black and white leaders of the era.
The structure ensures that people with minority points of view get elected. Wade should know that better than most. She was once the City Council’s lone conservative, elected from a right-leaning district in this left-leaning city.
If the 5-3-1 council split is a bad system — and there isn’t currently any popular movement that says it is — Wade should make the argument directly to the people.
So far, Wade hasn’t explained the need for the council change, other than that unnamed “business owners” requested it.
Local residents have been burned by the legislature before.
In 2011, the state legislature gerrymandered a Republican majority on the county commissioners. The redistricting was so badly botched, it would have left more than 40,000 people without a representative for two years had a federal judge not ordered that part of it fixed.
Wade introduced the 2013 legislation that made the nonpartisan Guilford County Board of Education partisan.
Both changes were made without formal public participation.
Greensboro deserves better this time around.
Don’t decide this behind closed doors in Raleigh. Let the Greensboro voters decide.
If Wade’s got a better plan for the Greensboro City Council, the legislature should put it up for a referendum. Greensboro voters should decide how they will be governed.
December 17, 2014 at 4:07 pm
Richard Bunce says:
Slow your roll here... in NC State Chartered Municipal Corporations ARE the creations of the State Legislature and for too long the State Legislature has been derelict in it's oversight of it's creations. Let the Legislature provide a clear enumeration of an NC municipalities allowed powers, much less than the municipalities have assumed over the years, and then let the residents decide how their Council is elected. I would also like to see non-resident property owners be provided a say in the municipal elections since it is these elected officials that are taxing their property.
