Legislators should leave local municipalities alone
Published March 20, 2015
Editorial by Winston-Salem Journal, March 19, 2015.
The state legislature’s GOP majority is abandoning its party’s love of small government and local control as it bulldozes uninvited into local affairs in which it has no business, its main aim being political gain.
They want local boards that are Democratic or nonpartisan to become Republican, just as Democrats want Republican boards to become Democratic ones. But the Republicans have gone out of control in their push, steamrolling over local authority.
Republican Sen. Chad Barefoot of Wake County earlier this month pushed a bill though the Senate that would restructure the all-Democratic Wake County Board of Commissioners.
Closer to home, Republican Sen. Trudy Wade of Guilford County pushed a bill through the Senate last week to reduce the number of Greensboro City Council seats and change the districts from which members are elected.
The overreach keeps right on going. A House bill filed last week would reduce the size of the Rockingham County Board of Education and make its races partisan. Republican State Rep. Pat Hurley filed a bill Tuesday that would restructure the nonpartisan Trinity City Council. She told the News & Record of Greensboro that she filed the bill because she has heard from residents who do not like decisions the council has rendered recently. But she did not discuss the bill with local leaders before filing it.
In regard to their bills, Sens. Barefoot and Wade have contended that power has become too concentrated, and the districts needed to be redrawn to better serve all the people in their respective areas.
But voters didn’t turn up at the state house or sign petitions asking for these changes. Legislators just took it upon themselves to press these matters.
Gov. Pat McCrory got it right recently when he told the News & Record that the state should not interfere with local governments.
“Let me put it this way: As governor I constantly have to fight Washington not to interfere. I think the same philosophy applies to Raleigh interfering with local governments,” McCrory said.
These acts are reminiscent of attempts by Republicans to reassign authority for the water system in Asheville and the Charlotte airport. Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Brown proposed taking tax money from urban areas and giving it to rural areas, another steamroll on local government.
And in Winston-Salem, with a jam-packed 2016 election coming, there’s still heartburn over Dale Folwell’s successful push, when he was in the state House, to move the next round of city council elections to 2016.
New legislation or revamped existing legislation could stop all this power-grabbing. But that prospect is about as out there as changing the course of the Yadkin River to have it run through downtown Winston-Salem.
But hey, in the lunacy that is the legislature, someone might push a bill trying to change the river’s course. And you can bet they wouldn’t give any local leaders a heads-up.
March 20, 2015 at 8:54 am
Richard L Bunce says:
The State Legislature CREATED the State Chartered Municipal Corporations. The State Legislature must perform oversight of their creations to assure they are not exceeding the very limited powers they were granted by the State Legislature. Historically the State Legislature has done a very poor job of oversight of the municipalities it created. These municipalities have significantly exceeded their State Legislature provided powers and ignored State statutes. The left would of course be singing a different tune if the State Legislature had a Democratic majority and the local governments Republican majorities.
The comparison between the State/municipalities and between the Federal/State government is apples and oranges. The States created the Federal government and reserved powers not allocated to the Federal government to themselves.
