Rhino’s John Hammer with his tally of winners and losers in the aftermath of the pending Greensboro City Council restructure, which now faces legal challenge:
One of the biggest losers is the News & Record, which came out against the plan before it was presented and has done everything in its power to stir up opposition. It fought to defeat the original Senate Bill 36, the revised plan that was part of House Bill 263 and the plan that finally passed. The plan that passed was the result of a conference committee made up of House and Senate members who revised the plan from seven districts to eight districts and added the provision that Greensboro has to have future redistricting plans approved by the General Assembly before they go into effect.
The News & Record even went so far in its opposition that it sold T-shirts opposed to the proposed restructuring plan.
So much of the opposition by the News & Record was about state Sen. Trudy Wade and not about the merits or flaws of the plan. It damaged the popularity of the paper. Objecting to a proposed statute is par for the course, but the virulent attacks on Wade seemed to many to be over the top.
Hammer also counts Mayor Nancy Vaughan as a loser, considering that Vaughan “took opposing the bill on as a personal cause and lost.”
That’s evident from Vaughan’s fiery speech during last night’s public hearing, after which the council voted 8-1 —-with District 5 representative Tony Wilkins casting the lone ‘no’ vote —to pursue the legal challenge.
