Vote on Sen. Trudy Wade’s bill restructuring the Greensboro City Council —now folded into Rep. Pat Hurley’s bill restructuring the Trinity City Council —is delayed again.
N&R doesn’t like it, calling Wade’s bill the “Frankenstein bill”:
Interesting turn here is political intrigue, as N&R gets hold of correspondence from Hurley —noting that the council has just gone further to the left with the addition of District 3 representative Justin Outling to replace Zack Matheny —and a response from Rep. John Blust:
First of all, there is the claim that “referendums have not worked in Greensboro for 30 years because the Council does whatever they please.”
The referendums mentioned here were all held more than 30-40 years ago. The referendums were between going to districts instead of being all at-large. Voters like me favored at-large and I can still remember my mother remonstrating against the “ward system.” In the 1970’s and early 1980’s, voters of Greensboro chose to keep all at-large rather than go to all districts. The African-American community cried racism.
Finally, in 1983-1984, city leaders who favored at-large compromised with those who favored districts and passed the current hybrid system of three at-large, a mayor at large and five districts. There was a committee that worked out this compromise, which has been in place ever since. There was no outcry against it at the time and there hasn’t been appreciable agitation to change this until now. In fact, this issue did not come up until December, 2014.
Turns out it was High Point Rep. John Faircloth who —according to Hurley’s email–“presented at Caucus, referendums have not worked in Greensboro for 30 years because the Council does whatever they please.”
Best example of that I can conjure up is Gboro’s aquatic center—fair enough voters approved the recreation bond, funding for the aquatic center was not specifically on the ballot. The bond more than likely would have failed if it were.
Anyway what does Faircloth know about Gboro? But Blust missed a slam dunk when he took up argument of a referendum. That’s the point the Rhino’s John Hammer makes time and again— that the current council makeup wasn’t decided by referendum.
I prefer to be optimistic —should HB 263 pass, perhaps there will be no outcry for at least another 30 years.