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News :: Civil & Human Rights : Elections & Legislation |
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Urbana Council Tables Pop Motion to Change City Government |
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by ML
(No verified email address) |
26 Jul 2004
Modified: 27 Jul 2004 |
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In a 4-2 vote, the Urbana City Council tabled a hastily composed proposal, backed by Mayor Tod Satterthwaite, to change the form of city government at Monday's council meeting. |
After being asked to vote on a measure so hastily thrown together that council members were never provided with a written copy of the motion to change Urbana's form of city government by adding two at-large seats to the city council, the council tabled the proposal in a 4-2 vote. Voting in favor of the motion to table the resolution formally proposed by Milton Otto were Danielle Chynoweth, Jim Hayes, Laura Huth, and Esther Patt. Voting against the motion to table were Otto and Joe Whelan.
Councilmembers were never provided with a copy of the proposed resolution to rewrite Urbana's city government structure. No public hearings were scheduled or asked for by advocates of the proposal, which mainly took shape in the editorial pages of the out-of-town paper, the Champaign News-Gazette.
About two and a half hours of public input preceded the vote, with citizens speaking before the council running more than 2-to-1 against the idea of undermining Urbana's ward system of government. Although the vote ended an evening that saw other city business delayed by the proposal's advocates attempt to grandstand the measure, setting off a firestorm of opposition by Urbana citizens, by calling the question without adequate and measured discussion, it will likley appear on the November ballot anyway, since such a proposal requires only 432 signatures to be placed on the ballot as a referendum.
Proponents of adding at-large seats repeatedly claimed that their idea had nothing to do with politics. This position was undermined by the fact that the proposal popped up immediately after the over-ride of Mayor Tod Satterthwaite's recent veto of Urbana's new ward map, based on the latest census data, which was immediately overridden by councilmembers. Advocates of the proposal made no attempt to ask for an updated census to legally support their claims that the new ward map fails to account for the growth on Urbana's east side nor did they ask to schedule a public hearing with sufficient public notice for both sides to prepare their cases and for council members to take measured reflection on such an important proposition as changing the from of government. The whole affair seems to have sprung from threats the mayor made against those who over-rode his veto, assisted by grumbling from Urbana's Republican minority dissatisfied by their recent also-ran status for nearly every city elected position.
The slap-dash nature of those pushing for the change was evident in the rather tortuous logic that was used to claim that voters in east Urbana were somehow "disenfranchised" without the measure's hasty adoption. No legal justification was offered to support such claims and it was obvious that its boosters had done no research into the possibility that such a change might well trigger suits under the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. |
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