ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 22, 1996 TAG: 9603220054
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
ROANOKE Mayor David Bowers' yes-no-yes position on a ward-system referendum isn't quite as grotesque as it might seem at first. But it does illustrate the perils of focusing on procedure to the exclusion of the merits of the issue.
In campaigning for mayor four years ago, Bowers supported an advisory referendum on whether some or all City Council members should be elected by wards, rather than entirely at-large as is now the case. Then, last year, Bowers voted against a motion to hold a referendum. Now, running for re-election, he says he's in favor of one.
Bowers' "no" vote last year came, however, a few months after a meeting on a ward system drew only seven speakers, four of whom opposed the idea. Public interest had faded too much, it could plausibly be argued, to justify the costs of a referendum. Since then, it could similarly be argued, interest may have reawakened enough for the question to be reopened.
No, Bowers' double flip-flop won't win any diving medals in the political Olympics. More to the point, though, neither does it strengthen the case for a ward system. Bowers - and the nine other Council candidates this year, all of whom say they favor a referendum - would do well to examine more closely the ward-system idea itself, referendum or not.
If they did, they just might conclude that, for all the clamor from what so far is a vocal minority, it remains a dubious idea whose time hasn't come. Consider, for example:
The major challenges facing Roanoke - improving the quality of public education, joining other jurisdictions in regional planning and cooperation, keeping municipal finances in sound shape, maintaining and improving the physical and recreational infrastructure, tackling social problems like blighted neighborhoods and unwed teen pregnancies, to name a few - require citywide answers. Ward systems encourage a parochialism that, in discounting the interdependence of all the city's sections, makes solutions to common problems slower and more difficult to achieve.
At less than 100,000 and not growing, the city's population remains small enough for individual council members to stay in touch with various parts of the city. Conversely, council's size - six plus the separately elected mayor - is small enough for voters across the city to keep track of each councilman's performance.
The mechanics of a ward system tend to lower rather than raise the average quality of elected officials. Sure, ward systems can yield excellent leaders, and at-large systems can produce stinkers. But by imposing an additional qualification for office not directly related to merit - place of residence - ward systems artificially restrict the pool of candidates. In so doing, of course, they also impose artificial restrictions on voters' choices.
A ward system would, in Roanoke, encourage the political resegregation and ghetto-ization of black voters. This is not always or even frequently the case: In places where racially polarized voting is entrenched, ward systems can be the only practical way to give minorities a reasonably proportionate voice in government. But every city has its own peculiarities, and Roanoke's experience for the past couple of decades has been that at-large election of all council members reduces rather than aggravates fragmentation of the electorate.
Roanoke voters of both races have grown accustomed to casting ballots for candidates of the other race, and to go beyond using only race to identify their political interests and loyalties. It would be a shame to reverse such progress by establishing a system in which some members of council would be beholden only to one part of the city.
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