LITTLE ROCK — Four black residents and one Hispanic resident of Little Rock are challenging the city's method of selecting city directors, saying the current system favors white voters and dilutes the voting strength of members of minority groups.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court in Little Rock, the plaintiffs advocate the dissolving of the city's three at-large positions and the rezoning of the city from seven individually represented wards to 10.
The lawsuit aims to dismantle a segregation-era City Hall system originally approved by Little Rock voters in 1956. Many neighborhood and black activists have long criticized at-large seats as a way to keep blacks mostly off the city board.
The addition of three more individually represented wards would create a situation in which members of minority groups would be in the majority in four to six of those wards, argue the plaintiffs, who are represented by Little Rock civil-rights attorney John W. Walker.
Walker said he will ask that the case, assigned to U.S. District Judge James M. Moody, be expedited so that it can be heard in advance of the Nov. 6 elections, in which all three atlarge board positions and one ward seat occupied by a white board member, Brad Cazort, are up for grabs.
The board now has seven directors elected from wards. Three of them are black and four are white.
It also has three members, all of them white, who are elected by residents of the city at large, which Walker says has the effect of giving whites a 7-3 majority in decisions affecting the city.
He said that advantage carries through to other areas besides issues decided by the Board of Directors because elected officials often determine the makeup of nonelected boards and commissions, and those appointees, who are mostly white, often have the same power as elected officials.
The suit asserts that of 240 appointees to city boards and commissions, only about 35, or 15 percent, are black and most of them are concentrated onthe Racial and Cultural Diversity Commission, the Housing Authority Board and the Central Arkansas Transit Authority, while "no member of the Hispanic community" serves on a board or commission, except possibly the diversity commission.
City Attorney Tom Carpenter said the racial disparity on the city board is more a political problem than a voting rights issue.
"The question is what is the percentage of African-Americans who can vote," he said, noting that everybody has equal access to the ballot box and can run for any elected position. "There's nothing about this [system] that suggests there's not access to the process."
He said the fact that some members of minority groups have been elected to at-large positions is part of the evidence that the system is not discriminatory.
One board member, Ward 1 City Director Erma Fingers Hendrix, has been elected to both a citywide post and a ward position. She could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
At-large City Director Gene Fortson, whom fellow board members appointed to fill a vacancy last year, said the position helps balance community-specific concerns of ward members with larger, citywide issues.
"I don't really understand the basis," he said. "We'll have to see how that thing plays out in court, but I think the at-large directors fulfill a role in representing the entire city."
Mayor Mark Stodola, who is white, is also elected at large, but the lawsuit is not asking for a change in the way the mayor is elected. Stodola declined to comment, saying he wouldn't want to discuss pending litigation.
The plaintiffs are Lou Ethel Nauden, Robert Whitfield, Thomas Brannon and Jesse Lacey, all of whom are black, and Andre Guerrero, who is Hispanic.
Walker said he wouldn't expect the court to rule on the case until early next year, but he will ask that the judge stop any Little Rock board elections from going forward until the case has been heard.
He noted that if the plaintiffs win and ward boundaries are ordered redrawn, candidates would have to run for reconstituted districts, so it would make sense to first see if a judge agrees that the current system violates the federal Voting Rights Act of 1973.
But if the election of board members isn't put on hold, Walker said, "That will only give us more proof for our case. We'll be able to further prove our point that whites vote for whites and blacks vote for blacks."
Referring to 2000 Census data, Walker said the current population of Little Rock is estimated at about 190,000. He said about 50 percent of the city's population is white and 50 percent consists of members of minority groups. The minority population, he said, is about 44 percent black, 4 percent Hispanic and 2 percent "other."
While each single-representative ward now has about 27,000 residents, the creation of three more wards would reduce the population of each to about 19,000 residents.
Walker said the smaller wards would be more favorable to members of minority groups than the current system because the pockets of Little Rock where minority groups are concentrated would be broken up to spread minority representation across more wards, and there would be "more opportunity for democracy."
He noted that residential living patterns tend to be racially segregated, with the city's minoritygroup population concentrated in the eastern, central and southwestern sections, and white residents more concentrated in the northern and western portions.
Even just dropping the three at-large positions and leaving the city represented by seven singlerepresentative districts would be better than the current system, Walker said.
In addition to seeking a declaratory judgment that the current setup is unconstitutional and asking that all elections be enjoined until the issue is decided, the plaintiffs want the judge to require the Pulaski County Election Commission to create 10 single-member election districts to bring about elections on a "one [wo]man, one vote" basis.
The commission redrew boundaries at the city's direction in 2002, and the suit alleges that the action diluted the strength of minority-group voters "by concentrating minority voters into three of what would otherwise, upon proper apportionment, be 10 wards."
The current method of selecting city directors is authorized under Arkansas Code 14-61-107(2). Another section of that state law, Arkansas Code 14-61-107(4), authorizes the option of electing all city directors from wards.
The lawsuit cites "a history of racially polarized voting in city elections for board of director and school board positions." It specifically cites the November 2006 mayoral election, an election this summer to increase mayoral power, and contested school board elections in 2006 and thisfall.
An August special election that gave Stodola expanded power at City Hall prompted a separate group of residents to sue city, county and state officials, arguing that a stronger mayor - combined with the existing at-large positions - would dilute the voting strength of the board's black members.
That federal lawsuit was dismissed after a different judge said the plaintiffs hadn't met his filing deadlines. The plaintiffs have appealed the dismissal to the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
"This polarization when combined with the at-large election system prevents minority voters from electing representatives of their choice to the city board of directors in numbers which are reasonably proportional to their population ratio," the plaintiffs argue in the suit filed Tuesday.
It asserts that in "virtually every case" in which black candidates failed to win election to at-large and ward positions, they were the "preferred choice" of black voters, "but their preference was negated due to the bloc voting of the Caucasian majority under the at-large voting method."
The lawsuit follows other failed attempts to force Little Rock to remove its at-large directors.
The most recent of these began nearly a year ago, when a group calling itself the Committee for Accountability and Equal Representation began a petition drive calculated to eliminate the citywide posts.
That effort also sought to embolden the city's then-weak mayor with veto power over board decisions. Though it was short of its goal, the group had worked for several months to collect the more than 8,500 voter signatures to force an election on the changes when the city board effectively blocked the group's path.
The board ultimately called for August's special election but only to consider boosting the mayor's position. At-large representation was not touched, and voters agreed to give the mayor's job full-time pay and new veto and executive authority.
Front Section, Pages 1, 9 on 10/24/2007