Ousted member: Won’t sit with housing agency board

Former Little Rock Housing Authority board member Robert Webb (back right) sits in on a board meeting Wednesday. Webb said he was not reappointed after opposing Little Rock’s sales-tax increase.
Former Little Rock Housing Authority board member Robert Webb (back right) sits in on a board meeting Wednesday. Webb said he was not reappointed after opposing Little Rock’s sales-tax increase.

— Community activist Robert Webb has attended the last two Metropolitan Housing Alliance board meetings, sat at the table with other board members and voiced several concerns, but according to the state attorney general’s office, the Little Rock city attorney and the chairman of the Housing Alliance board, he is no longer a board member.

After a tense hour-long special meeting Wednesday of the Housing Alliance board, Webb said he would not sit with the board at future meetings but would explore other options to be reinstated as a board member.

After a set of decisions and rulings, the city Board of Directors voted not to appoint Webb to a second five-year term on the alliance board, and a subsequent nonbinding attorney general’s opinion supported that decision.

“The Housing Alliance does a lot of good work in the community and the last thing I want to do is impede that work,” Webb said. “I’m going to weigh my options at this point because I’m really disappointed in the city board [of directors] and the board members. Our city has become a dictatorship and not a democracy. When you have people who fear government — and I’m not one of them — that’s not good government.”

Webb said he believed part of the reason he was not reappointed was his campaign against the 1-percentage-point citywide sales-tax increase approved by voters in September.

The city Board of Directors appoints the members of the Metropolitan Housing Alliance, although alliance board members may make suggestions to the directors. If the directors do not make a decision in 45 days on appointment suggestions or reappointment requests, the decision falls to the alliance board.

City directors voted 81 days after receiving a reappointment request for Webb from the Housing Alliance board, which is past the 45-day window allotted by Arkansas statute. The paperwork for the reappointment had the wrong ending date for the new term, and the city directors asked that the paperwork be refiled.

Once the date was corrected, the directors voted 36 days after it was submitted and decided not to reappoint Webb. During a lengthy February meeting, the directors voted to appoint Kenyon Lowe, who was sworn in later that month.

City Attorney Tom Carpenter said in previous interviews that once Lowe was sworn in, Webb was officially off the Housing Alliance board because the membership is capped by the organization’s bylaws at five members.

Webb attended the Housing Alliance board’s February meeting and the March meeting on Wednesday, sitting in a chair at the board table. The board did not officially acknowledge his presence at either meeting.

Webb did not vote at either meeting, but raised several concerns about policy Wednesday.

Ed Armstrong, attorney for the Housing Alliance, said the board had not asked him for a legal opinion on Webb’s attendance. He said the last official action taken by the board was to defer to the attorney general’s opinion on whether the city directors had missed the deadline for reappointment, which would have forfeited the decision to the alliance board. Webb asked for that opinion.

The attorney general’s opinion said the city Board of Directors had followed proper procedure and policy when making the new appointment.

Richard Stephens, chairman of the Housing Alliance board who will be resigning in July, said Webb is free to apply for the soon-to-be-open position.

“I would think we would be obligated to consider any and all qualified applications for the opening,” Stephens said.

Arkansas, Pages 7 on 03/29/2012

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