A bill seeking to end the at-large election of city board members is expected to fail in a House committee vote later this week after a vote Wednesday rejected the measure but wasn't counted because of a lack of a quorum.
After the House Committee on City, County and Local Affairs heard discussion of Rep. John Walker's House Bill 1952 for about one hour Wednesday, a vote was called that yielded just one committee member in favor of the legislation.
However, several members had left the meeting prior to the vote, which left the committee short of a quorum. State law requires at least two-thirds of a public body to be present for a public meeting to take place.
Once the chairman realized there weren't enough members to continue, the meeting was adjourned. It reconvened later that evening for a special session but didn't take another vote on Walker's bill. The committee is expected to do so on Friday.
The goal of HB1952 is to prohibit city board members from being elected through a citywide vote if the city's population is at least 2,500 people and at least 10 percent are members of a minority group, said Walker, a Democrat from Little Rock.
Walker, who is black, argued that black voters and candidates are disenfranchised by the at-large voting process.
He said having board positions elected through a citywide vote violates the one-man, one-vote principle and makes it harder for members of minorities to get elected because it takes more resources to run a citywide election compared with campaigning only in the section of town one is to represent.
It's an issue Walker has taken up numerous times before. He attempted to do away with Little Rock's at-large board seats through a federal lawsuit in 2007, which was ultimately dismissed at his request. Walker also introduced a bill similar to HB1952 in 2011, but it never made it out of committee.
Little Rock has an 11-member board with seven ward seats and three at-large positions. The mayor serves as the 11th member who votes in the event of a tie.
Walker's testimony before the committee Wednesday contradicted some of the language in his bill and prior comments he has made.
He said he wasn't asking for the number of wards or zones a city has to be regulated, saying that "it can be five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, but they should all be elected" from their districts. He also said that the way the North Little Rock City Council operates -- with two people elected from each ward -- would be admissible.
However, HB1952 would require cities to separate into seven single-member wards.
At one point Wednesday, Walker said the bill "isn't intended to apply just to Little Rock." He previously testified before the committee that he didn't know which other cities the legislation would affect.
Rep. Jana Della Rosa, a Rogers Republican and a member of the committee, questioned the specificity of Walker's bill.
"Why do we need the state to come down and put a rule in place just for Little Rock? And I'm a little frustrated with this because this is coming to us a lot from a lot of individual cities [where legislation is] written to apply to just one area," she said.
Mark Hayes, the general counsel with the Arkansas Municipal League, brought up another concern when speaking against the bill.
The bill would amend a section of state law that specifies rules for cities with a city manager form of government, yet Walker said he intended for it to apply to all cities that met his population eligibility requirements.
The legislation refers to a town's "board of directors," which is what governing bodies in both city manager and city administrator forms of government are called. Other cities with mayor/council forms of government have city councils.
Hayes said after the meeting that if Walker wanted to do away with at-large board seats in all Arkansas cities, he only would have had to strike that language in the four state statues that deal with the setups of city boards and city councils.
But since Walker instead had his bill amend the part of law that deals with the city manager form of government, the bill would contradict other sections of state law, Hayes said.
Little Rock's Ward 1 City Director Erma Hendrix spoke in favor of Walker's bill. She said that as a black director her vote has been canceled out by the board's three at-large directors, who are all white. She also said that in her eight years on the board, she's never been able to get a single piece of legislation through.
Earlier this year, the board approved an ordinance proposed by Hendrix that amended the policies for the public-comment period at board meetings.
Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola and Vice Mayor Lance Hines, who are both white, spoke against Walker's bill. They said a city's form of government is a local issue that should be decided by the voters.
Metro on 03/19/2015