There will be, given the historic success of signature petition drives by Citizens for Term Limits and Accountability Committee, a proposed Clay County Home Rule Charter Amendment on November's ballot that, if passed, will reverse a Charter Amendment voters adopted in 2006.
Two years ago, a Charter Review Commission met in public over the course of many months before proposing an Amendment that kept the five current County Commissioners who are each elected only by the residents of their individual districts, and add two Commissioners elected by the entire county. One of those new Commissioners would become Clay County's first four-year Chairman of the Board of County Commissioners. Passage of this year's proposed CTLAC admendment would keep things as they are, and eliminate those two at-large additions, and the four-year chairmanship, before they are established.
I think whether the current five-member or the potential seven-member better serves the public created by CTLAC's amendment is a very interesting discussion of political theory. But we keep hearing some arguments against this year's CTLAC proposal, and it's time to put those to rest as political theory failed in the face of Clay County reality.
When people say they support the expansion of the County Commission, at least in part, because their theoretical political belief is that citizens will benefit from a four-year chairman who is elected by them instead of a yearly-rotating chairman appointed by members of the BCC as has been Clay County's history, I respect the belief and theory, even though I personally believe five single-member Commissioners is the better of the two configurations.
But the reality of Clay County politics isn't a theoretical debate. Because there is a single candidate for the creation of the county's most powerful political position, local residents have a right that is a right in name only. Saying that Clay County citizens should be able to elect the chairman has become, the way local politics has unfolded, little more than failed political theory. The practical reality is local voters' right has no more meaning than Cubans having the right to re-elect Castro time after time.
Opposing CTLAC's proposed amendment to eliminate the permanent chairmanship because voters should elect the chairman has, no matter how well-intentioned and rationalized in theory the opponents may be, been rendered hypocritical by reality. Because an unopposed candidate strips voters of any meaningful right to decide who the first BCC Chairman will be, it's time to stop using that false-in-the-face-of-reality argument that voters rights will be in any way enhanced. That voters' right simply does not exist this year (or the next four years) in Clay County political reality.
The second false argument is that CTLAC's proposal is attempting to reverse the wishes of the more 25,000 voters who approved the amendment two years ago to created the "elected" chairmanship. True, if the CTLAC amendment is passed, those 2006 wishes will not be fulfilled. But only having the right to vote for only one candidate as the first full-time BCC Chairman can't be what those 25K wished for, either.
Since the wishes of those who supported the 2006 Amendment to elect a new four-year leader of Clay County government won't be fulfilled no matter how this November's vote turns out, raising those two-year-old voters' wishes in argument against the CTLAC petition also becomes hypocritical in the face of local political reality.
There are plenty of ways to legitimately discuss the relative merits of the retaining the current five-member BCC configuration, as approval of CTLAC's amendment mandates, or the planned expansion to a seven-member County Commission with a four-year chairman. But let's not waste time or confuse the issue by debating theories both moot and hypocritical in the face of reality.
Link to get sign a petition to abolish the planned false "elected" chairmanship: http://24.23.126.8/ [1]
Michael S. Mann
michaelsmann@comcast.net [2]