Monday night, July 9, on a breezy summer evening the terminally endangered Fort Bragg City Council met again in regular session to conduct a public hearing on their own extinction under the pending California Voting Rights Act districting plan.
It is traditional that the City Council's expression of urgency is inversely proportional to the seriousness of the crisis. Monday night the principle was again demonstrated. The Council was calm to the point of being catatonic. If you watched the meeting with the sound off you would never have suspected anything was up. The laid-back City Council had that bland after dinner look that indicates to the American sensibility all capacity for thought has fled.
While the City Council relaxed, the first item under discussion, after they rubberstamped the consent calendar, was the California Voting Rights Act districting plan.
The California Voting Rights Act is a 18-wheel semi truck in the community's rear view mirror coming at us fast. The takeaway from Town Hall Monday night was that the Council does not intend to fight and are doing their best not to look too weak while they don’t fight it.
What's at stake for Fort Bragg is the end of general elections, which would further inhibit the already moderate power of the City Council. The deliberate hobbling of local self-government is hurtling right at us like a guided missile. Meanwhile, the City Council dodges any responsibility of leadership.
The City Manager was tasked with conducting the hearing. Ms. Tabatha Miller gave the Council the latest update on the Safe Harbor option that will allow the city to cave in gracefully (cheaply). This get-out-of-jail-free card ensures districting for alleged ethnic balance will happen, but damage to the City will be limited to $35k. Its only condition is that nobody goes to court.
This seductive poison mitigates against any suicidal impulse to fight for fair elections and stand up for representative local government. Getting to the “Safe Harbor” has plainly been the Council's preferred option and clear intention. The City Council has confined their remarks to the whimsical hope that Jacob Patterson — the opportunistic, unemployed lawyer taking advantage of a destructive state law to make a few bucks for himself, will grow a sense of decency, and let them off the hook.
The City Manager took the meeting through the now familiar process. She explained the California Voting Rights Act once again, and released once more the information that the demographer had finished its work, but declined once more to release that information, and confirmed repeatedly to the worried City Council that under the Safe Harbor rules the California Voting Rights Act might only cost us $30k in attorney fees to Jacob Patterson.
The Council had heard it all before and strived mightily to make no remarks of significance. Councilman Will Lee broke ranks a tiny bit to declare his overriding concern with “protecting the assets of the city,” interpreted as sacrificing the City Council in its present form to concern for fiscal responsibility.
Monday night's City Council meeting counts as one of the four public hearings that they are required to conduct before they pull the rug out from under local democracy. One down. Three to go.
The formal point man for the impending dissolution of representative local government, the aforementioned Patterson Esq., spoke briefly indicating his honest willingness to negotiate if some sort of proportional voting could be discussed. He almost woke the Council up but he was just kidding. When Mayor Peters shook himself briefly out of his somnolence and asked Mr. Patterson to elaborate on his suggestion, Patterson blithely declined all negotiation, turned his nose skyward and departed in a cloud of community opprobrium and self-righteous sanctimony. Also par for the course.
Next, on the Council agenda: the Skunk Train. The famous tourist attraction has announced their application for a $15 million grant to repair the historically unstable Fort Bragg to Willits tunnel and replace 30,000 toxic copper and arsenic railroad ties. Fort Bragg Development Director, Marie Jones leapt onto the grant-getting bandwagon, telling the City Council that another permanent staff person would be required at City Hall — indeed in her department — first to assist the Skunk in the application and then to administer allocations. A permanent Skunk person at City Hall rounded out the advantages for everybody of a $15 million shot in the civic fiscal arm. Everybody on the Council was in favor.
The meeting was sparsely attended, 12 lonely souls were quietly present while the City Council deadpanned, and slouched.
Thank you, Rex. Careful not to step in it, the Council will help itself to listen and understand. Intransigence will cost them dearly. Tabatha Miller gave me a half-hour last Friday but appeared unmoved.
“The California Voting Rights Act: Constitutional, Flexible, Powerful” by Pedro Hernandez and Alex Ault in Fair Vote California, June 14, 2018 unequivocally states that flexibility abounds in the application of various solutions to what we have here. The self-afflicting limitations Fort Bragg would seem to accept to avoid further litigation create needless exposure by walling voters from greater preferences in candidates. Other aspects of relative disenfranchisement and unintended negative consequences would result in applying the big districts solution to this tiny burg.
And I’ll just put it here today as it will eventually be sent to the Mayor and Council for the record.
My solution is to hybridize the at-large with the district system. This rests on the assumption that it is important for a candidate to be elected to Council by the aggregated preference (votes) of a district and that it is essential in a town of this size to allow electors to choose from among all eligible candidates and not be limited to in-district only. (As an aside: it would be such a huge advantage already to be the in-district candidate if used properly. If one can’t win in district, there isn’t much room for complaint against the process.) Each elector will get the same two or three votes as in the present system. Tabulation of votes would filter through the given districts. High vote-getter in a district is elected its representative. Second and third place also matter as a ranking of preference that result in elected representation. All seats will be gained by election and none will be appointed. This is so simple because very little will change and conditions are met: districting to parse out preference, maintaining and enhancing the viability of a small candidate pool.
There are many other dimensions to this and a side-by-side comparison will perhaps provide more light to our brethren huddled under the bushel.
Rick Riley