In case you're late to the party, let me catch you up. Richardson citizens face a referendum in November in which they'll be asked whether to change Richardson's city charter to make the office of mayor directly elected by the voters.
OK, I know it doesn't sound like much of a party. No fun here. Still, some are cackling about it like they somehow got into the good stuff. At least those people should find something to amuse them here.
Previously, I wondered, if direct election of the mayor is such an obviously fair and democratic way to do it, why in the world did Richardson's voters not set it up like that way back in 1956 when they adopted the current system? I started searching to find out what I could about that long ago decision, to find out if there might be any faint echoes of it still reverberating today that might inform the choice about to be thrust upon us in this year's November election.
I didn't find the answer to why Richardson made the choice they did in 1956, but I did discover that the City of Dallas, in 1949, switched from a system remarkably like Richardson's today to a system of direct election for mayor. I also found a back story that suggested that contentious council government after Dallas made the change would have justified Richardson's decision not to follow Dallas, but I didn't find any hard evidence that was behind Richardson's decision. For whatever reason, Richardson rejected Dallas's decision.
After the jump, the results of a little more digging.
Thanks to helpful reader Andrew Laska (a great resource for all things Richardson: Richardson Echo, Preservation Richardson, Richardson Heights Homeowners Association), I found my way to old copies of Richardson's newspaper of the 1950s, The Richardson Echo (the original one, not Laska's current site named in honor of the original). Here's what I found.
Before 1952, tiny Richardson was governed by what is called a commission form of government, consisting of an elected mayor and two elected commissioners.
In 1952, Richardson held an election and switched to an aldermanic form of government, consisting of an elected mayor and five aldermen. The functions of commissioners and aldermen were not much different, so I'm guessing the change was prompted primarily by Richardson's population growth and a belief that more elected officials were needed to manage Richardson's municipal government. The key thing for our purposes about Richardson's government at the time is that in both the commission and aldermanic forms of government, the mayor was elected.
One thing that sounds like something is confused is that Dallas, according to the history I found earlier, switched from an aldermanic form of government to a commission form in 1907, while Richardson went the other way in 1952. WTH?
Anyway, in 1956, Richardson held another election and switched from its aldermanic form of government to a council-manager form of government. The most obvious changes were, first, the number of council members grew to seven; second, the mayor was no longer elected, but selected by the seven council members from among their ranks; and third, a professional city manager was hired by the council to run the daily operations of city government. Again, I'm guessing that the changes were prompted primarily by Richardson's growth.
At least that would explain the larger council and the addition of a professional city manager. But why did the city switch from an elected mayor to one chosen by the city council? Why, indeed, given that neighboring Dallas had gone in exactly the other direction just seven years before? Was there something about the Dallas experience that led Richardson's voters in 1956 to decide to voluntarily put aside their right to directly elect their mayor? Or was there something in Richardson's own experience with an elected mayor to prompt the change? Curious minds want to know.
Shouldn't we all be curious? Wouldn't the answer to that question have been worth knowing before we started down the road to a referendum to revoke that long-ago decision, a decision by Richardson voters much like ourselves? Doesn't anyone care anymore to think through changes instead of just forcing them through because they sound good on first thought? Especially when people living right here in our place a generation or two earlier, when faced with the same questions, made the exact opposite decision? Whatever happened to prudence?
8 comments:
P.S. Anyone who already knows the answers to all these questions that I'm stumbling around in the dark trying to answer and you're just not telling me ... I hate you.
In 1956, the major change was not the switch from aldermanic form of government to council-city manager form of government, but was the adoption of a home rule charter for the City.
The State of Texas, long ago, used to write rules for every city. Yes, if the State Legislature wanted a city to do "X", they would just pass a law, even if the citizens objected. Even in the 19th Century, this proved to be insane.
Thus, by 1913, the State Legislature passed the enabling legislation to permit the creation of home rule cities. [http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/mvhek]
The purpose of having home rule cities was to permit the cities (normally referred to as "municipalities") to conduct their own affairs, so long as no action or ordinance contradicted anything in State law. This reduced quite a bit of the burden on the Legislature in terms of dealing with a rapidly growing state, and also placed governance closer to the people.
A town had to have at least 5,000 residents to apply for home rule status. Richardson achieved this in the mid 1950s, and thus a Charter Commission was formed for the purpose of writing a home rule charter that the citizens would vote up or down. As history shows (but oddly, Wikipedia no longer does - someone's been removing Richardson's history from the article), the citizens approved the new charter in 1956.
Yes, this charter allowed for a 7-member council with all members elected at large, and the mayor selected from the council. This plan was not all that unusual, because in the early 1900s, reformers bent on rooting out the corruption inherent in strong-mayor cities (i.e., where the mayor was the CEO) created the council-city manager form of government, where the city would be run by a professional city manager, with the council setting policies and performing oversight, but having no direct exectutive function.
The model city charters created by these reformist groups were indifferent to whether the mayor was elected by the people or by the council - the mayor's position was so weak that it really didn't matter. Indeed, in the minutes of the 1988 Charter Review Commission, there is a document entitled "A Study of the City Charter" done by the League of Women Voters in Richardson. My notes from reading this document have the following:
"About 1/2 of council-manager cities have council elected mayor and 1/2 have direct election. 'The Model City Charter' recommends the former (council elected), to avoid conflict between elected mayor and city manager on 'who's in charge'."
While the number of council-selected mayors has declined over the years in Texas - down to about 12 now - in 1956, there was nothing the least bit odd about having the council choose the mayor, for the reason listed above.
(cont.)
Bill
(cont.)
In a previous RumorCheck article, I laid out the history of the Charter and Charter Review Commissions. You can see it at http://www.rumorcheck.org/CharterCommissionHistory
In 1961 and 1966 (following a "let's review it every 5 years" model), a review was done on the Charter, but the Council judged that any changes were too insignificant to justify sending them to the voters...after all, elections cost money.
In 1973-76, a great deal of work was done to create a new Charter. The reason that this overhaul was done was that by the mid 1970s, the State has changed a lot of language relating to home rule cities. That is, prior to this point, charters tended to have a lot of verbiage on a lot of subjects, but as time went on, the State put additional language in the Codes that rendered the redundant language in each charter superfluous.
However, for reasons that I didn't find in the record, the City Council chose not to send this overhauled charter to the voters.
By 1987, after turnover on the Council, the commitment was made to have a charter review. The Commission spent about 14 months in many open meetings and public fora reviewing every single paragraph of the Charter. See http://www.rumorcheck.org/ClosedMeetings-CharterCommission.hmtl.html for the complete list of meetings, minutes, public hearings, etc.
At the end, by early 1989, the Commission had deleted about half of the Charter as it was no longer needed in light of changes in State law - really, it went from more than 100 pages to about 50.
Early on, there was discussion of 5 items in particular, for which subcommittees were formed:
- Term of office for Council (and staggered terms)
- Redistricting
- Single member districts
- Elections, popular vote for the mayor, filing dates, etc.
- Boards and Commissions, length of terms, term limits
There were long discussions on some of these issues up until March 1988, but the Commission finaly asked itself the question, "Are we a Charter Revision Committee or a Charter Review Committee?" They decided that they were the latter - charged with updating the charter, not making changes in governance. The 5 subcommittees were abolished, and they went back to single common meetings.
In any event, there was no great call for direct election of mayor. At most Commission meetings, there were no visitor speakers at all. At the four public hearings, there was of course public comment, but while it's possible that a few spoke for direct election of mayor, it clearly was not a burning issue.
The following is what local attorney (and later City Council member) Jim Shepherd said:
"Vote on all seven City Council candidates [ED: at-large voting was OK with him], City Council should elect the Mayor [ED: as opposed to popular vote], 7 member council is fine, [ED: Council members should have] 2 year terms, but stagger them [ED: the terms]."
The only change that Mr. Shepherd wanted in the structure of the Council was to look at staggered terms.
So, contrary to what some may think, the issue of direct election of the mayor was considered in 1988, there was no great call for it, and so the existing process of selecting the mayor from the Council was continued. No great conspiracy, no insiders trying to keep power, no cabal trying to lord over the people. Frankly, the people were given a chance to speak, and the people didn't seem to have a problem with the current system of selecting the mayor from the Council.
All of the above notes are taken from an in-depth review of the two boxes of records that the City Secretary has from the 1988 Charter Review Commission, compiled while researching the issue of "all meetings...shall be open" [http://www.rumorcheck.org/LawsuitagainstClosedSessions.html].
Bill
Bill, thanks for the history lesson. The money line:
"So, contrary to what some may think, the issue of direct election of the mayor was considered in 1988, there was no great call for it, and so the existing process of selecting the mayor from the Council was continued."
That sounds plausible. Although no one has dredged up a similar record of the original 1956 charter commission meetings, I wouldn't be surprised if the original decision against direct election of the mayor was as uncontroversial.
A helpful reader (who didn't identify himself or herself) cites several articles from the old Richardson Daily News reporting on the work of the city charter commission in 1988. There were two public hearings at which some speakers argued for direct election of the mayor, single member districts, more council members, increased pay for council members, and various other changes to the city charter. The old stories were republished here.
These Richardson Daily News articles are in the material related to the 1988 charter review commission which I reviewed when researching the "all meetings...shall be open" issue. You will see that the newspaper articles just confirmed what I noted: that the issue of direct election was mentioned, discussed to some extent, but really was not a burning issue.
Bill
Yup, "mentioned, discussed to some extent, and not considered a burning issue" by the same gang denying it today.
Sometimes the people have to take back control in order to get things done. It is a shame our public servants have to be reminded who they serve like this.
It would have been much better for the community if they set their personal ambitions aside and behaved like the servants they pretend to be.
Confidential to the helpful reader who failed to identify himself or herself: Yes, I know who you are. The posting requirements demand more. You have to identify yourself to readers on each and every comment. For example, using your real name instead of an alias, adding your real name to your profile, or simply signing each and every comment, all would be acceptable means of meeting this requirement.
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