Today’s feature from yours truly on single-member districts covered a lot of ground, but space constraints abridged our conversation with Mayor Lee Leffingwell. We’ve got more with the mayor below the fold.
One complaint lodged against SMDs is that they encourage “ward politics,” a bugaboo Point Austin explored in his column this week. Some predictable quarters are already levying that charge against AISD, presaging what will likely be a broader argument over council districts. “That is one of the downsides of districts, no question about it,” Leffingwell says, “and that what the hybrid system” – the mayor’s preferred 6-2-1 scenario “is designed to offset.”
He continues:
That’s the reason for the at-large positions, to offset that balkanization. And hopefully make it so that the needs of the individual districts could be balanced by someone who’s looking at the needs of the city as a whole. Hopefully they all would look at the city as a whole, but obviously they’re gonna be focused on their districts. Its disappointing to think that occasionally, someone might be elected who’d be willing to sacrifice the entire city for their district, but hopefully that wouldn’t happen too much.
All these things are tradeoffs. There’s good things about geographic representation, there’s good things about the at-large system, there’s bad things about that too. But I think at the end of the day,– at the risk of sounding sappy – I’m gonna come down on the side of more democracy. I think that’s what geographic representation does. That’s why we have it at every level of government except for the city.
Leffingwell’s set to announce his SMD proposal (and lots more) at his State of the City address at City Hall, taking place tomorrow at 8:30am.
What the hell else is happening?
On the city calendar: The Community Action Network Resource Council meets in the Boards and Commissions room at City Hall, 5:30pm.
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This article appears in February 18 • 2011.