The recent massive tax increase passed by the Greensboro City Council was bad enough. But then we learned that 57% of the revenues would be directed toward city staff compensation.
That creates the appearance that city council members were paying off city employees for their support during election season; or that they otherwise have a bias toward rewarding the public sector richly.
Greensboro City Council elections typically have been held during “off-years”– i.e., years when there are no other major races on the ballot. That means turnout for city council races is typically very low. Under these circumstances, city staff has a major opportunity to determine who will be elected. If they show up at the polls while everyone else stays home that is a problem. And council candidates will have every incentive to buy the votes of city staff under this arrangement. Indeed, that is precisely what happened a couple of weeks ago.
Over at Carolina Journal, a spotlight is cast on the state of North Carolina’s practice of holding municipal elections during odd-numbered years. Jess Unger argues against this practice primarily on the basis of cost. He advocates holding all elections during even-numbered years.
This would automatically fix the problem of city staff disproportionately affecting city council elections. There would be less incentive for city council members to seek to buy their votes.
Unger is right. Let’s do it.
Over the last 30 years, since I have lived in Greensboro, we have elected low-quality council members in low-turnout elections. It’s time to fix that.
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