City-county representation one of issues in Evansville merger question

A consolidated Evansville-Vanderburgh County government would guarantee at least two elected officials from outside the city on a 15-member governing body.

That's something absent in the current structure of three bodies of elected officials in two separate local governments.

The budget-writing County Council and the executive County Commissioners have 10 members between them. But no district from those bodies lies entirely outside city limits.

Just one member of those two county government bodies — Councilman James Raben — lives outside the city.

Noting that it's possible for 12 of 15 Common Council members to live outside city limits, advocates say the proposal offers far superior representation for rural residents than the current structure.

"To me it's much closer to equal, much more representative of a district that represents you. And it puts everybody at the table at one time with one pot of money, as opposed to two pots of money," said Sheriff Eric Williams, a leading supporter of consolidation.

Consolidation opponents say different isn't always better.

"It becomes more difficult to prevent bad proposals from affecting you, and it also becomes more difficult to get good proposals passed to fund a worthy project. Your ability to hold your representatives accountable is greatly reduced," said county Treasurer Rick Davis, a consolidation opponent.

Accountability

Among the 12 Common Council districts proposed is one that lies entirely outside and northwest of city limits and a neighboring northern district. Both would have representatives from outside the city.

Three separate at-large districts would each elect one Common Council member, with candidates required to live in-district but selected by the entire county. All three districts include areas inside and outside the city.

The 12 prospective single-member districts, six of which resemble current City Council wards, were drawn to average roughly 15,000 people each. The three current County Commissioners districts average about 60,000 people each, and the four County Council districts average about 45,000 people.

"It's much more efficient to have smaller groups represented by a single district representing you and the three at-large," Williams said.

But anti-consolidation activists look at the same map and arrive at entirely different conclusions.

Davis mounts an argument that has little to do with district lines or population counts.

Davis said maintaining two local governments allows residents to exert more influence over elected officials. He notes that every city voter currently selects one County Council district representative and one City Council ward representative, plus three at-large members on each body.

On the seven-member County Council, that means each voter exerts political influence over four members.

"If those four people don't vote your way, you can vote them out and hold them accountable for their decisions," Davis said.

On the nine-member City Council, Davis said, the voter's influence over his district representative and three at-large members means those four members need only to convince a fifth member to agree with them to win a vote.

But the sheer size of the proposed 15-member Common Council reduces the influence that four members can yield, Davis said.

"You can convince all three of your at-large representatives that a proposal is either good or bad, and you can convince your district representative as well — but still walk out of council chambers disappointed," he said.

Minority politics

In the 2008 presidential election, then-Democratic Sen. Barack Obama captured Vanderburgh County with almost 51 percent of the vote. Republican Sen. John McCain won 48 percent.

Obama's victory showed that a black candidate could win a majority of votes in Vanderburgh County. It wasn't the first time. Estella Moss was elected county recorder in 1976, serving two terms in that office.

Rev. Adrian Brooks, Sr., a staunch opponent of consolidation, argues that the map of 12 Common Council districts would make it harder to elect black candidates.

"Only certain folks will be elected. We will lose two of the most educated representatives that we have in (black County Council member) Stephanie Terry and (black City Council member) Connie Robinson if this referendum goes through," Brooks, who is black, said during an Oct. 17 debate.

Brooks believes by increasing the area to be represented from the city to the entire county, and reducing the number of elected bodies, consolidation would dilute minority political influence. He points out that city voters — including black voters — typically vote Democratic, while voters outside the city typically vote Republican.

Despite Obama's and Moss's victories in Vanderburgh County, Brooks doubts black candidates can win countywide. He points to Democrat Royce Sutton's unsuccessful 2004 campaign for a County Commissioners seat, calling it a "case study" and a "guide."

But 2004 saw several Democrats go down to defeat in Vanderburgh County, not just Sutton. Then-Republican President George W. Bush won the county with 59 percent of the vote. Then-Republican U.S. Rep. John Hostettler won a narrow victory in Vanderburgh. Locally, Republican Cheryl Musgrave knocked off incumbent Democratic County Commissioner David Mosby.

Sutton, meanwhile, garnered a more than respectable 48 percent of the vote in losing to Republican Bill Nix.

Mayor Lloyd Winnecke, a Republican and an ardent supporter of consolidation, believes it does a disservice to white Vanderburgh County residents to imply that they won't vote for black candidates.

"It's an unfair characterization of our community to say that a minority candidate could only be elected from a geographic area where there's a majority of minority residents," Winnecke said. "We should think in broader, more inclusive terms."

Nevertheless, there are districts on the consolidated Common Council map — Winnecke singled out districts 4, 5 and 10 — with notable minority voting strength. The 4th City Council ward now represented by Robinson is essentially mirrored in the Common Council map's 4th district, with just two precincts and part of a third left out to meet the 15,000 population average.

"There is no reason to believe that minority representatives could not be elected from those districts. And furthermore, in the three at-large seats, there's nothing to say that minorities couldn't be elected from each of those," Winnecke said during the Oct. 17 debate.

But Brooks is suspicious of consolidation supporters.

"Some of the very organizations that are supporting consolidation don't have any diversity," he wrote in an email message last week. "Yet we are being told to trust them. We don't know what their motives are in the final analysis.

"Our community needs to build trusting substantive relationships among its many diverse groups, including its rural, Hispanic, Asian, black population, and then come back and ask us to trust you."