Evansville/Vanderburgh Unification Efforts
The leading organization in support of Evansville-Vanderburgh County government consolidation, an organization on whose board I serve, has endorsed a proposal to put the issue on two ballots over a span of two years. The idea, first floated by Sen. Vaneeta Becker (R-50), quickly caught on as the popular proposal among the area’s legislative delegation.
As the Courier & Press notes in a recent article, this is a reversal of position from the board and I don’t feel as though I’m breaking any confidences when I say it’s not the board’s first choice. Today’s C&P rightly argues that a two-step plan means unification’s opponents now have double the opportunity to defeat it, all while doubling the time, energy, and fundraising required for unification’s advocates. So why should backers swallow an inferior plan? As our co-leader Paul Black said, it’s “the train that’s coming through town, so let’s get on it.” A two-step process doesn’t mean defeat for consolidation, it just presents a steeper hill to climb.
The issue now is determining how this new two-step process will be structured. All six members of the local legislative delegation penned an editorial yesterday which offers a few clues, but my initial impression from meetings leaves me skeptical. If the first referendum comes back positive, it would simply mean that legislators would then appoint members to a committee to formulate a plan, which would then be put to a vote in the second referendum.
But if anti-consolidation legislators are appointing members of the new committee, how can we be assured we’ll actually get consolidation? And why would this appointed committee do better than the previous one, which also contained appointed members and spent two years studying the best possible plan? The two-step plan may end up being the death nail to unification, but there is still hope.
