The failed effort to recall Mayor Ron Littlefield foundered not on the court’s decision Tuesday, but on the failure of the petitioners to follow the law. More importantly, it obviously failed to meet the test of broad public interest: Far too few Chattanoogans had enough desire to remove the mayor from office to propel a recall.
Indeed, the failure of the recall marks a welcome defeat of a narrow-minded, wrong-headed agenda in favor of political stability and unified support for current city progress and goals. Instead of a recall, most Chattanoogans wisely favor keeping the city focused on current prospects for unparalleled job growth and economic and social progress.
Mayor Littlefield correctly made that point in a brief news conference Wednesday morning. He assembled the most recent three prior mayors, the president of the Chamber of the Commerce, members of the City Council and County Commission, and Rep. Zach Wamp to represent the range of local leaders who favor unity in support of the city’s hard-earned and enviable reputation as a city on the cusp of great economic and civic advancement.
Chattanoogans may not like the occasional tax or fee hikes that the recall groups railed about. But most residents apparently accept the need for periodic tax adjustments – the recent city tax increase was the first in eight years – to keep a decent level of public services and to create previously unimaginable economic opportunity and vastly improved civic amenities. A recall would have threatened all that.
Awareness of current achievements and the risk of hindering new opportunities clearly made the recall initiative untenable. Despite their often obnoxious badgering for signatures, the recall groups were simply unable to get enough qualified voter signatures in the allotted 75 days to make a successful petition for recall.
In the end, their misguided effort collapsed for a number of reasons. Their petitions failed to meet basic legal requirements – for a clear, consistent recall question, for a date for each signature, and for the signatures of verifiably registered voters. Recall organizers also failed because they chose to pursue a recall under city charter standards rather than the state’s more onerous standard, despite warnings from the Election Commission’s attorney about the uncertain legal standing of the city charter’s recall provisions.
The city charter’s apparent recall provisions require qualified registered voters’ signatures equal in number to 50 percent of the voter turnout in the last mayoral race. Given the extremely light turnout in that race, the recall groups would have needed just under 9,000 qualified signatures. Problem is, the City Council never sought state approval to give its recall provisions supremacy over the recall provisions required under state law, which required about 15,000 qualified signatures of voters, or 10 percent of the city’s total number of registered voters, to mount a recall.
In a ruling on the mayor’s lawsuit to bar the recall after the deadline for gathering voters’ signatures had passed, Circuit Court Judge Jeff Hollingsworth found, as expected, that the city’s recall provisions had never been properly approved by the state. He also cited the other defects in the petitions, which, ironically, reduced the number of usable signatures from 9,000 to 4,000.
Judge Hollingsworth’s ruling also appears to knock out the recall groups’ secondary effort to recall City Council members Jack Benson and Manny Rico. Petitions against those council members, started later than those for Littlelfield, would seem to give them until Oct. 8 to get enough signatures to mount a recall – if the petitions meet legal criteria.
In reality, that effort is effectively moot. Under state law, a recall vote couldn’t be held until the next scheduled “county general or municipal” election. That’s two years away. Benson and Rico are free to serve until then regardless of any recall petition. In any event, the recallers had only gathered 65 qualified signatures to recall Rico, and just six to recall Benson. There simply is no hue and cry to replace them: The effort should be dropped.
Recall-minded citizens would best take Littlefield’s offer to sit down and discuss their grievances. That would give them a better opportunity to explore ways to improve the city.