The Chattanooga City Council, after working on a redistricting plan in private for the past six months, will give the public its first and likely last opportunity to comment at a public hearing Tuesday evening. Council members plan to vote on the plan on April 5.
At the hearing, I will ask the council to press the reset button on redistricting and begin anew. The process to date involved a three-person council committee that met privately with mayoral staff beginning last September. The committee presented its report to the full council on March 1.
The city's process likely violated the Tennessee Open Meetings Act. This "Sunshine Law" prohibits multiple members of a governing body from meeting privately to deliberate on decisions about public business. Deliberation means "to think about or discuss issues carefully." The committee could not have developed new district boundaries unless council members deliberated and gave feedback to mapping staff.
Who made the decision not to hold public meetings, thus removing any possibility that the public could comment? When the redistricting committee made its March 1 presentation, one slide read: "Public input is not required by state law or the charter." Does the council want to be perceived as a body that only solicits public input when it is required?
After the March 1 meeting, a newspaper reporter wrote that the city staff person advising the committee said that "it was decided to work out the plan in-house without public participation "
Compare and contrast the city's process with the one recently followed by Hamilton County. The entire commission served on the committee. Committee members held public meetings where members of the public were allowed to speak. More than 300 people viewed the meetings on the county's YouTube channel.
Members of the Chattanooga public will never know who said what at the city's committee meetings. While we appreciate the opportunity to speak at a public hearing, our testimony on the maps is compromised because we were not privy to the assumptions, presentations and discussions at the committee meetings.
We were denied the opportunity to hear from and speak to our elected officials while "the sausage was being made." To use another cliche, it is clear that we were not welcome in "the room where it happened."
Anytime an elected body does the public's business in private raises a red flag. This instance is particularly disturbing because it involves voting rights.
I take no pleasure in criticizing this City Council. I believe it is a good council whose members spend a lot of time dealing with a myriad of complicated issues trying to make things better in the city. They rely on the city attorney and other staff to help them avoid legal potholes.
I hope that council members will get the redistricting train on track by designating the entire council as the new committee and allowing public comment at each committee meeting. The City Charter gives them until March 2024 to complete the plan.
Helen Burns Sharp is the founder of Accountability for Taxpayer Money. Contact her at corryhelen@msn.com.