pinion Public Should be Wary of School Board's Rush Toward Seven Members

On Tuesday, the Manatee County School Board voted to move forward with a plan to promote a change in board organization that would add two members to the board and alter the way members are elected. The public should be very concerned and demand from their elected officials a much more thoughtful and complete process.

When the issue first surfaced, I wrote an entire column on why the idea that was being proposed was a bad one. You can find that here. To summarize, by Florida statute, a county school board can be organized four ways. The default, which Manatee has now, is a five-member board, each ostensibly representing a district of constituents, though they are each elected by countywide vote.

This set-up has obvious flaws. If you represent a district of constituents, you should be accountable to them in every election, in that they have the power to remove you. In the last election, both races were won by candidates who lost their in-district vote, but were carried to victory by the votes of people they are not representative of. That's not the way democracy works.

Board members sort of danced around that on Tuesday, arguing that they don't really represent taxpayers, but the children. That might look good on a bumper sticker, but all you have to do is look at the way the board handled the recent sex scandals and that line will stick in your craw. It also seems convenient to say that you're accountable to a group when about 95 percent of it is too young to vote you out of office and are otherwise captive subjects of your decisions. It would sort of be like the sheriff saying he's not accountable to us for the county jail, but rather the prisoners.

In 1984, Florida passed a law giving three alternatives to our current set-up. You can have the same five-member board elected only by voters who reside in the candidate's district, expand to a seven member board elected only by voters in seven districts, or, maintain the five-member board elected in their districts, and add two additional “at-large” seats, elected countywide (which is how the Manatee County Commission is organized).

The school board voted on Tuesday to move forward on putting that last option in front of voters in a referendum on the November 2016 ballot. The issue is being pushed by two people: first-term school board member Dave Miner and first-term Manatee County Commissioner Charles Smith. Both argue that mirroring the county commission would broaden representation and help improve school board dysfunction.

Charlie Kennedy seemed to be the only school board member aside from Miner who had done any preparation on the item, and gave a detailed argument against Miner's proposal. Among other issues, Kennedy pointed out the fact that two at-large commissioners would mean that one district could conceivably have three representatives on the board, amounting to something much less than equal representation.

Kennedy agreed, however, with the idea of commissioners being elected only by voters in their district—even though Kennedy himself would not have won in November, had that been the case. As such, he favored either of the other two options. I feel confident that most Manatee County citizens would agree if they were educated on the options and provided with an honest debate over their merits. That seems unlikely to happen. Kennedy ultimately voted for Miner's proposal, which passed 4-1 (Bob Gause dissenting).

Neither Miner nor Smith have answered the criticisms of their proposal or debated it against the other two options. Miner only noted that there would be pros and cons to any change, while making much of “entrusting the people” to make the decision as a way to engender trust with an institution voters have become increasingly cynical toward. But if there are three options, the board decides on one of them—with almost no public discussion or input sought—and then essentially asks the public yes or no on the board's choice, then what exactly are you entrusting the people to decide?

Let's not forget that we are talking about changing the organization of one of the most powerful institutions in Manatee County, a board that oversees hundreds of millions of dollars annually, borrows on behalf of taxpayers and governs the largest employer in the county. Shouldn't this be a very slow and deliberate process? Where are the workshops? Where is the effort to inform the public of all of the options available, publicly debate the merits of each, and then seek input on whether and how to go forward? That would be entrusting the people with the choice.

The only argument that has been made in favor of the approved proposal beyond the vague promise of “broadening representation” is that it would be the same as the county commission. With all due respect to Commissioner Smith, who was only elected to the board in November and has not yet served through a genuinely controversial issue, I find the idea that the BOCC functions with a high level of efficiency in terms of a government that is representative of its people, nothing short of laughable.

The BOCC has proven itself little more than a rubber stamp for an increasingly powerful bureaucratic administration that seems to primarily exist to facilitate the desires of special interests like developers, phosphate mining companies and health care interests. Having seven members has in no way broadened citizen representation—in fact, it has clearly reduced it by making it easier for those interests to control a majority of the seats.

As Miner himself argued, countywide elections are much more expensive to conduct. By restricting some of the seats to in-district elections and making the other two countywide, the money will gravitate toward those seats, and whoever it lines up behind will find themselves with an insurmountable advantage. In county commission races, lesser money still has a fighting chance in the district races, especially smaller ones like Commissioner Smith's. However, I would bet dollars to donuts that we will never again see another BOCC at-large race won by a grass-roots candidate, if only because it's impossible to get a hundred thousand dollars going door to door hat in your hands, and harder still to communicate your message to more than 200,000 voters in a shoe leather campaign while your opponent is armed with a war chest.

So, the BOCC might “handle its business,” as Smith argued Tuesday night, but it rarely seems to do so in a way that's reflective of its constituents. Go to any county commission meeting and you'll quickly get a sense of what the constituents who are paying attention to the issues think of the representation they receive. Then ask commissioners who've been on the common sense side of any of a dozen controversial issues whether it's easier to argue for sanity on a bigger board, or if it's simply easier to be shouted down, while the majority rams things through. Just because something is happening quicker and easier doesn't mean it's working better.

Look back at the board's indigent health care sales tax debacle, the tax abatement sham, the contract "negotiations" for the port director or the county administrator, or the many land use concessions it made at Long Bar Pointe and other developments. See what the people (and the one or two responsive commissioners) were clamoring for, and then look at what they got. You can make a much better argument that the BOCC should scrap its two at-large seats and return to five districts, than you can that any other government should emulate its organization.

The BOCC also demonstrates how at-large seats can give disproportionate representation. Because Carol Whitmore is an at-large member, while district 3 is held by fellow islander John Chappie, that means that two of the board's seven members are from Anna Maria Island, which consists of only around 5 percent of the county's population. That's nearly 6:1 in terms of a representative ratio.

While Whitmore ostensibly represents the entire county, she routinely supports island residents when they feel development is encroaching on their quality of life, even arguing for a moratorium on large rentals out there. Yet, Whitmore sounds a different tune when rural county residents complain that giving developers concessions to increase density in their neighborhoods will be just as injurious, suddenly spouting off about unavoidable progress instead of the need to preserve a unique charm.

That's good for islanders, but not for citizens in Northeast Manatee County, who live in the geographically enormous District 1 where they are represented by Commissioner Larry Bustle, a darling of the developers who has never seen a comp plan amendment he hasn't liked. Now, imagine if the other at-large seat were won by an islander? It's not a bad strategy by developers, hospital chains and phosphate companies. There is no mining on the island, very little undeveloped land and wealthier residents there wouldn't feel an additional half-cent sales tax nearly as much as in poorer pockets of the county. Whitmore and Chappie survive by fighting for the island issues (with Chappie similarly sentimental toward the Village of Cortez) and then voting the way they're supposed to on each and every other item, which keeps both the votes and the big money rolling.

Then there's the cost, which Miner described as diminutive on Tuesday. It may only end up being about $80,000 a year in board member salaries, perhaps around $100k in total compensation, but how long will it be before the board is telling us that with more members they need another administrative employee? And what if the additional members are just as lawsuit prone as some of our current ones, or likewise feel the need to chronically show up downtown and monopolize the six-figure time of the district's top administrators?

There is also the idea that the district already plans to put multiple referendums in front of voters on the November 2016 ballot, items they've described as being beyond crucial to operating the district—a half-cent sales tax, a voluntary increase in school property taxes and $150 million in additional bond debt. Should they really be asking the public to vote on whether to experiment with reorganizing the board that would then oversee all that public investment without knowing how it will work out?

So, if the school board wants to get away from countywide elections, like I heard on Tuesday, they should limit the current conversation to asking the voters to go to a five-member board that's elected in-district. That change doesn't involve much risk, and its merits would be fairly simple for anyone to understand. It would be a fine first step that also wouldn't include extra costs to the taxpayers. If, once that is achieved and can be evaluated, it is still decided that representation must be broadened, then go back to the taxpayers and ask them to expand it to seven members, but still elected in district (yes, you'd have to give up alignment with the BOCC districts, but so what?). There is no evidence that at-large members of government boards in any way enhance representation, though there is much that suggests such organization degrades it.

Most importantly, don't run headlong into such a monumental reorganization just because two public officials suggested it after making vague and incomplete arguments on its behalf, without addressing the obvious potential pitfalls, debating or even examining the alternatives, or seeking public education or input in any way. Inform, discuss, debate and decide would be a much better method to demonstrate that the board is indeed interested in engendering trust with a rightfully skeptical public.

Dennis' debut novel, A Long Road Home, is now available for pre-order through the publisher and ships July 3. Click here to reserve a copy. Click here to read previous columns by Dennis.