Fixing the woes of the Austin City Counsel is a mountain of
a task, but the work has begun. I’ve just returned from a lunch hosted by the
Austinites for Geographical Representation (AGR), the League of Women Voters,
and the Austin Area Research Organization to introduce prospective commission
members to Angelo Ancheta, “a distinguished law professor who also serves on
the Citizens Redistricting Commission for the State of California.”
Wait! Before you run off half cocked; I realize that those
guys out there don’t always do things like the rest of the country. Maybe, we
can learn from their struggle and try to it better here in Austin.
After all, “Mr. Ancheta is coming to Austin
to share his personal experience serving on the first citizens redistricting
commission in California, a
system upon which Austin's 10-1 was
modeled.”
The luncheon was held at Threadgill’s today and the room was
packed. Evidentially, there are some 400+ people signed up as volunteers to do
the commission work. This number has to be whittled down to fourteen—a pretty
big task in itself. A task force is at work currently doing just this.
Mr. Ancheta came to Austin,
on his own dime we were lead to believe (no reason to think otherwise) to share
his experiences as a member of the California
state redistricting commission. Austin
is merely redistricting some 850,000 citizens—California,
some 38,000,000.
The Professor will also be speaking this evening at Bass
Auditorium on the tu campus in an event sponsored by the University of Texas
School of Law, LBJ School's
Center for Politics and Governance and AGR.
Lots of good information came out of the noon luncheon—along
with making the acquaintance of other commission candidates—and I look forward
to getting even more info this evening at the lecture and Q&A session.
This has been a long time coming to Austin
and still has an uphill battle to be successful. It is high time that the
strings to the governance of our city be taken out of the hands of that small
group that has strangled the city since the 1970s.
There’s a lot of work left, but still the major task to be
overcome is the voter apathy and lack of participation. Let’s hope we turn that
corner with this effort.
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