State Senators Single-Member District Legislation
Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas The Travis County Republican Party (TCRP) applauds Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwells new backing of single-member city council districts and endorses legislation by state Senator Jeff Wentworth that would require single-member district representation on the Austin City Council.
Currently Austinites are represented by six city council members who serve in an at-large capacity. They each represent the entire population of Austin and are all elected by the same city-wide constituency. The mayor too is elected by the city as a whole. The latter is quite the norm; the former is highly unusual and greatly ineffective. With the city limits serving as a single at-large district multiple people are serving a single district. Invariably this setup leads to vast geographic areas of the community being under-represented or all together un-represented. Multiple-member districts also diminish accountability by any one council member to any group of voters discourage citizen participation in local governance and suppress voter turnout in municipal elections.
Austin is simply too large and growing far too quickly to not have single-member city council districts said TCRP Chair Rosemary Edwards. Austinites deserve to have direct representation on their city council with a representative who they can go to with their concerns and vote out if they want change just as they do in the state Legislature and in Congress.
Mayor Leffingwell is advocating a board in which six members represent six individual districts and two more members serve like himself at large. He is charging a committee with preparing this and other proposed changes to the city charter for voters next year.
In the Texas Senate Sen. Jeff Wentworth is advancing legislation that would require single-member districts for Austin. Senate Bill 380 requires that The governing body of a municipality with a population of 500000 or more must consist of a mayor elected at large and at least six members elected from single-member districts. A member must reside in the district the member represents. If passed by a two-thirds majority in the state House and Senate Sen. Wentworths bill could take effect this year; if passed with a simple majority the act would apply to the 2012 elections.
Im encouraged by the growing support for single-member districts Edwards said. Our country was founded on the principles of direct localized representation and the voters deserve a direct voice in their government in the capital city of Texas.
