
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 11, 1991                   TAG: 9103110300
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A/8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WARDS IN ROANOKE, JUST LIKE CHICAGO

THE ROANOKE public hasn't exactly flooded City Council with demands that council members be elected via something other than the at-large system in place since municipal time began. But the political types seem avid for change, so Roanoke soon could see at least a partial ward system.

Even city Republicans - naively? - have signed on. Wards empower individual voters, a GOP study committee said last week, and the smaller the wards the better. Besides, a ward system would encourage good Republican candidates to challenge the majority Democrats. (Why this is so is unexplained.)

The agitation for wards in general comes at a curious time. Roanoke's population is shrinking; so, one would think, is any practical need for wards. The racially polarized voting that for much of Roanoke's history kept blacks from political power has vanished; so, one would think, has the need for wards as a voting-rights remedy.

But what's curious about the Republican position in particular is how it has conservative GOP theorists advocating a system that elsewhere would draw their scorn.

The model par excellence of small-ward politics is that exemplar of good government, Chicago. The city is fragmented into three dozen or so wards, each electing its own alderman. The predictable result: a governing body of unwieldy size; hardened political lines between races and classes; and the log-rolling - swapping parochial favors without regard to the overall welfare - that conservatives find so distasteful in places like Congress.

True, the various Roanoke proposals call for retaining some at-large council seats. But the other seats would be held by people whose primary political interest is their wards rather than the city as a whole - and council apparently would have to be enlarged to accommodate the change.

The smaller the wards, of course, the larger the council: under the GOP plan, as much as double the current membership of seven. The mayor's annual salary now is $15,000; for other council members, it is $13,000. Perhaps a public that isn't demanding a ward system should demand at least this: To the extent that a council doing no more work is enlarged, cut each member's salary proportionately.

by CNB