
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 29, 1994                    TAG: 9406290475 
SECTION: LOCAL                     PAGE: B3    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: NEWPORT NEWS 
DATELINE: 940629                                 LENGTH: Short

VOTING SYSTEM CHALLENGED

{LEAD} The U.S. Department of Justice will sue the city of Newport News unless it changes an at-large system of electing City Council members that federal officials say hurts blacks.

The Justice Department sent city officials a letter informing them of the pending suit and the federal government's desire to reach an agreement out of court. Electing council members to represent the city as a whole, rather than a small ward, is discriminatory, wrote Deval L. Patrick, assistant attorney general in the department's civil rights division.

{REST} The City Council met behind closed doors before its public meeting Tuesday and decided that Mayor Barry DuVal and the Rev. Lawrence Bethel, head of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, would send a joint letter to the Justice Department asking it to hold off on the lawsuit.

by CNB