Wednesday, February 17, 1999
Winburn pulls back electoral proposal
BY HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Chances of an electoral reform plan being on Cincinnati's May primary ballot faded fast Tuesday when Councilman Charlie Winburn opened a Law Committee hearing by coming out against his own proposal.
Last week, Mr. Winburn proposed a ballot issue that would have turned the current two-year council terms into four-year terms and returned the selection of a mayor to council itself. Since a 1987 change, the top vote-getter in the council race becomes mayor.
The Winburn plan seemed to have the support of six council members — enough to place it on the May 4 primary ballot — at last week's council meeting but Councilman Tyrone Yates scheduled a public hearing on the plan so critics could make their arguments against it.
But before the first word of public testimony was taken Tuesday afternoon, fellow council members and an audience of about two dozen opponents and proponents of the Winburn plan looked on in amazement as Mr. Winburn took the floor to withdraw it.
Mr. Winburn's action came after a week of intense criticism of the plan, particularly from leaders of Build Cincinnati, a bipartisan group that has been working for a year to get a plan on the ballot. The Build Cincinnati plan would include a directly elected “strong mayor” and a council elected from districts.
“To be frank with you, even I do not understand all the legal jargon in my proposal,” Mr. Winburn told the Law Committee. He said he offered it as a “temporary stop-gap measure” until another plan comes along.
Mr. Winburn said he would ask council at Thursday's meeting to “indefinitely postpone” consideration of his original plan. He said he would offer another that would call for the direct election of the mayor and
election of council to four-year terms but would not give the mayor any additional legislative or administrative powers.
The withdrawal of his earlier plan angered some of the council members who had said they would vote with him to put it on the ballot.
“This is what happens around here all the time,” said Councilman Jim Tarbell, who supported the original Winburn plan. “We had an agreement on this. Agreements don't seem to mean much.”
Withdrawing the plan, Mr. Tarbell said, “makes this meeting meaningless. We're just wasting the time of the people who came down here to speak.”
In fact, about half of the people who had come to the law committee hearing and signed up to speak left without doing so after Mr. Winburn's announcement.
Among those who stayed behind was Chip Gerhardt, one of the Build Cincinnati organizers, who said his group “wants to work with council to get something done.”
Build Cincinnati organizers want a directly elected mayor who would not be a member of council but would be the “chief executive officer” of the city, with broad executive powers.
Acceptance doubted
Mr. Winburn said while he has supported “strong mayor” proposals in the past, he does not believe Cincinnati voters would accept such a sweeping change in the form of government.
“What I've proposed will preserve the city manager form of government,” Mr. Winburn said. “We all know a strong plan wouldn't be passed by the voters.”
Mr. Winburn said he would make a formal proposal for a direct-election plan at Thursday's council meeting, but it does not seem likely that he could get six votes for it on the nine-member council by the March 5 deadline for placing an issue on the May ballot.
Effective in 2001
Mr. Winburn's new plan would not go into effect until the 2001 council election. The original plan would have been effective in this year's council election.
Build Cincinnati leaders say they will continue to try to work out details on their own plan and build support for it.
Mr. Winburn said he expects to have another hearing on his plan and that of Build Cincinnati at a Law Committee meeting Monday.
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