Charter Proposal May Be Dead

A group of folks, headed by former Mayor Alan Henry, has been working on proposing changes to Lubbock’s decades-old City Charter since January and finally has come up with a proposal to make to the Lubbock City Council.

Many of the recommendations that the group will ask the City Council to present to voters for their approval are pretty routine and amount basically to updating our current Charter.

Two of the group’s ideas are substantial—how to regulate Lubbock Power & Light and allowing the city to issue debt for economic development.

In the opinion of this observer, it’s the economic development issue that kills the charter issue.

Most voters could be expected to support the LP&L issue once they get the facts about how the utility needs to be protected from greedy Councils and City Managers, including this council and manager.

But Lubbock citizens never have had much faith in the folks that do economic development in our community. It would be hard to prove to the voters that the millions of tax dollars that have been given to the Lubbock Economic Development Alliance over the years have done much good other than pad the wallet of LEDA’s executive director/president.

Sure, proponents of the Charter change could accurately point out that before debt could be issued the voters would have to give it the thumbs up, just as they do for roads and other projects. They won’t buy it.

In the overwhelming majority of the bond proposals that the citizens have approved, the City has spent the money exactly as it has said it would. But it is the few times that the Council has taken advantage of the wording on the ballot proposal to move the money to something else that the public remembers and ultimately will bring down this proposed new Charter.

The group that worked on the Charter put in lots of hours and deserves to be thanked for the work. However, because LP&L needs to be protected, I hope the Council will cut the economic development issue out of any proposal it sends to the voters.