City director delays proposal to change Little Rock board makeup

Little Rock City Director Erma Hendrix's proposal to let voters decide whether to eliminate the city board's three at-large positions has been pushed back a couple more weeks.

Hendrix notified the city manager she wanted the vote moved to the board's July 2 meeting, just days after telling her colleagues she was introducing the ordinance for a vote at Tuesday's meeting.

She did not return a request for comment.

Hendrix said at last week's board meeting that if the board does not send her proposal to the ballot this November she will file a federal lawsuit against the city.

She has not detailed what the basis for the lawsuit would be, and has made the threat several times over the past few months and at other times during her tenure when discussing various matters at board meetings.

Hendrix wants to do away with the three at-large positions on the board and leave it with seven members elected from wards, plus the mayor. The mayor position is elected citywide, presides over meetings, has veto power and only votes in the event of a tie.

"This decision is necessary to overcome over two decades of racial discrimination in how the members of the Board of Directors have been elected," the proposed ordinance said.

Hendrix has said the at-large board members, all of whom are white, cancel out the votes of the city's three black board members.

She told her board colleagues recently that there's no reason they should not approve the ordinance because it would let the voters decide what's best.

If it's not approved, "you will be costing the city some money, because I will be going to federal court," Hendrix said at last week's meeting.

This is the second time Hendrix has brought up the issue to her board colleagues. In 2015, she put the matter on the agenda for discussion, but she never proposed an official ordinance for a vote.

That same year Rep. John Walker, D-Little Rock, attempted to change the designations on the city board through legislation but failed to get his bill out of committee.

He argued that board seats filled by the city at large disenfranchise black voters and enable white people to be more easily elected, giving them more power and thus canceling out the votes by ward-elected black board members.

Little Rock's population is about 42 percent black, 45 percent white, 7 percent Hispanic and 3 percent Asian, with 3 percent of people falling within another category.

In 1993, voters approved changing to the current board format where seven members are elected from zones in the city, three are elected by the city at large, and the mayor is also elected citywide.

The recommendation to do so came from residents involved in the Future Little Rock process that studied the city's issues and made policy proposals.

Prior to that, the board was made up of seven members elected at large.

The first Little Rock Board of Directors took office in 1957. The seven seats were made up of six men and one woman, all of whom were white.

It wasn't until 1969 that a black member was elected when Charles Bussey began serving on the board. Perlesta A. "Les" Hollingsworth was the second black member, elected in 1973.

In 1977, the first black woman was elected to the board -- Lottie Shackelford.

Hendrix was elected to the board in 1993 after the makeup changed to the seven ward representatives and three at-large representatives. That was the first year there were three black board members -- the most black directors there have ever been at any one time.

Metro on 06/17/2018

Upcoming Events