Is it too easy to amend city charters?

by: MarkCamann

Mon Mar 09, 2009 at 03:49 PM CDT

Wentworth has filed legislation (SB 690) that would raise the petition requirement, currently five percent of registered voters, to ten percent of registered voters.  In cities with more than 400,000 registered voters, there is a lower signature requirement, a fixed number of 20,000 signatures.  SB 690 would eliminate this lower threshold for large cities.

Of course this bill pertains only to home-rule cities, which are the vast majority of cities in Texas with more than 5,000 residents, cities whose voters have the right of initiative as it pertains to the city charter.

I am at a loss to understand why any legislator would want to make local government less responsive to the voters!

those signatures do not in any way assure an amendment's passage - they only allow citizens to decide on the amendment, which could still be voted down.

Even the current petition requirement of five percent of registered voters is a massive undertaking for those citizens who care enough about their community to gather the needed signatures.  I am not aware of any city in Texas where citizens have been petitioning for city charter amendments so frequently as to create an actual problem.  I invite Senator Wentworth to use this forum to enlighten me and other Burnt Orange Report readers on the situation that motivated him to file such an audacious piece of legislation.

The Senate Intergovernmental Relations Committee will hold a hearing on SB 690 sometime on Wednesday.  Hopefully this bill will not come out of committee!