Nanaimo's Considered Opinion on Local Elections Task Force Recommendations

The City of Nanaimo appears to have waded in on the recommendations recently issued by the Local Government Elections Task Force - don't feel too badly if you haven't heard of it, the opportunity for you to provide your input was left with your local council and not many in B.C. appear to have taken up the challenge. In order to help raise the profile of these significant proposed changes to the rules governing how we select our Mayors, Councils and School Boards, I wrote the following letter to Nanaimo's 'paper of record', the Daily News.

Dear Editor, While it is somewhat comforting to read that Nanaimo City Council members are unsure as to the recommendation from the Local Elections Task Force to increase the term of office from 3 years to 4 (Councillors happy with local election changes, July 9), it would be much better for the voters of B.C.'s many jurisdictions if the Task Force appeared to have taken the 920/154 written submissions, received even with very little advertising, to heart. Instead, they appear to have relied mainly on what they would prefer to see happen and/or what is being done in other provinces. While a stated goal of the Task Force is to improve voter participation, ignoring the 'stakeholder' comments and concerns will not help in this regard! Common sense would suggest that strong support for change needs to be present before a change is made so: - only 4 (3%) of the 155 local governments in B. C. took up the suggestion by the Union of B.C. Municipalities (UBCM) to hold referendums in 2008 on the issue of extending the term of office from 3 years to 4, resulting in a 53% overall majority for change - the Task Force input from local governments is 48.6% in favour of extending - from organizations is 21.4% in favour of extending - from individuals is 38.8% in favour of extending Similar changes have been implemented in other provinces but, strangely, we have no data as to whether or not things like increased voter participation or reduced costs were actually achieved. Even with this distinctly underwhelming support and a dearth of data to quantify the benefits, the Task Force still recommended the extension. The real reason appears to be that the UBCM membership had endorsed this action at their last annual meeting and four of the seven Task Force members were UBCM executives. The very real concern of having to wait an extra year to "express opinions on the performance of their local elected officials" seems not to have carried much weight, even though the courts have said that, in the absence of recall legislation, the ballot box is the only place to hold politicians accountable. Anyone wishing to read my thoughts on this issue can go to my Blog at http://vigilantz.blogspot.com/2010/05/local-governement-election-rules-in.html. The work I have done is what I would have expected my local chain newspaper to have done with the report. Need more proof? 81% of 165 written submissions were for campaign contribution limits yet they were still not recommended. Just goes to show what a 'sham' the whole thing really was.

[UPDATE: At their annual meeting held at Whistler in September, the UBCM held a re-vote on the issue of 'term of office' and, this time, they voted to recommend to the government that they leave the term where it is, 3 years - we will have to wait for the legislation to see what the government actually does with this 'conflicted' input.] [FURTHER UPDATE: At their annual meeting held at Vancouver in September 2013, the UBCM once again took up the issue of 'term of office' and decided, reportedly with a narrow majority, to ask the government to extend to 4 years. Going even further back, in 2006, they did not endorse, while in 2007, they did. So we have 3 years, 4 years, 3 years and back to 4 years, which clearly demonstrates lack of significant support for a change to the term of office.]