RALEIGH – If the current movement to recall Greensboro Councilwoman Dianne Bellamy-Small succeeds – and it just advanced another step with the news that the U.S. Justice Department had no Voting Rights Act objections to the August 21 public vote – it would be a precedent-setting event. As far as I know, no public official as prominent as Greensboro’s Bellamy-Small has ever been removed through recall in recent North Carolina history.
The Recall Small movement is based on several elements. First, she appears to have leaked a confidential report related to the ongoing investigation of mismanagement and corruption in the Greensboro Police Department. Second, when stopped by a local police officer for speeding, Bellamy-Small reportedly intimidated the officer by threatening to take the matter up with the Greensboro police chief. Third, there have been numerous citizen complaints about the councilwoman’s constituent service and unwillingness to be interviewed.
Bellamy-Small, of course, denies these allegations, attributing them in part to racial animus. This is not the forum to evaluate them – I’ll leave that task to the voters of Greensboro – but there are some issues of statewide import worth considering. For example, should North Carolina governments – cities, counties, school districts, and the state – offer citizens the opportunity to recall politicians?
Direct democracy is controversial. Some celebrate recalls, initiative campaigns, and public votes on bonded debt as important democratic checks on the excesses of government. Others contend that electoral representation, established by elections every two to four years, is a sufficient check on malfeasance and corruption in a representative form of government.
I’m a mixed-constitution man myself. Plato Aristotle, Polybius, and other thinkers are persuasive when they point out that there are pros and cons to each form of government organization. Executive power, whether elected magistrates or hereditary monarchs, can lead to tyranny. Aristocracy – literally “rule by the best” – can become self-serving oligarchy, regardless of whether the “best” are identify by electoral representation or some less-savory means. And direct rule by the people can become the rule of the mob.
Peering back to their classical history through the interpretive lens of Montesquieu and other Enlightenment thinkers, the American Founders sought to include executive, legislative, and judicial powers in a constitutional framework intended to check and balance the designs of power-hungry individuals and factions. Some of their handiwork has been undone since then – for example, the U.S. Senate was originally supposed to represent sovereign states, through legislative election, and the existence of “independent” regulatory agencies combining rulemaking, enforcement, and judicial functions makes a mockery of constitutional principle. But the separation of powers still exists. It still helps to sustain political competition and limited government.
If used carefully and sparingly, direct-democracy tools are beneficial to state and local government. Public votes on long-term debt obligations are appropriate in a way that public votes on annual budgets would not be. I’d like to see North Carolinians have a way to place issue directly on state or local ballots for a public vote, though I think the threshold for obtaining signatures ought to be high enough to make the process truly a safety valve to relieve exceptional pressure when politicians blatantly and cynically refuse to allow important issues to be debated, rather than let initiatives become simply an invitation to subject a bewildering array of confusing and contradictory bills to plebiscites.
And, yes, I favor giving North Carolinians the power to recall politicians in between elections when circumstances warrant. Make the threshold high, sure – but don’t make it impossible for political miscreants to escape public accountability just because they haven’t committed indictable offenses.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.