Staggered terms question to be included on November ballot

By Lisa Majors-Duff

In a report to the board last week, county attorney Raymond Large said DOJ officials have no objection to allowing voters to decide the issue of staggered terms during the Nov. 5 General Election.

"The most important part of the information is that the 'attorney general does not interpose any objection to the specified changes,'" said Large, quoting from a letter from Joseph Rich, DOJ's voting division chief.

The question - "Shall the structure of the board of commissioners be altered to provide that the members be elected for staggered four-year terms of office?" - must be cleared by the N.C. Board of Elections before finding its way onto the November ballot, said Jackson County Elections Supervisor Lisa Lehman.

"The state board will review it and might object to its format but not its language," Lehman said. "The state board never changes language submitted to them by an attorney or a board of commissioners."

By a vote of 4-1, county commissioners adopted a resolution in January calling for the question of staggered terms to be put to the voters. Commissioner Franz Whitmire voted against the measure, the details of which were questioned by Chairman Jay Denton during a subsequent meeting in February.

In response to Denton's questions, which focused mainly on the election of the chairman, commissioners directed county Manager Ken Westmoreland to have the approved resolution reviewed by Robert Joyce, a voting specialist with the N.C. Institute of Government in Chapel Hill, who said the chairman's seat is a separate office and would not be affected by the resolution.

If county voters agree board seats should be staggered, then the top two vote-getters during the 2006 General Election will determine which district representatives will serve four-year terms. The bottom two vote-getters would then hold their seats for two years.

For example, if candidates from Districts 1 and 2 receive the most votes in November 2006, they will serve for four years and run again in 2010. According to this scenario, candidates elected in 2006 from Districts 3 and 4, as the low vote-getters, would serve two years and be required to run again in 2008, this time for four-year terms, thus overlapping the terms of the four seats. The chairman's seat would continue to be elected on the current schedule.

As stated in the resolution, "great interest" exists among county citizens for restructuring the board of commissioners, a policy currently employed by 86 of the state's 100 counties. Staggered terms would also "provide continuity of government and operations by ensuring that experienced members are on the board at all times," according to the resolution, which was drafted by Westmoreland at Commissioner Stacy Buchanan's request.

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