Enough with the recalls

In politics there’s a phenomenon known as voter fatigue. The idea is that too many elections too close together tend to suppress the number of voters who turn out at polling places.

Local governments tend to worry about a phenomenon known as bond fatigue — that people sick of politicians coming back too frequently and asking to borrow money will vote such measures down rather than evaluating the projects on their merits.

Here at the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, we worry we may be suffering from Houston recall fatigue.

If you haven’t heard, the latest attempt to recall a mayor in the borough’s tiniest city was not successful, at least not according to preliminary vote tallies. By a 2-1 margin, Mayor Virgie Thompson handily survived the attempt to oust her from office.

Of the last six Houston mayors, four have faced similar attempts. Recall elections there are starting to resemble regular elections in their frequency.

Frankly, we’re getting tired of it. And we think Houston voters are, too.

To whatever degree these attempts are attention grabs on the part of disgruntled Houstonians, we regret the role we have played in providing that spotlight. But a recall isn’t the sort of thing a newspaper can ignore. Though sometimes, we wish we could.

Recalls, the mayor noted in a story in today’s newspaper, are a very expensive means of redressing a grievance.

Indeed, just paying the lawyers required to sort the whole thing out cost the city $4,000. A small number, relative to larger governments like the Mat-Su Borough, but a noticeable hit to a tiny budget like Houston’s.

Compare that to the $1,500 Thompson was alleged to have received by filing an erroneous time sheet and the whole thing starts to look ridiculous. Detractors allege Thompson turned in timecards and was paid for hours she did not work, but she and her supporters maintain she made an honest mistake while retroactively filling out her timecards and did work the 100 hours a month required by city code.

Guilty or not, the city spent several times what it pays Thompson each month in this attempt to remove her from office.

It seems the city is forced into a position where, while one hand tries to fund the various city services and overcome periodic budget crises, the other hand is tossing money out the window on an expensive, unnecessary election.

Another factor adding to the ridiculousness — Houston’s mayor only serves for a year. A new mayor is selected from among the city council after each year’s regular election.

Factoring in the time it takes to organize such an election, recalling a mayor inevitably only saves the city from a few months with that mayor at the helm. Waiting it out, we think, would be the more reasonable and more cost-effective option in many cases.

So what’s the solution? There’s probably no legal way to raise the recall bar in Houston. For a petition to be successful, it must bear the signatures of one quarter the number of voters who cast ballots for the candidate when he or she won office.

In Houston, that usually means around 50 signatures. A low bar, to be sure, but the state tends to have rules on these sorts of things, rules Houston isn’t likely to change. That the bar is so low speaks to the biggest underlying issue we’ve been able to identify over years of covering Valley politics — in a city this small, where everyone knows everyone, all politics are personal. Every political act in Houston devolves into a series of personal attacks. It gets ugly fast and recalls result.

Really, the only solution we have come up with amounts to a plea for peace. To the residents of Houston we say, please, if not for your own sakes then for those of our poor, tired reporters, work to get along with your neighbors.