Falk Engel, Lawrence
To the editor:
The Township Council’s present procedural impasse in selecting a replacement for Mayor Mark Holmes is yet another illustration of poorly orchestrated political drama in Lawrence which leaves us as residents ill-served.
Councilmen Rick Miller and Bob Bostock want the three prospective applicants for the vacancy to sit with council for an open public meeting/interview (evidently with citizen input), while Mayor Pam Mount wants to conduct closed-door interviews “in private for about 15 minutes each” (Ledger, Jan. 8, 2009) to select a council member. As neither side is giving in, nothing of consequence is getting done by the council, leaving township government suspended in comical limbo.
I would suggest a simple, common sense, and non-partisan resolution to this impasse: Both sides should concede and permit Ms. Mount to conduct her closed-door interviews with as many applicants as she wants to see. Thereafter, all of the applicants should appear before council for an open public forum where they can answer public policy questions posed by both council members and voters. In this fashion everyone gets the procedural elements they want, but the participatory democratic process is protected.
Personally, I would like to see any or all of the three applicants demonstrate just a scintilla of intellectual independence and civic courage and simply appear before the council to answer questions and deliberate policy on their own initiative, thereby obviating this absurdity in one fell swoop. At least that’s what I would do if I were running.
Having grown up here I always take personal umbrage when political insiders play Lawrencians for rubes: Mayor Mount knows exactly what is going on here, and so do the rest of us. By stalling this process (beyond 30 days), the decision on a council replacement is taken away from our elected governing body, the Lawrence Council, and given instead to an instrument of political party machinery, the Township Democratic Party Committee.
Closed door decision making for an elected office is fundamentally wrong, and the power to replace a resigned elected official should be vested in the electorate (by special election), or in officials who are also elected in a general election. For the record; if the Township Republican Committee were to exercise such power under similar circumstances, my opposition would be equally emphatic.
Editor’s note: After the Ledger received this letter, the Democratic Party nominees agreed to meet with council members in an open meeting at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 20.

