Florence City council defers issue of nonpartisan voting

FLORENCE — A special Florence City Council meeting concerning a referendum dealing with non-partisan elections lasted for 5½ hours Wednesday and ended with the controversial matter being deferred to Monday’s council meeting.

At issue is an ordinance that would set a referendum to determine whether the city would set a date for a non-partisan referendum.

A motion to set a date at last month’s meeting failed because it didn’t receive a two-thirds vote. Voting for it were councilmembers Buddy Brand, William C. Bradham, Steve Powers and Ocatvia Williams-Blake. Voting against it were Mayor Steven J. Wukela and councilmen Ed Robinson and Billy D. Williams.

But the tide might have shifted in favor of the opponents. Following the marathon meeting Wednesday, Williams-Blake said she will not put the voters through this again.

“If we don’t come up with a compromise before the next meeting, I will be voting to take it off the agenda,” she said. “It’s not fair to the taxpayers for us to keep going over this over and over again and to stay here another night until 10 p.m. If I change, it will be because it’s in the best interests of the taxpayers to not go over this again.”

Brand, a Republican, was not happy with the outcome.

“The will of the people of Florence has not been served,” Brand said. “The mayor has usurped his authority and used Robert’s Rules of Order to aid his own agenda and not the agenda of the citizens. I find that is extremely harmful and slighting to the citizens of Florence for what he was elected to do. He was elected to do what was best for all the people, not a faction of the people.

“This is a very regretful way to conduct the city’ s business. It will be brought up again Monday. I have some concerns about it because Councilwoman Williams-Blake appears to be changing her mind. I respect her opinion for that. It appears that we won’t have the votes to carry it through.”

Wukela said he opposes the referendum because he thinks it was “improvidently passed” to begin with.

“We’ve operated under the same system for decades and no one was inclined to change that system until, frankly, after the primaries in June,” he said. “And, if you go back and look at the minutes of that meeting, you can see that one councilman was quite explicit about wanting to make the change because they had already lost two incumbents. I don’t think that’s an appropriate basis to change the voting procedures.

“Secondly, the voting rights section of the U.S. Justice Department has failed to approve this change and has asked us to have this referendum. And if it passes, then they will decide whether to allow us the change in the ordinance.”

Wukela said the change is an “extreme expense for the city to bear,” especially when the Justice Department might say it’s not going to allow it anyway.

“And the reason the Justice Department has concerns about it is the reason I have concerns about it,” he added. “In essence, the referendum and the change would almost exclusively remove the right for folks to vote for a straight-party ticket in the city, where they would have that right everywhere else and they’ve had that right in the past.”

Wukela said he doesn’t see any justification for taking that power away from voters.