LUBBOCK — When Progressive-era advocates pushed for municipal elections to be nonpartisan, they sought to take away celebration politics from native authorities. Greater than a century later, celebration politics appeared to have seeped again into down-ballot races, injecting political ideology into municipal affairs in locations like Odessa — an oil city in West Texas.
Throughout a city assembly this week, the Republican-backed majority on Odessa’s nonpartisan Metropolis Council voted as a bloc to terminate two metropolis staff — the town supervisor and metropolis lawyer — with out a clear trigger. The vote got here simply weeks after three new Metropolis Council members had been sworn in to workplace, and earlier than these new members had spent vital time working with the staff they let go.
Mayor Javier Joven and 4 council members — all of whom have been supported by the Ector County Republican Get together — voted to fireside the 2 staff, Metropolis Supervisor Michael Marrero and Metropolis Lawyer Natasha Brooks.
Marrero, who has been employed by the town since 1994, declined to remark for this story, and Brooks, who has labored for the town since 2015, couldn’t attain for remark.
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The council’s choice to fireside the 2 employees was met by uproar from Odessa residents.
“I am flabbergasted by what simply occurred at present,” Filiberto Gonzales, a former Odessa metropolis council member, mentioned in the course of the assembly. “Individuals got here into the Metropolis Council with out doing their due diligence.”
Traditionally, municipal governments’ duties, reminiscent of waste administration, water distribution and public security, haven’t been thought of extremely political. That is why almost all native elections throughout the nation are nonpartisan, that means a candidate’s celebration affiliation just isn’t printed on the poll.
However even common housekeeping duties have change into extremely polarized alongside political traces lately, inflicting friction on even probably the most mundane points.
Maybe probably the most notable are college boards throughout Texas and the nation. Disagreements over crucial race idea, library books and historical past curriculums have turned schoolboards into political battlegrounds. In Tarrant County, for instance, the conservative PAC Patriot Cell Motion spent about $390,000 on 4 conservative candidates working for an area college board.
“It is more durable to manipulate when you’ve got partisanship,” mentioned Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist on the College of Houston. “It impacts the best way enterprise is being carried out and it is more durable to create consensus.”
Through the Odessa Metropolis Council assembly, neighborhood members stepped as much as the rostrum one after the other to inform their elected leaders that they had been out of line and had acted with out listening to their constituents. Many spoke favorably of the 2 staff and mentioned they had been confused about being fired, why council members fired competent employees with out a proof.
Though a number of neighborhood members spoke up in the course of the assembly, they had been upset they bought an opportunity to remark solely after the council had already booted out the 2 staff. They need to have been allowed to talk previous to the vote, residents argued.
In a heated handle to the council, one native lawyer mentioned he intends to sue the council for violating residents’ rights.
“Mr. Mayor, please perceive, I am submitting a swimsuit towards the town,” lawyer Gaven Norris mentioned. “You’ve got disenfranchised my voice.”
Norris mentioned the lawsuit was within the works earlier than the assembly came about and that he’d add the occasions from this week’s assembly to the lawsuit. He declined to touch upon the unique motivation for the lawsuit. The lawsuit has not been filed.
“Native politics aren’t imagined to divide the neighborhood,” Norris mentioned in an interview with The Texas Tribune. “We’ve a bunch of leaders hell-bent on dividing us.”
In an announcement, Joven defended the council’s motion with out offering a cause for the 2 terminations.
“The residents of Odessa voted for change within the November election, and nearly all of our Metropolis Council and myself are onboard with persevering with to maneuver our neighborhood ahead,” he mentioned. “The Council is dedicated to constantly bettering each side of the Metropolis. After in depth evaluate, the Council decided one of these change would require an adjustment within the day-to-day management of the Metropolis.”
The Ector County Republican Get together didn’t reply to requests for remark. In a previous interview with native media, celebration chair Tisha Crow mentioned she was excited that Odessa could be “represented by a brand new metropolis council majority consisting of conservative God-fearing Republican patriots.”
Hannah Horick, the chair for the Ector County Democratic Get together, mentioned there at the moment are severe considerations about whether or not this was a great transfer for Odessa, and even authorized.
“When these substantial modifications occur, in live performance with native Republican management together with precinct chairs and a county chair, it is arduous to not marvel if there are blatant violations of the Open Conferences Act,” Horick mentioned. “Or simply efforts that may skirt the letter of the legislation.”
Whereas Horick works to get Democrats elected, he says partisanship shouldn’t be in metropolis authorities as a result of it shifts native focus into nationwide tradition wars. One current instance, she mentioned: Odessa grew to become a “sanctuary metropolis for the unborn” final month, regardless of the Supreme Court docket putting down Roe v. Wade in June and Texas having one of the vital restrictive bans on abortion within the nation.
Joven tried to go the ordinance in January 2021, however the three council members declined, noting that it was not a metropolis subject and there have been different priorities. Joven tried that August to get a particular election on the matter however was rejected once more. The ordinance grew to become considerably of a marketing campaign promise throughout this yr’s election, with at the least one newly elected council member, Chris Hanie, saying it might be a prime precedence in the event that they had been elected.
In a vote of 5-1, with one abstention, the brand new Metropolis Council handed the ordinance throughout their second assembly.
“To me, that’s such a mirrored image of partisanship and never a mirrored image of what is within the metropolis’s greatest pursuits and our locations,” Horick mentioned. “We see a lot of that underneath this mayor’s management and the management of some members of the council.”
Horick mentioned Odessa has change into extra politicized underneath Joven, who was the primary Hispanic mayor of Odessa.
“We have seen a partisan and divided metropolis authorities since he took workplace in late 2020,” Horick mentioned. “It is no shock to me that, now that they’ve secured extra votes on this bloc of Republicans, that they’d go and attempt to make a considerable change.”
Editor’s be aware: An earlier model of this text contained an announcement that was purportedly from Odessans for Moral Management. The assertion was despatched from a parody Fb account and has been deleted from the story.
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This text initially appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/12/16/odessa-city-council-fired-employees-republican-party/.
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