Predictably, the Port of Bellingham has signaled they have no inclination to hew to the public's interest or play fair.  I am ashamed to admit that we, who produced the now-completely-fubared petition for port reform, all vaguely suspected this could happen, but did nothing to prevent it. What chumps!  We've known the port for decades.  They are used to abusing power and will hold out to the end, lying, cheating, and looting. We've watched them give millions to their friends and employers - with legal impunity! They have again and again exploited their presumption of validity to take advantage, to sow doubt, confusion, and create hollow diversions against the public's interests.  They've done it again!

The port was moved to action after weeks of facing crowds upset over the firing of the new port director, Charlie Sheldon.  Sheldon had quickly become a favorite of port tenants and was rapidly moving the port toward job-creating, a traditional port activity.  But port insiders - led by Scott Walker and Port Attorney Frank Chmelik - rankled at Sheldon's threat to their real-estate privatization schemes.  They literally conspired to have Sheldon resign or be fired.  They used a well-known and illegal form of 'serial meeting' to avoid public notice and take action swiftly and decisively against Sheldon.  Public reaction at the normally quiet and poorly attended port meetings was intense and sustained.  It finally levered the port into adopting a resolution referring the citizen initiative for two additional at-large commissioners to the ballot. 

But the port was really only pretending to assist their constituency in putting the issue on the ballot. They were really just shying away from public scrutiny.  They adopted the citizens' initiative as an expedient, but Commissioner Walker later realized he had missed some important chances to skew the results toward failure.  He didn't waste any time getting busy with Interim Port Director Rob Fix, attorney Chmelik, and Ken Oplinger from the Chamber of Commerce to engineer another coup.  And the fIx was in!

At their last meeting, without public notice, they intentionally reconsidered and rescinded their approval. Now they have said they will put something on the ballot, but at this point no one knows what.  They have discussed making it a two part question: First, whether to expand the commission, and a second choice between either at-large or district positions.  Of course, districts are not what the initiative was seeking, but making any ballot question more complex usually hurts its chance of success.  Probably the port will try to do as much of that as possible.  I have already shown how their scheme is untenable because with separate parts, it can fail even if it succeeds.

Not everyone didn't know what was going to happen. Oplinger appeared and spoke just before I did.  Somehow, he not only had time to prepare a speech, but he already knew enough to promote the port's action in advance of its being discussed - without it even being on the agenda!  Wow! That irritated me even more than their illegal meeting, and I let them have it.

Needless to say, they have thrown a near fatal wrench in the works of the petition.  We probably should have just kept gathering signatures, but we had learned that change is rarely done by petition and is usually sponsored by the commission. No one wanted to spend their summer gathering signatures.  So, with the delay and with the port insisting they will put something on the ballot, the "will of the people" is now firmly mired in their muck.  But the exercise may have at least outlined the bounds of the next fight.

Commissioner Jorgensen had a hard time voting for the original resolution because he wondered whether districts would better prevent Bellingham from controlling the commission.  Avid readers will remember when attorney Chmelik, pretending to read from the statues, insisted that electing at-large positions would forever foreclose the district option.  A flat, bald-faced lie, but nearly good enough to torpedo the issue on the first go-round.  Had former State Senator Harriet Spanel not risen out of turn to address Jorgensen on the brink of his vote, the issue would have failed.  Now, Fix, Chmelik and Walker have fired their second torpedo and probably sunk the petition's question.  I have no doubt they are loading more torpedos as we speak, to wreak as much wreckage upon the public's process as possible.

OK.  So representation is an issue?  Let's talk about it.  Let's agree on some aims.  Folks promoting the now rescinded resolution spoke to bigger issues: greater population, wanting better decisions and better policy outcomes.  That's fine.  But we need to pin down these commissioners' priorities.  Then we can talk about how to achieve them.  It's pretty simple because the issue of electoral structure and representation has been studied to death in sociology, political science, and even mathematics - it's a favorite topic of game theorists.  We don't have to guess at what has the best chance of accomplishing what.  Human government has been experimenting with this for a long time.

So here is a start.  I'm not getting too much reply from my commissioners these days, so hopefully they will volunteer to address the points and make their case, or citizens like you will need to bone up and pressure them to respond. Herewith follows a synopsis (by no means exhaustive) from a wide selection of literature:
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Reasons for Districts

1. Minority Representation - Minority Representation has been the traditional reason for establishing voting districts. Districts can increase the chance of minority representation if populations are concentrated geographically and if boundaries are not gerrymandered to offset the effect. Districts do not help if populations are low and hinder chances if populations are dispersed.

2. Cost - It costs less to run a district-only campaign. That can broaden the field of candidates.  However, this advantage is eliminated when, as we do, the general elections are countywide.

3. Fairer service delivery - In a typical city setting, district arrangements have been used to assure that road repairs, parks, libraries, and other services - even police and fire protection - are fairly distributed in the community.  This advantage is less applicable to the type of services the port provides.  This district advantage is also subject to abuse.  Hence, the ward system has become somewhat synonymous with graft and corruption. 

4. Better access - Diverse interests often live in similar geographic areas.  But some groups vote more, are more readily organized, and can thus be more influential.  Districts are sometimes seen as a way to give all community interests a more equal opportunity in government.  The argument for this advantage is less compelling given the type of interests community members are likely to have in a port authority.  Districts are also seen as limiting the potential for control by candidate "slates," but this concern is mainly relevant in relation to completely at-large systems.
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Reasons For At-Large

1. Minority Representation - When minority populations are disperse, at-large elections can improve chances for minority populations to gather in support of a candidate.  For our port authority, at-large positions will likely improve minority representation.

2. Campaign issues - At-large campaigns tend to focus elections on broader, longer-term issues affecting the entire community.  District elections can tend toward issues relevant to smaller segments of the community.  At-large elections may thus help broaden debate, build a sense of more cohesive community and help reduce oppositional wrangling over minor details.  At-large positions are seen to help "bring out the ombudsman in representatives."

3. Constituency Confusion - Voters are already inundated with a multitude of nestled boundaries: state, county, port, city and myriad other fire, water, cemetery, school, and diking, etc. districts.  Adding at-large positions is simpler and eliminates additional boundaries.  People are less likely to vote when they don't understand.  Additional districts are unlikely to improve voter turnout.

4. Economic Development - When representatives see themselves as stewards of a district, competition between districts for economic prospects can increase.  At-large systems often result in less competitive and more comprehensive approaches to development.  In fact, research often cites the "Law of 1/n" which states that economic inefficiency increases with the number of districts.

5. Voter and Candidate Participation - At-large elections tend to generate more candidates for office and greater voter turnout. Since at-large positions are available to any candidate, the opportunity to run for office is significantly increased.  Also, incumbents are more likely to become entrenched in districts.  More candidates and better turnouts due to at-large elections help offset this tendency.

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Mixed systems, including both district and at-large positions, such as proposed by the petition and the now rescinded resolution, are the theoretical favorites.  Paul Edelman, Professor of Mathematics and Law at Vanderbilt University, has used game theory to show the best policy outcomes are most likely to occur in a mixed system with at-large representation approximating the square root of the total number of positions.  Gee, that's exactly what the petition proposed!

In the same vein, students of political science will be familiar with the "Law of 1/n," wherein economic inefficiency immutably increases in relation to the number of districts in a jurisdiction.  Of all public agencies, it seems like the port would be most interested in avoiding economic inefficiency.

Will the port succeed in institutionalizing parochialism, reducing representation and allowing for greater individual control of the commission?  Eventually we will need to decide whether we want a commission that can be effectively ruled by one strong member and is subject to "pork-barrel" politics, or if we want a more circumspect, comprehensive, and cohesive government that is more likely to achieve good policy outcomes for the community as a whole. 

That's where the petition was aimed.  It's what the port's rescinded resolution intended.  Now, we need to get the port commissioners to address what they are after and how what they're doing helps.  And everyone will need to do their part.  The port is otherwise expert at marginalizing and eliminating their opponents.

And here's some reading to get you started: