From the Evansville Courier & Press:
The tremendous failure of a proposal to merge the governments of Evansville and Vanderburgh County in last November’s referendum stuck a fork in that idea at least for now.
On the heels of that victory, opponents of a city-county merger are now trying to make it much harder for one to take place at any point in the future.
They are pushing Senate Bill 343, which would require a “rejection threshold” for any such merger efforts. It’s a tricky phrase, but in practice, it would hand far more power to voters who live in the county but not the city and therefore would make mergers far less likely.
Here’s what “rejection threshold” means:
Last year, Vanderburgh County held a single, countywide vote. Those who lived inside Evansville’s city limits had just as much voting power as those who lived outside the city, and whatever the county’s full set of voters decided would go.
With a “rejection threshold,” there would instead be two votes. Any proposed merger would have to win the approval, separately, of the city’s voters and the county’s voters.
...
With 67 percent of Vanderburgh County’s residents voting against a city-county merger in November 2012, the area is unlikely to see another serious pursuit of such a merger any time soon. Lawmakers, though, could make that task even more daunting than last fall’s election returns suggest.
See the full article here:
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2013/mar/30/bradner-column/
