Many communities in America have them.
They’re gadflies. Blowhards. People who raise a ruckus just to be heard. Maybe they like the sound of their own voices. I don’t know.
An individual has surfaced over yonder, in Tucumcari, N.M., who I guess qualifies as a gadfly. She doesn’t like a proposed new city ordinance that puts some restrictions on garage, rummage or estate sales in the city.
She’s threatening to recall Tucumcari city commissioners over their insistence on approving the city ordinance.
But here’s the ridiculous aspect of it.
The gadfly, Dena Mericle, doesn’t like in Tucumcari. She lives in rural Quay County. She doesn’t have any proverbial skin in the game. The ordinance doesn’t affect her. Her garage sale restrictions are set by the county commission.
According to my colleague Thomas Garcia, writing for the Quay County Sun, Mericle said this during a public hearing: “The commissioners are elected by us, the public, to serve our best interest and the interest of the city.”
She then used the R-word — “recall” — to make her point. “If the commission passes this ordinance, then I hate to resort to this, but I’ve collected well over 300 signatures … for a recall of the commissioners.”
Tucumcari Mayor Ruth Ann Litchfield told Garcia that commissioners “often make decisions that are unpopular. If we give in to the threat of recall, then anytime there is an item or ordinance that someone doesn’t like, they will resort to that tactic.”
Earth to Dena: You are entitled to express your opinion, but you are not entitled — as a practical matter — to spearhead a recall drive in a community in which you have no vested interest.
Geez, I hate recalls. They should be done only in the case of malfeasance. Tucumcari commissioners are acting totally within their purview by regulating a legal activity inside the city’s corporate boundaries.
As such, commissioners are answerable only to those who pay the bills, the residents of the city — who also would be financially liable for the cost of a recall election.
This kind of outside intrusion isn’t unique, of course, to Tucumcari.
Do you recall the Amarillo municipal referendum this past November in which residents were asked whether to approve construction of a multipurpose event venue in its downtown district? The referendum passed in a close vote.
One of the main foes of the MPEV was a guy who lived in Canyon, about 15 miles south of Amarillo. But there he was, raising Cain at City Council meetings objecting to the MPEV.
I get that he — as is Mericle — is entitled to speak his mind. If he didn’t like the MPEV, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution grants him the right to speak out against it.
However, these local issues ought to be decided and argued publicly by those who have a tangible stake in their outcome. That’s not a legal requirement, of course. It just makes sense.
The rest of us are perched in the proverbial peanut gallery, where our arguments and objections will get all the attention they deserve … which isn’t much.
