Lynch at Large

There are some outstanding programs in the WAI Radio archives from this past week, and they generally stick around for over a month. Mayor Jim Dailey (seen sending messages via Blackberry from the studios) visited Thursday as did potential gubernatorial candidate Bill Halter. Friday morning it was AARP's Mark Johnson with the COMPLETE rundown on the Medicare drug benefit.

Halter danced around the questions but he did so with such skill and grace, the coaching was obvious - which is not necessarily a bad thing. Give it a listen and you sill read between the lines that he is running. You will probably also get the general impression that he was sent by Bill Clinton to save the race for a candidate with some possibility of beating Asa Hutchinson. Halter certainly says the right things and he has lots of political polish.

I sometimes wonder, does Jim Dailey only make sense when he talks with me? Dailey said straight out AGAIN that he favors changing Little Rock's form of government to a mayor council style, such as most Arkansas cities already use. North Little Tock has this kind of government and it is designed to give the mayor both authority and accountability. The Little Rock version is run by a city manager. This is set up by state law. Voters need to change the form of government in an election.

Let me be more specific about what is wrong with the city administrator format, which is used in Little Rock. The main failing is the FOUR "at large" positions. Three directors and the mayor run citywide and that means they need MONEY for advertising and promotion. Raising campaign contributions means getting into bed with special interests. West Little Rock has two ward seats and those would generally be taken by somebody who is sympathetic to real estate developers and financial interests. Southwest Little Rock and the east side are outnumbered.

In the mayor council type of local government, there are none of the flaky "at large" spots. Everybody runs from a section of the city and it is not as expensive to be a candidate. It's "one man, one vote." Your vote counts as much as the real estate developer. Now, I ask you, is THAT a concept or what?

The people need to take back Little Rock city government. The only questions is, are the old money special interests ready to give up power? In a change of government campaign, they can be counted on to do what they have always done: LIE, LIE, LIE. I can only hope that Mayor Dailey will keep his word and run for another term on the platform of working to change Little Rock to a mayor-council form.

The interview is in the WAI Archives and we cover the recent story about raising the mayor's salary and giving the office more power. We get into several important areas. The "on demand" archives are free and WAI is linked in the left column.