With their dreams of swift legislative action in Richmond quashed, proponents of Arlington governance changes say they’re not backing down in an effort to achieve their goals.
“We need to regroup,” former County Board member John Vihstadt said during a March 12 discussion of the matter at the Arlington County Civic Federation.
That body has over the past three years been the driving force behind a number of proposals that would make changes – evolutionary or revolutionary, depending on your view – to the governance structure in place in Arlington since the early 1930s.
Among the proposals? Expanding the County Board and School Board from five to at least seven members, having board chairs serve more than the current one-year rotations, and changing the every-year nature of local-government elections.
Del. Patrick Hope (D-Arlington) introduced legislation delegating state authority to Arlington (either through its elected officials or voters) to make such changes. But the measure got punted to 2025 after County Board leaders pounced on the proposal as premature.
“I’m personally baffled,” said Dave Schutz, who heads the Civic Federation’s change-of-governance subcommittee, speaking of the County Board’s chair and vice chair, Libby Garvey and Takis Karantonis, traveling to Richmond early in the session and killing the measure for 2024.
Schutz said he was disappointed at both the reaction of the county leadership and the feeling that, in the end, “we got nothing” from the General Assembly session.
Garvey and Karantonis “should be asked to explain themselves,” Civic Federation delegate Dave Hughes said at the March 12 gathering.
But in reality, Garvey already has explained herself. In January, she told the GazetteLeader she was “dismayed” that Hope introduced the measure before there could be a countywide discussion on the parameters of change that should be embraced.
“It isn’t something we have worked with the community on,” said Garvey, who suggested in January to the GazetteLeader that County Board members had made clear to Hope that they didn’t want any such bill introduced for the 2024 session.
At the March 16 County Board meeting, one of the candidates seeking to succeed the retiring-in-December Garvey on the body (Julie Farnam) complained at the public-comment period that the board was being anti-democratic by not supporting the governance-change measure. Garvey reiterated her past view that the issue requires more community engagement.
“It’s an important topic that needs to be well-discussed,” Garvey said. (No other County Board members opted to offer a response on Farman’s comments.)
Supporters of governance change argue that the county government was offered but declined the opportunity to play any role during the two-year period when the Civic Federation mulled proposals for change and shepherded a resolution on the topic through the body. Those on the other side have countered that while the Civic Federation has a role to play in community conversations, it overreached in bypassing a largely unsuspecting broader public and going directly to the legislature.
(The validity of the package also was called into question when Civic Federation delegates last year voted on it. Despite passage, it picked up a much larger number of “no” votes than boosters anticipated.)
Vihstadt, the last non-Democrat to serve (2015-18) on the County Board and one of those who helped develop the Civic Federation’s governance recommendation, said he was not particularly stunned that the county’s ruling Democratic oligarchy is in no rush to support structural governance changes.
“It’s an almost universal truism – folks in power embrace the status quo,” he said.
From the end of Reconstruction until 1932, Arlington was governed by a three-person board of supervisors whose members occupied individual districts and had wide powers over a relatively unpopulated community.
In 1930, the General Assembly permitted Arlington voters to change their form of government to a five-member County Board with an appointed county manager. The first County Board members were elected in 1932 and the governance structure largely has remained intact ever since.
Vihstadt noted that when those changes were implemented, Arlington’s population was about 30,000. Today, it is closer to 240,000.
