COUNCIL SET TO ESTABLISH ZONES

Now that Cape Girardeau voters have shown they want their council members elected from zones, the challenge to the Cape Girardeau City Council and staff is to implement a legal, feasible plan.

Voters Tuesday approved by a 2-1 margin a measure to amend the city charter to change from at-large council elections to having council members elected from six zones. The mayor will continue to be elected at large.

The change was initiated by a petition that secured sufficient signatures to place the question on Tuesday's ballot.

Although city officials have questioned whether the charter amendment will be legal as approved, the council apparently is prepared to do whatever is necessary to implement zone representation.

Councilman David Limbaugh, who was opposed to the change, said after Tuesday's election that whatever legal questions exist must be resolved because "the voters have spoken."

Three other council members Mayor Gene Rhodes and Councilmen Doug Richards and Melvin Gateley earlier voted against a resolution to oppose zone representation because they said the matter "should be left to the people to decide."

City Attorney Warren Wells said Thursday that the council likely will discuss the best way to implement the proposal at a meeting "to be held soon."

Wells refused to comment on possible options the city might have to satisfy legal demands that zone representation assure "one-man, one-vote" representation.

"I think at this point it's probably best not to comment on the options," said Wells. "The council can develop their own options by discussion and reaching some consensus as a group," he said.

"By my laying out what I think the options could be, it tends to define it, and that's not really my role. There are a number of options, including implementing it as it is."

Wells said that it appears the measure, as approved which established zone boundaries by combining existing voting wards without regard to the number of eligible voters in those wards won't stand up to legal scrutiny. But, he said, no one can know for sure without researching the issue and compiling the actual numbers of eligible voters in the zones.

"The county clerk provided numbers for the petition based on registered voters and, as I understand the law, they have to be equally divided by eligible voters," Wells said. "That's an area of concern, but we don't actually have the numbers to say whether it's legal or not."

If the measure is implemented and turns out to be illegal, the election results could be invalidated. Also, as it stands now, every time zone boundaries would be adjusted, the city charter would have to be amended, which would require a vote of the people.

Although Wells refused to comment on what the city could do to correct that inconvenience, one option would be to do what St. Joseph, a city of about 70,000, did when it changed from at-large to zone representation in 1989.

Also a home rule city government, St. Joseph voters approved an amendment to the city charter that established five council districts from which council members are elected. Voters also elect three additional council members and the mayor at large.

John Boeh, St. Joseph's city attorney since 1988, said Friday the city's charter was amended so that voters aren't required to approve boundary changes.

One option for Cape Girardeau would be to resubmit to the voters a charter amendment that would set up zone representation but enable the council to make boundary adjustments through ordinance and avoid special elections each time to change the charter.

"We made it part of the charter amendment that it would be reviewed by ordinance to make sure there was a one-man, one-vote situation," Boeh said. "Any time we have a big shift in population or growth in a particular area of the city, we can adjust our boundaries through city ordinance, which keeps from tying our hands too much."

The city also must review district boundaries following each federal census, Boeh said. Other adjustments can be made based on "reasonably accurate population estimates," he said.

Boeh said the arrangement seems to be working in St. Joseph. He said one of the complaints of full at-large representation was that too many council members were from the same part of the city the same complaint that's been lodged by proponents of zone representation in Cape Girardeau.

"I think that's one of the problems of an at-large system," Boeh said. "All the council can come from a relatively small geographical area, and there's the perception that people aren't being adequately represented."

Still, the zone representation measure in Cape Girardeau will have to overcome legal and practical questions before it can be implemented. And the issue of equal representation isn't the only legal challenge associated with the proposal.

Former City Councilman Curt Smith last week filed a complaint against the committee that mounted a campaign on behalf of the ballot initiative for city zones. Smith charged the group with several violations of state campaign-finance disclosure laws.

The complaint was filed with the secretary of state's office and currently is before the Campaign Review Board, a non-partisan committee that issues rulings on such complaints.

But Marion Sinnett, administrator of the board, said the board's ruling won't affect the outcome of Tuesday's vote.

"As the complaints come in, we contact the parties involved, interview them and gather records on the case," Sinnett said. "That information then is presented to the board, which has only one option: If the board feels there's a violation, they notify the county prosecutor."

Sinnett said violation of the campaign-finance laws constitute a misdemeanor crime. He admitted that most county prosecutors don't consider campaign-finance violations "a big priority."

"An awful lot of that type of stuff does come through, and it gets to the prosecutor and it is not a high priority," Sinnett said. "The prosecuting attorney can handle it a multitude of ways.

"A lot of times they give them a slap on the wrist and they have to pay a small fine," he said. "Other times they might require them to file the necessary reports late or amend them, and sometimes they can fully prosecute the case. It really runs the gamut.

"But it might lay there six or eight months if the prosecutor's working on a murder case or something. It's not something that's usually a high priority."

Morley Swingle, Cape Girardeau County prosecuting attorney, said that the prosecutor rarely becomes involved in campaign-finance law violations.

"Unless it's a real egregious violation, you're not going to want to put somebody in jail over a campaign-finance disclosure violation," Swingle said. "If the secretary of state's office asks me to review it, I will, but it's the sort of thing that's very low on everyone's list of priorities."

Swingle said a serious violation would include a politician who failed to disclose campaign contributions from organized crime figures.

He said that although he's reviewed some campaign-disclosure violations, he's never brought criminal charges in such cases.