Sunday, May 13, 2007
Editorial: Blacksburg's big-box whodunit
Town officials should reveal who messed up advertising Ordinance 1450.
From the RoundTable blog
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Passions are running high in Blacksburg over a possible big-box retailer, and the town is not doing itself any favors being coy about who erred in advertising an ordinance designed to limit such development.
Ordinance 1450 is a darling with big-box opponents. It would require special council approval of new retail buildings 80,000 square feet or larger.
The town planned to run it past the planning commission on May 1 and then send it to the council for a vote on May 8.
That schedule fell apart when someone at town hall flubbed state rules on advertising such official action. As a result, a vote was delayed until the end of the month.
Officials say a staff member filling in for someone on vacation made the mistake. Town Manager Marc Verniel has declined to identify who exactly it was.
These sorts of things happen. It's unfortunate that this time it involved a high-profile ordinance, but the town was right to delay action. The advertising requirement exists to protect the public from government that would do its business without oversight.
The mistake is keeping secret the identity of the person responsible. One can understand Verniel's commendable desire to protect one of his staffers from the expected public venom for an innocent error, but secretiveness fuels conspiracy theories and resentment.
Without a full accounting of who did what, people fired up about a big-box store can only speculate. At last week's town council meeting, a number of citizens posited that the delay really occurred in order to clear the way for developers.
Coming clean would not calm those who wish to find conspiracies, but it would enable more rationally inclined citizens to judge fairly.
If there is nothing to this, Blacksburg residents should be willing to put aside this incident and refocus their attention on the real debate. They should not call, as some already have, for the firing of a staff member who made an honest mistake under unusual circumstances.
