Not another recall

Not another Baker City Council recall.

Please.

We don’t need it.

A recall is far more likely to hurt this city than to help it.

We hope, then, that former Councilor Dick Haynes, who is running ads in this newspaper seeking help with a campaign to recall Councilor Milo Pope, gets so few responses that he decides not to take the next steps of filing a recall petition and gathering the approximately 605 signatures needed to force a recall election.

Haynes is upset because Pope has expressed several times over the past nine months his belief that four of his colleagues botched things when they voted, on June 9, 2009, to fire City Manager Steve Brocato.

We understand Haynes’ complaint.

We, too, find Pope’s predilection for criticizing his fellow councilors over Brocato’s firing occasionally tiresome.

A majority of city voters, after all, made it clear last fall that they don’t share Pope’s dissatisfaction.

On Oct. 26 voters decided, by more than 2-to-1 margins, not to recall Mayor Dennis Dorrah and Councilor Beverly Calder, two of the four councilors who voted to fire Brocato.

Pope supported that recall campaign.

Haynes states in his ads that “It is obvious we can’t have quality and productive government in Baker City Hall with Milo Pope on the City Council.”

But we’ve seen no evidence that Pope’s statements about the Brocato firing have hampered the City Council’s ability to go about its business.

There have, perhaps, been more 4-3 or 4-2 votes over the past several months than is typical. But that’s how representative government works (usually) — decisions are made by a majority vote.

Our opinion about recalling city councilors is precisely what it was last fall when the ballots went out on Calder and Dorrah.

Recalls are appropriate in cases when a councilor commits a crime, or is guilty of malfeasance.

Pope has done neither.

Starting a recall campaign, with its inevitable yard signs and letters to the editor and taking of sides, would be vastly more disruptive — not only among councilors but throughout the city — than Pope’s periodic remarks about June 9, 2009.

If our goal as a community is to concentrate on the future — and it should be — then there’s nothing to be gained, and potentially much to be lost, by looking back to last fall’s recall.