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Okeh, City Council, but conceptually correct: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/us/20arkansas.html Arkansas Town Draws a Line on Clubs By ROBBIE BROWN Published: July 19, 2011 Be careful before starting a Boy Scout troop in Gould, Ark. Or a Harry Potter fan club. Or a baseball team. Readers’ Comments Share your thoughts. Post a Comment » The City Council adopted an ordinance last week making it... [more]

Okeh, City Council, but conceptually correct: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/us/20arkansas.html Arkansas Town Draws a Line on Clubs By ROBBIE BROWN Published: July 19, 2011 Be careful before starting a Boy Scout troop in Gould, Ark. Or a Harry Potter fan club. Or a baseball team. Readers’ Comments Share your thoughts. Post a Comment » The City Council adopted an ordinance last week making it illegal to form any kind of group without its permission. That is a clear violation of the Constitution, legal scholars agree. But it is also a sign of just how nasty politics has gotten in Gould, a farming town of 1,100 some 70 miles southeast of Little Rock, where members of the Council have struggled with a local political group that seeks to influence how the town is governed. The mayor, Earnest Nash Jr., also happens to be a member of the political group, the Gould Citizens Advisory Council. Even by the standards of small-town dramas, Gould’s situation is bleak. The town faces nearly $300,000 in unpaid taxes, and there have been frequent clashes among the mayor, the advisory group and the City Council over how to repay it. Those clashes — and a perception by the City Council that the citizens’ group is seeking too much influence — led to the ban on new organizations. “I’ve seen some humdingers, but never any ordinance like this,” said Mark Hayes, general counsel for the Arkansas Municipal League, an organization for towns and cities. “This is certainly one for the books.” And it is not the only ordinance bringing unfavorable attention to Gould. Last week, the Council overrode the mayor’s veto of two other controversial measures. One required that the citizens advisory council cease to exist. The other made it illegal for the mayor to meet with “any organization in any location” either “inside or outside Gould city limits” without the Council’s permission. The advisory council, which calls itself a nonpartisan group that educates voters and raises money for public causes, says it will continue its work. But the City Council, in one ordinance, accused the group of “causing confusion and discourse among the citizens” by harshly criticizing local officials at public meetings. As a result, the City Council said, “No new organizations shall be allowed to exist in the City of Gould without approval from a majority of the City Council.” The ordinances were so unusual that one television news anchor, Donna Terrell of Fox 16 News in Little Rock, blurted out on air, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Political feuds become especially heated in places “where everybody knows everyone,” Ms. Terrell said in an interview. “You start to see a lot of emotion where sometimes in a larger city people tend to mask their emotions.” The ordinances were passed last month, then vetoed by the mayor, and then overridden by the Council on July 12. The mayor said he would go to jail rather than stop meeting with local groups or withdrawing his support from the advisory council. “These ordinances are blatantly unconstitutional,” Mr. Nash said. “For the most part, people are just ignoring them. They are continuing to meet in groups. I am continuing to talk with citizens.” On Monday, the City Council, too, began backing away. Sonya Farley, a councilwoman, said she would probably vote to rewrite the ordinances with more constitutionally sensitive wording. But Ms. Farley said the Council was frustrated with the mayor’s tendency to hold community meetings without advertising them to the entire town. And she said the Gould Citizens Advisory Council had spent public money without serving the public good. “This ordinance was worded wrong,” she said. “It wasn’t written to stop people from meeting. It was written to treat everybody fairly.” In the meantime, Mr. Nash said he would continue to do his job exactly as he always had. “Technically, what I’m doing I guess is illegal,” he said. “But if I’m going to get arrested for meeting with citizens or letting them form their own groups, that’s a pretty good reason to go to jail.” [less]