The N.C. House has given final approval to a bill that would once again make school board elections in Forsyth County partisan.
House Bill 523 passed 69 to 48 on Tuesday. The bill will now move to the N.C. Senate.
The bill would make races for the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education partisan, and change the election cycle for the Winston-Salem City Council, moving elections to coincide with presidential elections.
Forsyth County representatives voted along party lines on the bill.
Republicans Dale Folwell, Larry Brown and Bill McGee voted in favor; Democrats Larry Womble and Earline Parmon voted against.
Folwell, Brown and McGee introduced the bill.
"The community is pretty tired of all the shenanigans that have taken place with people messing around with the local school board elections," said Folwell, who represents the 74th district. "It just puts everything back to where it was."
In 2009, the General Assembly passed a bill to make the school board race nonpartisan. The bill, introduced by Womble and Parmon, was promoted by CHANGE, Communities Helping All Neighbors Gain Empowerment.
CHANGE said the nonpartisan race would encourage new candidates to run.
The group also pointed out that of 115 local school boards in North Carolina, 100 are nonpartisan.
Steve Boyd, a member of CHANGE, said in an email that the organization was not pleased that the new bill had passed the House. Boyd also said a return to partisan races would reduce the number of candidates who could run for the board.
"We are very disappointed that some in the Forsyth delegation in the state House have pushed a bill that reintroduces party politics into the election of school board members," Boyd wrote. "In the first nonpartisan, 2010 election, more candidates — 26 — ran than in any race in the last 20 years. We need campaigns focused on issues vital to our children's education, not on party brands."
In the 2010 election, all the incumbents who ran were re-elected.
The bill also would change city council elections from odd years to even ones, meaning that city council elections in Winston-Salem would be held the same year as presidential elections, starting in 2016. Currently, the council and mayor are elected in odd years after a presidential election year.
The most recent Winston-Salem City Council election was in 2009. Under the bill approved by the House, the current eight members would serve out their four-year terms, with the next elections in 2013. The council members elected in 2013 would then serve three years, rather than four, and elections would be held again in 2016.
The bill originally called for council elections to be moved starting with next year's presidential election, but the Winston-Salem City Council and Mayor Allen Joines asked that the date be postponed to 2016.
"We felt like it just wasn't appropriate to take a year off an existing term," Joines said.
Joines said the change would save about $150,000 a year in election costs.
"We've always been concerned about voter turnout in municipal elections, so certainly this should address that a little bit or a lot," he said. "My only concern is that being on a presidential election year, where you have the president and governor, that a local race would tend to get somewhat lost in the shuffle. We'll have to work extra hard to get the local issues out there in front of the voters."
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