Mayor Craig Fletcher, Vice Mayor Tracy Carroll and Councilwoman Pilar Turner surprised many Council watchers this week when they voted in favor of holding a referendum on the sale of Vero Electric.  Ironically, twice in the past six weeks all three council members voted against putting the final decision in the hands of city voters.

Did Carroll and Turner reverse themselves, abandoning firmly staked out positions in opposition to a referendum?  Fletcher is given to shifts in his thinking.  For example, has been alternately for and against a referendum, and alternately for and against looking into a partial sale.  Such course corrections, however, are out of character for Carroll and Turner.

Why their apparent change of heart?  Peal back a layer or two of doublespeak, and the one-word answer is clear.  Obfuscation!

The Council’s majority of three has repeatedly insisted that the past several elections and the Sept. 2011 lease referendum all served to adequately measure and express the public’s support for the sale.  Yet, Fletcher, Carroll and Turner are now proposing a referendum.  Especially given their previously stated opposition to giving the public the final say, their intention can only be to thwart a citizens’ initiative now underway to require voter approval before any of the city’s utilities can be sold.

Unlike the referendum idea Fletcher floated this week, the proposed Charter amendment will also require that any vote on a utility sale reference the corresponding sales agreement.  In short, the citizens’ initiative seeks to insure that voters will have a voice in key decisions impacting the future of the city.  Further, the proposed Charter amendment provides that all relevant information be fully disclosed no less than 30 days prior to a vote.

In contrast, Fletcher is calling for a referendum that will simply ask city voters if they want to sell the electric system.  The March vote Fletcher, Carroll and Turner are proposing not be predicating on any specific sales agreement.  The reason?  Obfuscation!

As with the Sept. 2011 referendum, which sought voter approval to lease the power plant, Fletcher’s yes-or-no referendum question again asks voters to agree to what amounts to a blank sales contract.  Not only will Fletcher’s referendum question fail to reference a final sales contract, since one will not exist at that time, it will leave city residents and taxpayers with an independently audited cost-benefit analysis of the sale upon which to make an informed decision.

Rather than bringing all relevant information into the sunshine, Fletcher’s yes-or-no referendum seems designed to derail the citizens’ initiative.  Councilman Jay Kramer described Fletcher’s proposal as “disingenuous.”  In Kramer’s view, Fletcher’s call for a simple yes-or-now, up-or-down vote on selling the electric system is hardly a genuine effort to be transparent with the public.

The referendum Fletcher, Carroll and Turner are proposing be held in March seems intended to deflect public support from the Charter initiative.  In the end, it will only serve to keep the final details of the sale screened from the public until after their cleaver yes-or-no referendum can be held.

Consider the imprudence of responding to a take-it-or-leave-it proposition from a prospective employer without first knowing the exact terms of employment.  The devil is in the details.  And it is precisely the details Fletcher, Carroll and Turner seem intent on keeping from the public.