Houston council votes to add two seats later this year

The Houston City Council will get two new seats this year, the most fundamental change to the top tier of municipal government since term limits were imposed two decades ago.

The council voted Wednesday to add a 16th and 17th seat, with members chosen by voters in the yet-to-be-drawn districts in November.

The council agreed when census numbers were released last month that the city's shifting population necessitated a redrawing of the map of council districts. But members had been split on whether to expand.

The city charter calls for the council to add two seats when Houston's population reaches 2.1 million. A 1979 referendum put that provision into the charter to codify an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice aimed at giving minority groups a stronger voice at the ballot box.

The 2010 Census count came up 549 people short. A city consultant concluded that the census had missed a spot — actually several spots - and Mayor Annise Parker reported that the count should have been 2,100,017.

Expansion opponents seized on the census number as proof that two new seats were not needed. Underlying the public discussion of whether Houston had hit the mark were elements of party affiliation, council-versus-mayor politics, budgetary considerations and defense of existing districts' turf.

"I think most people would applaud us for trying to keep the size of government down," said Councilman Oliver Pennington, who unsuccessfully tried to introduce an amendment declaring the population was short of 2.1 million.

In a city where Latinos comprise 44 percent of the overall population, but occupy just two of 15 council seats, race and ethnicity also loomed over the discussion.

"This is a majority minority city. We do not have a majority minority council," Councilwoman Jolanda Jones said, calling race and ethnicity "the big elephant in this room."

The city faces a $130 million budget gap for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Some council members protested the city could ill afford the approximately $800,000 necessary to staff two more council offices and the $800,000 in renovation costs to shoehorn offices for Districts K and J into the City Hall Annex.

"You really can't put a price on representation. This is really about fulfilling our commitment to the citizens of Houston who voted for that charter amendment in 1979," Parker said after the meeting. "It's fulfilling our commitment in the consent decree (with the Department of Justice) that actually led to that charter amendment, and it's fulfilling our commitments under the Voting Rights Act to make sure that we have representation that fairly meets the needs of all of the residents of this great city."

Parker calls it obligation

Parker has always presented her plan to add two seats as a legal obligation for the city, not a personal initiative. Still, the 13-1 vote to expand the council represented a remarkable transformation from near-mutiny a week ago, when several council members challenged her numbers, snapped back at her suggestion that they cut their office budgets to fund the expansion, and insisted that two new seats would not improve representation for the city's residents. Only Councilman Mike Sullivan voted against the ordinance Wednesday.

The city has been reporting a population in excess of 2.1 million for at least five years. Two years ago, minority voters filed a lawsuit seeking to compel the city to add the seats. Failing to honor the 1979 agreement, the suit argued, represented a change in voting under the Voting Rights Act that required Department of Justice approval. An appeals court set the suit aside to give Houston a chance to add seats after the census, but did not dismiss it.

'Significant milestone'

Plaintiffs' lawyer Vidal Martinez threatened the City Council at a special meeting Tuesday that he would reactivate the suit if the panel did not move to expand. He celebrated Wednesday's action.

"It is not just a significant milestone for the Latino community, but also for our great city in ensuring timely and relevant services to the citizens of Houston by reducing the huge numbers that each district has grown to over the decades, while at the same time increasing political representation to huge segments of our community who haven't had it yet," Martinez said.

chris.moran@chron.com