Wisdom of Crowds

Well, well, well.

Maybe, just maybe, the Wisdom of Crowds theory may prevail in Farmers Branch, Texas after all.

Seems some common sense folks in Farmers Branch came together and organized a petition campaign against their town's recently passed ordinance that forbids landlords from renting apartments to unauthorized immigrants (a matter I wrote about last month here). The petition, Let the Voters Decide, calls for a referendum vote by the citizens on whether to overturn that ordinance or not. According to JobsAnger Blogspot, the petition has over 1,400 signatures, twice as many as needed to force a vote on the matter.

Patrick McGee at the Star-Telgram reported yesterday that according to city officials, Farmers Branch now has 15 days to confirm that the signatures are from registered voters and that if so, the city council will have to either repeal the ordinance or schedule a referendum vote for May 12.

City Councilman Tim O'Hare, that town's principle anti-immigrant pusher, however, is not worried about the outcome. He told the Houston Chronicle that if it came to an election on this question, "I don't think it will be close."

The city council could legally repeal the ordinance without going through the expense of a vote, which would be the right thing for them to do, of course. But, given their unanimous support for the ordinance in the first place, I just don't think there's enough decency among the council members to do the right thing. What it looks like they will do is to spend lots of taxpayer dollars on legal fees defending this hare-brained ordinance. It's scheduled to go into effect on January 12, but several groups have indicated they may challenge it in court, including the Mexican America Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

A court will probably get the first crack at deciding this issue. But there's another just action that the wisdom-of-the-crowds theory should be given an opportunity to prove itself in: a Recall Los Pendejos petition. Every member of that Farmers Branch city council should be removed from office for wrongful conduct. And if the many are really smarter than than few, that's exactly what will happen.