Citizens in Outagamie County move to reduce county board size

According to this article from Gannett News Service there is an effort being made in Outagamie County to cut the size of its county board by half – from 36 to 18 members.

A political action committee known as Citizens for Responsible Government-Fox Valley is collecting signatures to put the issue on the April 3 ballot as a referendum question. To do so they must secure 6,453 valid signatures by Feb. 20. If they miss that deadline they still have 60 days in which to finish gathering the signatures, but the question would not make it on the ballot until April 2008, according to the article.

Fond du Lac voters have already successfully reduced the size of their county board and the issue had gotten messy and is currently tied up in litigation here in Winnebago County. It will be interesting to watch how the county board members in Outagamie County handle the citizen group’s efforts. Will supervisors allow the group to gather signatures and put the item on the ballot? Or will they play dirty pool and do an end-run around citizens as our county board did here in Winnebago County? We’ll find out soon enough.