Are you in favor of the rule of law? Hypocritical, contemptuous city council “has-beens” think you’re a “wannabe.”

In Saturday’s Tribune, city council president Larry Kochert revealed his latest lame/same strategy for coping with the pressure that accompanies his uncomfortable position as one of nine legislators whose stubborn unwillingness to perform the statutory duty of redistricting – an abiding failure that has dragged on for more than five years through two council terms – has led predictably, and directly, and inevitably, to potential intervention by the Federal government at the behest of litigants.

Kochert’s patented and increasingly tiresome “fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly” reaction is to shirk responsibility for years of indolent sloth, to shift the blame to those who are in favor of rule of law, to talk ludicrous smack about the rule of law costing far too much than we can afford, and to toss out a half-baked, kitchen-table redistricting proposal in the faint hope that it passes muster with the Feds.

The proposal will move ahead, Kochert said. Now that a hearing has taken place, the council will publicly discuss the map in upcoming council meetings before any vote is taken.

Kochert said it was the charge of the City Council to draw the map, not a panel of residents.

“They’re wannabes,” Kochert said. “They want to be leaders of the community. The law says the council does the redistricting” …

… Redistricting is mandated every 10 years, two years after each federal census. Though the council redistricted in 1992, it failed to do so in 2002, when two such proposals lacked support.

The last sentence is the one that really matters, isn't it?

Amid the self-serving and spiteful blather from the council’s Keystone Kommissars, it’s worth remembering that the message to the city council as provided by a magistrate during the pre-trial hearing was quite simple.

1. It is a matter of fact that the council has erred, and the council will lose if a trial occurs.

2. To avoid ignominy and great expense, the council must do its job as mandated under law.

3. To avoid ignominy and great expense, the council must do its job correctly, also as mandated under law.

Kochert’s own words speak volumes. I interpret them as: "It's my job, by God, and now that I have no choice, I'll do it as quickly and sloppily as possible because in New Albany, slipshod is job one!"

Thanks. As a plaintiff, I’ll speak only for myself.

Larry Kochert is as blatant and shameless a hypocrite as New Albany has seen in almost two centuries of its existence, and given the venality and ignorance that has gripped the city for so much of its history, that’s saying something -- and it isn't hopeful.

For Kochert, who has served on two successive councils, neither of which did its statutory duty to redistrict until being forced to do so at the point of an edict, now to thump his chest and proclaim, “The law says the council does the redistricting,” is more than just hypocritical. It is breathtakingly arrogant, and sadly indicative of the old (and older) school’s unwillingness to turn calendar pages for fear of admitting that its shelf life has long since expired.

So, is it true? Are the plaintiffs “wannabes?”

Well, I wannabe living in a city where it isn’t necessary to file a lawsuit to convince an elected official to do his statutory duty, and to do it correctly.

I wannabe living in a city where the process of redistricting, which is essential to any concept of fair and equal representation, is carried out publicly, openly, and at a time when ordinary people can make themselves heard.

I wannabe living in a city where fairness and equality of representation aren’t held hostage by the fear and blindness of one solitary councilman, in this case, Dan Coffey, whose ongoing jihad against modernity is compelling him to draw a line in the redistricting sand, and which if the line held, almost certainly will fulfill the gloom and doom prophecy of great monetary expense – all for the sole purpose of preserving Coffey’s antediluvian fiefdom from the taint of progress.

I wannabe living in a city where Kochert’s bluff and obfuscation are seen not as some cartoon-panel stand on behalf of democracy -- Slippery Man to the rescue against those damned pesky pergessives -- but rather a transparently contemptuous assault against democratic principles, as embodied by his open contempt for anyone who might seek to become a part of the democratic process without his explicit approval, as extended by the King from his throne in the garage where he used to conduct elections in a fashion that would have embarrassed the junta in Burma.

I wannabe living in a city that grasps how far removed Larry Kochert’s patriarchal and parochial vision of limited citizen participation is from the sort that genuinely prefaces growth, progress and self-realization, and that Kochert’s version, far from being a prescription for evolution, instead is a dire diagnosis of the extent to which devolution and accompanying low common standards have been permitted to erode whatever skills New Albany’s ruling class once possessed.

Yes, and I wannabe living in a 21st-century city, not a 19th-century city. The great redistricting debate of 2007 is not about preserving the feudal privileges of people my age and older, a group that includes most of New Albany’s governing caste and all of the good old boys who populate it.

Rather, it’s about a large number of children that I barely know, and about what sort of city will be there for them when they come of age. The Kocherts, Coffeys and Schmidts of this city seem to think that they're somehow protecting future generations from progress, when in fact, they're achieving nothing other than dooming future generations to the conditions now prevalent in the rental property shantytowns of Harrisonapolis and Gregoryville.

Absolutely: I wannabe living in a city with a future vision. That's why all of us, not just a cadre of elected officials, are charged with civic participation. That's why we'll continue to participate.

Meanwhile, the council's Gang of Four has no future vision, on redistricting or anything else.

Case closed.