Clarification on human relations commission and landfill

Editorial note: The following report was revised for print and then cut for space considerations. The report clarifies some aspects of the controversy over the human relations commission's authority to act on the landfill dispute.

The battle over plans to reopen the White Street Landfill moved from city council to the Greensboro Human Relations Commission last week, and a stream of speakers, asked the commission to pass a resolution requesting that the city council rescind its decision.

Former Mayor Yvonne Johnson asked the commission to file a complaint against the city over the landfill. After the mayor spoke, Human Relations Director Anthony Wade entered the meeting and warned members that they needed to read a memo issued by the legal department before proceeding. Ultimately, the commission decided to hold a special hearing on the landfill in the next couple weeks.

The commission’s duties include studying and making “recommendations concerning problems in any or all fields of human relationship” and encouraging “fair treatment and mutual understanding among all racial and ethnic groups in the city”; anticipating and discovering “those practices and customs most likely to create animosity and unrest among racial and ethnic groups and by consultations seek a solution as these problems arise or are anticipated” and making “recommendations to the city council designed to promote goodwill and harmony among racial and ethnic groups in the city.”

Wade said the question about whether the commission holds the authority to investigate the city came up during an executive committee meeting a week earlier. Associate General Counsel Jamiah Waterman noted in the memo that the commission was established to investigate complaints of discrimination. He said the duties of the body “are narrowly defined and do not include investigating the city,” adding that it would be a conflict of interest. “Therefore,” he said, “the CHR does not have the authority to investigate the city concerning its handling of the White Street Landfill unless it is directed to do so by the city council.”

Wade said he believes the ordinances provision allowing the commission to make recommendations to the council designed to promote goodwill and harmony among racial and ethnic groups would accommodate any desire the commission might have to make a statement to council about the landfill.

Wayne Abraham, a former chairman of the commission who is running for city council at large this year, pleaded with his former colleagues to intervene.

“City council didn’t always want to hear what we had to say,” he said. “But it was our job to say it to them anyway, whether we liked it or not, whether they liked it or not. Whether we would get reappointed for telling them the truth or not was immaterial. Our job was to do what was right for the citizens.”

Previously.