News-Record.com

Our editorial today joins City Councilman Tom Phillips in questioning the need for the city's Commission on the Status of Women.

News & Observer columnist Rick Martinez agrees, suggesting we declare victory and move on.

If you missed it, here is our editorial, which in some ways expands on earlier post on this blog:

"Who am I? Why am I here?" Adm. Jim Stockdale famously asked in a vice presidential debate in 1992 that effectively sunk his political career, right then and there.

Greensboro's Commission on the Status of Women probably can sympathize. Aimless and adrift despite the good intentions that spawned it 33 years ago, the organization has lost its way. It may lose its city funding next.

"If we don’t show some progress, if (the commission) is not really helping the quality of life for women in Greensboro," the organization's vice chairwoman, Jeanne Hudgens, told the News & Record's Margare Banks, "then we should go."

The organization was begun by the city in 1973 to conduct surveys, investigate complaints and hold public hearings. Over the years that agenda has gradually shifted primarily to programs, including workshops, community forums, a book club and an annualawards luncheon. Yet the value of those activities is questionable, at best. In general they are lightly attended and even many commission members don’t show for them.

Nor, apparently, do they show for their own meetings. At four out of their nine monthly meetings in 2005, so few commissioners attended that they lacked a quorum to conduct official business.

Meanwhile, the Human Relations Department has done much of the heavy lifting as far as complaints about discrimination are concerned. In fact, the commission spends so little of its time these days on such nuts-and-bolts services as counseling for women that it begs a serious question about the city’s investment.

The commission has received a total of $635,000 in taxpayer money since 1998 and was, until recently, the only city commission with a full-time staff member. As concerns persist about the commission’s effectiveness and relevance, the City Council cut its budget from $90,000 to $45,000 this year.

Of course, the commission's worth as a taxpayer-funded entity has been challenged before. City Councilman Tom Phillips has attempted for years to drop the commission from the city budget. More people are listening now. "This goes back to when I was on the council in the late '80s and early '90s," Phillips said Wednesday.

"Even back then they weren’t doing anything."

Meanwhile, the commission's staunchest proponents on the City Council have struggled to explain what it does.

Some council members probably worry that opposition to the commission could be construed as insensitivity to the concerns of women. But an ineffective commission that is supposed to address those issues does no one any good.

In light of rising skepticism, a consultant is studying the commission's role and will make recommendations on its future. That's generosity almost to a fault.

How many other organizations are asked to justify their contributions after receiving taxpayer funding?