Bias Accord Reached in Springfield, Ill.
The City Council and lawyers for black residents on Thursday presented a federal judge with a compromise plan to phase out the city’s commission government by 1991, moving to end a bitter struggle over political bias.
The plan must be approved by U.S. District Judge Harold Baker, but spokesmen for both sides said it would settle a 2-year-old lawsuit over racial divisions in Abraham Lincoln’s hometown.
“What this means is, once and for all, this lawsuit is behind the city of Springfield,” Mayor Michael Houston said.
Baker ruled in January that the city’s at-large elections and commission government violate the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of blacks.
He had threatened to impose a new government this week unless a settlement was reached.
Under the compromise, a “transitional” government would retain some aspects of the current system until 1991, when a mayor-aldermanic system would take over.
Blacks make up about 11% of the city’s 100,000 residents, but no black has been elected to the council since the commission government was instituted in 1911.
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