Members of the Arlington County government’s Human Rights Commission were outraged last month after one of their members recently was denied reappointment to a new term by members of the County Board.
This is the very same Human Rights Commission that has, essentially, been at war with the County Board over the past six months, notably dispatching a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice demanding an inquiry into conditions at the county jail.
As we reported in February: “While some more sensible members of the [advisory] panel preached caution and urged their colleagues to go through the normal channels – sending a request to County Board members, asking them to write to the Justice Department – the body’s majority rejected that view in an end-around maneuver that seems to have no parallel in recent memory.”
We have no inkling of the internal County Board discussions that led to the non-reappointment of this particular commission member. But advisory commissions that play with fire often get burned; to expect anything less is simply delusion.
Those who profess themselves baffled that elected officials would go the retribution route to rein in an advisory panel gone rogue need to come out into the real world once in a while.
