18
1983 and fought other local government reorganization efforts in the 1990s including the local
governance project which sought to reorganize county government.
Merger opponents also counted on a number of veto points within the political system.
As they saw it, merger could be stopped at any number of critical junctures. Voting on merger
would require authorizing legislation including details of the referendum process and actual
merger. The last juncture was the referendum itself, which provided CO$T with an opportunity
to make a direct appeal to the citizenry. Plainly, when it came to the statehouse and the
governorship pro merger forces had work to do. That task was made infinitely easier by GLI’s
connections and political veterans. Sometime earlier they had made arrangements with key
legislators and the governor’s office to ease passage for new legislation. Wasting no time, the
Louisville delegation to the state legislature produced a bill. Sheryl Snyder, a partner at Todd,
Brown, Frost and Heyburn and colleague of Abramson, wrote much of that legislation.
Representative Larry Clark chaired a crucial committee on local government and was enlisted to
shepherd the needed bill through the legislature. Public hearings were held and local
organizations composed of blacks, neighborhood representatives, civil rights groups, members of
the Board of Aldermen spoke fervently against merger. Some pled with the committee
requesting that the city and suburbs be allowed separate votes on merger ––as was done in
Nashville and other cities (Lyons and Scheb, 1998). They reasoned that the city should be able to
decide whether it wanted this marriage. But everyone knew that passage was a foregone
conclusion.
8
With hardly any committee deliberation the legislation passed the committee by a
vote of 20 to one. The single opposition vote was cast in sympathy for allowing the city its own
choice (Kentucky House of Representative, February 16, 2000).
Convention