CM Megan Barry resurfaces after running silent on the LED issue

Megan Barry's campaign manager Elizabeth M-K Sullivan announced to the Nashville Neighborhoods e-list this morning that CM-at-Large Barry not only opposed Charlie Tygard's failing light-emitting-diode-sign bill, but that she is "working on this issue right now." Call me a cynic if you like, but this strikes me as freighthopping mid-passage in order to add "keeping LED signs out of residential neighborhoods" to her bulleted list of accomplishments in the next campaign.

We can fact-check that spin. After coming out of the gate strongly opposed on this issue, she convinced me of the rightness of the cause, but then she voted for the task force allowance of LED signs in neighborhoods and equivocated on the question:

Fellow at-large Councilwoman Megan Barry reiterated her concerns about sign ordinance enforcement by the Codes Department, although she voted in favor of the task force’s recommendations.

“I think it gives the Council some opportunity to have some discussion about what they want to see go forward,” Barry said. “I do agree that… we may have created a bat to kill a gnat and that’s a concern. It’s definitely a concern for all the neighborhoods because they don’t want to see these things in their neighborhoods. The reality may be that they’re not going to see them, I don’t know. We need to have a good discussion on Council.”

Now she seems to be walking back a harder stance given the community-leveraged road blocks to the LED sign proposal. It's not right, but it's okay, because I don't reject any CM's help on this important issue, but Ms. Barry has miles to go to convince me that she is not trying to get back into the party now that band has finally arrived.