Book Schools City Council On Minority Party Representation

One-party rule is a disservice to taxpayers. That’s the message Republican candidate for State House Ethan Book shared with the City Council Monday night, urging the legislative body–all of them Democrats–to examine the benefits of minority party representation. Ethan Book can be reached at 203.943.0045, newenglimo@aol.com.

I am Ethan Book, resident of the Hollow in Bridgeport and a candidate for State Representative, 128th District. I am here before this Council to propose a City Ordinance revision to establish minority party representation on this Council.

For more than two decades, the dominant and, at times exclusive, representation on this Council has been of elected members of the Democrat Party. At present, all 20 Council members are of the Democrat Party. For the two years prior, there were nineteen members of the Democrat Party and one of the Republican Party. Prior to that several years elapsed before there was another single member of the Republican Party. What is clear is that there has been a long-term monopoly of the Democrat Party in this important legislative body.

The usual and expected result of such a condition is undue advantage, even abuse through a single-party system. In recent years, we have observed symptoms of such a system with excessive municipal spending, at times without due care to public interests, a situation which has yielded to preferential opportunism for a few selected interests. This situation has resulted in inefficient government and high tax increases. Other symptoms of this situation include what has been commented to this Council on multiple occasions of the problems of conflicts of interest, apparent abuses of municipal funds budgeted for legislative services, apparent abuses of council member stipends and defective bidding such as for the airport driveway. These are merely some of the issues which have come to light.

It clearly has not been sufficient that some residents such as John Marshall Lee, Dave Walker and myself have made multiple pleadings of good counsel and warnings. Regarding the recent step of this Council to respond to the currently proposed municipal budget by hiring outside professional counsel, while I cannot say that this step was too-little-too-late, I will nonetheless say that the step was little and late.

City government would be greatly improved with established minority party representation. This is being done successfully in other municipalities including Trumbull, Monroe and Hartford, also is being successfully done in this City with the Board of Education and the Zoning Board. Minority City Council representation was proposed and discussed in 2012. At that time. Mayor Finch did not object to the idea. It simply didn’t go forward!

As was written in early 2012 by Michael Garrett, currently the Chairman of the Bridgeport Republican Town Committee, and published at Only In Bridgeport, “Minority party representation creates checks and balances, opens up opportunities to a larger pool of potentially effective office holders and encourages economic development for business leaders suspicious of one-party rule.”

Mr. Garrett went on to say, “Off-hand, I can see no downside to the implementation of a minority party representation rule to the City Charter … on the contrary, positive effects abound. For instance, instead of a political monopoly by the majority party, power is shared to the mutual benefit of all. The majority party maintains its power and therefore, its agenda, however opportunities for effective government [could] be more readily presented by minority representatives instead of capable ideas being lost because they are never initiated in a public forum … .” The more complete text of Mr. Garrett’s comments published at Only in Bridgeport provided with the hard copy of these comments.

Both former Mayor Bill Finch and our current Mayor Joseph Ganim campaigned on promises of greater transparency in city government. Taking prompt, effective steps to establish minority party council representation would be a great assist in achieving such transparency as well as to improve on the costs and quality of our City government.

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3 comments

  1. Ethan Book, is Donald Trump a true Republican? Political parties are really not that important in local politics in Bridgeport. It seems you want the Democratic Party to build the Republican Party for you.

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    1. Ethan, Ron makes a good point. When I served on the CC, my first term began in 1983. At that time we had eight Republicans and ten Dems. My term serving with Mayor Moran we had 10 R’s and 10 D’s. I can’t remember when Tom White and Tony Minutolo served, it could have been with G1, and I believe that was for one term. During one of my terms the issue of minority representation was discussed, but didn’t get off the ground. Ron’s opinion is correct, the Republicans were alive and well, albeit in the minority. The party engaged in local issues, worked to find viable candidates, and yes the Council functioned more efficiently, and provided checks and balances. You can’t expect Rick Torres to be the lone representative of the party, he needs supportive like-minded Republicans to step up to the plate. Build that second party or things will always be as they’ve been for the past 18 years.

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      1. Lisa, I remember that timeframe very well, in fact Ernie Newton got elected Council President because of Republican council members votes. I remember when Linda Grace was running for her first time and she had this real big banner the length of her house. It got my attention so I followed her comments on why she was running and I voted for her. I’ve been writing on OIB for the Republican Party to truly reach out to blacks and to listen to the black community concerns. The local Republican Party doesn’t have to be like their national party.

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