Some towns play political softball, other towns play hardball … in Bridgeport they play hand grenades.—Philip Smith
Phil Smith knows a lot about city politics. He also knows much about the city charter and charter revisions. He supervised several revisions that updated the charter. He is not serving the current Charter Revision Commission that is recommending a number of questions to the City Council for ballot approval including a mayoral-appointed school board. Smith weighs in with a review of the proposed charter document and why sections of it are flawed. See below:
While the Board of Education provisions have gotten most of the attention, the proposed charter revision includes extensive changes in both the form and substance of the City Charter.
What follows is based upon a cursory review of the proposed charter, a process made more difficult by the departure from the format of the current City Charter and the lack of any description of the changes proposed by the Charter Revision Commission.
Generally speaking, the new Charter replaces clarity with confusion and plain language with legalese. This is due in part to what appears to be the use of a town charter as a template for the new City Charter. Among other things, this “model” charter spreads related provisions over several chapters of the document.
For example, currently if you want to know about the Police Department you go to the chapter on the Police Department. Not so the new Charter, which requires you to check several places and follow cross references between chapters in order to find the same information. Not exactly user friendly.
The use of another community’s charter also leads to inaccurate descriptions of the powers and duties of some city officials. For example, the proposed charter requires meeting notices to be filed with the Town Clerk, as they are in many towns. But in Bridgeport those notices are filed with the City Clerk, not the Town Clerk. Not a big deal, but an indication of the lack of attention to detail that runs throughout the document.
There is perhaps no better example of the confusing legalese of the proposed charter than its minority party representation provision. Rather than directly say “minority party representation shall be governed by state law,” the proposed charter says: “Unless otherwise required by the General Statutes or otherwise set forth in this Charter, the political affiliation of all appointed Boards or Commissions or panel of alternates shall reflect the requirements of the General Statutes with respect to minority party representation. This charter shall apply to all Boards and Commissions established or required by this Charter or established by Ordinance.” Huh?
The proposed charter purports to define the agencies of city government, but allows the Mayor and City Council to adopt reorganization plans which supersede the charter. Either agencies are important and permanent enough to be included in the charter or they are not. If they are, charter revision should be required to change those provisions. If not, they shouldn’t be in the charter.
Budget and Fiscal Controls
The proposed charter makes a number of changes in the provisions concerning the city budget and financial controls.
It reduces from two-thirds to a simple majority the vote required to approve a supplemental appropriation or increase a line item in the Mayor’s proposed budget. Just what we need, a City Council with more power to spend money.
It may be a drafting error, but, as written, the proposed charter requires the City Council to set a mil rate before the budget is finalized.
The proposed charter also eliminates City Council approval of budget transfers within a department, regardless of the amount of the transfer.
Credit where credit is due. The proposed charter requires “periodic” oversight meetings concerning the monthly financial reports. That is an improvement. Of course, it would help if the administration actually complied with the current Charter requirement.
Chief Administrative Officer
The proposed charter includes, for the first time, the position of Chief Administrative Officer, a Moran-Ganim creation of dubious value. In one section the Chief Administrative Officer is described as being “responsible for the administration and management of the employees who shall provide direct assistance to Mayor in overseeing and coordinating the daily business, operations and administrative activities of the Mayor.” That sounds like he or she runs the Mayor’s Office.
But wait. The next section provides that “the mission of the Chief Administrative Officer and the members of the office is to coordinate all department management and operational policies and practices on behalf of the Mayor. The Chief Administrative Officer is positioned between the Mayor and department heads and reports directly to the Mayor. This office has the responsibility and authority of running the daily business activities of the City.” That sounds like the delegation of a large amount of the Mayor’s authority and accountability to an unelected official.
Removal of Officials
The new charter includes a provision which purports to allow the City Council to remove elected and appointed officials from office by a majority vote of the Council Members. There are a number of problems with this section. First, there appears to be no legal authority for the Council removing elected officials from office.
More than two decades ago, the Connecticut Supreme Court struck down a charter provision which permitted the recall of local elected officials, concluding that nothing in state law authorized towns to adopt such provisions. Simply stated, there does not appear to be any more legal support for the Council removing elected officials than there was for recall.
Beyond that there are other problems with this section. While the current charter (which permits the removal of appointed but not elected officials) requires a super majority of the Council to remove an official (currently a 2/3 vote), the proposed charter requires only a majority vote. That’s not much protection for the independence of an elected or appointed official.
The same provision allows an appointed official to be removed on the vague basis of “poor performance.” In the real world of Bridgeport politics it’s not hard to see that provision being used to harass or remove officials who run afoul of the Council.
Credit where credit is due: The proposed charter does improve the procedural protections available to the accused officer.
Emergency Powers
The proposed charter grants the Mayor sweeping new powers emergency powers to be exercised in the event of a “public emergency” which is broadly and vaguely defined as “any condition which exists or threatens to arise involving or threatening to damage or injure the lives, health or property” of city residents.
The powers granted to the Mayor in such an emergency include the authority to “obligate the City in an amount not to exceed one (1) percent of the current tax levy (or such other additional amount as may be approved by the Council).
This section also includes a reference to a meeting of something called the Legislative Council, which is not otherwise referred to in the proposed charter. Is something missing or is this another example of bad drafting?
Board of Education and Term Limits
The proposed charter establishes term limits for Boards and Commissions, including the new appointed Board of Education, but not for the Mayor or City Council. The motivation for the ten-year limitation is unknown, but it is worth noting that, in the past, some of the most highly regarded members of the Board of Education served for far more than ten years.
Two other provisions concerning the Board of Education are worth noting:
• Most people serving in public office and all party officials are prohibited from being appointed to the Board of Education.
• It attempts to define the powers, duties and responsibilities of the Board of Education, all of which are governed by state law, not the charter.
The Charter Revision Commission may like term limits for Board and Commission members, but not for the Police and Fire Chiefs. The existing ten-year limit for those officials is eliminated.
The proposed charter also:
• Includes provisions concerning elections and electors which are governed by state law and prohibited by Section 7-192(a) of the general statutes.
• Replaces the commonsense provision dealing with the absence or inability of the Mayor to act with a complicated procedure which only addresses the removal of a disabled mayor.
• Establishes conflicting bonding requirements for city officials.
• Describes the Assistant Town Clerk as both an appointee and a civil service position. It is currently a civil service position.
• In several places the proposed charter attempts to define the collective bargaining status of certain city employees, something that is governed by state law not the charter.
This is far from an exhaustive list of the flaws in the document produced by the Charter Revision Commission. Some reflect bad policy, others result from bad drafting. Some look like power grabs. Taken together they are ample reason for the City Council to reject this flawed document.
THE FINCH MANIFESTO (Charter).
D.O.E.
Thanks Phil Smith for the hard work.
Let’s hope the City Council rejects this biased Charter Revision.
Now it’s time to throw the baby out with the bathwater!
Thank you, Phil. I attended two of Public Hearings. I must say I am very disappointed but not surprised by this garbage.
At one of the meetings I urged the commission not to be duped by the mayor. When one of the commissioners assured me this would not happen, I told her the proof would be in their final recommendations.
Thanks for proving they were duped.
*** OIB and friends, seize the moment for awareness and voter participation in getting the word out on this flawed charter revision. Come election time, just vote “NO!” *** HERE WE GO! ***
Since the Board of Education is at the heart of this Charter Revision perhaps the City Council should schedule the referendum on it for September 4th, the same day as the Board of Education election.
In a presidential election year with a higher turnout, I presumed the administration probably would win a charter ballot on a specific position–Board of Education in this case.
It appears this commission is reporting out a series of measures. This shotgun approach will allow every interest group in town to latch onto something they don’t like. That should be more than enough to overcome the Democratic organization.
This is Politics 201. Who is asleep at the switch?
Jim,
There is one pattern that is clear. The City Council gains power, generally at the expense of the Mayor. That could be the result of an effort to win over reluctant Council members. If so, Bridgeport taxpayers could be paying for it for years to come.
Think about the manufacture of grenades, thanks to Phil Smith.
They are innocuous until they are visible. A current Charter that most City Council members have not read (or understood) is put under the microscope for one purpose: to provide this Mayor with what he calls ACCOUNTABILITY for educational results … (Does anyone care to indicate where Mayor Finch currently provides public ACCOUNTABILITY?)
So perhaps a few more details are added to the new Charter, similar to pins from a grenade to be pulled at some future time when an administration is desperate … regarding financial transfers (where does all the SLUSH money go?) … or ignored public meetings (a separate public meeting for CAPITAL items?) … or monthly reports (that fail to come monthly as is currently true: the March monthly financial report from our ACCOUNTABLE MAYOR, due by the 4th Friday of April under the current Charter is not available to the City Council yet) … what are the consequences of failing to live up to the current Charter? … Where are the pins for the public to pull when they are not served well by their officials?
Do we need to field-test grenades before there is an election? Steve Mednick, an attorney from out of town compensated for his relative “expertise” on Charter change, Ed Maley, another legal “expert” who was receiving $7,000 per month one year ago for professional services and Mark Anastasi, our City Attorney, have been leading the discussion and guiding the conclusions, in my opinion. But there has been no public “show and tell.” The majority of members voted to prevent a continuing dialogue with any public in attendance when it would do the most good, contemporaneous with the redlining review or later discussion. Rather they organized special sessions into specific “hearings” where the public could speak, but where there is scant if any explanation for how, why, and what of Commission direction. Has the CT Post or any other media team done a “down and dirty” review?
Grenades maim or kill in the hands of trained military. U.S. soldiers have had to deal with “IEDs,” improvised explosive devices, in the last decade to extensive loss of life and ability. It would be a shame if a current civic failure to note the differences between the current Charter and the Charter revisions to be promoted in November were buried, out of sight to almost everyone today, but remembered by the “paid” experts on legalese, long after the purpose of minor changes has been forgotten by CRC members. (Frequently, new language or elimination of current language is provided for public review to see the nature of change. Not yet in Bridgeport, unfortunately.)
Perhaps Phil Smith would volunteer to lead a citizen group discussion (over several dates) to locate the grenades, rank their firing direction and explosive power, and put that info out to the public in time for the fall election? How many volunteers will make themselves available to perform “due diligence?” Any OIB readers? Time will tell.
Post this everywhere!