Top 10 of 2022: #7: Charter Changes: New City Power Jobs, Transparency Concerns and Minority Party Council District System

Republican Mayor Erin Stewart and her newly elected Republican City Council supermajority set right away in 2022 to change the City Charter in a raft of different ways. Some of the changes were widely viewed as innocuous, while Council election changes raised concerns and new, powerful appointed positions and other changes, encased in an opaque referendum question, generated controversy.

When the city’s Republicans initiated changes to the City Charter, the city governing document, similar to a local constitution, their proposal raised the question of changing the way the Council is elected. This created concerns that Republicans would consider reducing or eliminating Council representation from neighborhood districts, moves that would have been considered discriminatory and potentially struck down under the Voting Rights Act.

However the Charter Revision Commission appointed by the Council and then the Council voted to propose a change in Council elections that did not reduce neighborhood representation. Their proposal eliminated the five Council seats that have been elected at-large and, instead added minority party seats to be elected from the city’s five Council districts.

The Council election system that has been in place since Council district elections were restored in 2002 has provided that two Council members have been elected from each of five districts (commonly called “Wards”) while five other Council members have been elected “at large”, citywide.

Under the new system, which was approved by voters in November, all Council members will be elected by district. Each of the city’s five Wards are now to elect three Council members. But, since voters can only vote for two candidates, no one party can win more than two of the three Council seats from any Ward.

That change was approved as one of the two ballot questions put to voters in November.

The more controversial of the referendum questions, however, included the creation of a new “Chief Operating Officer” position that appears to allow one mayor to select a high-paid top administrator with the same powers as the mayor, who might then serve as a holdover from one mayoral administration into the next. The changes also converted the heretofore elected positions of Town Clerk and Tax Collector, both presently held by Republicans, into positions appointed by the mayor.

While the Charter Commission had recommended that these controversial items be placed on the November ballot for voters as their own, separate questions, the Republican-dominated Council chose, instead, to lump them together with other small Charter changes, and place them before voters as a vague question asking only, “Shall the remainder of the changes to the City Charter, as recommended by the Charter Revision Commission, be approved?”

Stewart’s political machine campaigned for the measure from the advantageous resource of city hall.

Supporters of the two Charter change ballot questions opted-out of participating in a forum planned by the New Britain Public Library that was to feature both proponents and opponents. Then the Stewart administration succeeded in stopping the forum from going forward at all… That is, until the New Britain Progressive stepped in and sponsored the forum, with the panelists who had agreed to participate prior to it being cancelled. While members of the Council who voted in favor of the Charter changes were present, they opted not to speak in support of the changes at the forum.

Former Mayor, Senator and State Commissioner Donald DeFronzo offered pointed criticism of the proposed Charter changes.

But, while the city’s Democratic party had opposed both questions, it carried out what many observed was an underwhelming campaign to inform voters about the nature of the Charter changes on the ballot.

In the November election, voters overwhelmingly approved the change in the Council election system.

However, the vague question on, “the remainder of the changes to the City Charter,” was only narrowly approved.

What shape the new position of “Chief Operating Officer” will take, and who is to be appointed to this plum job, are among a number of items resulting from the most recent Charter changes that will doubtless be the center of news in 2023. And that certainly adds to this being one of the New Britain Progressive‘s Top Ten Stories of 2022.