Business (Almost) Trumps Democracy in Elkton

This post was submitted by DFE:

The Daily News-Record does its best to cover all the nuances in the continuing circus that is the Elkton Town Council business, but yesterday, it missed the big brass ring.The Council bloc held that Monday's meeting was a public hearing. Nathan Miller, the town's attorney, said he wasn't sure that one was required in order to make Charter revisions, but wanted to err on the side of caution, before Steve Landes and Emmett Hanger could bring the Town Charter revisions before the legislature.

The Mayor, who brought his own lawyer to provide third-party oversight, disagreed because the public hearing had never been called for. The DN-R reported that the same citizens got up to ask the same questions as before, and got the same old answers. But there was a lot more going on than that. The proposed Charter that was published in the paper is not the Charter that is in Richmond awaiting submission to the state legislature.

Those differences raise a lot of questions about exactly what powers the Council plans to reserve for itself (This might sound dumb, but consider: according to the proposed Charter, a vote from only two-thirds of the Council is required to change the Charter from now on, but really, only the state legislature can change a municipality's charter ). This was brought up by the mayor's lawyer in the state code book. You would think the town's attorney, a former legislator, would have found the same passage.

Also, for example, the DN-R version puts all power in the hands of the Council, making the mayor a ceremonial office. The version in Richmond says nothing about the Council's powers and perogatives. All of this can be tossed out as nit picking, but the issues, like a strings wound into a complicated knot and once teased out, all point to a disturbing power-grab that, itself, may very well not be legal (I'm not a lawyer, so I can't judge it.) Consider this: the town attorney explained last night that the version of the charter currently in Richmond is a place holder for a finished, yet-to-be-negotiated document. He said that this happens all the time in Richmond--you have to put something in just to get on the agenda, and it doesn't really matter what's in the document until it comes up for a vote.

However, the mayor's attorney explained that this is true for laws, laws upon which different committees conference, ironing out the differences. Town charters, as the mayor's lawyer noted from the state code book, being permanent statements of a municipality's powers, are different. They have to be finished, published in the locality, subject to public hearings, commentary and amendment all in advance of being submitted. That's why a town has a whole year to work on it, to get it right before it goes to the state.

I tend to think that the mayor's lawyer must be right on this. How can the public agree to changes in its charter if it's a working document up to the last minute before it goes to vote?Trying to change town charters--their constitutions--in this way is like "Dumb and Dumber writing the laws." Who is writing this durned thing, anyway? And why does nobody seem to have "the real copy" in hand?

But here's the trump card. Here's the thing that all the smoke and mirrors is designed to conceal. The third provision of the document, buried at the very end. The charter revisions, whatever they might be, are supposed to take effect July 1st, unless an emergency exists that would make it necessary for the revisions to take effect sooner. But Part 3 declares that if an emergency does, indeed, exist, and the charter would take effect immediately. What does this mean? It cancels the May elections!

Councilmen whose terms expire keep their seats for over two more years. It ensures that Council members who were appointed to fill vacant seats don't have to run for their seats in the next election cycle. For instance, Lucky Sigafoose, who was elected by a wide majority, died and his seat was taken by Clyde McDaniel who, it's safe to say, votes exactly opposite of the way Lucky tended to vote about 95% of the time. The voters who put Lucky into office because they agreed with his philosophy are shut out of the chance to put a like-minded replacement in his seat for 4 years, or, with the elections cancelled, even longer than that.

When this came up in the meeting the other night, everyone on Council (who, we assume, wrote the Charter and who are up for election) was shocked, and declared that they never intended such a thing and there would certainly be elections in May. But, somehow, I wonder? If this had slipped through, as the Council had intended that no version of the Charter document was ever to be made public before it went in front of the legislature and signed by the governor, and would have if the mayor had not raised a stink, would they not have declared an emegency because of the on going Angler talks and the millions of dollars (and a golf course) at stake? It is, indeed, a case of business almost trumping democracy, but I applaude the efforts of a few vigilant citizens! Long live democracy in Elkton!