More Debate Over Charter Change

Last month, on imby.com, Peter Frank published a critique of the charter change being proposed: "A Citizen's Response to the Hudson Charter Change Proposal." Earlier this week, Robert Rasner published a response to Frank, also on imby.com: "Charter Change Response to Peter Frank Opinion Piece." Rasner shared his response with Gossips, and it can be read below.

Peter Frank's analysis of the citizens' initiative makes some valid observations. But most of what Peter identifies as shortcomings or bugs are left in place by our petition for several reasons. As a group of unelected citizens, we consciously focused on the mayor/manager-council dynamic to the exclusion of other perceived problems in the charter. We were conscious of Hudson's history and aware of the flexibility NYS provides municipalities in determining their own governmental structure. Finally, we understand that the process of charter change is ongoing and dynamic and should be.

First and foremost, the study group that authored the proposed changes is entirely outside government. We weren't elected to do this; we have no mandate beyond that of all citizens to do what they can to better our community. So, we never understood what we were doing as comprehensive or wholesale charter reform. Rather, we set out to address a specific, perceived shortcoming based on the observation that over the last 20 years no mayor, Democrat or Republican, male or female, white or black, has been able to either articulate or implement a plan to address the city's failure to address many of our basic needs such as street repair, garbage pickup, our antiquated zoning code and like matters. Equally important, no mayor has been able to articulate or implement a plan to solve the city's dwindling discretionary income given its contractual obligations to both its labor unions and unrepresented employees.

So, we consciously sought to employ the lightest touch possible to achieve the goal of injecting professional management into the city's day-to-day operations.

In reviewing our current charter with those of other cities in NYS that employ the manager-council model, we found a great deal of heterogeneity. This is true even in the narrow scope that we focused on: the manager-council dynamic. Did we ignore the rest of the charters? No. We spent 3 years reading and discussing them. But we did focus. And, again, that's on purpose.

New York's constitution and its statutory framework for municipal governance does not provide a "best practice" or a "preferred embodiment" beyond the core constitutional directive of one person one vote. Indeed, the statutes, and the cases that interpret them, have repeatedly concluded that New York's legislature has consciously and purposefully permitted each municipality to decide for itself how best to organize its city, town, village and county government.

So--mayor or no? After a long debate lasting weeks (can you imagine?) we determined that Hudson has had a mayor for a good long time. And often a mayor brings unique perspective to the task of governance. Being outside the fray, as it were, we felt such an office would provide Hudson a degree of governmental continuity. In some manager-council cities, the chief elected officer is called "president" or "council president" or "mayor." In Hudson, it will continue to be the mayor as it has been. But the day-to-day enactment of the council's policies will be by the manager. I'm pretty sure that doesn't really confuse Peter Frank (though he does go on about a mayor's legislative role when, of course, mayors are part of the executive branch, not the legislative branch of government).

And what about our elected treasurer? It is an outlier, that's true. We've read the charters and didn't find one with an elected treasurer. But this office was outside our self-imposed purview. And besides, Hudson's history, particularly its recent history, with an elected treasurer has been quite good. So, we moved on.

To the council. This was a necessary part of the analysis for us, obviously, since it's a "manager-council" model. What we found was bloat. Our website has the statistics and numbers but as a committee--with its share of former council members, by the way--we felt the over-sized council yields an environment where no one is responsible for anything since everyone seems to be waiting for the other guy or gal to bring something to the floor. That's what we must assume--we see very little work being done and that by just 2 or 3 members.

And there's work to do. The next council and mayor will have to work together to adopt the few changes the petition embodies. Did our group provide any guidance? No--we're not the legislature nor the executive. But there's 2 years between when the charter changes are adopted and when they go into effect. If that's not enough, there are ways to extend that time.

And that really brings me to the final and perhaps most salient point of how we designed the present petition: no charter change, or attempted charter change, is ever the final word. The charter is, and is designed to be, a living document, changing slowly but inexorably to keep pace with both the demands on the city and its resources to respond to those demands.

It shouldn't be up to a citizens' initiative to bring these ideas forward, to seek meaningful and thoughtful charter change. But it is a method that the framers of our state constitution foresaw as being necessary and useful. It's our hope that the work of charter change will continue after our effort concludes. Perhaps the city will follow through with its promise to form a charter commission. Or perhaps Peter Spear will lead the community in the consultative process that he's been studying and advocating. These are all to be hoped for and speak to the flexibility of the charter change process. Nothing is written in stone.