Once again, Council president Margaret Morris attempted to get the Council to pass a resolution to establish a charter revision commission, and once again, the effort was impeded.
In July, councilmembers took issue with the process of selecting members of the commission and insisted that it be "more open and inclusive." It was suggested that each of the five wards needed to be represented on the commission. At the July meeting, Morris invited people to send their comments about the proposed law to her, and, based on that input, she would make revisions and present the revised law at the Council's August meeting.
The Commission shall consist of nine members and a quorum shall consist of five members. Seven community members shall be appointed by the President of the City of Hudson Common Council in consultation with the Common Council. At least one resident from each Ward shall serve on the Commission. The Common Council President and the Majority Leader shall serve, ex officio, as the eighth and ninth members. Each of the nine members shall have equal voting powers in any matter put to a vote of the members of the Commission. The President of the Common Council shall serve as Chair, one member of the Commission shall be elected by the Commission to serve as Vice-Chair to preside in the absence of the Chair, and one as Secretary to record the proceedings of the Commission.
Despite the changes, Councilmember Claire Cousin (Fifth Ward) expressed concern that too much of the selection power was vested in the Council president. She made this statement:
I cannot support this appointment structure as written. I'm concerned that this version places too much appointment power in the hands of the Common Council President. For a process this important, appointments should be a collective decision of the Council, not concentrated in one person.
Cousin proposed the following amendment:
The seven community members shall be appointed by the Common Council, with a least one representative designated by each ward. No single officer of the Common Council shall have sole appointment authority over the community members.
Cousin called for further revision, although this seems unnecessary if the proposed amendment were to be adopted:
I'd also like to clarify what "in consultation with the Council" actually means. Does the Council have a meaningful role in approving or selecting these appointments, or is the final authority solely with the Council Pres? I would support language that makes that role explicit rather than leaving it open to interpretation.
Cousin made a motion to amend the proposed law which was not seconded. Councilmember Rich Volo (Fourth Ward) suggested the issue be tabled. Morris supported the idea of tabling, saying that she did not want to amend to the proposed law "on the fly." When the vote was called on tabling the resolution, there were just four votes opposed (Morris, Henry Haddad, Jason Foster, Dominic Merante). The other seven votes were in favor of tabling. What is to happen next is unclear.
In the public comment, Ronald Kopnicki said he wanted "a sense of how sweeping a change is being anticipated." It would appear this is something that has not been determined nor should it be. The proposed law provides this definition of the commission's scope of work:
The work of the Commission shall be governed by section 36 of the M.H.R.L.[Municipal Home Rule Law]. The Commission shall review the entire Charter of the City of Hudson, as directed by subdivision 5 of section 36 of the M.H.R.L. Notwithstanding such requirement, the Commission may leave part of the existing Charter unchanged and may propose amendments to parts.
COPYRIGHT 2026 CAROLE OSTERINK
When Cousin was helping run HHA redevelopment, she chaired a committee intentionally limited to three members, below a quorum, so its meetings with Mountco could take place outside public meetings.
ReplyDeleteShe defended the broader process as “silent work” on what was then a $220 million redevelopment impacting every resident of Hudson.
Now Margaret Morris proposes a nine-member public Charter Commission, with every ward represented, and Cousin objects that too much authority rests with the Council president.
Morris beat DePietro 604–301 and made Charter review a stated priority of her campaign.
Cousin has never won a competitive election but collect payments for many years by running in unopposed elections for Supervisor or Common Council, or receiving state campaign funds for losing a primary against Didi.
Apparently three people behind closed doors was enough for $220 million in redevelopment, but nine people from across Hudson working in public is a power grab.
Full ward representation wasn’t the only thing the Council pushed back on in July. They also took issue with Morris having one hundred percent of the authority to make appointments, and her statement that she already had five people in mind to serve. Those five plus the spot she created for herself left just one spot on the commission. Returning to the table with a document that adds two members and ensures every ward is represented is good progress; keeping the appointment power squarely with one person is not.
ReplyDeleteThe NYS DOS guide for municipal charter revision and the relevant municipal home rule section both name the local legislative body as the appointing entity, if that’s the option a city chooses to pursue. The Common Council President is not the legislative body. While Hudson’s current charter does grant the CCP the authority to appoint members of Common Council Committees, this is not that. The same NYS DOS guide was largely ignored by the previous charter reform group, who failed to heed any of the guidance around forming the work group and holding public meetings.
Here is a relevant passage from the DOS guide’s section about commission composition:
“A major consideration in determining composition, however, which may influence the size, is the type of representation desired. Representation in turn depends to a great
extent on the degree of social and economic
homogeneity of the community. For example, in some cities where council members are elected by wards, each council member and the mayor appoint one person to the charter commission, thereby transferring to the charter commission much the same refection of community interests as are found in the council.
The question often arises as to whether the
appointees should be elected officials or lay
citizens. There is no hard and fast rule which
applies in all cases. Experience has shown,
however, that elected officials and other key
opinion leaders in the community have
disproportionate influence upon the outcome of a charter revision effort.”
The Council doesn’t necessarily need to fully adhere to the guide’s recommendations, but I for one would like to know a) if they’ve read the document, and b) if they have, what the rationale is for choosing different options. Specifically, I would like for Morris to explain why she feels that the Council President should be granted the sole authority to appoint committee members.
If any Council members are reading this, the NYS DOS document can be found here: https://dos.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2026/02/revising-city-charters.pdf
That's a totally crabbed and inexpert analysis of the Home Rule Law. If the Council votes for it, it's the body's work. QED.
DeleteTo what are you objecting? Home Rule Law provides three options to pursue municipal charter revision. Under the legislative path, the legislative body (Common Council in Hudson) makes charter commission appointments. The Council President introduced a Local Law asserting all of that authority for herself. The Council (wisely) tabled it. Had they approved it, then it would have become “their work”, as you wrote. But they didn’t, so it isn’t, and the fact remains that the Council President is not a one-person legislative body.
DeleteI could of course be wrong, and we’ll never know, but: I’m relatively certain that if the previous Council President had attempted the exact same thing, this comments section would be roiling right now.
It's not my role to teach you how to interpret or understand statutes. So I won't try. But you're right about Tom -- but was a blazing asshole and a fabulist. His capacity for actual work was nil, unlike his capacity for bullying and self-aggrandizement which were boundless.
DeleteSeems to me that this is slowly creeping towards what the "Revising City Charters in New York State" handbook published by NYSDOS is prescribing when it comes to the composition of a charter commission:
ReplyDelete"For example, in some cities where council members are elected by wards, each council member and the mayor appoint one person to the charter commission, thereby transferring to the charter commission much the same refection [sic] of community interests as are found in the council."
Why not just do that and be done?
Why not, indeed. Why does this process seem to keep being designed to limit public input, participation and representation? Why not solicit letters of interest from city residents and select appointees from those respondents? Isn’t that a better system than the Council President making choices from an unknown group of “people who approached her”?
DeleteCharter revision is important and affects everyone in the city, whether they know it or not. It shouldn’t be managed by a self-selected group of people who hold zero public meetings and can’t produce any documentation of “public input”, nor should it be managed by a group hand picked by one person.
One of the selling points that the charter review people liked to use was that it increased democratic representation. Twice now, the process has been at odds with that promise. Morris may come back with an amended LL that does the right thing, but it won’t change that sole authority was the first instinct and completely unaddressed by the first revision.
Morris did solicit letters of interest. I read about here on Gossips back when she started this process.
DeleteYour disdain for a citizens' initiative is interesting. What's it based on? Equal voting in Hudson was acquired by a citizens' initiative -- way back in 2019 or so. And a citizens' initiative is a public undertaking by definition and, as such, "public input" is baked-in to its premise. And, of course, before any citizens' initiative can get on the ballot it needs either legislative approval or the signatures of between 5 and 10 percent of the active electorate (as defined in the relevant statute). Hardly a power grab or an understood path to shenanigans.
Finally, ask yourself this: why isn't the Council doing charter reform? I mean, actually doing the research, drafting, debate and discussion, all in public by law? Nothing is stopping them. They can't do an entire overhaul but neither, frankly, can any commission. Why doesn't the Council roll up its collective sleeves and do what everyone agrees the voters clearly endorsed?
Does the council understand what an enormous task revising the charter will be? Honestly, we should be seeking volunteers who are sharp readers with a lot of time on their hands. If you can't bring time and reading skills to the table, you shouldn't be considered.
DeleteTo wit, remember the Restore NY Grant fiasco that wasted months, made everyone fight, and Lil Debs lost out on $2m that they needed.
DeleteMorris and Volo were the only people who read the fine print, and we did not listen to them:
https://www.hudsoncommonsense.com/restorenyvote
Citizens’ initiatives are great. I wish there were more. Citizens’ initiatives that seek to fundamentally alter city government but hold zero public meetings before their work is done and can’t produce basic things like records of who they spoke to, what questions they asked or what answers they received are less great.
DeleteI don’t have an issue with the intended product. I have an issue with the process. It’s the same objection that a lot of people had when the charter review team started presenting their finished work. I had hoped that was a lesson learned, but apparently not.
Regarding Morris’s solicitation of LOIs: one announcement at a sparsely attended common council meeting and one sentence in a blog post aren’t exactly “getting the word out”.
DeleteNot sure of which citizens' initiative you speak, but the 2 I was involved with kept copious records of who was spoken to and what was said. We didn't keep minutes of our working meetings because that's not required and would, therefore, be weird.
DeleteBut, beyond that, your critique is strained: the work product goes through a vetting process -- first with the legislature and then with the voters. The work product either stands on its own or it doesn't stand at all. Does anyone really care how sausage is made if it's good sausage? Not really. It's sausage, it involves certain things. So your critique seems to reduce itself to "I'm all for neighbors -- just don't trust them." So what's the point of any of this?
Kristal nails it. And that gets to something almost nobody else is discussing: competence. However the appointments are divided, we don’t merely need five wards represented. We need people capable of reading a charter, statutes, comparative municipal structures, recommendations, testimony, and probably hundreds of pages of supporting material...and then doing something intelligent with it. It’s not a beauty pageant.
DeleteYour objections are facile, sir. "Not exactly getting the word out." What would you have the president do? Publish one time every week for six weeks in the RS? Contract with a town crier/megaphone truck? Hire a skywriter? She made a public announcement. It was picked up and amplified by Gossips which does a far better job of reporting items of local importance than the RS has in quite some time. Gossips is, in the ways that matter, the "paper" of record when it comes to Hudson's civic business.
DeletePublishing in Gossips and nowhere else is exactly the kind of anti-inclusive process I’m describing. We hold publicly noticed public hearings for far more mundane activities than creating charter revision commissions. I don’t think one mention in one local blog suffices.
DeleteRegarding the transparency of the previous citizen initiatives: I’ll happily withdraw the criticism about private conversations with unknown respondents if you can point me to where the public can access those copious records.
The point about sausage making is probably the most germane. You seem to think that it doesn’t matter who is in the room when drafting fundamental reforms to city government; I do, and—once again—that was a very common bone of contention with the last effort. When given the choice between soliciting broad public input through a transparent process, or having some private conversations then giving the rest of us a “take it or leave it” choice at the ballot box, the charter team chose the latter.
I’m not particularly interested in relitigating the shortcomings and oversights of previous charter reform attempts, but it would be nice if the people leading the next attempt had learned from them.
MB - you are on a roll today, we agree again.
DeleteAre you in favour of City Hall / Mayor Ferris following through on his campaign promise and creating and maintaining a non-partisian functional resident newsletter to get the word out on these things:
https://www.hudsoncommonsense.com/nomail
How about if the council member from each ward were to nominate a candidate from their ward to be approved by 2/3 vote by the member, council president and the majority leader.
ReplyDeleteI like this ☝️ It gives each member a chance to nominate someone for their ward and reflect the diversity of the population, but also allows the entire council to veto nominees that are controversial/overly goal driven, etc.
DeleteRemember, Tom DP handpicked the Comprehensive Plan committee and the former mayor’s girlfriend ran it. That being said, Hudson needs to move away from this cronyism and winner-take-all kind of governance. A general buy-in from all sides would help move this forward and get Hudson to a better place. Don’t expect major changes to the charter, but let’s fix the broken and archaic stuff first.
At some point, the process itself becomes the argument for charter review.
ReplyDeleteAs a relatively new Hudson resident, this is one of the things I thought we voted for. Margaret Morris ran explicitly on charter review and won decisively. She proposed a commission, Council members raised concerns about its composition, and she came back with a revised proposal that increased its size and guaranteed representation from every ward.
The appointment structure is clearly what is holding this up, and I understand the concern. But I also think some deference is due to Morris. She is the “elected” Council president and made charter review a central part of the campaign voters overwhelmingly supported. That doesn’t mean the Council shouldn’t have a meaningful role in the process. It does mean we shouldn’t endlessly redesign the process until the person elected to lead it effectively can’t.
So resolve the appointment language, find a structure that preserves both leadership and representation, and get on with the work.
Also, what seems increasingly strange is the idea that everyone must first agree on how “sweeping” charter revision should be. Isn’t that precisely what the commission is being created to examine? Review the Charter, hear from the public, identify what works and what doesn’t, and recommend changes — or no changes — accordingly.
Instead, we’ve now spent months debating how to create a commission to study why Hudson’s government so often seems incapable of moving efficiently through its own processes.
For a city of roughly 6,000 people, governing ourselves simply should not be this difficult.
Hudson has elections every 2 years, and since only the Dem Primary matters in this town it is really an election less than 18 months into every term.
ReplyDeleteAt the last election Morris and Campbell (CFO) were the only ones to clear 1500 votes in city-wide elections. Morris beat DePietro 2:1 in the primary.
Remember Ferris won by 41 votes after raising more than $50k in campaign funds and Kamal was bruised from the Galvan/Bard rent scandal.
Lloyd, the mayor slayer, took 68 votes.
Cousin ran uncontested in the 5th ward (after resigning from 1st Ward Supervisor and the 11 Warren St issue happened on her watch) and got 309 votes in the 5ht after recently spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to build awareness for her primary campaign against Didi.
So while every Common Council member today has 1 equal vote... it is informative to see who carried the most votes from residents.
Right now there is a dynamic where Claire Cousin, Kaya from Kite's Nest (Kaya employs Cousin at Kite's Nest), the Promise Neighborhood Group (Kamal got a revolving door job there when he lost) show up with a a dozen students to public events, or organize a small FB mob to push or block policy.
While the majority of registered voters who have real jobs and do not use youth camp kids or online mobs to intimidate and coerce, are having their voice & vote blocked.
https://www.hudsoncommonsense.com/2025electionscorecard
Morris could have won every single vote in the city, and it still would not mean that the electorate handed her a blank mandate to do whatever she wants however she wants. Voters wanted charter reform, but that doesn’t mean the process shouldn’t matter.
DeleteVoters also voted for the councilmembers, who are more direct representatives for residents than a city-wide position. Why should those ward representatives not be able to decide who among their constituents is the best choice? Why do the charter reform proponents consistently choose the least inclusive path possible?
Charter reform seems inevitable, how we approach it is obviously still a work in progress.
re: "Voters also voted for the councilmembers, who are more direct representatives for residents than a city-wide position."
DeleteFirst - Morris was the First Ward rep and the first in living memory to win in a competitive write-in campaign.
Second - Morris likely got the same or more votes as Claire in the 5th ward (1500/5), around 300. Morris did not raise $500k for a recent election.
re "Why do the charter reform proponents consistently choose the least inclusive path possible?"
This is a false & snuck premise. You are intentionally commingling the Charter Reform Petition last year and your subjective view of it, and the 2026 Morris Charter Commission. You can do better.
And to point out more inconsistency... remember when Mayor Johnson / DePietro built the advisory group around the Comprehensive Plan. That was very centralized and not transparent AND now Hudson is not even following the Comprehensive Plan.
Honestly, the lazy left should be really concerned that a few more moderates don't start working on this issue...
Who received more votes than whom is completely immaterial. Again: a vote is not a blank mandate. We don’t stop holding elected officials accountable after Election Day.
DeleteI don’t believe I’m comingling anything, it’s an apt comparison of two different processes with similar disregard for public input. The previous reform attempt was conducted with zero public participation beyond unrecorded “conversations” with unknown respondents, until it was time to vote yea or nay on the work produced in that black box. This new proposal invests 100% of the commission appointment authority in one person who has already made some choices from among an unknown cohort of “people who approached her”.
The pushback to requesting more transparency in this process is really interesting, as is the whataboutism. There is only an inconsistency if everything in Hudson is viewed through a very tribalistic lens, which I do not.
What I find so curious in this comment thread here is that there's a slew of commenters that are missing the salient point altogether.
DeleteI get that Margaret's initial plan is optimal in terms of creating an efficient charter commission and that commission, if it were to come to be, would probably even succeed in creating a really good charter proposal, too.
That however is all meaningless when it can't pass on the ballot because a number of groups in Hudson felt left out. Margaret is ignoring political realities here (although she seems to be moving in the right direction with her latest revision).
One can criticize Claire Cousin for any number of reasons, but she is rightly calling attention to this very basic fact: Screw up the process by which the charter commission was created and its results won't matter.
Welcome to the transparency train Michael, what took you so long to board.
DeleteWe all agree in America that an election is not a blank cheque for all actions, but it can be a mandate to pursue certain lawful goals and reforms within existing laws.
But it is not immaterial either. Morris ran on charter reform and won decisively (3 of 4 general election voters).
Hudson needs a commission, not another commission on forming the commission.
~
Related to transparency Michael, since you care, do you think Cousin should have disclosed that she now works for Kaya and Kite's Nest full-time and recuse from conflicted votes and issues.
Is she voting and blocking at the direction of Kaya from Kite's Nest?
If, hypothetically, other CC members worked full-time for Galvan Foundation (like Kite's Nest, a local multi-million NGO), should they mention it in disclosures and recuse from certain issues.
Both have business in front of the City's Boards and may receive grants etc.
~
That consistency issue aside:
What is one reform you would like to see in the Charter? (Happy to hear you are also in favor of Charter Reform).
Max, I agree with you. We can’t keep doing things the Tom way
DeleteI thought this might be a good time to revisit the proposal I had to reform the city charter by way of a citizen's assembly.
ReplyDeleteIt is different from a conventional approach in two broad ways:
1 Who is in the room
2 What they do in the room
The first part is because of sortition, or what is called a civic lottery, in which a randomly selected and truly representative group of residents is chosen to participate, much like a jury.
And the second because it creates a strong, facilitated space where neighbors can learn, disagree and change their minds.
I just learned that our neighbors in Kingston will be the first city in the nation to reform their city charter by citizen's assembly.
And they have drafted it so every reform of the city's governing document must be done by citizen's assembly.
Because we live in a time of extremely low trust in institutions and each other, and are a polarized community and nation, I think this back and forth about transparency is an inevitable end state stale mate.
There is another way, and it's call sortition, civic lottery, and citizen's assembly. Because it is everyday people making the decisions it becomes, as Peter MacLeod put it, the "manufacture of democratic integrity," in a time when integrity is in question.
I wrote about the different kinds of legitimacy on offer to us last year:
https://imby.com/post/peoples-charter-reform-in-hudson-trusting-our-neighbors-to-design-a-city-that-works/160844
Isn't there a third significant difference, Peter? Citizen Assembly typically requires funding (not sure why, but every example I've found does). Indeed, Kingston's current struggle in beginning actually doing charter change is presently hung up on the cost issue from what I gather reading the reports. And they've been trying to start the actual work since 2020 -- and still not started due to all the politics.
DeleteYou get what you pay for, right, John?
ReplyDeleteAs for Kingston, I think you are wrong. The Local Law initiating the charter review through citizen assembly was passed in 2025.
This is from yesterday: https://midhudsonnews.com/2026/08/26/apply-to-represent-mayor-on-the-kingston-charter-revision-commission/
Kingston is working with the National Civic League, America's oldest good governance organization. They were instrumental in developing and promoting the council-manager form of government. And they author the Model City Charter, the gold standard of government structure for over 130 years. The National Civic League is an organization not even referenced in your DIY efforts.
I spoke with Nick Vlahos, the Deputy Director of the League's Center for Democracy Innovation, and Derek Okubo, about their history, about charter reform, and the rise of citizens' assemblies.
You can listen here: https://thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/p/nick-vlahos-and-derek-okubo-on-reform
We are talking about the opportunity to review and revise our governing document. Forgive me for some wonkish enthusiasm, but this is an unbelievable opportunity for our city to engage in the most American of activities, of choosing how we want to be governed.
Whether you want a city manager or a strong mayor system, I imagine you want the outcome to be perceived as legitimate by your opposition, so they don't run up their own citizen initiative to challenge it.
As for cost, paying $150,000 for a process that produces a legitimate, durable charter is a lot cheaper than paying nothing up front for a contested one that costs us down the road in referendum fights, legal challenges, and another charter reform cycle to get the durable outcome we could have had the first time.
I can think of no more worthwhile investment for our local foundations than to support a city who wants to rewrite its foundational document in a way that is truly representative.