Newtown’s current Charter Revision Commission is the most thoughtful charter panel we can remember. Their discussions are interesting and informative. Their ideas for reforming Newtown’s government are innovative and insightful. Plus they are a genial group, working always to consensus so that ideas and issues and not personalities and politics hold sway in their work. To date they have made some good suggestions (eliminating the Board of Selectmen and strengthening the first selectman) and some not-so-good suggestions (giving the first selectman a four-year term). The commission is now probing a sensitive area in the town’s anatomy – finance.

Ever since Newtown abandoned its old Board of Finance in favor of a Legislative Council with broader powers, the council’s consideration of financial matters has drawn on the talents of two distinct types of council members: number crunchers and policy makers. The former have tended to be finance experts, often having professional experience in accounting or financial planning. Working with the considerable talents of Newtown’s Finance Director Ben Spragg, they settle into positions on the council’s finance committee and configure town budgets that address town needs as responsibly and as conservatively as they can manage. Their work then is presented to the full council, where the ramifications of this preliminary budget work are assessed. The policy makers on the council then weigh in, giving emphasis to one project or another, one department or another, based on their best reading of the public’s interest and will. The result has been a budget that usually wins quick town approval (though that was not the case last year).

The current system seems to work, yet the Charter Revision Commission believes that formalizing the relationship between the number crunchers and policy makers may make a workable system even better. By creating a new Board of Finance, reserving for the Legislative Council the final say on the budget before it goes to the voters, and throwing a veto-wielding first selectman into the mix, the charter panel hopes to establish a budget process that is more defined and better understood by both the town’s budgetmakers and the public.

We have appreciated and supported the Charter Revision Commission’s independent innovative spirit in its discussions of possible change in local government in the past months. But in the critical area of finance, we would hope the commission listens carefully to the town’s current budgetmakers, including the Legislative Council and the finance director. The commission’s suggestion for a new Board of Finance and formalizing the current de facto system of budgetmaking is conceptually strong and worth serious consideration. Finesse and flexibility often trump formality when it comes to local financing, however. Adding more mechanisms to the methods of the council and its finance committee may hamper the process rather than help it. The council itself is in the best position to say whether this will be the case.

We trust the council will speak its mind on the issue when it meets with the Charter Revision Commission this month. And we trust that the commission will listen.