Last week in this space we addressed some of the major changes in town government proposed by the Charter Revision Commission. The commission has put so much thought and effort into proposing changes to bring the powers of the first selectman and the Legislative Council into better balance that it would be useful to make every effort to ensure that the council and selectmen understood and supported the changes before they went to the public for a vote, we argued. Notwithstanding all the significant work the charter panel has done in the past seven months, however, there remains one area of importance to the future health of local government that was not addressed by the commission: the declining ability of Newtown’s political parties to come up with a full complement of candidates for the biennial local elections. 

In the last local election in November, 1999, voters were presented with uncontested elections for first selectman, town clerk, Board of Education, Zoning Board of Appeals, and for the Police Commission. If it weren’t for six people contesting seats on the 12-member council and two contested seats on the Planning and Zoning Commission, there would have been no reason for anyone in Newtown to go to the polls in 1999.

Leaders of both political parties lament how hard it is to attract qualified candidates to run for local office. This is not surprising given that the percentage of Newtown voters who belong to either political party has been shrinking steadily in recent years. On Election Day in 1999, a full 40 percent of the eligible voters were not affiliated with either party. The rolls of the registrars of voters on that day included 5,157 unaffiliated voters, 4,475 Republicans, and 3,022 Democrats. While both parties say they would consider nominating an unaffiliated voter who expressed interest in serving on a local board, that almost never happens; it does not serve a party’s interests to rely on non-party members to carry their partisan banner into an election.

We are sorry that the Charter Revision Commission decided not to explore new mechanisms for opening the local ballot to unaffiliated voters. People who are not party members can petition their way on to the local ballot, but that is a hurdle that is more likely to frustrate rather than encourage would-be candidates. A review of majority/minority representation on local boards and commissions by the charter panel would have been in order this year since neither the Republicans or the Democrats can claim to represent the majority bloc of voters in Newtown anymore. Perhaps the addition of at-large nominating conventions open to every voter would yield some choices, especially on the school board.

It would have been nice if the Charter Revision Commission had been able to research the possibilities under current state election law for opening up the democratic system on the local level. Instead, the commission has designated the issue of bringing more candidates and contests to the local ballot as something the next Charter Revision Commission should take up. It should have been a priority rather than an afterthought.

Our local government will suffer, no matter how it is configured, without a full and vigorous debate in local election campaigns on issues affecting the first selectman, the council, the Board of Education, the police, and local land use agencies. That debate does not take place when no one is challenging incumbents and there are so few choices to be found on the local ballot.