Why The Charter Revision

Was A Failure

To the Editor:

At The Homesteads debate Bill Sheluck invoked my name to support his contention that he was successful in his leadership of the last Charter Revision. One of his supporters did the same in a letter to the editor. Therefore, I would like to set the record straight. He is correct in stating that I found working with the people on the committee enjoyable and the discussions stimulating. However, since the voters rejected 60 percent of the questions and 80 percent of the content, I view it as a failure not a success.

Having served on at least three charter revision commissions, I have spent time thinking about why this last one failed. I believe that our chairman Bill and we, as members, made several critical errors:

Unlike all previous commissions, at Bill’s insistence, no votes were taken on individual changes at the time we finished discussing them. Thus, there could not be a minority report or real paper trail for dissenting opinions at the end of the process. Instead there was a coerced consensus at the end.

We, and, in particular Bill, were much too confrontational with the Legislative Council. Since they held the real power, it called for delicate negotiations, more of a joint effort, rather than his take it or leave it approach. Particularly since the creation of a Board of Finance would take away much of the council’s function.

Petitioning for a referendum for everything rejected by the council proved to be the worst possible way to effectuate change in complicated charter provisions.

Once it was discovered that we left the critical effective date for changes out of the document, we should have agreed not to go forward so that the defect could have been corrected before going to the voters. However, Bill was adamant that we go ahead.

The result that some questions were approved and some rejected left an essentially unworkable charter that had to be cobbled together by the town attorney with the help of the finance director and first selectman.

Those are my reflections on a textbook case of how not to revise the town charter and suggest to Bill that he not try to use me as a reference in the future.

Sincerely,

Jack. H. Rosenthal

101 Haley Lane, Newtown                                          October 28, 2003