City Council scores win for city with special election vote
Boston has been through a lot in the past year, and the City Council has taken a step to forestall a looming logistical nightmare.
The council voted Wednesday for a home rule petition that would eliminate the special election requirement and allow Council President Kim Janey to serve as acting mayor until the regular fall election. All this is predicated on Mayor Marty Walsh stepping down before March 5 to take his Labor post with the Biden Administration.
Once one considers the potential for chaos had the proposal not carried the day, we must applaud the council’s move.
Councilor Ricardo Arroyo, who filed the petition, said it would be irresponsible for the city to potentially hold four elections — a special, the regular November contest and preliminary elections preceding each — in a matter of months amid a pandemic.
That scenario would present “a serious threat to the health of our residents, our city workers and our communities, and will contribute to the disenfranchisement of people of color, disabled and low-income communities, and would be wasteful and costly as an expenditure for the city at a time when our revenues are down and so many of our critical services are in need of increased funding,” he said.
Boston has enough on its plate, a quartet of campaigns while coordinating the voting process for each election would not serve the city — or its residents — well. We’re still navigating the coronavirus vaccine rollout and wrangling with home-schooling children; pandemic exhaustion is the order of the day.
Mass VOTE Executive Director Cheryl Clyburn Crawford said a special election “would have undoubtedly led to voter fatigue and confusion, while posing an unnecessary risk to public health as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on.”
The chair of the council’s Committee on Government Operations, Lydia Edwards, said Wednesday that the committee received “copious amounts of public comment” on the petition and that “99.99% of the people who testified” at a hearing last week wanted to do away with the special election.
Janey has described the idea of a special election in these circumstances as “at best, foolish, and at worst, dangerous.”
In these days where many feel the government has let them down or written them off, it’s no small win when elected officials work according to the best interests of those they serve.
The vote doesn’t end with the council, however. It needs approval from Walsh, the state Legislature and Gov. Charlie Baker to become law.
Baker has indicated he’d sign the petition if it reaches his desk and last month signed a similar home-rule bill allowing Lawrence to bypass a mayoral special election this year.
While not specifically addressing the Boston special election, Baker said on Jan. 14 that he signs home-rule petitions “as a general rule.”
There are some issues, however. Councilor Frank Baker questioned in past meetings how it would look if the Legislature acted quickly on this bill while ignoring others filed by the council.
It would look like politics in Massachusetts — often confounding, frequently frustrating and occasionally, as with the home rule vote, actually helpful.