Fairfield residents decry charter revision plan at hearing
FAIRFIELD — Town residents overwhelmingly spoke out against proposed changes to Fairfield's charter at the Charter Revision Commission's final public hearing June 2.
Notably, many of those who decried the changed to the charter were members of the Democratic Town Committee or Democratic members of the Representative Town Meeting.
Changes to the RTM were front-and-center issues on Thursday night, as residents pushed back against changes that would reduce its size from 40 members to 30, and that would mandate minority representation in each of the 10 voting districts.
“Liberals and conservatives have much common ground on charter reform,” DTC chair Steven Sheinberg said in the hearing. “The broad consensus includes an RTM with no minimum minority representation, keeping the RTM at 40, which is one member for 1,000 voters in 10 districts, and an RTM that has access to legal services.”
There is no broad support for proposed changes for the RTM and especially not minimum minority representation, said Sheinberg — calling it anti-democratic. He said there is also no support for reducing the number of RTM members, adding it is hard enough for the four members per district to cover them now.
“If you stay with the plan proposed by some members of this board to vote for radical change to the RTM and the budget process, then many voters, including Republicans, Democrats, and independents, will vote no in November
and all the good changes to the charter will not be implemented,” he said.
CHANGES TO THE CHARTER
Steve Mednick, the attorney hired to guide the commission and town through the revision process, summarized the changes at the beginning of the meeting. He noted that one of the major changes in the proposed charter was a restructuring of the document.
“We consolidated provisions. We simplified provisions. We eliminated redundancies,” he said. “We created standards in article one of commonly used terms throughout the document.”
Mednick said these changes would make the document easier to follow and use. He said a new section in the beginning of the charter covers rules of order and civility, which he said would address issues that other communities around the state and nation are seeing concerning allowing the public and elected officials to safely present their views on any given issues.
One big change, and the one members of the public focused on, was the changes to the RTM. Mednick said the commission was unable to convince stakeholders of the need to restructure the current form of government.
“While the commission still believes the RTM is too large and unwieldy, (the document) basically retains the RTM in its current status with the reduction from 56, which is your max, right now you have 40, to 30 members,” he said.
Mednick said the commission had previously considered doing away with the Board of Selectmen, in favor of a system where there would just be a first selectman or town manager and then a board of executives like a town council or a smaller RTM. Those plans were later dashed as there was not much will to decrease the size of the RTM to one that a town manager would want to work with.
“It would be very difficult to imagine a town manage that was willing to take a job with a government that has a board of directors that is that large,” he said.
COMPLAINTS ABOUT THE PROPOSED CHARTER
More than 30 people spoke during public comment, many of whom spoke out against the changes to the RTM. One such speaker was Violet Lumani, a resident and unaffiliated voter, said the town has had its system of representation in place for a long time and it has served residents well. She went on to claim the minority representation proposal in the charter would consolidate power for Republicans, adding no party should have an outsized amount of control on power.
“Here, we have a population that is growing a ton, and the answer is to decrease the number of representatives from 40 to 30 and cap it there?” she said. “That's not to mention the participation trophy that is minority representation. I don't know how anybody can argue that that is better for democratic process.”
Dru Georgiatis, a Democratic RTM member from
District 9, said that, being from a swing district, the current size of the RTM works very well because it allows residents to have a direct representative of government to deal with issues specific to their area.
Georgiatis said that while the commission justified minority representation in the RTM partially by noted many other towns' boards and commissions have it, RTM districts speak to the entire town, while RTM members just represent their neighborhoods.
“To reduce it to a district level is not necessary, because you have town-wide minority representation within that board of 40,” she said. “To reduce it to the district level is undemocratic and its smacks of gerrymandering.”
Christine Brown, a Democratic RTM member from District 9, said the RTM minority representation proposal ignore the fact that democracy is, by definition, majority rule.
“On many local issues, there is broad, bipartisan agreement on the RTM,” she said. “However, on some issues, there are major policy differences between the parties, and there's nothing wrong with that. It gives voters a clear choice of which party's policies to support.”
RESPONSE FROM MEDNICK AND NEXT STEPS
On Friday, Mednick said he represents a lot of municipalities around the state of various sizes. When the commission was talking about how possible changes to Fairfield's structure of government, he said, they took a look at a variety of different municipalities. He said he tried to propose an
RTM that is smaller than it is now, “but still much larger than it should have been.”
“We were trying to move to a compromise to see if we could get any notion of support for the idea of going to a smaller legislative body,” he said, adding his proposal had 27 members and nine districts.
“Most of the legislative bodies in Connecticut are under 20,” he said. “In terms of representative democracy, in a district system, people know who their representative is, who their council member is, and the you elect them and they represent you.”
Mednick, a Democrat, said he saw that Fairfield has a pretty close ratio of Republicans and Democrats winning elections. He said other municipalities, such as Waterbury, went to a multi-member district system and employed minority party representation.
Looking at that, Mednick said he asked the commission if it would make sense to have minority party representation. This way, he said, Democrats might have a represenative in Greenfield Hill and Republicans might have a representative in Stratfield.
This way Mednick said, each party could nominate two people to run for a district, if there were 30
members, and the only person who loses would be the second person from the minority party.
“Somebody will lose, but a majority person won't lose,” he said.
Mednick said there are a lot of rules in the United States, down to the local level, with minority party representation that have worked to provide some degree of political diversity.
“Is the majority constrained? Yes. Minority party representation means a cap on majority representation,” he said. “It's not perfect democracy, but don't call it anti-democratic. Don't call it autocratic. Don't call it authoritarian. This is not the denying people water in line in Georgia. This is not cutting back on early voting. This is not closing polling places and denying people the right to vote.”
The commission will meet next week to discuss public feedback and make any changes they feel necessary, before presenting it to the Board of Selectmen. The BOS will then either vote to accept the recommended changes, deny them, or request tweaks to the work. In the end, the people will vote on the charter in November.