Mayor uses veto power on hiring issue
City Council ordinance would have given city clerk departmental hiring authority
WOONSOCKET — An ordinance passed by the City Council that was designed to give the city clerk clear authority to do the hiring within the Office of the City Clerk has been vetoed by Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, who portrays the measure as a case of legislative overreach.
In her veto message, the mayor called the disputed ordinance “an obvious attempt to improperly seize executive power and improperly expand its legislative powers in violation” of the city charter “in an attempt to interfere with the day-today administrative powers of the Mayor” to control hiring within the clerk’s office.
Contradicting the council’s legal justification for passing the measure, the mayor said the legislative body has no authority to accord the clerk hiring powers that are not otherwise explicit in the charter.
“The Council’s improper attempt to usurp the Mayor’s clear-cut authority with respect to the appointing authority for all permanent and temporary personnel and staff with- in the office of the City Clerk cannot withstand a rational reading of the provisions of the Woonsocket Home Rule Charter,” she concluded.
The council passed the ordinance on a 5-2 vote for the first time on Sept. 18, nearly a month after an unusually public airing of a hiring dispute that involved Baldelli-Hunt and City Clerk Christina Duarte. Hiring issues are normally private under the state’s Open Meetings Act, but the council said the law didn’t apply because the name of the employee was not discussed and job performance was not in question.
At issue was an opening in the
clerk’s office for a licensing aide for which five candidates had tested. In keeping with what she thought was tradition, Duarte informed the mayor of her recommended candidate, but she was later surprised when Baldelli-Hunt hired someone else.
The council grilled Baldelli-Hunt about the basis for her choice and admonished her for dictating hiring within the clerk’s office in top-down fashion, but Baldelli-Hunt defended her actions during that session, which lasted some 90 minutes. She said the new hire had a good record as a temp in the assessor’s office, finished third in qualifying exams and came highly recommended by the director of personnel and the tax assessor.
“I like to do what’s fair – we can’t always be nice, we have a city to run,” the mayor said at the time. “At the end of the day… this person was responsible, always showed up for work, took the test, passed the test and had good comments” from the personnel director and assessor.
Unlike most senior managers and department heads in City Hall, Duarte is not appointed by the BaldelliHunt. Under the rules of government outlined in the charter, she is appointed by and works for the city council.
In a formal opinion, City Solicitor John DeSimone previously concluded that Duarte does not have authority to hire anyone, as other heads of departments do. In fact, DeSimone said that from his reading of the charter, the city clerk’s office is not a department and the clerk is not its director. He said the city clerk holds a title, but that doesn’t make her a department director.
The scuttling of Ordinance 17-0-66 is just the latest in a series of legislative vetoes by Baldelli-Hunt, most of which have been easily overridden by the necessary margin of at least five votes. The same could happen again on Monday, at the council’s next regularly scheduled meeting, if the five members of the council who voted in favor of the measure reaffirm their position by voting to override the veto.
The measure became law after Council President Dan Gendron, Vice President Jon Brien, Councilman James Cournoyer, Councilman Richard Fagnant and Councilwoman Denise Sierra granted second and final passage of the ordinance on Oct. 2. Councilman Christopher Beauchamp and Councilwoman Melissa Murray voted against it. Follow Russ Olivo on Twitter @russolivo