City reps eye rule change on filling vacancies

Public comment would take place first before any vote

STAMFORD — When the Board of Representatives appointed Jackie Pioli to a vacant seat on the Board of Education earlier this year, some members of the public were disgruntled that the vote took place before they had a chance to speak.

“Now that you’ve voted, our comments don’t really matter,” resident Jeff Herz said at the time. “Maybe just possibly we could have said something that (might) have changed somebody’s mind. But now we’ll never have the opportunity to do that.”

Said another resident, Stephanie Edmonds, “I’m disappointed that you have allowed a technicality in your policies to betray the spirit and intent of the policy that places the public comment at the top of the agenda. Since it’s the people that give you power, when they’re on the agenda, they deserve the highest amount of respect.”

The timing of public comments would change under a proposal by board Majority Leader Nina Sherwood.

Full board meetings begin with an invocation and a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a roll call, a moment of silence, announcements, honorary resolutions and a time for public comment. The board’s rules currently state that filling a vacancy must occur after the roll call and will “take precedence over all other business before the board.”

Sherwood has proposed an update to the rules so any vote on a vacancy comes after the public comment period, which the board added to its order of business several years ago.

“I know ... we changed our rules to allow the public to speak essentially on all matters that our board considers before we vote on them,” Sherwood said at a Legislative and Rules Committee meeting this week. “I think that that was the right thing to do then, and I think that there’s a loophole, and I think that that loophole was discovered in February when there was obviously a situation where people wanted to speak on the board filling a vacancy, and our rules didn’t allow that.”

In February, when the board voted to fill the vacancy on the Board of Education, Sherwood made a motion to suspend the board’s rules and move up the public comment session on the agenda. The motion needed support from two-thirds of the

members present and voting to pass. It failed in a 21-19 vote.

The Legislative and Rules Committee was split when it considered Sherwood’s proposal this week. Four committee members voted in favor of the change. Four other committee members voted against it.

Rep. Lindsey Miller, D-7, who voted “no,” said that while voters weigh in on candidates at election time, filling vacant seats is “the purview of the Board of Reps and not anybody else.” Stamford’s charter gives the Board of Representatives the responsibility.

Democratic District 4 Rep. Megan Cottrell joined Miller in voicing concern.

“It gives the appearance that it’s a public debate, and then it kind of makes it seem like a vacancy becomes a public hearing, and that’s not ever really anything we’ve done on this board or on the (previous) board,” Cottrell said.

Another “no” vote came from Rep. Mary Fedeli, a Republican from District 17. A city representative since 1995, Fedeli said she probably received more emails from the public on the recent Board of Education vacancy than on any other vacancy she has ever considered.

“I don’t think the public has an issue of communicating with us on citywide vacancies,” Fedeli said.

Fedeli was also hesitant about allowing residents who live anywhere in Stamford to speak on the filling of a vacancy on the Board of Representatives, whose members represent specific portions of the city.

Despite the split vote, the proposed rule change could still be brought to the floor at the full board’s meeting scheduled for June 5.