Newtown’s Heroes And Goats

We never know how to react when a charter revision commission gets to work: should it be with interest and expectation as when the artist picks up a paint brush, or should it be with trepidation and alarm as when the baby picks up a hammer? No other public agency has as much potential to change the face of our local government, especially when its members go about defining, or redefining the town’s executive functions.

For most people, the town’s chief executive is the face of government. He, or she, is the one most frequently in the news, whether it is cutting ribbons at the new shopping center, receiving petitions for pothole repair, or making budget presentations at council meetings, or public hearings, or at town meetings. The elected chief executive officer — the first selectman in Newtown’s case — is the town hero or the town goat depending on the public mood of the day. So when we learn that the Charter Revision Commission is considering various alternatives to the way the town’s executive branch goes about its business, we sit up and take notice. From what we’ve heard so far, there is cause for both interest and alarm.

In recent years, charter revision commissions have given only passing pro forma consideration to the concept of a hired town manager for Newtown. Let’s hope the idea is passed by again this year. Town managers are supposed to be “professional” and beholden to no particular political point of view, answering only to an elected legislative body like Newtown’s Legislative Council. This is precisely the problem with town managers — the lack of accountability. Anyone with the concentration of power that normally accrues to a municipal chief executive officer needs to be elected and accountable directly to the people. We want the people in the top position in the town’s hierarchy to care whether they are the hero or the goat in the public’s mind. Town managers need only worry about currying favor with a voting majority of council members.

Accountability is also the reason why the proposal by the current first selectman, Herb Rosenthal, to expand the executive’s term of office from two to four years is a bad idea. Having a chief elected official’s record put to the electoral test every other year remains an extraordinarily effective method for empowering citizens on the local level. If members of Congress can stand for election every two years, so can Newtown’s first selectman.

Finally, if Newtown’s future executives are to have the privilege of being the hero or the goat, they should be given the latitude and flexibility they need to claim either title. With several checks and balances on the power of the chief elected official already in place on the Legislative Council and Board of Finance, Newtown may have grown to the point where executive power should be consolidated and the Board of Selectmen eliminated. Hero or goat, perhaps the day has come to call our chief elected official mayor.