A Needed Charter Revision

The proposed charter changes on this year’s election ballot have been overshadowed by political contests this year, but the proposal to change the way Newtown votes on its annual budget may have a more discernible impact on local taxpayers than any of the other choices they have to make on Election Day. We want to remind voters not to forget the charter question when they are in the booth and to encourage them to approve this important change to the town’s governing document.

The proposal would split the town’s annual budget voting into two parts: one for town expenditures and another for school spending. It would also append advisory questions to help town budgetmakers interpret the results. Those questions would ask voters to indicate for both the town and school sides of the budget whether the proposal is too low. The votes on the two separate parts of the budget would be binding, so if one side of the budget passed and the other did not, only the proposal that failed would be up for a second or subsequent vote. Additionally, the charter change would eliminate the current charter’s requirement that there be a budget town meeting after two budget rejections.

There appears to be widespread support for this so-called “bifurcation” of the budget, but a corps of critics has emerged in recent weeks arguing against the requirement that the votes be binding. Nothing should be binding, they argue, until both sides of the budget are passed since adjustments in expenditures when budgets are recast following their rejection often involve both sides of the budget. We believe that this perceived flaw in the proposed change is far less consequential than reconsidering expenditures that have already passed muster at the polls. That would constitute a kind of democratic double jeopardy where majority rule is subject to continuous second-guessing and rejiggering until some other less compelling set of priorities is satisfied. It would undermine the clarity this charter change is trying to bring to the budget approval process by introducing an element of uncertainty about what a Yes vote means as it wrestles with the uncertainty of what a No vote means.

The proposed charter revision, as worded, may not be a perfect solution, but it will provide far more guidance to our budgetmakers than the current system or any of the other alternatives we have heard so far.