Bad At Blind Man’s Bluff

Since the rejection of the Legislative Council’s initial budget proposal on April 24, the process of assembling Newtown’s financial plan for 2012-2013 has resembled a game of blind man’s bluff, wherein a blindfolded Legislative Council is “it” and must grope around trying to seize a budget in the midst of competing taunts of “Over here!” … “No, over here!” The third rejection of the council’s budget plans this week ensures that this frustrating game will continue a few more weeks.

Despite efforts in all quarters of this year’s budget debate to flood the public arena with information, the answer to one key question remains hidden from the council: Are people opposing the budget because it is too high and driving up taxes or because it is too low to adequately fund vital services, especially educational services?

It is embarrassing for a town as sophisticated as Newtown is in its financial affairs to find itself stymied by ignorance and reduced to merely guessing about the best course of action. To its credit, last year the Legislative Council tried to avoid exactly this kind of confusion by creating a charter revision commission and charging it with assessing and ultimately proposing a solution to the problem of how to interpret budget referendum votes. The commission did come up with a solution to add supplemental questions to budget votes that would give direction to subsequent deliberations. Some argued — and still do — that the plan didn’t go far enough. They argued there should be separate votes on the town and school budgets. But in the end, all arguments were moot; the charter change didn’t go anywhere at all. Even though the changes were favored in a referendum vote, not enough people cast ballots on the revision to satisfy minimum state requirements for charter changes.

The problem, town officials acknowledged later, was that the charter vote was not run concurrently with a general election, which would have ensured that more than the requisite 15 percent of the local electorate would have voted. Lesson learned.

Last month, council chair Jeff Capeci told a budget forum that he is committed to seating another charter revision commission to bring the issue of budget ballot questions before voters again. If we are to use last year’s charter revision experience as a guide, however, the process needs to start now and move quickly. Last time around, it took more than seven months from the time a charter revision commission was appointed to the anemic and ill-fated charter vote. November’s general election is just three and a half months away. The council indicated Wednesday night that it will appoint a charter revision commission soon, but the panel will have to work double-time to get a proposed charter change on the ballot this year and secure the vote it will need to benefit next year’s budget vote.

With luck, the council will find members for a local charter revision commission who are committed to getting a charter change on the November ballot and speeding the review and requisite hearings sufficiently to meet the September 7 deadline for getting the issue on November’s ballot. It can be done. Given how bad we seem to be at playing blind man’s bluff, it is essential that we try.