PAYING ATTENTION!
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Lawrence
City Charter Needs Real Changes!
The
City Council has been holding meetings for the last year
and a half to consider how to change the city charter so
that Government services will be delivered more effective
and our city will run more smoothly.
Most of the changes proposed are minor and insignificant.
The real problems with our city charter are of such great
magnitude that a complete overhaul is in order. The city
charter basically sets up our city government on the
national model, with the Mayor as the Chief Executive,
and the Council acting much like congress. The Council
makes city ordinances and approves the budget while the
Mayor is to enforce those ordinances and propose a budget
for council approval. Unfortunately, the geniuses who
established our "new" city charter never
thought about the third branch of our federal government,
the judiciary. In the Federal model, the judiciary (the
courts) decide all disputes between the braches of
government if one oversteps their authority.
But locally, there is no branch of government that
enforces our charter when the Council or the Mayor
refuses to follow the law. So, what happens when the City
Council makes ordinances for the city and the Mayor
refuses to enforce them? We have seen it happen time and
time again over the last sixteen years. Mayors Sullivan,
Kennedy and Dowling all refused to enforce residency
requirement. Now, whether you agree with the residency
law or not, it is the law and must be enforced. Yet, in
the 16 years of our "new" charter it never has
been.
And Residency is not the only law that has been ignored
by our previous mayors. What is the council supposed to
do? What are the citizens suppose to do when there is no
"or else" in our city charter. If the
Mayor’s job is to enforce the laws of the city and a
mayor refuses, there must be some vehicle available to
citizens in order to force them do their duties as
prescribed by the charter. This is why we need an
"OR ELSE" clause in our City Charter.
If the council had the authority to "direct"
the mayor (meaning to order her) to act upon the laws and
ordinances of the city, much the same way the School
Committee has the right to do so with the superintendent
(though they never take advantage of this) then the
elected mayors would have real checks and balances over
their unbridled authority.
So what is the "or else?" We could change the
charter to give powers to the city council to withhold
funding already allocated to the mayor’s office if
he/she refuses to comply with the law. After all, you
wouldn’t pay someone at your place of employment if
they refused to do their job correctly would you? The
Council could simply have the authority to override the
mayor’s enforcement powers if he/she is not
complying with the law and they could enforce the laws
with a simple vote.
Here’s how it would work: (we’ll use residency
as an example) If the mayor refuses to fire city workers
who are in violation of the residency requirement, the
council could then take a majority vote to
"direct" (order) her to fire employees in
violation. If she doesn’t comply within a certain
amount of time, the enforcement power to carry out that
charter provision would then transfer to the council for
this one issue only and the council could then take a
majority vote to remove residency violators from the
payroll.
You see how easy things can work if we have a structure
in place that takes into account the potential for
corruption by our elected leaders?
Another major charter change must be to bring back
Aldermen. When all of the city department heads were
elected for two-year terms you could vote out the
Alderman of Parks if the city parks were not properly
maintained. If your streets weren’t plowed
adequately, you could vote to remove the Alderman who
isn’t doing his job. Yes there was corruption under
the old form of government, but it wasn’t our tax
money people were stealing. And the city still operated
efficiently. Elected officials were held accountable.
Under the current charter we no longer have department
heads selling jobs for cash. Instead, we have large
campaign contributors receiving millions of our tax
dollars simply because they supported the elected mayor.
We have more power concentrated in the hands of one
person and a system which makes it almost impossible to
keep track of and hold responsible those people who are
breaking he law.
So, here’s what I propose; we elect our department
heads like we us to elected Aldermen. They sit on the
city council with a full vote. We also continue to elect
our District Councilors so that no particular
neighborhood is neglected or forgotten. The Mayor would
sit as the secretary of the City Council to answer
questions in public at every meeting and assist the
council in matters of executing the law.
The mayor would be responsible as the enforcer of the
charter. He/she would be responsible for disbursing the
funds in the budget, which the City Council voted to
allocate. And the public would have accountability, more
information, decentralized power and would always know
who was responsible for what function of government the
citizens were unhappy with.
Changing the charter to exclude city workers from serving
on the school committee is a nice start. Excluding city
workers from being able to contribute to elected
officials who oversee their jobs would be an even better
start. But, we have had this "new" charter for
16 years, and if that’s the best the City Council
can do, given the absolute failure of our mayors to
enforce the charter, resulting in corruption of city
services then a complete overhaul is the only way to jump
start our government so that it services the people
instead of the political hacks.
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