“I ask you to kill this item tonight,” said Darnell Goldson.
After 90 minutes of passionate debate and a procedural sneak attack, he prevailed: Aldermen agreed to block mayoral-selected nominees from setting to work on revamping the city charter.
The fiery discussion took place at the full Board of Aldermen meeting Monday in City Hall, where aldermen considered the makeup and agenda of the Charter Revision Commission. The commission is set up every 10 years to review and suggest changes to the city’s governing document.
As aldermen move to assemble the commission, Goldson, West Rock alderman, and others objected that the process has been too much steered toward Mayor John DeStefano’s agenda without a chance for people with independent views to take part.
The mayor suggested two topics for consideration: shrinking the Board of Aldermen and expanding term limits from two to four years for the mayor, city clerk and aldermen. He put forward a list of 15 people to sit on the commission.
The Aldermanic Affairs Committee considered those recommendations in a contentious, three-hour meeting on March 16. A total of 39 people applied to sit on the commission. After much debate, the list of members emerged from committee largely unchanged, with 13 of 15 mayoral nominees intact. (See the list at the bottom of this story.) The mayor’s two topics for consideration were adopted; no others were added.
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Goldson (pictured) objected that the resulting deck was stacked in the mayor’s favor, to the exclusion of independent voices and agendas. The recommendations passed in a divided 4 – 2 committee vote, and passed to the full board for consideration at Monday’s meeting.
On Monday disagreements lingered. Majority Leader Alderwoman Katrina Jones of Newhallville sought to delay the vote for another two weeks until aldermen could come to agreement. During the meeting, she quietly passed over the agenda item, skipping on to other issues, such as the fate of federal block grant money.
At 8:30 p.m., most people thought the meeting was over — until Goldson pulled out the procedural sneak attack. He knew the bill needed to clear a high bar — 20 out of 30 votes. At the end of the meeting, betting that the mayor’s administration did not have the votes lined up in its favor, he called the bill to a vote.
The rare move sent a puzzled look over aldermanic President Carl Goldfield’s face. Jones asked for a five-minute recess to regroup.
When the meeting resumed, Jones moved to delay the vote by officially tabling it. The effort failed by a slim margin: 14 no, 13 yes.
Goldson pushed forward. He asked colleagues to “kill” the bill by voting it down. He said aldermen failed to give other nominees a chance to be considered for the commission, and rushed through the mayor’s slate and agenda instead. A range of other issues — including whether the city should move to an elected Board of Education — were unfairly excluded from debate, he said.
He suggested the board return after budget season to revisit the issue.
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His proposal drew an impassioned response from downtown Alderwoman Bitsie Clark (pictured).
“I happen to feel extremely strongly about the numbers of people on the board, and about the numbers of years,” Clark said.
She said in past years, the board has failed to tackle those issues because a myriad of other issues crowded the charter review process. This year, she was encouraged by a new plan: to seat a commission this year that would look at only those two issues; then perhaps convene another commission next year to look at further issues.
“I thought, great, we can really spend time talking about this,” Clark said. “I’m disappointed that we’re not going to do that.”
West River Alderman Yusuf Shah took offense at Goldson’s remarks.
“To say that somehow, somebody stacked the deck, or somebody is giving us stuff to just push through, is inappropriate, and I think it undermines our character as aldermen,” Shah said. He earned a rebuke from Goldfield for making personal comments about Goldson, and for loudly interrupting the board president when he was trying to calm things down.
Much of the debate focused on process. Did nominees get a fair shake? Did aldermen break the rules by approving a list of nominees without requiring them to appear in person at the meeting? Did the bill go before the right committee?
Melissa Bailey Photo
Goldfield (pictured) got down from his presidential platform and walked to his Ward 29 chair to make a comment: He said there was “nothing illegal” about the way the nomination process was handled. The recommended commission members were not official mayoral nominees, so the process is different from that of other boards and commissions, he said.
Other debate focused on timing. Changes to the city charter must be approved by referendum at the ballot. Yale Alderman Mike Jones noted that the governor’s and U.S. Senate races this fall should bring high numbers to the polls in November, making it a good time for a referendum question. By stalling the process, aldermen would likely forsake the chance to get a question onto the ballot.
Jones joined a minority who sought to send the bill back to committee for further review instead of outright killing it. That effort failed by a 11 to 14 vote.
Around 9:45 p.m., aldermen finally got to vote on the substance of the bill. Should they establish a committee of those 15 people to tackle charter reform? With 14 clear dissenters, there was no way the bill could garner the 20 votes it needed. That freed aldermen to safely vote against the mayor’s agenda.
By the time the final vote came, a couple aldermen had left for the night. The mayor’s slate was officially killed by a vote of 20 to 5. (Voting yes: Alds. O’Sullivan-Best, K. Jones, Shah, Lehtonen, Goldfield. Not voting: Paca. Absent: Rhodeen, Bauer, Edwards, Morehead.)
Mayoral Chief of Staff Sean Matteson was asked if the city intends to make a second attempt to launch charter revision. He said he’d talk it over with aldermen.
“I think it deserves discussion,” he said.
Below are the 15 members of the slate which was being considered Monday night.
Porsche Collins
Sandra Trevino
Victor Fasano
Allan Brison
James Rawlings
Cherise Dykes
Jorge Perez
Arline DePino
William Ginsberg
James Segaloff
Larcina Carrington-Wynn
John Cirello
Victor Bolden
Willie Joe Moore
William Celentano
just for the record, the fact that the alternative solution to this option was to hold 2 charter commissions, one of the two issues and another later in the year/next year on more issues, still holds true. this can be restarted by aldermen at any time i believe.