Charter Review & Reform
What is a City Charter? It is a living document in which the city’s governing system is defined.
I was fortunate enough to be selected to serve on the Newport Charter Review Commission that was commissioned in December 2021, and the goal was to ensure that the city’s Charter reflected diversity, inclusion, and equity which would offer fair representation to Newport citizens.
By May 2022, the Commission submitted their recommendations to Council so that Council could review, discuss, and vote on the revised items.
The recommendations were designed to ensure greater transparency between the Council and the citizens of Newport, and to encourage citizens’ participation in our city government.
The recommendations sought to make the Charter more accessible and comprehensible, with the hope of bridging the perceived gap in communication that our citizens felt, and still feel, with city government.
The goal was to allow the voices of the people to be heard.
The way that the Charter is currently set up under Chapter II is that the Council shall consist of seven (7) Councilors, one from each of the City’s three (3) Wards, and the remaining four (4) individuals would be At-Large Councilors serving the entire city.
The term of office for the elected Councilors is for two (2) year terms, however, there are NO TERM LIMITS so as long as an individual keeps running for Council and getting elected, they can serve indefinitely.
How is our mayor chosen? NOT BY YOU THE PEOPLE!
The Council chooses one of its members who was elected At-Large as Chair of the Council and will preside with the title of Mayor. This individual doesn’t have to even be the highest vote getter of the At-Large candidates.
THE PEOPLE CURRENTLY HAVE NO SAY AS TO WHO THE MAYOR OF OUR CITY WILL BE!!
When the 2022 Charter Review Commission submitted their recommendations, the city solicitor recommended that 13 of the 17 recommendations be considered for a Council vote, with the rationale
that voters would be overwhelmed at the polls if they had too many ballot questions to vote on. Personally, I didn’t think that this gave the citizens of Newport enough credit to be able to make informed decisions and exercise their right, as United States citizens, to vote….to choose what they wanted to vote on and how they wanted to VOTE.
And among the many items rejected by the 2022 City Council were the following:
Election of all seven (7) councilors on an At-Large basis
This would do away with the Ward specific councilor positions and instead would allow the councilors to serve and concern themselves with the problems of the entire community given the potential future issues facing the City.
Term Limits
To set councilor term limits so that the councilors would have the opportunity to run for and potential be elected to serve no more than four terms consecutively to provide more people in the community the opportunity to serve.
When you do something for TOO long you run the risk of becoming inadvertently and unintentionally complacent. Term limits allow for new energy to come to the table, a fresh perspective on the issues, and more critical and creative thinking on the potential resolutions.
Selection of the Mayor
To have voters, rather than council, select the mayor based upon which At-Large elected Councilor had the highest number of votes.
The recommendations by the Commission on At-Large councilors and the mayoral selection included a recommendation that these measures should be decided by Newport’s voters, giving a voice to the people, and removing any bias that the council may have on those issues.
The recommendation was designed to bypass councils’ ability to vote on those items and have them instead go straight to the ballot giving the vote directly to the voters.
At the time of discussion of the recommendations, a comment came from a councilor that term limits at the city, and even the presidential level are undemocratic.
However, term limits represent the epitome of democracy and encourage competitive elections. They would allow new voices to emerge, creating the type of participatory democracy that our city deserves and encourages fair representation on the council.
When Council rejected the recommendations for term limits and the mayoral selection, they denied the people a voice in a democratic process!!
The Charter is archaic and does not reflect the growth that Newport has seen in the past ten (10) years. It needs to be modernized and representative of the citizens of Newport. It NEEDS to be updated!!
And as you have seen over the past few years, the previous and current council have a blatant disregard for the Charter and as some councilors have stated, revisions to the document would impact their re-election.
Is that what we want? To leave the decision of how our Charter is defined and how it determines the way in which our city is run, in the hands of individuals who aren’t thinking about how their decisions impact us but instead ignore this document and make decisions that are self-serving?!
My recommendation would be to have the Charter Review Commission a permanent commission that is independent of Council to avoid such issues as councilor bias.
The commission should be chosen by a panel of city administrators, ideally the commission members would serve based upon staggered two (2) year terms, they would hold public workshops to gain feedback from the citizens of Newport on the various chapters of the Chater, and would submit recommendations of changes to the Charter directly to the City Manager’s office each election year to be put to the ballot for the citizens of Newport to decide how THEIR city should be run.
We need to be asking ourselves the following questions:
Has Newport outgrown our Council-Manager form of government?
Do we want Council to be able to hire or fire our City's Manager?
Should Council term limits apply?
Should we continue to allow the councilors – not the voters – to fill the vacancy should a Councilor leave before the end of their term?
Should the voters be able to decide who the City’s Mayor is?
Newport has grown substantially and yet our city government has not grown with it!
WE NEED CHANGE!!!!