How Framingham's Charter Review Was Weakened by Threat of Council Veto

SUMMARY:

In the following, simple arguments will be made for one last easy change in the City Charter to greatly improve flexibility in the city annual budget review process: kill automatic referral to the City Council Finance Subcommittee.

Some lamenting will be done on the failure of the Charter Review Committee to provide voters a way to retire At-Large City Councilor bias from the City Council, but the automatic referral has to go, as it is City Charter micromanagement of the City Council.

The Charter Review Committee is approaching its final vote on charter change recommendations at its meeting on Thursday, June 13, 2024. Its work is 99.9% complete, and this vote is simply to affirm that the final set of changes approved at the prior meeting made it into the charter draft with the correct wording.

This Charter Review Committee was as good as one could hope for, with its members having a diverse set of abilities and perspectives. It worked hard, and was well run by its Chair, Adam Blumer.

However, it would be naive to think that the process was entirely unaffected by political influence, as the charter review process played out with the firm knowledge that the City Council would act as final arbiter on whether recommendations would reach the public for a vote.

This is the central problem of the review process, as was discussed in a prior article back published on September 13, 2023:

The Fundamental Flaw in the Framingham City Charter

In theory, the City Council could have sent a message to the Charter Review Committee at the outset, encouraging it to be wide-ranging and thorough in all of its considerations, and especially making clear that it should have no reservations in carefully examining the role the City Council has played since Framingham became a city.

In practice, the City Council sent quite the opposite message. At-Large City Councilor and former Charter Commissioner George King claimed on Facebook that:

"... A charter review committee is limited as to what they can change. For example the writer [Geoffrey Epstein] theorizes if the review committee made changes to the composition of the city council, that the city council would act in self interest and kill it. But there is no worry, as the review committee cannot make structural changes such as that. You need a charter commission to do that. ..."

and further:

"... I know they cannot change the composition of the city council or the term of the Mayor. That requires a charter commission."

These two comments can be found at:

George King's first incorrect Facebook comment

George King's second incorrect Facebook comment.

The fact of the matter is that, as the Charter Review Committee found out after investigation, it can make recommendations to change the City Council size and composition.

The Charter Review Committee then stepped up to the plate and launched a poll in December 2023 on City Council size and composition, whose results showed the community was equally split between no change for the City Council and a scheme which would replace the two At-Large City Councilors with 3 'tri-district' City Councilors each resident in, and elected from, one of districts 1-3, 4-6 or 7-9.

That was progress, but unrelenting City Council pressure proved too much, and this issue will not be placed before voters to seek their opinion. The City Council successfully blocked an important opportunity for the community to decide how it is governed.

It is a sad day for the city when the City Council abuses the powers it has been granted under the City Charter to suppress voter participation in a very important charter review process.

This issue of replacing At-Large City Councilors was discussed at length in a previous article:

Framingham City Council Elections Will Be Unjust for 8 More Years

The story of the City Council running interference on the charter review process does not end there, as is has also blocked critically important charter changes to its annual budget decision making process.

At issue is the great deal of power the City Charter gave to the City Council Finance Subcommittee.

Most city charters mandate that submission of the annual budget by the Mayor is made simply to the City Council, and that body then entirely controls the way it does its review, constrained only by timelines and public hearings mandated by their respective city charters.

Framingham is an outlier in its charter requirement that:

"Immediately upon its receipt of the proposed operating budget, the council shall refer the budget to the council’s Finance subcommittee."

By this charter mechanism, the City Council Finance Subcommittee controls almost the entire annual budget review process, not the City Council.

As a town, Framingham's budget approval and review authority lay with Town Meeting, which had 216 members. As a city, that authority switched to an 11 member City Council, which thus concentrated a great deal of power into few hands, and was one of the worries expressed in the runup to the original City Charter approval vote in 2017.

However, Framingham's City Charter made things worse by shifting the annual budget review, and enormous influence on financial decision making, to the 5 member City Council Finance Subcommittee. That was further concentration of power, which left a majority of 3 on the City Council Finance Subcommittee able to control everything.

The record of the first 6 years as a city shows that when the City Council Finance Subcommittee finished its budget review and forwarded its recommendations to the full City Council, the recommendations were generally unaltered, and rubber stamped into approval.

The power of the City Council Finance Subcommittee is enormous, and it is certainly true that the voters who approved the original City Charter did not expect city financial planning and management to be controlled by a majority of 3 on the City Council Finance Subcommittee.

In July 2023, when the Charter Review Committee commenced its operations, George King, Mike Cannon and John Stefanini ruled the City Council Finance Subcommittee and there was no way they wanted their hold on power to be weakened by the charter review, and so no changes to the role of the City Council Finance Subcommittee made it thus far into the Charter Review Committee recommendations.

However, the Charter Review Committee might take note of the fact that John Stefanini was defeated in his re-election attempt last November, shifting the balance of power in the City Council away from the bloc controlled by King/Cannon/Stefanini.

This is a different City Council that chafes somewhat against the ‘financial authority’ of King/Cannon who still form the leadership of the City Council Finance Subcommittee, but with diminished power due to the voter removal of John Stefanini.

In particular the full City Council reversed the King/Cannon plan to defund the Athenaeum renovation and countermanded the King/Cannon plan to use more reserve funds to lower the tax levy increase in the FY25 budget.

This means that the current City Council could easily support a charter change which does not mandate automatic referral of the budget review to the City Council Finance Subcommittee.

There is nothing to lose and a lot to gain by making this change.

The City Council could, of its own volition, still decide to refer the budget review to its Finance Subcommittee, or it could exercise other options, such as:

• It could decide to have the budget review done by the full City Council to make it more inclusive, or
• It could decide to have the Capital Projects and Facilities Ad Hoc Committee review the Capital Improvement Budget planning prior to financial review, or
• It could have those sections of the budget dealing with sustainability and environment reviewed by the City Council Sustainability & Environment Subcommittee, as part of the budget review process.

There would be much more flexibility built in for the future if the charter mandate for automatic referral of the annual city budget to the City Council Finance Subcommittee were removed.

If the Charter Review Committee members recall, they concluded that a charter mandate for automatic referral of appointments to the City Council Appointments Subcommittee would weaken City Council powers. That same argument applies to automatic referral of the annual budget to the City Council Finance Subcommittee.

Perhaps, changing the size and composition of the City Council is a bridge to far for the Charter Review Committee, but it seems that with a small effort, involving a few edits, the charter mandate for automatic referral of the annual city budget to the City Council Finance Subcommittee could be removed.

There is no downside to this, as it simply provides the City Council with more options for how it manages the annual budget review and approval.

There is clearly appetite for such a change on the current City Council, which has new members and new ideas.

It is a recommendation worth making.

I predict that the City Council would approve.