In Pursuit Of A Better Government For Holmdel

When our founding fathers met to frame the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson famously said “It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers, but by their distribution that good government is effected”.

In our current archaic form of government, too much power is concentrated with the Mayor. The Mayor appoints individuals and various professionals to the Zoning and Planning boards. While other committee members can recommend candidates, the Mayor has complete discretion on the appointments. This potentially enables abuse of power and corruption. Each year, no matter who the Mayor is, these appointments are dependent on the likes and dislikes of that Mayor.

In the proposed new form of government, the Mayor LOSES that power. The power of appointment is now ‘distributed’, like Jefferson suggested, to the entire committee. The committee or the people (via the petition process) can pass an ordinance to ensure that appointments are made based on a public vote by the committee. This provides the necessary safeguard against the consolidation of power and possible corruption.

On the need for checks and balances in government, James Madison said “If men were angels no government would be necessary”, and “all men having power ought to be mistrusted.” The framers relied on systemic (built-in) checks and balances versus the goodness of politicians to do the right thing.

In the proposed form of government, the Initiative & Referendum power that the residents will now have provides these systemic checks and balances via the form of a petition process to oppose any law or to enact new laws.

In our current form, residents can only petition against a bond ordinance passed by the committee, or a salary increase that was voted on by the committee. The proposed form of government extends that power to all affairs of the township. The petitioning process requires a minimum of 10% of the voters who voted in the most recent election to sign the petition.

The bigger point here is that the necessary checks and balances come not from the petition process itself, but from the THREAT of a petition. Anytime, the Mayor or the committee enacts a law, they would be forced to do more due diligence to ensure that the law would be safe from a challenge by residents.

In the past, we have seen attempts by the committee to introduce a resolution when not all members of the committee were present to get the votes required to pass the resolution. Such activities would cease to exist as those laws enacted in a sneaky manner will now be subject to public scrutiny and challenge.

We must acknowledge that this truly is the only way to give more power to the people.

These two aspects alone of the proposed government bring us significantly closer to the views of our founding fathers and ensure that we have a better municipal government here in Holmdel.

Prakash Santhana

Deputy Mayor

Holmdel Township