Bipartisan CPR Performed On Charter

A new Hamden town charter isn’t dead — at least not yet.

A week after the Legislative Council shot down a proposed once-in-a-decade revision of the charter, over 50 people in town are hitting the streets in a long-shot bid to collect signatures to put the proposed changes on November’s ballot after all.

The town is required by law to consider updating its charter at least once every decade. This year, that process involved hundreds of hours of volunteer labor, tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, and numerous legislative workshops and heated debates. It produced a document with proposed changes to appear for voters to accept or reject on Nov. 2. But it needed the approval first of the Legislative Council. On Aug. 11, the council vetoed the entirety of the proposed 145-page charter after virtually no public explanation as to why.

Read more about that here.

There’s still one way to get the proposal to the voters: Collecting 3,657 signatures of registered voters over the next month, or within 45 days of Aug. 11.

The proposed charter would have included four-year mayoral terms (rather than the current two-year terms), a new finance commission, a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) commission, and a pathway to a Civilian Review Board with subpoena power. It contained measures aimed at professionalization of administrators, budget checks, and heightened police accountability. Click here to read one take on why Hamden’s charter revision process matters — or mattered.

“The charter is like our town’s constitution,” Sarah Gallagher repeated as she circulated petitions at Carmel Street doors on Wednesday night alongside mayoral candidate Lauren Garrett. ​“This is the one thing you have the chance to vote on other than your elected officials.”

This is Gallagher’s first time running for elected office, as a DTC-endorsed council representative for District Four. Her first foray into local service was last year, through the charter revision commission.

She said she was ​“shocked and disappointed” when she heard that the council had voted against the charter. ​“It’s an assault on democracy,” she said.

The morning after the news got out, she created an infographic and in-depth guide breaking down what the proposed revised charter meant.

In her eyes, it meant greater fiscal accountability, protections for equitability, and steps towards professionalization of government offices. It also offered more avenues by which the public could participate in local politics, such as increased time for public input during town meetings and additional formalized volunteer groups, such as finance and diversity, equity, and inclusion commissions.

While the charter revision process included significant guidance from experts on local government and extensive legal advising, it began with a series of public input sessions in which residents told the commission what they expected from their town.

“It was developed by residents, and we want to give it back to them,” Gallagher said

“It makes me want to ensure that the Legislative Council is functioning and accountable, and is listening to the people of the town and not just pursuing some separate agenda,” she said. ​“And it reminded me to be accountable to myself. If I vote for or against something, I’ll be able to explain why.”

“I wouldn’t give up on making our town better, and I’m not gonna let seven or eight people ruin this for everyone,” she asserted. ​“Hamden, in a way, represents all of Connecticut, and all of our country. So if we get this right, we can really be a model.”

When registered voters tell her repeatedly at doors that they want more honest budgeting practices, she transitions from campaign pitches to petitioning.

That’s the routine everyone on her slate is following. The Row A Democrats — or those endorsed by the Democratic Town Committee in advance of a Sept. 14 party primary — have been the largest force in favor of the charter. While canvassing in preparation for the primary, they bring a clipboard with information about the document and collect signatures.

“Anybody that I’ve asked has signed,” Lauren Garrett said, despite the fact that the majority of people do not know about the charter when she brings it up.

She said that the DTC printed out 100 petitioning papers two weeks ago. Around 30 to 40 volunteers, in addition to the entire DTC slate, which includes council and Board of Education candidates, take out those papers every time they go door knocking.

For that reason, Garrett said, it’s impossible to know how many signatures they’ve collected so far. On Wednesday evening, she and Gallagher collected nine names within the course of about two hours. Nobody declined to sign their name.

This past Saturday, several members from the slate met in the fifth district to pick up literature for the DTC campaign — and the charter. 

Jennifer Pope, the co-founder of the Hamden Progressive Action Network and a Democratic State Central Committee member, said that the charter includes many of the policies and practices outlined in the DTC’s municipal platform, such as heightened police accountability and fiscal oversight.

On the council, moderate Democrat like Kathleen Shomaker and Berita Rowe-Lewis, who are running for reelection on a slate with mayoral incumbent Curt Leng, voted against the charter, as did Republicans. Members who are running with the DTC-endorsed slate, like Dominique Baez and Adrian Webber, voted in favor of the document.

“We were going to be talking about this at the doors anyway, but now it’s a little different,” Laurie Sweet, a DTC-endorsed at-large council candidate, said. In an alternate universe, the DTC would have been urging people to vote in favor of the charter. Now they’re asking them to sign in favor of having the right to vote on it — and using it as a political tool to draw distinctions between their campaign’s values and those put forward by the Leng slate.

Mayor Leng told the Independent that he ​“plans on signing the petition and gathering signatures as he talks with voters about the Democratic primary.” He has previously noted that while his slate includes individuals who voted against the charter, it also includes Frank Dixon, the chair of the charter commission. He has said he would like to attempt to pass several provisions included in the proposed charter through ordinances if it doesn’t make it to the ballot.

It’s not only Democrats who are in favor of moving the charter forward.

Petitioners include Jay Kaye, the 2019 Republican mayoral candidate and also a charter commission member who is running for council at-large this year as an Independent Party candidate. Kaye plans to hold an event to gather signatures on Sept. 4 in Villano Park. Anyone interested in signing the petition, who hasn’t been asked to at their door, may do so then and there.

“It’s not a partisan issue,” Gallagher said of the charter controversy on Wednesday. ​“It’s a democracy issue.”