Petition Drive Falls Short, But New Council May Revive Proposed New Hamden Charter

A petition to put a proposed town charter to a referendum in Nov. 2’s general election fell short by more than two thirds of the procedurally required signatures, according to Hamden’s town clerk.

For the past two months, over 50 volunteers worked to collect names of Hamden residents willing to support an initiative to put a recently rewritten version of the town’s ever evolving constitution onto an upcoming ballot. The deadline to submit that petition was Thursday, Sept. 23.

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, primarily on the part of a council-appointed Charter Revision Commission, 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 first needed the approval of Hamden’s Legislative Council. On Aug. 11, the council vetoed the entirety of the proposed 145-page charter after virtually no public explanation as to why.

So backers commenced a petition drive to try to get the proposal on the ballot. A petition containing signatures from 10 percent of Hamden’s 36,477 eligible voters was the last chance to override the council’s veto and get the proposed charter into the public’s hands. After the council’s August vote, town leaders rallied supporters to conduct the ultimately failed petition drive.

As of Monday, Sept. 27, Town Clerk Vera Morrison reported that 1,089 signatures were turned into her office. That means that an additional 2,559 names would have been necessary to move the charter forward.

The proposed new 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. The document was supported by most members of the Hamden Democratic Town Committee as well as Independent Party representatives like Jay Kaye, a Charter Revision Commission member who ran as the Republican mayoral candidate in 2019 and is running for Legislative Council this November.

“I prefer to measure success by effort rather than results,” Kaye wrote in a message to those who worked on the charter after receiving Morrison’s report. ​“Volunteer circulators took the time to secure 1,089 signatures of Hamden electors. That is no small feat.”

The news doesn’t mean that Hamden has to wait another ten years to change its current charter. A new council, which will take office on the last Sunday of November following the Nov. 2 general election, will have the power to determine whether or not to return to revising its charter by establishing another CRC well before 2030 — and perhaps even before 2022.

The charter produced this year did not move forward because the Council’s centrist Democrats chose to vote against it, alongside conservative Council members who were consistently outspoken about their disapproval of the document. Republican Councilwoman Marjorie Bonadies called it a ​“left-wing manifesto). However, those Democratic moderates lost to an opposing group of self-proclaimed progressive Dems in a heated Sept. 14 primary, meaning the balance of power will change when the new Council is seated.

Those new Democrats, the DTC’s endorsed slate of candidates, are also the individuals who led the campaign to continue moving the charter forward through the petitioning process. If that group also sweeps the November general election, the charter revision process will most likely resume itself within their first year of office.

Steve Mednick, the attorney who advised Hamden’s Charter Revision Commission, said that once the new Council convenes, at least two thirds of the body would have to pass a resolution to put together a new charter revision commission; they could not simply vote again on the vetoed document. Within 30 days of that vote, the president of the Council would have to appoint at least five and at most 15 individuals to serve on the commission.

That commission could choose to start from scratch or use this year’s proposed charter as a blueprint. ​“It shouldn’t be as layered a process as we went through this past year,” Mednick said, referring to the over 40 meetings held by the commission to gather public input and expert insights around best governance practices.

Mednick said he would suggest ​“finalizing a new charter as early as possible” and letting it ​“sit in mothballs until next November.” That advice comes after the town spent thousands on attorney fees for a laborious year-long effort that has yet to pan out.

The reason behind waiting until November rather than scheduling a special election to vote on a potential charter is to ensure maximum voter turnout. If less than 15 percent of eligible voters participate a referendum, a charter could not be passed even if those who vote do so overwhelmingly in its favor.

Therefore, even if a new Council does return to the charter revision process, it most likely will not be voted on for more than a year. But, Mednick pointed out, even if the petition passed, the timeline probably would have looked the same.

Ballot information for November is due to the state by early September. The charter is typically broken up into questions, such as ​“Should Hamden’s mayors have two-year or four-year terms?” rather than voted on in whole. That question formation requires additional time and debate among council members. According to Mednick, after the council vetoed the proposed charter, ​“the only real alternative was a special election.”

Therefore, the future of the charter remains in suspense until a new Council gets together in late November. Then, if they decide to create another commission, there will be more opportunities to add or subtract from August’s vetoed version — and perhaps there will finally be a public vote.

Nora Grace-Flood’s reporting is support in part by a grant from Report for America.