Opinion: Charter Review Committee Retreat Exemplifies Bad Government

I didn’t attend the Charter Review Committee retreat on September 6 at the North Amherst Library, but I have seen the results and they aren’t pretty. I actually can’t imagine a less democratic, less transparent, or less thoughtful process for decision-making. The purpose of the retreat was to narrow the list of about 200 suggestions for revisions to the charter that the committee received from the public. The committee voted on those suggestions with little to no deliberation on each.  Those that were voted down, many of which had substantial public support, will not likely receive any further consideration by the committee as it prepares its recommendations for the Town Council.

Background
The Amherst Home Rule Charter requires a review of the Charter every 10 years, in years ending with a four. The town’s first charter review, now underway, comes six years after the start of the Council/Manager form of government in Amherst. A nine-member Charter Review Committee was appointed by the Town Council in the Spring of 2024 but did not get up and running until late September of that year. The Committee spent most of its first 10 months of meetings planning outreach events (e.g. see  here and here) to get public feedback to inform its recommendations for revisions to the charter that might improve the efficacy of local government, but to date, has had almost no discussion of problems with the charter or of things that might not be working well.

In contrast, the League of Women Voters Amherst spent 15 months (March 2023 – May 2024) exploring the efficacy of the charter in terms of the League’s own  Principles of Good Government.  More than 400 people completed a survey about the charter that was conducted online over six weeks in March and Aprill 2023 and dozens more participated in three public forums in 2024 that reviewed the charter in considerable depth.  The culmination of that work resulted in the League publishing a set of recommendations for amendments to the charter.

One clear conclusion from the League’s work is that a substantial number of Amherst residents, more than half of the survey’s respondents, were unhappy with town government and offered substantive recommendations for how government could be improved.

Democracy and Transparency Absent at Charter Review Retreat
Attending the retreat were Charter Review Committee Chair Julian Hynes, and members Raphael Rogers, Erika Mijlin, Bernie Kubiak, Meg Gage, Andy Churchill, Ken LeBlond, and Markus Smith. (No ninth member has been appointed  (see also here) to fill the vacancy on the review committee created in January when Dan Muscat resigned.)

See the table of the votes taken and ranks given to suggested charter amendments on September 6 and completed on September 11. (1= high priority; 2=medium priority; 3= low priority; A=abstain; F=flagged topic. Tentatively, five members needed to rank an item 1 or two for the item to be moved forward.)

To see which of the 16 recommendations made by the League of Women Voters of Amherst and the 50 recommendations made by a group of 43 residents writing in the Amherst Indy were supported by the Charter Review Committee, take a look at this color coded chart of the votes (compiled by me) of the votes taken by the Charter Review Committee. Some votes are in flux if there were abstentions or if items were “flagged”, but overall, most proposed amendments that promote public participation or limit the powers of the council or town manager were blocked from further consideration. fThe addition of a ninth member to the committee might have influenced a large number of the iterms that had four votes against, which was enough to disqualify it from consideration.

I cannot report on exactly who voted for what because, at the moment, no such record has been released.

The all-day charter retreat took place in-person, and not virtually, and  no recording of the meeting has been made available to the public. The Feedback Subcommittee provided the table of about 200 proposed amendments to the Charter Review committee one business day before the retreat, with little chance for them to review it before voting on the items. 

The taking of official votes during a day-long retreat was arguably a violation of Open Meeting Law, based on its lack of transparency and accessibility to the general public. Retreats are not conventionally used for making final decisions, but instead are a place for discussion. This has been the practice of the Town Council in all of their retreats. Though topics are discussed, and sometimes straw votes are taken to get the sense of the room, no final votes are taken. At this retreat though, votes that were taken were deemed official.

The chart of proposed amendments used during the meeting was not placed in the meeting packet. Nor is there a packet posted for the retreat at all. And there are no minutes posted for the retreat  (or for any meeting of the Charter Review committee at all), though most minutes have been approved. There is no evidence of the minutes of the outreach sessions held by the Charter Review Committee in any packet or on the website, and no recordings of three of the four sessions. Public comments submitted to the committee since June on the committee’s comment link were not available in the packet or on the website nor were any comments from current or former councilors, except those of Councilor Mandi Jo Hanneke.

Last but definitely not least egregious, is the fact that the votes of members were not recorded with their names. At the Charter Review meeting on September 18, members balked at Chair Julian Hyne’s suggestion to record their names with their votes, seemingly unaware that a record of all votes taken is required of all public bodies under Open Meeting Law.

Not Democratic
The formation of a “feedback subcommittee” of the Charter Review Committee a few months back was in effect a mini-coup, enabling a group of council allies to take control of the substance of the committee away from the Chair, Julian Hynes. The feedback subcommittee is composed entirely of close allies of the Council President or Town Manager: Andy Churchill, former Chair of the Charter Commission and current at-large candidate for Town Council, member of the editorial board of the Amherst Current; Ken LeBlond, colleague of Council President Lynn Griesemer and Amherst Forward PAC organizer; Bernie Kubiak, close ally of the Town Manager, former resident member of the Finance Committee, hiring committee member for Town Finance Director, member Transportation Advisory Committee, hand picked by Manager to update the town’s bylaws, and former town manager of several towns; Marcus Smith,  close ally of Amherst Forward PAC leadership. This group of four could not be more biased in support of the status quo and the goals of the Amherst Forward endorsed council majority. The fact that the Charter Review Committee was stacked by the Council with these strong Council allies and that it is unlikely to appoint anyone to fill the existing vacancy who is not an ally is, not just undemocratic but Trumpian.

It is arguable that Churchill should step down from the committee based on being a candidate for town council.  He should absolutely not be involved in writing the committee reports considering his close relationship with the Council President.

The full committee worked from proposed amendments provided by the feedback subcommittee and listed according to charter articles, that were otherwise not organized in any way. The list of proposed amendments didn’t indicate how much support each one received from the public, whether they were supported by the League of Women Voters (whose mission is good government in Amherst) or any other group submitting comments. Each proposed amendment was counted as one recommendation, and the 199 public comments included on the League of Women Voters survey (see also here)  were not considered at all (as recommended by the Feedback Subcommittee).

The strong bias of the Feedback Subcommittee came through at the September 11 post-retreat meeting to vote on articles 6-11, when members’ voices were recorded in voting. 

Not a Thoughtful Process
The members voted on each proposed amendment at the retreat as high, medium or low priority for inclusion in the report to the Town Council, without any discussion of the criteria they were using to make those decisions. There was lack of clarity on why members abstained on votes and why they “flagged” items, on whether a majority of five was needed to move itmes forward or simply a majority of those voting. There was no separate category for proposals that members supported but thought were more appropriately taken up in the Council Rules than in the Charter. Often those items were just voted down with no notation about why.

Though rationales existed on the committee’s own website for many of the proposed amendments, those rationales were not included in the chart, nor provided for discussion, since the feedback committee stated they didn’t have time to include them. The League of Women Voters background materials included all of their rationales but they were not referenced.

Many of the proposed amendments, especially ones suggesting something new be added to the Charter, had never been discussed before by the committee and most had not been discussed in any depth, since the committee has only had one fairly cursory run through of the entire Charter.

Stay tuned to find out who voted for what, if that turns out to be possible.

These partisan and anti-democratic proceedings will only support the demise of democracy in Amherst.  With pro-democracy amendments discarded without deliberation, we are sure to see a government that is even less transparent, less accessible, and less accountable than what we have now.  The committee is required to hold a public hearing on its recommendations.  There is still opportunity for the public to show up and express their outrage at this corrupt process. 

Darcy Dumont is a former Amherst Town Councilor from District 5.