By William C. Shelton

Last Thursday the Charter Review Committee conducted its first meeting. Its purpose is to design a new governing document – a new government, really – that will enable the City to be responsive to residents and to effectively meet the challenges of this historical moment.

Such an effort is overdue by over a century. Our current charter dates to 1899. It mandates two Fence Viewers, a Wood and Bark Measurer, and a Grain Weigher. It also invests overwhelming authority to govern in the mayor.

Just twelve years after the current charter’s adoption the city’s leaders recognized their error. The Board of Aldermen approved a new charter that specified a commission form of government, a forerunner of today’s council/manager form. The Mayor signed it, but it languished and then died in the Legislature in 1914.

Our current charter grants the city’s legislative branch only two powers. The City council can create new ordinances, which can then be vetoed by the mayor, requiring a two-thirds vote override.

And the Council can approve the annual budget submitted by the mayor. Even this “authority” is illusory. The Council can only reduce specific items, or reject the entire budget.

If the Council were to not approve the budget, city government would continue to operate on the previous year’s budget. The Mayor could then pick and choose individual supplemental appropriations to submit for Council approval, mobilizing political pressure to approve them.

Lord John Dalberg-Acton famously wrote that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Massachusetts’ politics offer convincing evidence.

Less than eight percent of its 351 cities and towns have a strong mayor form of government. But they historically account for all of the Commonwealth’s major municipal corruption scandals, with one exception. That would be Lowell, where the corrupt city manager had been a strong mayor in Holyoke.

Somerville is consistent with this pattern. Its long history of corruption peaked, but did not end, in the late 1960s. The Boston Globe Spotlight Team’s very first series blew the lid off this corruption in 1971, for which it won a Pulitzer.

The pattern of quid pro quo exchanges of money for favors may be substantially reduced now. But highly concentrated power in the executive branch fosters an unconscious arrogance that usurps the legal and democratic prerogatives of Council members and citizens. It leads to decisions made in the absence of public awareness and input that are justified after the fact, if and when doing so becomes politically necessary.

From the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s, Aldermen pursued comprehensive charter change five times. In 1980 the Board of Aldermen approved and the mayor signed a comprehensive charter revision.

Largely drafted by Alderman Andrew Puglia, it aimed to make government more responsive through provisions like Initiative, Referendum, and shifting power to the legislative branch. In 1981 it arrived at the Massachusetts’ House of Representatives, where it passed as Bill 6294. But Somerville’s Denis McKenna killed it in the Senate.

One provision of that charter would have eliminated a corrupted system of elected tax assessors. Shameless cynics said that Senator McKenna opposed the bill because his son’s father-in-law was Assessor Bobby Campo. Mr. Campo later went to prison as part of the Assembly Square corruption scandal.

The Committee that will pursue this latest attempt to update the city’s charter is entirely appointed by Mayor Joe Curtatone and Council President Matt McLaughlin. They had set December 24 as a deadline for Committee candidates to submit their applications.

They subsequently extended the deadline, citing insufficient diversity in the applicant pool. Viewing the Committee’s ultimate makeup challenges one’s understanding of what was meant by “diversity.”

Nevertheless, the Committee has been given an awesome responsibility. It has the opportunity to design a municipal government that is open, accountable, and responsive.

Substantially shifting authority from the executive to the people’s elected representatives could base policy decisions more firmly on real-world evidence, make governance more participatory, produce more creative solutions to the city’s great challenges, moderate escalating campaign spending, reduce the influence of self-interested parties, and make the city’s true fiscal conditions and choices more transparent.

For me, the wisest comment during the Committee’s first meeting came from Committee Member Beverly Schwartz. She suggested that the Committee begin by discussing values and goals that would define what should be the new government design’s guiding principles.

Yes. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road – or hired consultant – can take you there. But by first defining the destination, the Committee can deploy available resources to support the journey.

The Committee’s webpage promises to “engage the community in robust discussions about potential charter amendments.” A good start would be to revisit the decision to not record Committee meetings. Not everyone can attend meetings at the time they are scheduled, but everyone will be affected by their outcome.

As one “community” member, I offer the following charter provisions for the Committee’s consideration:

• Adopt initiative and referendum. We the voters should have the maximum capacity allowed under Massachusetts’ Constitution and General Laws to propose and approve our own ordinances.
• Consider proportional representation. Assess such methods as ranked-choice voting.
• Create an elected auditor position with an independent budget, charged with monitoring the city’s fiscal condition on behalf of its people.
• Ensure that the legislative branch has its own legal counsel and, if it chooses, staff.
• Include all the funds managed by the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development within the publicly reviewed budget.
• Make advocacy for a city job applicant illegal if it is done by an elected official.
• Simplify charter amending. The city should have the authority to make basic amendments without needing a Special Act of the General Court.

What provisions would you like to see in a new charter? We at The Somerville Times would like to encourage a conversation on the matter. Please go to our website, click on the “Forum” tab at the top and right side of the homepage, and share your thoughts.