NEW: ACLU Opposed to Providence City Charter Revision
Friday, July 27, 2012
A proposed revision to the Providence City Charter could essentially allow “the Mayor and the City Council to flout any laws they wish to,” the Rhode Island ACLU argued in testimony submitted to a Providence City Council committee last night.
That proposed addition to the Charter provides that: “No contracts, agreements, ordinances, resolutions, rules or regulations, and/or by-laws shall limit, abridge or in any way impede the authority of the mayor and/or the council of the city to exercise organizational and managerial discretion to protect the health, safety and welfare of its residents, and to maintain the fiscal health of the city.”
In written testimony about that provision, the ACLU argued:
“It is hard to think of more far-reaching and wide-ranging language that essentially allows the Mayor and the City Council to flout any laws they wish to. As worded, a Mayor can ignore a city ordinance, breach a contract or disregard a formally-adopted regulation if he or she decides in his or her ‘managerial discretion’ that doing so will better protect the welfare of residents. The same holds true for the City Council which could effectively suspend a duly-adopted city ordinance merely by passing a resolution, without the formal requirements that repeal of an ordinance would require, in the exercise of its ‘discretion’ to protect the city’s ‘fiscal health’ or welfare. Whatever may have been the intent of this section, it amounts to a usurpation of the democratic process and contains unbounded opportunities for mischief.”
The ACLU raised concerns about a few other proposals of the Review Commission, including one that would eliminate a requirement that city legal notices be published in a newspaper of general circulation, instead allowing them just to be posted online. A recent study estimated that one in five American adults still does not use the internet in any capacity, and this lack is greatest among the poor, the elderly and people with disabilities.
“While we recognize the incentives to move from newspaper postings to internet postings,” the ACLU stated, “these individuals should not be excluded from equal information and equal participation in government simply because of their lack of internet access.”
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Comments:
Wuggly Ump
8:45pm on Friday, July 27, 2012
I may have to agree with the ACLU on this one. This seems more like the creation of a dictatorship.
bill bentley
8:53pm on Friday, July 27, 2012
Jesus, they've finally gone full-tilt fascist. God Bless the Fourth Reich.
marcia greeley
7:38am on Saturday, July 28, 2012
What are they above the law!!!!
Gary Arnold
10:02am on Monday, July 30, 2012
Or maybe some of the laws are not equatable as they were conceived. We all know that our lawmakers in local government and the GA are a bunch of crooks, always have been and had and have a tendency to do what is right for themselves. Remember this is RI where the people get suckered in to a lot of lawmaker deals that we end up paying for and mostly for non-performance results. I'd say the current administrators need the control to make things work in present times not the good old times when the local pols and GA did it's dirty deeds of self-serving.
Wuggly Ump
7:25pm on Tuesday, July 31, 2012
@Gary I see where you're coming from but think of this going the wrong way. More liberal politicians come into office after this law has been passed by the business minded leaders. They will be able to disregard contracts and ordinaces, including balanced budget laws.
I would rather see fair and equitable contracts, where both parties are held to account.