Published: October 15, 2008 12:31 am            

DUVALL: City charter revisions are common sense

Revisions to the North Tonawanda City Charter will be put before voters in a few weeks and if my experience covering local government is any basis to judge, they all seem to make sense.

A brief review of those proposed changes, which will appear on the ballot in the form of five separate propositions, are:

• Converting the city attorney’s office from an elected position to one appointed by the mayor, subject to the Common Council’s approval.

• Abolishing the elected position of city clerk and combine those duties with that of the elected city treasurer. The holder of the new clerk-treasurer position would be decided by an election in 2010.

• Allowing city residents to sue over enforcement of the charter, with legal fees reimbursed by the city, should they be successful in court.

• Granting the mayor the authority to appoint the city accountant, a non-elected position. This is an oversight in the existing city charter, as amended in 1999.

• Prohibiting the city attorney from providing legal representation to an elected official in North Tonawanda city government against another elected official during a legal dispute.

Let’s take them one at a time.

Repositioning the city attorney’s role, from elected to appointed and banning him from representing one arm of city government against another in court.

First, the vast majority of municipal attorneys are appointed. It works elsewhere without issue and there’s no reason it can’t work here. The city attorney is supposed to defend taxpayers, not politicians. When the attorney has to run for office — and align himself with one party or the other — it creates an inherent me-versus-them mindset once in office. By converting the candidate to one that both the mayor and council must agree is fit to serve, you take away the possibility that they are going to act in a partisan way.

And let’s be honest, when the attorney and council are suing the mayor, all governance turns into a sideshow. NT politics has been a sideshow for far too long and this will help to prevent it in the future.

Combining the clerk and treasurer into a single office.

Again, many municipalities have a combined clerk/treasurer. Most are villages, but given North Tonawanda’s ever-shrinking population, our numbers aren’t much larger than some of that biggest villages in New York where this system is used.

These two offices — arguably the most essential for an efficient and resident-responsive government — can easily be overseen by a single individual. It’s going to mean more work for some people and fewer jobs available in City Hall. While it’s understandable that there are people in city government whose jobs will be affected and who are against this decision, at the end of the day it benefits taxpayers.

We’re all doing more with less in the private sector. Government shouldn’t be any different.

Granting the mayor power to appoint the accountant.

If anyone votes no on it, they simply don’t understand what this whole thing is about. And it’ll provide an interesting litmus test on Election Day. Just how many people out there are against these charter revisions lock, stock and barrel — and most assuredly out of some political motive? We’ll be able to tell based on how many no-votes this specific proposition gets because there’s no valid reason not to approve it other than politics.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly:

City residents will now be able to sue over charter changes and have the city pick up the bill if they win.

It’s a stridently populist approach to government. It has the potential to provide NT taxpayers with a direct means for a redress of grievances. It also opens the door to the possibility of party-backed legal challenges to just about anyone in city government if used improperly.

But to my mind, anything that grants average citizens a more direct route to government reform is a good thing. And based on the way some things have been handled around here lately, I can’t see how anyone could concoct grounds to argue in favor of less accountability.

Managing Editor Eric DuVall’s column appears every Wednesday and Sunday. Contact him at 693-1000, ext. 112, or by e-mail to duvalle@gnnewspaper.com.

        

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