New obstacle for Glen Cove's city charter reform

The years-long efforts of the Glen Cove Charter Review Commission, which in 2015 was tasked with considering reforms to the structure of city government — including term limits and durations — could be nullified by a technicality.

During a presentation of the commission’s recommendations at a working meeting of the City Council on Tuesday, City Attorney Charles McQuair told Carolyn Wilson, who chairs the commission, that contrary to her understanding, the committee was not legally empowered to propose the ballot referenda that its 10 members had spent the past three years deliberating.

Under state municipal law, the committee was required to propose changes to the city charter within two election cycles of its founding, McQuair explained. That deadline passed with the 2017 election.

Wilson said she believed that a January resolution to reappoint herself and her fellow committee members constituted a renewal of the committee and an extension of that deadline. McQuair said that it did not.

The commission had been counting on the fact that state law grants special privileges to charter committees, including the ability to submit their proposals directly to voters in the form of ballot initiatives, bypassing the council’s approval, which, in other cases, is required. Hours before the council meeting, Glen Howard, committee member, told the Herald Gazette, “We are a charter commission. We don’t have to go to the council.”

If the City Council reauthorizes the commission before a Sept. 1 deadline, Wilson said, the referenda could still be put on the ballot in November.

Standing in the foyer of City Hall after the meeting, Wilson sounded distraught. Still clearly shocked by, and trying to make sense of, what happened, she said, “Something seems off about all this.”

She noted that in light of this development, an email from a fellow commission member she had received the day before made more sense. She would not provide the names of the people involved, but said that the email’s author had been approached by another person and alerted to the fact that the charter commission might not technically exist.

McQuair wrote in an email, “To be clear, this is a situation about the [presentation] of a referendum and not the expiration of the commission itself.”

Other charter reform efforts

The surprise roadblock for the Charter Review Commission comes at a time when another group — Reboot Glen Cove — has been ramping up efforts to enact a different set of more radical charter reforms.

Last Friday, the group began canvassing at cultural events in the city, including the Downtown Sounds summer concert series and the Morgan Park Summer Music Festival, in advance of an Aug. 28 deadline to present a petition at a City Council meeting.

The group must collect about 590 signatures, according to Jack Vilella, a Reboot organizer — 10 percent of the number of voters in the most recent gubernatorial election — by the deadline in order to compel the City Council to vote on whether to include its proposals on the November ballot.

Reboot Glen Cove is proposing a series of drastic changes to the charter, including abolishing the mayor’s office in favor of a city manager; blocking the city’s ability to accept payments in lieu of taxes, or PILOTs, as bargaining chips in negotiations with developers; and placing stricter controls on the city’s Community Development Agency and Industrial Development Agency.

Philip Pidot, another organizer who ran unsuccessfully as a Republican candidate for City Council in 2015, said that with more signatures being added all the time, he did not have an accurate count. But, he said, the group was close to its goal, and added, “I’m confident we’ll hit the 10 percent. The big question mark for me is whether the council will vote to [put our proposals on a ballot measure].”

If the council votes against the group’s proposed amendments, Reboot Glen Cove would have another chance to bypass the council by presenting another list of signatures — an additional five percent, or just under 300 names. By the time that list would be presented at a September council meeting, however, it would be too late for the amendments to appear on the ballot.

Pidot said that the next phase of the group’s strategy involved persuading council members to vote to include the proposed amendments, and persuading residents to push them to do so, to avoid a second round of petitioning.

Finger-pointing

Members of the Charter Review Commission said they feel conflicted about the rise of Reboot Glen Cove. On one hand, Howard said, “I’m glad to see someone getting the public involved.”

But Wilson said that in many ways, these newcomers to charter reform had underdeveloped ideas. Many of the group’s proposals had been discussed at length — and sometimes contentiously — during the commission’s three years of work. “I’m sorry they’ve started so late,” she said. “We’ve been meeting for three years, and the meetings are all open. I think we could have used their input.” She added that the group’s petitioning, public-outreach campaigns and surveys were likely to confuse voters who might not know that the two groups are different. “I feel as though they’ve kind of undermined what we’re trying to do,” Wilson said.

Vilella said that he didn’t trust the commission’s work. “I know that it was initially something that [former Mayor] Reggie Spinello had cobbled together,” Vilella said.

He added that among the Glen Cove residents he’s spoken to, “there was a lot of doubt . . . [that the commission is] interested in delivering results for citizens,” and that he suspected something “nefarious” about the commission’s work.