On Monday night’s Town Meeting Warrant, Article 18 will ask voters to “require” the Select Board on steps to take for passing a new law. That law would create a process by which voters can “recall” elected officials, including members of the Select Board.
According to members of the Advisory Committee, Town Counsel has opined that that the Citizen Petition Article isn’t enforceable as written. As member Tim Martel explained to a fellow member:
Town meeting can’t direct the select board to do anything, because they derive their Authority from the state.
Chair Andrew Pfaff noted that if the Citizen Petition Article had been written to insert a recall bylaw language into the Town Code, he believed that would have been enforceable.
It’s not the first time a petitioner has sought to pass a Recall Bylaw. In 2017, Sam Stivers petitioned to add a recall bylaw that was opposed by the Select Board. (Then-member John Rooney even cited it as the reason he decided to resign from the board, so he could oppose it as an unconflicted citizen.) Town Meeting voted to defeat it.
Since then, Stivers was elected to the Select Board. And when Michael Weishan brought a Petition Article for a recall Bylaw to Annual Town Meeting in 2022, Stivers was among those who opposed it. That Article was also voted down by Town Meeting.
At that time, comments from voters in the hall, including Advisory Committee members, appeared to be that a recall process should be looked into and brought back to Town Meeting, but that the proposed version wasn’t the right one.
On September 9th, the board voted unanimously to oppose the latest version.
The new Petition was submitted by Joseph Palmer, who ran (unsuccessfully) for the Select Board last spring against incumbent Andrew Dennington. According to the board’s minutes, Dennington plans to make their presentation against the Article.
What this Article asks for
Article 18 calls for the Select Board to “establish” a legal recall bylaw modeled on the version successfully adopted by the Town of Hopkinton.
It highlights the fact that the state has already approved Hopkinton’s as a valid law. And it details how the board should take to communicate with the public on outlined steps for complying. (You can read the full text here.)
The Hopkinton bylaw referred to is section 5-2 of the Town’s Charter. That law requires a multi-step process for recalling any elected official, as long as their term doesn’t expire within the next 6 months.
Recalling an official would require collecting signatures from at least 10% of voters in town. That also needs to include at least 200 voters from each precinct. (Southborough has three.)
After the signatures are certified by the Town Clerk as meeting the threshold, official recall forms are issued (which emphasize the severity of a recall measure) for petitioners to once again collect signatures. This time, they would need 20% of voters to sign within 45 days.
If that step is successfully verified, the notified official would have five business days to resign. At that point, the Select Board is to schedule a special recall election within 90-100 days and even a subsequent resignation couldn’t stop the process.
If an official is recalled, or they resign during the process, that person couldn’t be appointed to another position within two years.
You can read the full text of Hopkinton’s process here.
Hopkinton’s law was in the news earlier this year, when a group of angry residents began the process of collecting signatures to recall members of the Select Board. That effort appears to have failed. (I couldn’t find more recent news after the early stages made headlines in early February, and the officials are still on the board.)
Advisory’s Opposition to the Article
At Advisory’s meeting on Wednesday night, the committee voted unanimously to “Not Support” the Article.
It’s worth noting that Advisory is an appointed committee, therefore would not be directly impacted by the bylaw.
Pfaff noted at the start of the committee’s discussion that he thought passing a recall bylaw “could make some sense”. But he and other members agreed that they aren’t in favor of the process used to bring the issue to voters.
In the past, Advisory has spoken out against the overuse of Citizen Petition Articles, especially ones that aren’t enforceable. At this week’s meeting, Pfaff explained their past position to newer members.
He told them he believed petitioners should first reach out to the committees that they are “looking to advise” to see if they can work with them. He believed they should only bring a petition Article if they first make that attempt but the committee rejects it.
Pfaff also noted that he might have supported an Article to create a committee appointed by the Moderator to research a potential recall bylaw and report back to Town Meeting.
During the discussion, Advisory members discussed that Article 10 on CPC membership was also brought as a Citizen Petition Article. Pfaff explained that although the CPC was entitled to propose an Article as a committee, they had apparently worried the Select Board would refuse to include it on the Warrant.
The committee put off voting on their position on Article 10 until Town Meeting.
