The recent editorial in the Times Herald chastising the City Council for placing two ballot proposals before the voters is totally out of line.  They categorically state that the council violated the charter.  They are wrong.  The council followed a very poorly defined procedure and exercised their options carefully and responsibly.  If you disagree, please read on, slowly.

First, it is clear that the charter required a vote by the council.  If the position were to be filled by some automatic procedure no vote would be necessary. The Vice President becomes President if the Presidency becomes vacant - automatically.   No one has contested this point.

Second, the charter requires a minimum four votes for any procedure to be approved.  No one has contested this point.

Third, nowhere, at any level of government, in the United States , is a person given the option to vote, and then mandated how they must vote.  This seems to be the point of contention.  Those agreeing with the Times Herald Editorial Board seem to feel that the “spirit” of the charter required the council members to vote a certain way.  That same debate rages in the U.S. Senate when the “Advise and Consent” clause of the Constitution is invoked when confirming the President’s nominee for Supreme Court Justice.  Historically, nominees to the Supreme Court were nearly automatically confirmed.  Lincoln ’s nominee was confirmed within half an hour.  Grants nominee was confirmed in one day.  It wasn’t until 1925, that a nominee even had to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Byron White, Kennedy’s nominee, appeared before the committee and was confirmed within three hours.  Today, it takes months to prepare for the hearings, and the process is grueling and anything but automatic.  Is the Senate operating within the “spirit” of the Constitution?

Fourth, the charter provides for “priority” consideration.  The council gave priority by nominating Laurie Sample-Winn, first.  She was not able to garner four supporting votes. In sequence, the other previous losing candidates were named for nomination, with the same lack of support.  Only then did the council consider other nominees.

The Times Herald offers John Livesay’s opinion, as supporting evidence.  They fail to mention that when he was first asked to interpret the charter in regards to the vacancy he found it “poorly written and vague and unclear” (my paraphrase).  When asked to define the meaning of “priority”, he was unable to do so.  The Times Herald failed to mention that many other attorneys disagreed with Mr. Livesay, but all agreed that the language in the charter was poorly constructed.

The council took responsible action.  They applied their conscience and options within a poorly defined procedure.  They then took action to prevent future councils from having to work with a poorly defined procedure, and proposed two clearly constructed amendments for voter consideration. 

When the Times Herald’s editorial first appeared on Thursday, their “punch line” was omitted.  And so they repeated the editorial on Friday.  The punch line “So, voters will decide how the charter should be reformed. When they do, the next question is how long will it take the council to violate it.”, is a cheap, below the belt comment.  The printers probably used editorial discretion in not printing it the first time.