By David Fortier
A misguided decision in 2013, allowing term limits to appear on the local ballot, has consequences for some candidates running in this year’s municipal elections.
In addition, the decision may require voters to reverse an earlier vote to set the record straight.
The issue is bound to come up in the charter revision commission meeting this Tuesday, March 30, at 7 p.m. in City Hall. The meeting is being streamed. Check the city website for details.
Let’s take this one step at a time
Mayor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu was invited to a meeting with another city considering a finance board. She was there to answer questions about how Bristol’s board functions.
During the conversation, a question about the length of the mayor’s term was raised. The mayor responded that a Bristol mayor’s term is two years and is also term-limited. As it happened, an expert on the subject, Attorney Steven G. Mednick, was in attendance. He piped in that term limits are not provided for by state statute.
The mayor relayed this message to Corporation Counsel Wyland Dale Clift who contacted Mednick. Mednick, in turn, provided a report.
Clift, who started in his current position in 2017, received the report on March 15 and informed the chair and members of the Bristol Charter Revision Commission of Mednick’s report and conclusion in a letter the same day.
In the report, Mednick concluded term limits “were adopted without legal authority and are unenforceable.” Mednick is a longtime charter revision expert and counsel to the City of New Haven.
In his 19-page opinion, including footnotes and appendices, Mednick writes “It is my conclusion that these Charter provisions [Bristol’s] reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the Home Rule Act and are therefore not legally permissible, enforceable or defensible.”
He recommends “that the current Charter Revision Commission, the Council and, ultimately, the voters take steps to repeal this provision in the upcoming referendum.”
What complicates matters is several members of the Board of Education are affected by the 2013 ballot question, whose provisions are scheduled to take effect this year. These include longtime Board of Education members Thomas O’Brien and Christopher Wilson, both Democrats.
So, how did we get here?
In the 2013 charter revision commission deliberations, then Corporation Counsel Edward Krawiecki, a Republican, advised that the term limit question belonged on the ballot. At the time, Wilson objected on the grounds the board of education, which is an elected body, was subject to state statutes and that the city did not have authority on this matter.
A local press article in 2018 quotes Wilson, who was then board of education chairman, commenting on term limits, as he had previously in 2013 and 2016:
“I would ask that you undo what the previous charter revision did,” he said. “The public may have overwhelmingly supported term limits, but they didn’t understand that it is a violation of the charter. The municipality doesn’t have the authority to impose term limits on the board.”
Despite these objections and a 1985 State Supreme Court case, “Simons v. Canty,” cited in Mednick’s report, term limits made it to the ballot.
Regarding the case, in Appendix A, the judicial review section of Mednick’s report states “While there are no cases dealing specifically with limiting candidate qualifications via term limits, in Simons v. Canty, the Supreme Court struck down a provision of the charter of Watertown permitting recall elections of municipal officials.”
Mednick clarifies his position this way: “The issue is not whether a municipality is prohibited from taking action, the question is whether a municipality is expressly granted the authority to take an action establishing ‘term limits.’”
He answers this question in the final paragraph of his letter to Clift: “There is no authority under the State Constitution or in the General Statutes permitting the adoption of ‘term limits’ for elected municipal officials.”
In the 2013 election, Bristol voters chose term limits 7,571 to 2,100.
On the question of home rule
In one of the appendices, a memorandum dated March 12, 2018, regarding term limits enacted via municipal charter or ordinance, asks the question: “Are municipalities legally able to set term limits for locally elected officials, specifically board of education members, via municipal charter or ordinance?”
The answer is no: “Municipalities are not legally empowered to enact term limits.” Among the reasons is that the state has not provided the required authority, “in any of the powers it has granted under the Home Rule Act.”
Another section in the document states Connecticut is a “modified home-rule” state, where municipalities “powers are limited to those that are expressly granted by state stature or necessary to fulfill municipal duties.”
There is, however, an exception to home rule powers, and it exists on the state level, where the legislature can, through a special act, afford municipalities expanded powers, as has happened with recall authorization. Bristol is among the five cities and towns in the state which have this authorization. The others are New Haven, Milford, Stratford and Westport.
Where does that leave us?
That leaves the city with several courses of action, among them asking voters to rescind the 2013 ballot vote in this fall’s municipal election.
In the meantime, local Republicans have posted an entry online asking if this is a political stunt to overthrow the will of the people. The post from the Bristol Republican Town Committee, signed by chairman Jeffrey Caggiano, cites a one-page opinion from 2001 on whether term limits would be permitted under home rule powers.
The entry states explicitly that “The Office of Legislative Research is not authorized to issue legal opinions and this memorandum should not be considered as one.”
Editor’s note: Both TBE contributing editors, Jack Krampitz and Rit Carter, are members of the Charter Revision Commission.