Nothing is more boring, or more pivotal: both the City of Miami and Miami-Dade County are due to name teams to suggest charter changes.
Nobody but an insider ever talks about a charter. It’s as well understood as the Electoral College is nationally – that is, it’s a mystery.
Think of the charter as a parallel to the US Constitution. It lays out ground rules under which a city or the county runs. Your elected commissioners and mayor are supposed to act within those rules. And those rules can only be changed by you, the voters.
So when local government sets up a charter review, what it’s doing is asking those who are appointed to brainstorm what changes to the rules are needed. Then the committee votes on which to put on the ballot for the voters to adopt or reject.
Some charters require a periodic review. Miami-Dade requires one every five years. It has now been seven years and commissioners plan to name a review team next year, making eight years to meet the five-year rule.
If that puzzles you, remember this: commissioners frequently ignore this requirement, because the last thing they want to do is let anyone else set rules under which they operate. The charter is an annoyance, and wishes of voters to change it are a bigger annoyance.
The reason the county is now – kicking and screaming – planning a charter review is that the state changed rules under which counties operate. Starting in November, Miami-Dade must elect a sheriff, an elections supervisor and a tax collector, roles that either didn’t exist here (think sheriff) or were controlled by the mayor and commission (supervisor of elections and tax collector).
Now the mayor and commission will lose control of those offices and the people who work for them. Charter changes to spell out how that will function are unavoidable.
What usually happens in a charter review here is, first, the mayor and commission want to name all the members, people who support their ideas. Second, the commission screens suggestions so that only those they agree with ever reach the ballot.
The deck is stacked against anything that could rock the boat.
Commissioner Damian Pardo wanted to hire an outside expert to advise how to create a city charter committee but was shot down. In the end, he got a sketchy survey by the city’s Department of Procurement, which has no claim at all to expertise in government structure.
That survey did note, however, that Broward County charter review team recommendations go right on the ballot, without commission censorship. If Miami commissioners ever mention that procedure again, it is likely to be only to claim that the commission knows which proposals are “dangerous” or “ill-informed” and shouldn’t get to the ballot, where they might get passed into the charter.
Mr. Pardo cited concerns that Miami voters adopted only 18% of past charter review suggestions. He might better have look at what percentage of the few proposals that commissioners allowed to go on the ballot were ever adopted, because most proposals never make it the voters to act on.
Another vital question: do independent players ever get on a charter review team? If members all are chosen by commissioners and the mayor, they become surrogates.
Case in point: when legislation for a charter review came to the Miami City Commission in September 2011, it required a charter team to weigh all changes the mayor and commission wanted. All the commissioners had to be on the team, and each could name in addition a resident of his or her district. The mayor would name two people and could be one of them. The chair of the commission would chair the charter review. No other members were allowed.
Oh, and just in case anyone went rogue, the commission at any time could remove any outside member without citing cause.
That is an “independent” charter review as the city then conceived it. Any wonder the current commission didn’t want an outsider to recommend a different structure?
Charter review is not scintillating. But it sets the rules for local government. It can determine what a future mayor and commission can and cannot do without voter approval.
Commissioners today have the leeway to decide who can join in this process, what they can do, and whether you will ever get to vote on any of the panel’s recommendations. Control freaks come to mind.
Today, newer faces on both the county and city commissions who have never faced a charter review can open the process to people who aren’t beholden to elected officials. They can allow all proposals by, say, 60% of the review team to go directly onto the ballot.
Or, as usual, they could slam the door shut on anything that could erode their control.
We look hopefully for healthy city and county discussions of these issues with an eye to opening the process. Let suggestions flow, and give the voters their say.
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