Posted by Dennis Herrick on August 18, 2008 at 06:49:26:
From today's Fosters Daily Democrat Online.
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Error has some wondering if Rochester tax cap question may be thwarted
By ADAM D. KRAUSS
akrauss@fosters.com
Article Date: Monday, August 18, 2008
ROCHESTER — It should come as no surprise next week when residents use a public hearing on the successfully petitioned tax and spending cap question to rail against government spending.
But a new theme — government incompetency — seems to have crept into the debate following an error on the city's part to accurately inform the public of Tuesday's hearing, set for 7 p.m. at City Hall.
One supporter of the tax cap says the city's error has made residents "more skeptical" of their government.
"Here you've got the government doing something that opened the door for people to wonder what happened," said Cliff Newton, who led the drive locally. "Here's something the people want. It's moving forward, and government creates a pretty good bump in the road."
Things got a little bumpy this week when the City Clerk's Office paid for an advertisement to appear in Foster's Daily Democrat advising the public of the hearing, only with the wrong date. The city followed up with a corrected notice the next day, on Wednesday, confirming the hearing will be held Aug. 19.
Questions were immediately raised by cap supporters, who wondered if the second notice was placed in the seven-day window legally required before the hearing. If it wasn't, they said, the hearing would not be legal, thwarting a key procedural step ensuring the city charter-altering tax cap question will appear on the November ballot.
Newton feared the city's mistake "possibly sidetracked" the wishes of more than 1,700 residents who signed their names to the petition — more than double the required 796 required signatures.
Mayor John Larochelle said he doesn't "see anything preventing this from going on the ballot."
He said the loss of a part-time employee in the clerk's office due to budget cuts could have contributed to the error.
"People who are expecting the level of service we've had in the past are going to be affected by the loss of personnel," he said. "There's inevitably going to be some level of mistakes. That's not to justify the mistake."
There's been debate over the legality of Tuesday's hearing.
City Manager John Scruton said "if you count the day of the hearing, then we met the seven-day notice."
Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan said state law allows for the day of the hearing to count in the seven-day window, but not the day the notice was published. That would seem to leave the city one day short of reaching the legal timeline, unless there's a correlation between the correct and incorrect notice.
City Attorney Dan Wensley did not return a message seeking clarification.
Scruton said due to ambiguities in state law, Wensley's "recommendation to the council is that they hold a second hearing" on Sept. 2 — 60 days before the election, as required by law. Going that route "will prevent anyone from challenging" that the city did not hold a legal hearing, the manager said.
Larochelle said he intends to schedule a hearing for September.
At one point, it seemed tax cap supporters were concerned that councilors may not sign off on a second hearing as part of a scheme to derail the legitimacy of the process.
"If you're a conspiracist could you be like, 'Geez, the coincidences are too many to believe this is not an accident?' I suppose so," said Fred Leonard, co-chair of the Rochester Concerned Taxpayers Association. "But, no, I don't believe they did anything on purpose."
Still, Newton said, "we have been told by other people who have done this in other towns that anything they can do they will do as a stall tactic." He added, "I don't think that's what happened, but now it's clearly not progressing as clearly as it should have."
Fueling some people's concerns is an alleged conversation a tax cap supporter had with a city employee in the City Clerk's Office who was concerned with "problems" with the cap, according to e-mails being exchanged between Leonard, Scruton and councilors.
Scruton defended the "right of any municipal employee to give their opinion on any issue," seeing how their speech is protected by the state and federal constitutions and a recent law change strengthening municipal employees' right to discuss or express their opinion on all matters concerning the government.
Leonard said employees shouldn't be doing that in the workplace.
Questioned if publicly airing these concerns could work to the benefit of tax cap supporters looking to rally further support, Newton said: "I don't think so. ... I want people to be angry with the largesse, not because government is working to circumvent them."
In the end, this much is clear from an e-mail the taxpayers group sent members and others: despite believing the Tuesday session "will not be the legal public hearing," the group still wants residents to "pack the house" and "send a strong message that this cap is important to the taxpayers of Rochester."