Steve's article is, indeed, even-handed about the new Charter that
Minneapolis voters are being asked to approve, practically sight-unseen and
even with their silence: Anyone who votes for mayor of city council in
their ward, but does not bother to cast a vote on the two charter
proposals, is counted as having voted YES on both.
Steve's last paragraph is therefore in error, where he says that you need
50%-plus-one vote (or 55%-plus one on liquor) to approve. The rule is, if
there are fewer than 50% (or fewer than 45%) actual NO votes, the charter
is approved. The number of YES votes that are actively cast for the measure
is irrelevant, and could be as few as the dozen or two men who devised the
document.
This silence-means-YES feature is probably why there has been no discussion
of the new charter, no marketing that has anything but cutesy anecdotal
laughs for us.
They really don't want us to read the long current charter alongside the
new proposed charter (long current charter: 71,000 words; new charter:
14,000; omitted without explanation: 57,000 words). We will see the
substantive choices they made, way beyond "simplification" of the language.
We will see which charter protections they weakened in simplifying their
wording, which charter protections they dropped entirely.
Steve's reporting includes some names of elected officials who are not
supporting the new charter, to go along with the City Attorney who says
it's not needed, will be expensive because everything that's had 100 years
of case law to settle interpretation will have to undergo litigation to
wade through "simple language" ambiguities.
Mayor Rybak does not support the new charter, nor does Council president
Barbara Johnson. We know that Carol Becker is voting against, as is at
least one of the Park Board Commissioners, Scott Vreeland. Dave Tilsen,
former president of the School Board and active on our forum, is of course
the most detailed in his pointing out reasons for being against the charter
replacement.
Curiously, no one seems to have made the charter replacement an issue in
the mayoral campaign, and no one begins questioning on it with the
necessary question: "Have you read the new charter as compared with the old
charter?"
The suggestion made earlier in this thread, that we should vote down this
charter "simplification" and go slower, piece by piece, is healthy and
reasonable. Why do we suddenly have to rush?
Read the on-line comparative version (there was a second printing in the
Monday Star Tribune of the bare-bones, uncomparative new Charter, in this
Monday's Star Tribune, and probably the business mag, so the minimum legal
requirements for public notice have been met.) Then VOTE NO.
And, if you vote for anything on the ballot next Tuesday (mayor, city
council park board, etc.), don't skip the charter questions. If you skip
them, you have inadvertently voted YES. Remember: they're counting on our
ignorance and our laziness to get this passed without discussion.
Connie Sullivan
Como, in East Minneapolis
On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 1:07 PM, Brandt, Steve <<email obscured>
Rest of post
> wrote:
> For anyone who is mulling how they will vote on the charter proposals, I
> tried to take an even-handed look at the pros and cons in this article
> today:
>
> http://www.startribune.com/local/minneapolis/229742981.html
>
> This version fixes a subject-verb disagreement in the printed version and
> adds back the percentage by which the 1070 St. Paul revision passed.
>
> For those who are curious, it was also written before the editorial
> appeared.
>
>
> Steve Brandt
> Reporter
> Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
> 612-673-4438
> <email obscured><mailto:sbrandt@startribune.com>
>
> Follow Mpls election news at startribune.com/mpls2013
>
> Follow Minneapolis news<http://twitter.com/#!/BrandtStrib> on Twitter
>
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> extra city news
>
>
> Steve Brandt
> King Field, Minneapolis
> About/contact Steve Brandt: http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/stevebrandt
>
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