Robert Van Rens

Today, the City of Frederick Board of Aldermen are supposed to start voting to approve the recommendations made by the Charter Review Committee of which I was a member.

The agenda for today's meeting can be found here: https://cityoffrederick.granicus.com/GeneratedAgendaViewer.php?view_id=12&event_id=3544

We were originally empaneled in late 2022 and spent essentially the entirety of last year wrangling with major restructuring on the City's governing documents. Each subcommittee researched it's area of responsibility at considerable depth. I've been responsible in the past for policy research for state legislation, either during formulation or in response to proposals, and what we did was considerably more detailed and exhaustive. Our notes and sources are part of the public record and can be found on the City's website, along with minutes from every meeting and a copy of the final recommendations at https://www.cityoffrederickmd.gov/1626/Ad-Hoc-Charter-Review-Committee

I'm not fully in agreement with every recommendation that passed from the committee; that's the nature of policymaking bodies, the majority vote decides the issue.

Nor do I agree entirely with this morning's editorial in the Frederick News Post laying out their thinking on the recommendations; it's not a secret that the FNP editorial board leans much more conservative than I normally do. What's surprising is the amount of -agreement- I have with them; of the 19 recommendations, there are only two places where I cannot agree with them; I think the establishment of single-member districts in addition to some at-large districts is vitally important to ensure better representation of the -entire- city, and I think the suggestion of punting non-citizen voting in municipal elections to a referendum in the next city election is moral cowardice. Relying on voters to do the right thing instead of doing it yourself would be disappointing at best. I do not believe you can serve the interests of protecting representative democracy by presenting voters with the chance to limit the franchise.

I want to be 100% clear on this issue: there is NO bar under federal or state law that prevents resident non-citizens from voting in -locally administered- municipal elections. State law DOES not permit participation in elections that are administered -by the state-, meaning county or state elections as well as municipal elections that take place under the aegis of gubernatorial or presidential election cycles and share ballots with those candidates.

The reason the committee STRONGLY recommended that we KEEP our off-cycle election year was so that various election reforms could be implemented that are not permissible under state administration; resident non-citizen voting is one, ranked-choice voting was another, semi-open primaries was a third. I can't speak to the intent of every committee member; my goal was to allow participation in the electoral process to as many city residents as possible. That means giving unaffiliated voters the opportunity to participate in primaries. That means giving non-citizen residents the opportunity to vote. That means expanding the franchise (for City elections) as widely as possible and removing as many barriers to participation as possible.

One of the reasons I support the establishment of single-member geographic districts is that they provide greater opportunity for participation at a different level. Running city-wide is expensive and requires a major commitment to campaigning across a large physical area; running in a single district, with a limited population, is a smaller lift. Defined borders, narrower population, and issues that residents identify as being specific to their neighborhoods make it a very different race, and this will hopefully attract a very different candidate than has run previously in the city.

When I ran for Alderman in 2021, the issues I built my campaign on were mostly those of good government; I saw a city apparatus that just didn't work, and I identified and enumerated the ways it could be repaired.

While I didn't come close to winning, I learned a great deal, and Mayor Michael O'Connor offered me two tremendous opportunities after the election. The first was a seat on the Historic Preservation Commission, doing something to which I am passionately committed. The second, and I would say greater, was a place on the Charter Review Committee, where I had the opportunity to take a "second bite at the apple," as it were, and try to implement many of the policy issues I ran on as Alderman.

The package of recommendations isn't perfect. There are things I would have adopted that the committee voted down, and things I would have left out that the committee voted to send forward. I can live with it, I still think it's a qualitative leap ahead for City Government, and I strongly urge each of the Alderpeople to adopt the committee's recommendations and to move to implement them as fully as possible, or, as in the case of RCV, to put in place the policy framework for implementation when the necessary tools become available (in this case vote-tabulating machines that can accommodate RCV ballots).

Today will be an extremely busy day at work, and I doubt I will have the opportunity to watch the meeting online, much less attend it. I will follow the results as soon as they are made available, and in the meantime I very much hope that my elected representatives will rise to the occasion and be brilliant today.

Ad Hoc Charter Review Committee | The City of Frederick, MD - Official Website The Charter Review Committee will meet on the first and third Thursday of the month at 1:00 p.m. in the board room at City Hall, 101 North Court Street, Frederick, Maryland, 21701. These meetings are open to the public.