September 2, 2002
Did the Common Council read its own Charter?
If Rev. Robert E. Baines is right, the downsizing is illegal.
Did the Common Council read its own Charter?
If Rev. Robert E. Baines is right, the downsizing is illegal.
Reverend Robert E. Baines, along with David Riveria, Ramona Taylor and Felicita Roch, have filed suit in Federal court for a temporary restraining order preventing the city of Buffalo from placing Local Law 8 (the one all the fuss is about that eliminates all four at-large seats on the Common Council) on the November ballot and "taking any other further legislative or administrative action on the reapportionment or redistricting of the City of Buffalo." The defendants are Mayor Anthony Masiello, all members of the Common Council and the two Erie County elections commissioners, Laurence Adamczyk and Ralph Mohr.
The brief argues that the Council's vote eliminating the four at-large seats is illegal because §23.5 of Buffalo's City Charter requires a two-thirds vote in the Common Council on any referendum that would change the structure of City Government. That would be 9 votes in the affirmative, not the 7 that passed it. The lawsuit also charges that the redistricting itself (a separate law voted 7 yes and 6 no by the same councilmembers who voted that way on the restructuring in Local Law 8) was 'legally flawed."
Local Law 8 begins: "A LOCAL LAW amending the Charter of the City of Buffalo in relation to the elimination of three at-large council seats and separately elected Council President."
§23.5 of the City Charter says, in its entirety :You can find that section of the Buffalo City Charter online, though the Charter is surprisingly difficult to navigate. There is no linked table of contents that lets you go to the section you want directly. To get to §23 23, you must begin at §1, scroll down to the bottom of the page, hit a right arrow, scroll down to the bottom of the next screen, and on and on. You have to do that maybe a hundred times to reach §23. (If you do all the work they make you do to get there, you might as well scroll down to the bottom and click ahead twice and you'll be at §23.13, Recall of Elected City Officials.) There's no linked table of contents to help you read the Charter, but there is one that provides direct links to the pages with information about bootblacks, billiard and pool rooms and bowling alleys, burials, games of chance, obscenity, official time, ethics, burials, sale of glue, office hours and holidays, bait dippers, phrenology (yes, phrenology) strikebreakers and several other matters of varying import.Except as otherwise provided by the local finance law, the council may by resolution adopted by a two-thirds vote of its members, submit to the electors of the city for determination by them at a general or special election, any question or questions relating to a subject upon which the council has power to act.
The vote of the majority of the electors voting upon any question or questions so submitted shall be finding and mandatory on the council, and the council shall thereafter take such action as may be made necessary by such determination of the electors.
I've heard the Rev. Baines's lawsuit pooh-poohed as coming from a group of people with no political clout and filed by a lawyer who isn't a player in the local political game. That's not good enough: this is coming up before US District Court Judge John T. Curtin, who has never been known to judge a legal brief on the political clout and local club membership of the attorney signing off on it.
Unless the Franczyk group can come up with a very good reason why they're not subject to §23-5, why their 7-6 vote trumps the 9-3 vote required by the Buffalo City Charter, this whole thing may blow up in their face.
You can hear the arguments yourself: the case will be argued in Judge Curtin's courtroom Friday, September 6, at two p.m.