Don’t like the outcome of a referendum? No problem. Just put the same issue back on the ballot in the next election, only this time leave out the part that voters objected to the first time.
That’s what the Board of Selectmen did last month in the town of Winchester, Connecticut, after voters rejected a 2018 ballot initiative that would have moved the town’s public notices from local newspapers to its website.
“Shall (five separate sections of the Town charter) be amended to eliminate the requirement for newspaper publication, instead allowing the publication on the Town’s website and any other place chosen by the Board of Selectmen?” read the 2018 referendum that was soundly rejected by local citizens in an election with record turnout of more than 5,000 voters.
This year the selectmen put the issue back on the ballot but conveniently left out the part about eliminating newspapers. “Shall the Town of Winchester amend (the same five sections of the Town charter) to make notices available in the Town Clerk’s office and posted on the town website?” they asked in last month’s election.
Excising the language about newspapers appears to have done the trick. Approximately 1,200 people voted this year and all five notice-related ballot questions passed with more than 950 votes and fewer than 175 votes in opposition, according to the Republican-American.
Winchester Mayor Candy Perez (pictured above) denied the ballot language was written to confuse voters. In a phone interview, she argued the ballots were covered extensively in local newspapers and both the Democratic and Republican town committees joined forces to print flyers encouraging voters to pass the amendments.
“I don’t think we give voters enough credit,” she said. “Our local government is so close to everyone, we talk about issues on the sports field, at the grocery store, all over town. I would think they know what they are voting for.”
Mayor Perez claimed the outcome was different this year because voters were able to focus on the issue. She contended the public notice initiatives were overshadowed by local and national elections in 2018.
“We’re not sure people saw them or knew what they were (in 2018),” she said. “No one put out flyers, no one reported on it.”
The Republican-American takes the opposite view. “There ought to be a law against bringing controversial referendums to voters during elections known to generate lower-than-low turnouts,” wrote the local paper in its editorial following the election. “The lack of such a law brought forth an abominable referendum result in Winsted on Nov. 5.” (Winsted is the largest city in the Town of Winchester.)
In her public pronouncements on the issue prior to the election, Mayor Perez focused entirely on the need to save money on abolishing outdated laws. She said Winchester’s selectmen want to eliminate about 80 obsolete ordinances, and to do that the Town charter would have required them to publish the full text of each ordinance in a newspaper. She claimed that would cost the town between $25,000 and $35,000.
“We want to change the legal notice requirements for (the ordinances) as we update them, and that’s why it’s on the ballot,” Mayor Perez told the Register Citizen.
“A yes on the charter questions allows us to continue to be mindful of taxpayers money while modernizing and updating our legal notice system to be able to cost effectively update our long overdue ordinances,” she wrote in a letter to the editor in the same paper.
But only one of the five ballot questions focused on the ordinance mandate. The other four measures eliminated other local newspaper notices, like those formerly required to promote competitive bidding and publicize the consideration of emergency appropriations.
Mayor Perez said she generally likes newspapers. She doesn’t subscribe to any in print but reads them online. She is critical of corporate-owned newspapers. She believes they slant their coverage and are only interested in keeping public notices in newspapers for the money.
“The media companies are run by good people overall, but they exist for profit,” she said.
The Winsted Journal, which used to report on the town, is no longer published and its website address now directs readers to the TriCorner News, operated by a struggling, locally owned company that publishes two small weekly papers in the area.
Winchester is also covered by the family-owned daily Republican-American of Waterbury and the Register-Citizen of Torrington, a Hearst paper.
Mayor Perez noted that despite the results of the referendum, the town’s selectmen can still choose to publish notices in newspapers. She offered advice for publishers who want to continue providing that service. “Maybe newspapers should give us inexpensive rates or donate space to us for the notices,” she said.