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Written by Joanne Wallenstein

Published: 11 October 2011

Created: 11 October 2011

Last Updated: 11 October 2011

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There is no doubt that most Scarsdale residents are confused by how we elect our mayor and trustees. No matter how many times I explain the Non-Partisan system to my very intelligent friends, it’s never clear to them why we elect a “non-partisan” committee of nominators to nominate candidates for a “no-contest” election.

For many years, Village governance had little impact on most Scarsdale residents, and so it was left to the few who cared to take the lead. But last year was different. When the Citizens Nominating Committee named their slate of candidates for Scarsdale Mayor and Village Trustees, two non-party candidates decided, for the first time in recent memory, to challenge them. Scarsdale suddenly had a contested election on its hands, and voters were galvanized.

And galvanized in a big way: 1,028 votes were cast in 2011, compared to just 150 in the 2010 contest.

Why was 2011 different? Several factors contributed:

1) Many absentee ballots were included in the CNC election for nominators. Some charge that the candidates themselves delivered these absentee ballots in bulk to the Procedure Committee.

2) Many repeat performers were elected to the nominating committee, some with conflicting allegiances. From the outside, the committee looked like a group of self-selected insiders.

3) Though proceedings are supposed to be confidential, there were rumors that unsubstantiated charges about one of the candidates were made right before the voting, with no opportunity for rebuttal.

4) The voting procedure for mayor and trustee at the CNC was also called into question when some contended that the names of one or more leading candidates were dropped during a final election round.

The result? Voting grew nearly tenfold. Village Hall was overwhelmed with voters, many of whom did not know how to cast a write-in vote. There were poll watchers on site, as well as police. Though the CNC candidates emerged as the victors, the entire non-partisan procedure was called into question.

Every year following the elections—and of special importance this past year—a Procedure Committee is formed to review the nomination process and election, and consider any necessary amendments. Chairs of this committee are appointed by the TVCC, an unelected body comprised of concerned Scarsdale citizens. The remainder of the committee includes nine seats also appointed by the TVCC, two SNAP representatives, and the ten elected nominators who have completed their three-year terms on the CNC. Thus, fewer than half of the appointees—10 of 21 slots—are elected to their posts.

This year the TVCC leadership appointed David Brodsky and Michelle Lichtenberg to chair the Procedure Committee. They had the tough job of addressing the issues that arose last year, crafting any necessary amendments to the Non-Partisan Resolution and restoring confidence in the Non-Partisan system. The committee worked diligently on drafting amendments to address some of the issues that were raised. These are not easily distilled to a few words, but here are the essentials of their proposed amendments:

1) Only one member of a household should serve on the Citizens Nominating Committee (CNC) at a time.

2) A former mayor or trustee should not run for the CNC directly after their service ends. The amendment calls for a cooling-off period of one year and seven months. They originally proposed a three-year waiting period but reduced it after comments from the community.

3) No one can serve consecutive three-year terms – however those who filled a vacancy can run for an additional three years.

4) No member of the Procedure Committee, the School Board Nominating Committee, the School Board Administrative Committee, the School Board or the Village Board can run for the CNC.

5) Absentee ballots will be sent to a PO Box in individual envelopes.

6) If last minute information about a nominee is introduced at the last session of the CNC, voting should be deferred to a subsequent meeting unless the chair is overruled by a 2/3 vote of the committee.

Are these amendments far-reaching enough to restore confidence in the system? Probably not – but they are a good start.

In my mind they fail to address some key problems with the system:

1) The Chair and Vice Chair of the CNC are not elected, but chosen by the TVCC. (In fact, the TVCC President herself usually chairs the

CNC, except this coming year, when she will presumably recuse herself so her husband can be considered for a second term as a Village Trustee.)

2) The TVCC appoints eleven people to serve and run the Procedure committee, none of those elected by residents.

3) The rules do not prohibit repeat service on the CNC – which often results in members of the TVCC serving over and over again – along with former trustees and mayors. Wouldn’t it be better to widen the membership of the committee to the broader community and seek out those who may not already have a long record of service to Scarsdale? Perhaps they would bring new blood to the pool of candidates for mayor and trustees and take a fresh look at Village issues.

4) The amendments do not stipulate how voting should be done within the committee –a complex process that is open to interpretation by the Chair and Vice Chair and gives them power to sway the results.

However, the amendments are a good beginning and I recommend you vote for them when we elect the new members of the nominating committee on November 15.

But what is written above is just the background for the discussion at the meeting of the Scarsdale Forum on Thursday night October 6th, where Brodsky and Lichtenberg presented the Procedure Committee amendments and discussed their merits on a panel with Larry Bell. Bell chairs the Non-Partisan Procedure Committee of the Forum who drafted its own Non-Partisan Procedure Report.

Why was a second report necessary? After all the official Procedure Committee already included 11 appointees from the TVCC. Why would the Forum (formerly TVCC) Executive Committee charge the Non Partisan Procedure Committee with drafting their own set of amendments, which were then published expeditiously before the official Procedure Committee could even issue their recommendations?

Puzzling indeed. Especially since many members of the TVCC Committee had served on the CNC during the prior years when the CNC’s actions had been called into question. Were they trying to rewrite the rules to prevent themselves from abusing them?

Even more puzzling was Bell’s presentation. He largely agreed with the Procedure Committee’s amendments and also recommended the formalization of the confidentiality policy in regards to “refuting allegations” and facilitating due diligence. However he took issue with the proposal that would prevent members of the same household from serving simultaneously (Bell and his wife both currently serve on the CNC, and Mr. Bell is a former chair of the committee). Bell contended that voters should have the right to choose whoever they like to represent them. He said that Scarsdale10583 had published a “hit list” of those who should not serve on the CNC, referring to a list on this site of the conflicting allegiances of last year’s CNC committee’s members.

Then he brought forth a seeming allusion to Nazi Germany, quoting Martin Niemoeller with the words,

“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—
and there was no one left to speak out.”

At that point, the audience looked stunned. As far as I could tell, no one was quite sure what Bell meant by this quote. Did he feel that he was being personally singled out by the amendments? What was he saying about the Procedure Committee?

Of all people, Larry Bell has had ample opportunity to air his views. As a past president of the Scarsdale Forum, he was contemporaneously the chairman of the CNC. He serves on the leadership committee of the Heathcote Five Corners Coalition, and is an elected member of the CNC, the same nominating committee over which he formerly presided. He is also on the Executive Committee of the Scarsdale Forum.

Though a few questions were posed during the Q&A session that followed, the room was relatively quiet. In a discussion about why the TVCC Committee disagreed with the one person/one household rule, Bell turned to Brodsky and Lichtenberg and charged, “You wanted to throw some people a bone – and that’s the bone you threw in. Let’s get down to the real issues!”

Perhaps the “real issue” with the Non-Partisan System is not the system at all. Could it be that a few persistent members of the Forum are over-reaching and dominating the CNC deliberations and the voting process? The TVCC committee’s efforts to shadow and second-guess the official Procedure Committee is a good example of the lengths they will go to undermine the process itself.

In my view, they befuddled a conversation that was already too complex; one that I have trouble interpreting myself -- no less explaining to a friend.

(Pictured at top: Larry Bell, Bk Mungia, Michelle Lichtenberg and David Brodsky)

Photo credit: Bruce Wells

 

 

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Written by Joanne Wallenstein

Published: 20 October 2011

Created: 20 October 2011

Last Updated: 27 October 2011

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Seven-term County Legislator and Democrat Bill Ryan faced off with Republican challenger Iris Pagan at the LWV debate on Wednesday, October 19 at the Scarsdale Library.  Pagan, a newcomer to politics is a teacher who worked her way through college at Pace and ultimately earned her doctorate in education from Columbia Teacher’s College.  In her opening statement she said she was running because high taxes threaten the American dream. Ryan, the former Chairman of the County Board of Legislators and an experienced voice in county and state government asked voters to re-elect him so that he could continue to “find the best answers” to confront declining revenues, high taxes and budgeting in the face of the 2% tax cap.

The format of the debate allows for only short statements and rebuttals and in many instances forced timekeepers to cut off the candidate’s comments before they could be fully developed. The League posed questions about affordable housing, the tax cap, Medicaid and the stagnant economy and here is a recap:

Affordable housing:  In Ryan’s view the $51 million dollar affordable housing settlement, signed in 2009 allowed Westchester to buildhousing and avoid paying estimated damages and penalties of up to half a billion dollars to the U.S government. According to Ryan, Westchester is ahead of schedule on the construction of these units and is doubtful that Scarsdale will play any role in fulfilling the mandate for 750 units.  He reassured the audience that the county had not found any discriminatory local zoning and did not plan to challenge the localities.

Pagan was determined to raise a red flag about housing and repeatedly cited a May, 2011 letter from HUD that added more stipulations

to the settlement agreement including a call for 3-bedroom units, and a proviso that the county challenge local restrictive zoning laws.

Though Ryan pointed out that a July letter from HUD had clarified these issues, Pagan insisted that the “Ryan/Spano” settlement had morphed into an “integration plan,” and called for the audience to “stand up against federal housing” which in her view threatens to bring affordable housing “next to neighborhood schools.”

In response to a question about how the county could meet the 2% tax cap, Pagan said she “would focus on social services and making sure that programs are running efficiently and effectively, adding  “We need to look at the recipients to be sure that funds are going to their targeted use.”

Ryan called the cap a “budgeting nightmare” that does not keep pace with the average rate of growth of expenses or mandated costs.  He said that the cap allows counties to raise $90 million to cover $280 million in mandated expenses.

In her rebuttal, Pagan contended that “Scarsdale schools have a surplus” and suggested that this surplus would allow the district to comply with the cap. She ended by saying,  “that’s called responsible budgeting.” Ryan told the group, ”As long as the state is forcing us to spend money we will have trouble complying with the tax cap.”

 

In a question about stagnant local revenues, the candidates parried back and forth about why White Plains does not have it’s own Industrial Development Agency (IDA). Pagan argued that an IDA would bring more business to the area while Ryan contended that White Plains is covered by the county IDA and that forming an additional IDA would be redundant.

Next the conversation turned to moving Medicaid costs from the county to the state level.  Currently, 40% of the Westchester County tax levy goes toward funding mandated Medicaid payments. Assemblywoman Amy Paulin is one of the sponsors of a bill with bipartisan support that would shift the responsibility for Medicaid to the state over a nine-year period. In total,  $211 million in expenses would be removed from the county budget. The state’s Medicaid Redesign Team would look to generate savings through reform and a new payment model. Pagan argued that the shift would mean lower county taxes but higher state taxes for local residents.

The question and answer period touched on safety concerns, consolidation of services, tax reduction and the housing settlement with little new ground covered.  Ryan’s familiarity with the issues and the numbers resulted in a smooth, logical presentation while Pagan struggled to form complete thoughts and sentences and fell back on canned phrases and rhetoric. However she did have a dedicated group of supporters in the audience; a mix of Scarsdale and White Plains Republicans who cheered and clapped with vigor at Pagan’s efforts to state her views.  Perhaps their enthusiasm will invigorate the November vote.

At one point in the evening, judicial candidate Ed Borelli stopped in to introduce himself to voters. He is running for NYS Supreme

Court Justice for the ninth judicial district. Unfortunately his pitch was also cut short due to time limitations and prevented the audience from learning much about him. He was the only judicial candidate to come by. In the future, perhaps the League should reconsider the format to allow candidates a longer introduction period to explain their platforms. The time restrictions appeared to be frustrating for both the speakers and the audience.

(Pictured at top: Bill Ryan and Iris Pagan)

Photos by Sara Werder

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Published: 06 October 2011

Created: 06 October 2011

Last Updated: 06 October 2011

Hits: 3375

Here is a letter to the Editor from Harry Reynolds of Bradley Road: Dear Editor: In August, I filed objections to the proposed amendment of the Non-Partisan Resolution because the amendment (a) deemed secret the identities of persons seeking the system’s nominations and (b) deemed secret what those applicants said, or failed to say, when they appeared before the Nominating Committee, and what the members of that Committee said to them.

Some in the Village were taken aback by those secrecy provisions which seemed unjustified because of the lack of any supervening cause that would sanction them for the public good. Indeed, there is no electoral system in the free world that provides for them.

The Procedural Committee killed the secrecy provisions, leaving it to its chairperson to inform the Inquirer last week that “We decided to table the confidentiality amendment until next year”. The attempt to encase secrecy in the proposed amendment was simply swept out of the public view. Secrecy provisions for which the Procedural Committee had eagerly sought the public’s favor were left by that Committee without any explanation for its decision to table the proposed secrecy amendment until “next year”, notwithstanding that a formal renunciation of that secrecy by the committee would affect the conduct of the system’s business in the intervening year.

Is it possible that the Procedural Committee could not decide whether the secrecy provisions, repellant on their face in a democracy, were not condemnable out of hand?

Put another way, what would our voters, to say nothing of our high school and middle school students, think of our Non-Partisan System’s belief that political parties should not be part of our village’s electoral system and, therefore, Scarsdale voters should not be told the identity of applicants for electoral office and should not be told what those applicants know, believe, plan, or desire concerning the public office that they seek? Would they not say that the necessary price of avoiding the rancor of political parties is not, and must not be, the creation of a village of politically ignorant voters?

It may be argued that the Procedural Committee’s tabling of the secrecy issue to next year was so unreasonable as to raise a question of the trustworthiness of the judgment of the Non-Partisan system. However, there is no reason to question the good faith of the Committee and the tabling of the issue suggests that there is support for the objections that have been raised against the secrecy provisions. Accordingly, it has been decided that the running of an opposition candidate in order to place the issue before the voters will await the Committee’s decision.

Harry Reynolds
Bradley Road