This week, 232 of Moretown’s 1,375 voters took from voters the authority to elect a public official, putting that power, instead, into the hands of the select board.
The vote to give the select board the power to elect a delinquent tax collector was presented as a special article in Tuesday’s primary election. It passed 230-178.
By having such a small percentage (17 percent) of voters make this change, Moretown residents follow other Vermont towns down the slippery slope of ceding power to the select board. One might wonder why the Moretown Select Board chose to bring this issue before voters on primary day versus Town Meeting or the presidential election in November. Why primary day, traditionally one of the lowest voter turnout events?
Vermont’s constitution very specifically separated the powers of select boards, town clerks, treasurers and tax collectors. In the past decade legislators have gradually eroded some of those separated powers, allowing towns to change their charters so that the constitution can be disregarded.
In 2015, Waitsfield voters voted by Australian ballot for a charter change that took from voters the authority to elect a town clerk and treasurer, giving it to the select board instead. In that vote, 250 (18 percent) of the town’s 1,400 registered voters made that decision, with 226 voters opposing it and 23 blank ballots.
(Waitsfield is also a town where zoning amendments can be adopted by the select board without coming to a vote of the public.)
What is disheartening about votes like this, that consolidate ever more power with five people, is that they serve to further disconnect people from the process of electing their public officials and engaging in that process.
Do voters really not understand how precious their right to elect their town officials is? Do they not care?
The saddest thing of all though is that once voters have given away their power to the select board, it never comes back to them.
