The January 25 meeting of the Town Council saw a bit of controversy over interpretation of the language in state law that places a cap on local property tax increases. As I explained beforehand, there were two interpretations on the table:
- Bad (and spun): That regardless of what any other any other governing body has done, the financial town meeting has the authority to exceed the cap with a simple majority.
- Good (and accurate): That the town council must vote, by a four-fifths majority, to request the state’s necessary authorization of the increase and the financial town meeting must approve with a majority.
To the surprise of every TCC supporter in the room, Council Member Louise Durfee led the way in suggesting that the town adopt the second interpretation as policy. Here’s my liveblog from the meeting, and here’s the video:
The meeting ended with a request that Town Solicitor Andrew Teitz draft language for the policy and submit it for public viewing ten days before tonight’s town council meeting. Well, not only did Teitz miss that deadline by several days, but here’s the third component of the policy that he’s putting forward (PDF):
Notwithstanding anything herein to the contrary, nothing in this policy shall be deemed to impair the authority of the Financial Town Meeting to exceed the cap set forth in the Act, under Article XIII (Home Rule) of the Rhode Island Constitution, or Chapter 3 (Town Meetings) of Title 45 of the General Laws of Rhode Island.
In short, the policy requires the town council to vote by four-fifths if it wishes to exceed the cap, but whether it does so, or whether the state authorizes the increase, is entirely immaterial, because the financial town meeting needn’t heed the explicit instruction of the law. In terms of the two options above, the council faked “good,” and Teitz went “bad.”
As we all witnessed two years ago, at the financial town meeting, at least some of the people who run this town will do anything to ram through their preferred policies, generally making it easier for them to take and spend your money however they like. During the last election cycle, TCC managed to replace some of that cabal. The next step will be keeping their machinations from increasing taxes more than the 4.5% allowed by state law, as we did last year. And the step after that will be replacing the rest of the bad lot.
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