On January 21, the City Council voted to approve Mayor Ruthanne Fuller’s nomination of W. David Power to fill the vacant Republican seat on the Newton Election Commission. Despite a recommendation by the Programs and Services Committee to deny the appointment, the vote to approve was 13 to 9 with 1 absent and 1 recusal. The seat became vacant when Jan Huffman moved away.
The meeting, led by City Council Vice President Council David Kalis, began with Programs and Services Committee chair Joshua Krintzman recapping the January 8 meeting of that committee. He explained the concerns of the Newton Republican City Committee (NRCC) regarding Mayor Ruthanne Fuller nominating someone not chosen by the NRCC. He reasserted that the Mayor is within her rights to appoint Power and that there is not a strict history of precedent to appoint a representative from a political party’s list of candidates.
Vice-Chair of Programs and Services Bill Humphrey said, “At this point, the Mayor has made very clear in her communications with us, and her communications privately, that she has no intention of going through some sort of alternative process.”
Councilor Rick Lipof cited the Mayor’s statement that “neither the Mayor nor the City Council should cede their power or judgement to a city political party.”
However, Councilor John Oliver said that his proposal to foster a partnership between the Mayor and the NRCC was not suggesting to cede control, but rather to modify the process for the unique commission.
“This is the one committee in our city where bipartisan political representatives from the top two parties are required,” he said. “Let’s let those parties have some sort of input in the process and the two people that, to a degree, represent them as a political party.”
Councilor Rebecca Grossman defended the Mayor’s right to make independent appointments, emphasizing the need for efficient governance and streamlined processes.
“If the Mayor had to consult the constituency for every appointment that she, he, or they are required to make, the Mayor would do nothing but be consulting people about commission appointments because we have hundreds of them,” she said. “It is within her right to select someone that she thinks is appropriate, and part of that is about streamlining the process.”
Bella Ishanyan is a Fig City News student reporter, Massachusetts High School Journalist of the Year, and a freshman at UMass Amherst.
