Letter: Hilton makes my Tiverton charter point perfectly

Posted 3/14/18

To the editor:

Thank you, Councilor Hilton. Your response to my prior letter actually validates my allegations and showcases your desire to strip voter rights.

Hilton writes that the council …

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Letter: Hilton makes my Tiverton charter point perfectly

Posted

To the editor:

Thank you, Councilor Hilton. Your response to my prior letter actually validates my allegations and showcases your desire to strip voter rights.

Hilton writes that the council voted to send a proposal to the Charter Review Commission (CRC) to “eliminate the FTR [Financial Town Referendum] and Budget Committee (BC)”, and the record shows that she was one of the four votes in support. Thank you for clarifying your position Councilor Hilton.

Hilton then delineates three of her “improvements” to the FTR:

• 1)  Eliminate the FTR alternate budget remand option: The history of the inclusion of the remand option was to expand voters rights by enabling a voter to propose a bottom line tax increase or decrease without having to be an expert on the entire town budget, and if approved by FTR voters then the BC is charged with “making the budget line items work”. Hilton proposes to strip taxpayers of this remand option. 
• 2)  “Slightly increase” FTR elector petition signatures: Hilton's proposal increases signatures from 50 to 200 – fourfold! Hilton wants to thwart taxpayers by raising the hurdle taxpayers face to have their voices heard. 
• 3)  Force the FTR petitioner to fund labor and any other contracted amounts: Hilton wants to tie voter’s hands, so they must fund the fat contracts the Town Council, of which she is a member, approves. 
Most troubling is that Hilton calls her proposals “improvements” to the FTR. The only ones who gain by these "improvements" are the power grabbing government types, who always think they know better than the taxpayer, toward the goal of confiscating more of your tax dollars.

Regarding FTR remand, the Town Council can and does transfer funds between budget line items at will, thereby making a mockery of the voter approved FTR budget line items (thankfully the FTR binds the total). So, I say this to Hilton in the name of the transparency she touts: If you eliminate the remand option and require the FTR petitioner to specify each and every line item, then surely you must agree to also eliminate all Town Council transfers of those line items. You can’t have it both ways, Trisha.

Beware the actions of this Town Council: Its goal is to grab the casino revenue simultaneously with stripping your voter rights, so you can’t do anything about it. Like Hilton, they will lie to you (increasing signatures fourfold is not “slightly” and eliminating the remand is not an “improvement”) and try to ram through their changes in the November general election.

Jeff Caron


Member, Tiverton Charter Review Commission

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