If you think that when you go to the polls to vote on a referendum, all the choices printed on the ballot are legal, you may need to think again. Should Tiverton’s proposed Financial Town Referendum (FTR) be adopted, even illegal budgets will be allowed on the ballot.
The FTR provides a petition process for any resident to put a budget on the ballot. Keep in mind that the 50 signatures required for a petition budget will be carefully checked by the town clerk to ensure that they are all from qualified Tiverton electors. Why would we bother with this step, I wonder, when no one is certifying that the budget proposals themselves are legal? Why wouldn’t we have someone with the necessary background in municipal finance and law check the five different numbers that make up each budget proposal as well?
I thought one reason for changing to a financial referendum was to stop the fighting and lawsuits that have resulted in recent years from budgets that passed at our Financial Town Meeting. How does knowingly allowing illegal budget proposals the chance to get approved do that?
If the budget approved is illegal, what do we do then? Maybe we just spend another $500,000 on litigation and let the courts decide. If that’s what happens, we’re right back where we started from.
Let’s find an alternative to the Financial Town Meeting that leads to less budgeting-through-litigation rather than more.
Carol Herrmann
Tiverton, RI
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