Who's Representing You In Scarsdale? Go Figure!

There is no doubt that most Scarsdale residents are confused by how we elect our mayor and trustees. No matter how many times I explain the Non-Partisan system to my very intelligent friends, it’s never clear to them why we elect a “non-partisan” committee of nominators to nominate candidates for a “no-contest” election.

For many years, Village governance had little impact on most Scarsdale residents, and so it was left to the few who cared to take the lead. But last year was different. When the Citizens Nominating Committee named their slate of candidates for Scarsdale Mayor and Village Trustees, two non-party candidates decided, for the first time in recent memory, to challenge them. Scarsdale suddenly had a contested election on its hands, and voters were galvanized.

And galvanized in a big way: 1,028 votes were cast in 2011, compared to just 150 in the 2010 contest.

Why was 2011 different? Several factors contributed:

1) Many absentee ballots were included in the CNC election for nominators. Some charge that the candidates themselves delivered these absentee ballots in bulk to the Procedure Committee.

2) Many repeat performers were elected to the nominating committee, some with conflicting allegiances. From the outside, the committee looked like a group of self-selected insiders.

3) Though proceedings are supposed to be confidential, there were rumors that unsubstantiated charges about one of the candidates were made right before the voting, with no opportunity for rebuttal.

4) The voting procedure for mayor and trustee at the CNC was also called into question when some contended that the names of one or more leading candidates were dropped during a final election round.

The result? Voting grew nearly tenfold. Village Hall was overwhelmed with voters, many of whom did not know how to cast a write-in vote. There were poll watchers on site, as well as police. Though the CNC candidates emerged as the victors, the entire non-partisan procedure was called into question.

Brodsky, Lichtenberg, Ross and Bell

This year the TVCC leadership appointed David Brodsky and Michelle Lichtenberg to chair the Procedure Committee. They had the tough job of addressing the issues that arose last year, crafting any necessary amendments to the Non-Partisan Resolution and restoring confidence in the Non-Partisan system. The committee worked diligently on drafting amendments to address some of the issues that were raised. These are not easily distilled to a few words, but here are the essentials of their proposed amendments:

1) Only one member of a household should serve on the Citizens Nominating Committee (CNC) at a time.

2) A former mayor or trustee should not run for the CNC directly after their service ends. The amendment calls for a cooling-off period of one year and seven months. They originally proposed a three-year waiting period but reduced it after comments from the community.

3) No one can serve consecutive three-year terms – however those who filled a vacancy can run for an additional three years.

4) No member of the Procedure Committee, the School Board Nominating Committee, the School Board Administrative Committee, the School Board or the Village Board can run for the CNC.

5) Absentee ballots will be sent to a PO Box in individual envelopes.

6) If last minute information about a nominee is introduced at the last session of the CNC, voting should be deferred to a subsequent meeting unless the chair is overruled by a 2/3 vote of the committee.

Are these amendments far-reaching enough to restore confidence in the system? Probably not – but they are a good start.

In my mind they fail to address some key problems with the system:

1) The Chair and Vice Chair of the CNC are not elected, but chosen by the TVCC. (In fact, the TVCC President herself usually chairs the

Forum President BK Mungia and Mayor Miriam Flisser

2) The TVCC appoints eleven people to serve and run the Procedure committee, none of those elected by residents.

3) The rules do not prohibit repeat service on the CNC – which often results in members of the TVCC serving over and over again – along with former trustees and mayors. Wouldn’t it be better to widen the membership of the committee to the broader community and seek out those who may not already have a long record of service to Scarsdale? Perhaps they would bring new blood to the pool of candidates for mayor and trustees and take a fresh look at Village issues.

4) The amendments do not stipulate how voting should be done within the committee –a complex process that is open to interpretation by the Chair and Vice Chair and gives them power to sway the results.

However, the amendments are a good beginning and I recommend you vote for them when we elect the new members of the nominating committee on November 15.

But what is written above is just the background for the discussion at the meeting of the Scarsdale Forum on Thursday night October 6th, where Brodsky and Lichtenberg presented the Procedure Committee amendments and discussed their merits on a panel with Larry Bell. Bell chairs the Non-Partisan Procedure Committee of the Forum who drafted its own Non-Partisan Procedure Report.

Why was a second report necessary? After all the official Procedure Committee already included 11 appointees from the TVCC. Why would the Forum (formerly TVCC) Executive Committee charge the Non Partisan Procedure Committee with drafting their own set of amendments, which were then published expeditiously before the official Procedure Committee could even issue their recommendations?

Puzzling indeed. Especially since many members of the TVCC Committee had served on the CNC during the prior years when the CNC’s actions had been called into question. Were they trying to rewrite the rules to prevent themselves from abusing them?

Even more puzzling was Bell’s presentation. He largely agreed with the Procedure Committee’s amendments and also recommended the formalization of the confidentiality policy in regards to “refuting allegations” and facilitating due diligence. However he took issue with the proposal that would prevent members of the same household from serving simultaneously (Bell and his wife both currently serve on the CNC, and Mr. Bell is a former chair of the committee). Bell contended that voters should have the right to choose whoever they like to represent them. He said that Scarsdale10583 had published a “hit list” of those who should not serve on the CNC, referring to a list on this site of the conflicting allegiances of last year’s CNC committee’s members.

Then he brought forth a seeming allusion to Nazi Germany, quoting Martin Niemoeller with the words,

“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—
and there was no one left to speak out.”

At that point, the audience looked stunned. As far as I could tell, no one was quite sure what Bell meant by this quote. Did he feel that he was being personally singled out by the amendments? What was he saying about the Procedure Committee?

Of all people, Larry Bell has had ample opportunity to air his views. As a past president of the Scarsdale Forum, he was contemporaneously the chairman of the CNC. He serves on the leadership committee of the Heathcote Five Corners Coalition, and is an elected member of the CNC, the same nominating committee over which he formerly presided. He is also on the Executive Committee of the Scarsdale Forum.

Though a few questions were posed during the Q&A session that followed, the room was relatively quiet. In a discussion about why the TVCC Committee disagreed with the one person/one household rule, Bell turned to Brodsky and Lichtenberg and charged, “You wanted to throw some people a bone – and that’s the bone you threw in. Let’s get down to the real issues!”

Perhaps the “real issue” with the Non-Partisan System is not the system at all. Could it be that a few persistent members of the Forum are over-reaching and dominating the CNC deliberations and the voting process? The TVCC committee’s efforts to shadow and second-guess the official Procedure Committee is a good example of the lengths they will go to undermine the process itself.

In my view, they befuddled a conversation that was already too complex; one that I have trouble interpreting myself -- no less explaining to a friend.

(Pictured at top: Larry Bell, Bk Mungia, Michelle Lichtenberg and David Brodsky)

Photo credit: Bruce Wells