Tonight, I’ve been concentrating on local issues: the organic law of the Town of Groton. I.e, another Charter Revision Commission tonight. One of the leitmotifs running through our discussions is the extent to which the Charter should be written in language allegedly accessible to the layperson. For instance, is the term “organic law” verboten? As a lawyer I like the term, because it is, from the lawyer’s perspective, perfectly clear, as it would be to almost any judge. The charter being a legal document, my own feeling is that it should be written so that you can predict the way in which it will be construed in a court.
There is, not surprisingly, a considerable body of opinion on the Commission that the Charter should be written to be understandable to the layperson. I can understand that point of view, but that approach sometimes causes problems. In practice, at least in my opinion, it can lead to imprecise terminology that may cause no end of problems when you get to court.
If well done the two positions shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, but judging by results so far, I’m not sure we’ve reached that happy medium. In any event the term “organic” was thrown in the compost. It will be replaced with “fundamental”, a reasonable compromise, I guess.
Tonight, by the way, we learned that our library, along with others throughout the state, does not operate in conformance with either state statutes or the charter. This came up as we debated whether to retain the library board. The charter says that the library board shall “manage and control” the library, and state statutes are similar. The library board is treated as an advisory panel in Groton, which doesn’t seem to equate to “manage and control”. State statutes appear to require us to have a library board, at least they do if we are considered a “city” as opposed to a “municipality”. Unfortunately, the term “city” is not defined in the applicable statute, and I couldn’t find a definition elsewhere.
I’m in favor of keeping the board, because I think a body of people who like books should be the ones making the decision should some troglodytes decide to try to ban books from the library. An independent board, relatively immune to political pressure, would probably be better equipped to stand up for the First Amendment. It looks like that’s where were headed.
Back to full time blogging tomorrow.
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