Editorial: Abolish charter review

Of all the incompetence that from time to time comes to the attention of the public from the bowels of Toledo city hall, very little comes close to that of the charter review committee.

It was that committee that laid the groundwork for the 13-piece charter proposal in 2022 that included everything but the kitchen sink. In that instance, the charter review committee should have advised council to put each of the questions on the ballot individually, or at least to group together only those that were similar. That would have been wise advice from the charter review committee but it didn’t make that recommendation, and council voted to lump them all together.

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As all Toledo voters quickly figured out, the whole point of that hodgepodge of proposed minor and major revisions to the city’s charter was to sneak through an extension of term limits to allow the current mayor to seek a third term in office.

There were a few things in the package that should have been enacted, but the crafters of that ballot issue sacrificed the desirable charter revisions to the goal of revising the city charter to allow the mayor to run for a third term. Thus, it failed.

A public hearing on the charter committee’s latest brilliant idea for charter revision was set for Wednesday, and members of council showed up in hopes of absorbing some wisdom from these delphic oracles empowered to advise on the content of the city charter. Also on hand to observe and report was The Blade’s city hall reporter, Kelly Kaczala.

Sadly, the entire charter committee failed to appear. The committee has 16 members, and none showed up.

The purpose of the meeting was to consider a proposal from the charter committee to city council to create a requirement in the city charter for council to periodically review the size of city council and decide whether it should be adjusted based on population.

It was, as Council President Carrie Hartman aptly observed, “a very strange recommendation to make.”

Every single current member should be removed from the committee, and no new members appointed pending the enactment of a charter amendment abolishing the charter review committee as presently constituted.

It is our feeling that everything the charter review committee does is dictated by an unseen hand, one that we would not be surprised to find out is that of the current mayor.

Rather than continuing to pretend to believe in the existence of a charter review committee that has any self-respect, integrity, independence, or utility, we encourage enactment of a charter revision to abolish the charter review committee and leave it up to council to generate proposed charter changes, or to the initiative of voters by way of signature petitions.

We believe such a ballot question would be so popular, and Toledo citizens so disgusted by the incompetence of the charter review committee, that a ballot question to abolish it could be packaged with any other proposed change — even that of a third term for the mayor — and the combination would pass in a landslide.