Greenbelt’s tragic loss of Councilmember Ric Gordon has not only deeply touched the community, it has created a challenging problem for the Greenbelt City Council, which is left with only six members.
Council has called on Greenbelt’s Board of Elections (BOE) to advise them on the question. The board met on November 30 to explore the possible courses of action and reconvened on Monday, December 4 to finalize their memo outlining the options available.
Franklin Park
A section called Interests of Franklin Park opens the memo. In it the BOE asks council to be sure to consider the interests of the voters of Franklin Park. “They, it is clear, have lost their spokesperson,” states the memo. It suggests a special public meeting be held in that community to hear their concerns.
The City’s Charter
At Thursday’s meeting, BOE members noted that the City Charter hardly anticipated a situation such as that now faced: a vacant seat with nearly an entire two-year term remaining. It simply states that in the event of a vacancy, council must, as soon as possible, elect by their majority vote a person to fill the remaining term. The Charter does not define “as soon as possible,” specify how council should go about choosing the person to be elected or set any requirements for consulting the public.
Options for Filling the Vacancy
Council may choose any citizen of Greenbelt who is a registered voter.
Council may hold public hearings to give citizens a chance to weigh in on how the seat should be filled, after which council would vote on whom to appoint.
A new election could be held with voters choosing from a ballot of potential councilmembers. Council could commit to elect the person preferred by voters.
Majority Vote by Council
The first of three options presented by the BOE is for council to follow the same practice used when a councilmember recently stepped down. They could choose any citizen of Greenbelt who is a registered voter to serve the term. If they wish, they could choose to elect any one of the four candidates from the November election who ran but were not elected to council by that vote. (The non-winning candidate with the largest number of votes in November was Matthew Inzeo.) The Board states that while council has every legal right to fill the seat by their own vote without any consultation with citizens, “This option is the least democratic, in the sense that it allows no voter or public participation, but it allows the most prompt and least costly action by council.”
Seek Public Input
Public hearings are the second option offered to the council by the BOE, which would give citizens a chance to weigh in. Hearings could be held to both discuss how the seat should be filled, and after nominations or petitions, to query or advocate for candidates.
The BOE asks council to send notification of hearings to citizens by postal mail in addition to advertising on their website and in the News Review. They note that while hearings would allow for some public input and would not entail great cost, only a small proportion of Greenbelt voters would participate in them and be heard.
A Ballot of Candidates
The third option offered by the BOE is a new vote by which citizens would recommend to council which candidate they prefer from a ballot of potential councilmembers. Council, for their part, could commit themselves to elect the person preferred by the voters. In their memo, the BOE says, “We believe … that such a process would be valid and appropriate, as long as it is understood that the section [of the Charter] requires council to take the final action.”
In the view of the BOE, this third option, “involving a referral election for all voters, is clearly the most democratic.” The price to be paid for that process would be more time and a higher cost.
The BOE describes the stages of such an electoral process. First, a notice would be mailed to voters about the upcoming election, with a call for candidates to submit petitions to run. Mail-in ballots would then be sent to voters with the option of mailing or using a dropbox to return them. This mail-in process would “save a significant amount of time and expense” compared to a traditional in-person election, said the BOE. Once the result was reported to council and the public, council would cast their final vote to select a councilmember. The hope is that this would be completed by mid-March 2024.
In this scenario, while the electoral process is playing out, the BOE suggests council may wish to appoint an interim councilmember. “It may be best,” they say, “in the interest of fairness, for the council to choose someone who does not intend to campaign for a permanent seat.”
Council scheduled a worksession to discuss filling the vacancy for Wednesday, December 6 at 7:30 p.m. The next regular council meeting will be Monday, December 11 at 7:30 p.m.