Additional Thoughts on the Wallingford Charter Revision

There was an article in the Record Journal this morning written by Dave Moran titled Dickinson had big financial role in PAC opposing charter change which is cross posted over on my other blog.

After reading this some thoughts come to mind regarding the recent election in addition to some others that I have shared before:

• I supported some of the proposals - I voted YES on those
• Others I didn’t and I voted NO
• There was plenty of information available regarding the proposed changes
• There was ample time and opportunity to get the facts
• Some of the people that turned out to vote made choices based based on their knowledge of the subject matter (whatever level that may be)
• Some voted the way they were told to vote
• Some were scared into voting a certain way
• The majority of registered voters - 64.4% - simply didn’t show up
• The majority of the 35.6% of the voters that showed up wanted no changes made.

So I make a lot of different things of these facts but the bottom line is – the people that wanted to have a say had their say and they said “let’s keep things the way they are.”

There is no arguing around that and there is no point – that is why the process is set up the way that it is. It is set up this way so that everyone has an equal say in their vote – all they need to do is exercise that right.

There has been some additional discussion around who donated what, where, and how much. There is a reason all of this information is recorded and why the paperwork is filed locally and with the state. It gets a review and some additional scrutiny when someone questions something but generally things that are in plain sight are on the up and up which is why I am such a proponent of making sure that what is public information gets put out more broadly and openly.

It would seem to me that Mayor Dickinson is well within his rights to contribute to a PAC.

At the same time, it seems that it is within legal boundaries for PACs to donate up to $2,000 a year to other PACs so when the Com­munity Initiative PAC made the donation to the Save Our Charter PAC it was above board.

Additionally when the Mayor’s campaign committees paid their surpluses into the Com­munity Initiative PAC, it is also allowed under Connecticut election laws.

So these are my thoughts – tell us, what are yours?

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