A referendum in Saratoga Springs?

Last Tuesday’s City Council meeting brought us a long-awaited unsurprising declaration by His Honor Scott Johnson, that the City was filing a notice of appeal with Judge Nolan’s Court.

The rationale for such a move was very much in tune with Republican thinking: to keep the pitchforks at bay.

The Mayor proclaimed himself the citizen’s Defender, not only of the city of Saratoga Springs (where pitchforks are a boutique item anyway), but of all the municipalities of the state of New York, and even nationally. What would happen, he said, if this people’s initiative to change the form of government were left unchecked, and other groups at another time would request revisions again and again and again.?

The City’s Charter of 2001 explicitly endorses periodic revisions; as John Maynard Keynes famously replied when challenged: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”.

Even more to the point, New York State’s municipal law allows referendums as a manner of improving or changing a municipality’s form of constitution. When a group of citizens perceives a way to ameliorate the conventional wisdom the weapon of choice is the citizen’s initiative of a referendum. Unlike elections, a citizen’s initiative is usually bipartisan or non-partisan, interesting all citizens without labeling them.

Mayor Johnson’s opinion is very much in line with the explicit policy of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives of consolidating the oligarchical hold of the well-to-do on the political system of this Republic. Why the less affluent would support measures that are clearly against their own self-interest is probably best explained by the New Yorker’s caption on a cartoon: “As a potential lottery winner I support tax cuts for the wealthy.”

In today's Huffington Post: