Tutty about choked on his coffee Sunday morning reading the column written by Freeport Mayor Jodi Miller and appearing in The Journal Standard.
Mayor Miller wrote that "Voting provides us with a voice in building the city, state and the country we want to live in..." The mayor continued from her sanctioned soap box, "I believe that every eligible resident has the opportunity to participate and make your voice heard through your vote."
If our mayor feels this way, why does she sit back and say nothing when the city manager proposes using home rule authority to bypass referendum requirements on tax and spend issues?
Since 1992, if you take an honest look, the City of Freeport (mayors, city council members, city managers; collectively known "the corporate authority) have taken dozens of actions that if Freeport were not home rule would have required referendum approval. There would of had to have been at least one referendum thus far in 2021 if not more.
In the mayor's defense, and it's not a good defense, like most members of the corporate authority she probably has very little understanding when an action is dependent upon home rule powers and when it is not. Just this past Monday they did a deed transfer that would have been illegal for a non-home rule unit of local government. Tutty surmises that not one city council member understands why, this type of naivety makes the council ripe for city manager manipulation.
None, zero, nada, of Freeport's corporate authority over the last thirty years has shown Tutty an ability to govern without home rule. Need a new tax or couple million dollars? No problem. "We're home rule, we'll just borrow millions of dollars and then create a new tax to pay for it all and the best thing is, we don't even have to provide the governed with official notice."
There was a time during one of the terms of the administration of Mayor Jim Gitz wherein the city council passed a budget that included raising Freeport's sales tax, an action that would require referendum approval in a non-home rule community. Mayor Gitz vetoed the budget, suggesting cuts in spending and claiming that he thought using home rule to raise the sales tax without a referendum was an improper use of this broad power. The council, some of whom don't even live in Freeport anymore, overrode the mayor's veto and raised Freeport's sales tax.
Freeport's purported city "leaders" are always quick to talk about the benefits of home rule yet none, zero, nada, ever talk about how home rule has been used as a club over the head of Freeport citizens for three decades now. The message coming from the corporate authority has always been "we're going to do this and you're going to pay for it, like it or not."
Another problem, home rule has effectively alienated rank and file residents. If Freeport had arrived at this point, huge amounts of public debt and a plethora of taxes to cover the same, by referendums rather than by a vote of the city council, don't you think residents would have more ownership in the problems we face? As it stands now everything is in the lap of the corporate authority and today's city council, mayor and city manager are as responsible as all those who have come before. That's the law for a public body operating under perpetual succession.
I guess Tutty would really like to know if Mayor Jodi Miller is a true advocate for voting rights and honestly believes that "The right to vote freely and fairly is sacred to our nation's character."
How about it Mayor Miller? How has excluding Freeport voters from every tax and spend issue of the last thirty years affected Freeport's character and is that affect positive or negative?
As always, yours in honesty, Tutty Baker tutty.baker@gmail.com
