EDITORIAL: New roles for Democrats is causing frustrations, but all must move forward
At the March 25 Township Committee meeting, Democratic committee members Sonya Martin and Dr. Joseph Tricarico charged that the Republicans have shut them out of the governing process and rendered them powerless as elected officials.
Their allegation was precipitated by a lengthy debate on whether or not Hillsborough’s committee form of government was serving the community effectively.
Although the issue was not on the committee’s agenda for the evening, Ms. Martin said she had requested that it be, and felt compelled to launch the discussion since it had been left off.
This followed an incident at the March 11 meeting in which Ms. Martin charged a discussion of township support for the artificial turf field sought by the school district was also not on the agenda. She added that the discussion was necessary in order for the school board to be able to finalize the field proposal for the April 15 ballot.
In both instances, Ms. Martin says she had asked for the items to be included on committee meeting agendas, and both times, the items were not included.
We don’t doubt Ms. Martin’s charge as it stands now, the Republicans can choose to deny any item from being put on the agenda since they hold power as the majority party.
Last year, when Tony Gwiazdowski was the committee’s lone Republican, he raised the same issue. At the time, Mr. Gwiazdowski said the Democrats were writing the meeting agendas and that he was not able to bring matters to the committee for discussion.
But unlike Mr. Gwiazdowski’s experience last year, Ms. Martin and Dr. Tricarico have the ability to make and second motions for discussion.
This parliamentary procedure allows them to force discussion on issues as they have been doing. To say that they are powerless is not true they have the same power as every other committee member, they just happen to be in the minority. Such is the way of politics.
We hope committee members will recognize this is part of the system we have in place the majority party has the power to affect how things get done and minority party members may have to be "squeaky wheels" to get noticed.
But while being "squeaky wheels," we hope all five members of the committee will remember the sentiments former Mayor Glenn van Lier shared with them earlier this year, when he said that even if they don’t like the person sitting next to them on the dais they have to respect that person’s position.