Citizens Committees Don’t Seem to Work

When a dozen new names were added to the membership roster of the Springs Citizens Advisory Committee last month it pointed to a core problem. Appointed by the East Hampton Town Board, citizens committees are supposed to be a conduit for the concerns of those who live in the various hamlets — and sometimes they work that way. As often as not, however, the committees become places where old grudges are nursed, petty factionalism runs amok, and misinformation reigns.

From time to time the committees have overstepped their advisory role, sending, for instance, official-looking letters to outside government agencies or dispatching representatives to weigh in at land-use hearings. None of this could rightly be considered appropriate.

The recent Springs dustup came about when a Democrat active in the local party solicited new members, as she put it, to counter “Republican high jinks” on the committee. This chafed the other side to no end and prompted the committee chairwoman to go out and round up a few new members of her own. Though the town board agreed in a 4-1 vote to apppoint the 12 new members, it was not without objection. Councilman Fred Overton, who attends the Springs Citizens meetings as the town board’s liaison, was furious and cast a no vote.

Two changes, one minor, might help avoid such dramatics in the future. The town’s other appointed boards, zoning, planning, architectural review, for example, are generally assigned new members during the town board’s annual organization meeting in January or when there is a resignation. Opening the advisory committee rosters once a year would avoid hasty deck-stacking of the sort seen recently.

Going further, though, the committees’ ersatz official trappings and sometimes their members’ airs suggest that they are fundamentally flawed and should be rethought if they are to continue to exist at all. They have evolved to be less neighborhood sounding boards and more unelected and frequently unaccountable circuses, holding votes that their members alone consider representative of the respective hamlets’ views.

Instead, the public interest might be better served by the town board’s appointing only a chairman and an alternative for each citizens committee, doing away entirely with members, and welcoming one and all to take part in meetings called by the chair. Whatever the approach, the current model has outlived its usefulness.