Democracy’s Weak Link
Quick: If you live and pay taxes outside one of the incorporated villages in East Hampton Town, name one of your fire commissioners. Can’t do it? You’re not alone.
Another question: How many of you voted in the last fire district election? Not so many? We thought so.
Whichever side a resident might be on regarding two issues that have blown up recently in the Springs Fire District — a cellphone tower and concerns about its ambulance service — one little-known aspect of how it and other fire districts are constituted deserves more attention.
By state law, fire commissioners are elected for five-year terms. The trouble is that only one commissioner comes up for election each year. This means that should residents seek a change of direction, it would take a minimum of three years’ of going to the polls, assuming, as is the pattern, that most commissioners seek re-election. By that time, the issue that caused a groundswell could all but be forgotten. By sequencing votes one commissioner at a time, the law assures stability, but at a cost of meaningful public participation in this arm of government. It is, to be blunt, something that would seem more at home in a foreign politburo than in a country that prides itself on open, free, and fair elections.
The way fire commissioners are chosen is as anti-democratic a process as could be imagined and should be overhauled.
So what, you might ask, does a fire district do, and why should residents care? The answer is that these autonomous governments levy taxes to pay for emergency services and incur debt to finance equipment and build firehouses and the like. In the villages, as hinted above, there are no fire commissioners and the elected trustees play that role. Residents who live outside of a fire district or village get emergency services through a town-negotiated contract. For example, people with property in the Northwest Fire Protection District pay East Hampton Village for fire and ambulance services, though they do not get to vote in village elections.
Most elected bodies in New York State follow a pattern that makes “throwing the bums out,” if you will, possible. For example, three of the five seats on the East Hampton Town Board will be in play on Nov. 3, which means that if enough voters don’t like the job Larry Cantwell, Peter Van Scoyoc, and Sylvia Overby are doing, they could force a change of direction, should they so choose. It’s more or less the same for school and village boards. And imagine: If enough people cared, the entire panel of East Hampton Town Trustees could be pink-slipped in a single day’s election. Even more impressive perhaps is that Americans will select a new president next year and have a chance to remake Congress. Not so with fire commissioners.
Fire commissioners can cruise along effectively insulated from what passes for the normal political process in this country. One-at-a-time elections for fire commissioners were established by legislative design, although what the motivation was seems lost to history. The result is a sure way to perpetuate a board’s status quo and assure only the most minimal voter interest, with turnout only among friends and relatives, if that.
Don’t like the Springs cellphone tower or believe that the district should pay for a paramedic program to supplement its volunteers? Too bad. Your vote would not matter until after the 2017 election at the earliest. This should be changed. We hope that the Legislature, which sets municipal organization law in New York State, is aware of this anomaly and paying attention.