Mayor's Veto Will Be Subject Of Framingham Council Meeting

Framingham MA

08 March, 2021

3:51 PM

Description

FRAMINGHAM, MA — The Framingham City Council will have a chance to override Mayor Yvonne Spicer's recent veto of a new law governing the Community Preservation Act (CPA) on Tuesday. The mayor's veto, the third in her first term, will be the sole topic at Tuesday's meeting. The Council can override the veto with a two-thirds majority, and Council Chair George King said he intends to hold a vote on Tuesday. Spicer vetoed the Council's CPA ordinance on Feb. 19. Although she agrees with almost the entire law, Spicer said one provision about CPA committee appointments goes against the City Charter. The Council's CPA ordinance was crafted in recent months in District 8 Councilor John Stefanini's Rules and Ordinance subcommittee. During the process, the committee decided to give City Council the power to appoint some members to the CPA committee. The Framingham City Charter gives the mayor the power to appoint members to all 29 multiple-member bodies in the city, which means organizations like the Board of License Commissioners, the Disability Commission and many others. But state law says the CPA ordinance determines how committee members get picked. The Council decided to give itself the power to pick the four at-large members of the CPA committee to ensure diversity. The five other members of the CPA committee will come from the Housing Authority, Planning Board, Parks Commission, Conservation Commission and Historical Commission. "The ordinance or by-law shall determine the composition of the committee, the length of its term and the method of selecting its members, whether by election or appointment or by a combination thereof," the state law says. There's also a dispute over whether Spicer issued her veto in time. Under the Framingham City Charter, any measure passed by the Council will be adopted automatically within 10 days if the mayor takes no action. In a memo following Spicer's veto, Stefanini said the CPA ordinance was handed to Spicer's office on Feb. 5. The Council approved the law on Feb. 2. "The Mayor's Office on Feb. 12 called the Council's office asking for another copy of the order as it had 'misplaced' it," Stefanini's memo said. "The Mayor finally returned it to the City Clerk on Feb. 19 — 17 days after it was passed, 15 days after signed and 14 days after it was delivered. No matter how you calculate ten days, it had passed." Spicer's office did provide Patch with several documents stamped "received" on Feb. 12, including the CPA ordinance. Although the stamp on that particular document was too faint to see. The procedural order of the veto may not matter. The Council passed the ordinance 11-0 on Feb. 2, indicating strong support for the law as it was written. The Council unanimously overrode Spicer's last veto in September seeking to overturn the apartment moratorium. The Council had approved the moratorium Sept. 3 in a 10-1 vote.