Stamford Awakes: Bond package eviscerates charter revision commission, local democracy. Simmons smites opponents and city voters.

Municipal control over traditional democratic decisions of local government rules were dramatically altered in the state’s annual bond package. Not content with authorizing billions in spending in the final hours of its regular session, the legislature grabbed power from local charter revision commissions.

The provision was the work of Stamford Mayor Caroline Simmons. The first-term Democrat has seen her authority slipping as she engages in a ceaseless public and private battle with the progressive wing of the local party. Seen as a force-in-formation in state Democratic politics, Simmons could be derailed if she continues to face opposition in Stamford from disaffected Democrats. The heavy-handed charter intervention may enflame the former state representatives growing number of detractors.

A charter revision commission has been toiling for more than a year developing and debating changes to the foundation document. Their efforts would go before voters but that may have become moot with the legislature’s pre-emption of local decision-making. The city council—not a center of goodwill for the Greenwich-raised Simmons—will be dismayed to see it is restricted from having its own legal counsel.

The danger with a vanity show of force like this one is that the legislation is broad and affects other towns. Simmons has managed to dismay plenty of Democratic activists nearly three years before the first delegate to the 2026 Democratic state convention is selected.

The requests for documents under the Freedom of Information Act will be flying from Stamford to Hartford to assemble the threads of Simmons’s anti-democratic gambit.

Published June 22, 2023.