Municipal Home Rule right for Fairfield

To the editor:

Municipal Home Rule is sanctioned by the Iowa Constitution. Forty-three of the fifty states support Home Rule. Iowa City, Iowa, is a Home Rule Charter City. We would like to see Fairfield revise its charter and become a Home Rule City, as well.

The two main advantages of a Home Rule City Charter are: A Community Bill of Rights; and citizens may bring issues to the ballot for a referendum vote.

With so many of our freedoms protected by the Constitutional Bill of Rights why do we need a Community Bill of Rights? The Tenth Amendment gives the answer: ?The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.?

People in different communities need different protections. A community in Pennsylvania may enumerate a protection against ?fracking.? A municipality in the Midwest may protect against CAFOs, while a small town in the Northeast may protect their fresh water supply from water removal by European bottled water companies.

Without a Fairfield Bill of Rights any city administration ? not just our current one ? is needlessly put in a position of guessing, which protections are needed locally when it comes to sensitive issues, such as new technologies and their impact on environment and health.

On the other hand, with a Fairfield Community Bill of Rights, projects that are harmful for workers, the local economy, livability, property values, and people?s health; projects that prevent municipalities from creating the economically and environmentally sustainable communities they seek would automatically be disallowed.

Our Community Bill of Rights will always be there to clarify what our community ideals and standards are. Home Rule assures that our leaders govern according to the will of the citizens through government of the people, by the people, and for the people ? not for corporations, not for the utility companies, not for any outside entity, but for the people.

Under our current charter the only recourse citizens have when an elected official makes a mistake and refuses to change their mind is to vote the official out of office. With Home Rule there is a less drastic, more flexible procedure ? a city wide referendum on the issue itself. The right to referendum is a safety valve. A referendum to amend a decision by the city allows disagreements between the citizens and the government to be put to a vote on the issue itself, rather than a vote on the person or persons who have made an unwise choice.

Join us for a weekend workshop Sept. 14-16 led by Thomas Linzey. This is a special, rare opportunity to learn how to implement Home Rule in Fairfield from Tom himself. There is a workshop attendance limit of twenty with about 8 seats remaining at this time. If you would like to attend the workshop, please contact Bob Stone at 472-7476 or

http://fairfieldhomerule.us

? Bob Stone, Fairfield