Why is a small special interest group afraid of the voters?
The Charter Review Committee in good faith made its best recommendations to the Los Alamos County Council for improvements to the Charter.
These were intended to clarify, remove ambiguities and to rationalize the processes that had slowly become obsolete over the years.
Council agreed that the separate recommendations had sufficient merit to warrant sending to the voters for their approval or disapproval.
A small group of people in an organization called LAGRI does not want to let the citizens vote on the CRC recommendations.
While they have not shared their rationale with me, I do know that they disagree with several of the CRC recommendations.
Presumably they do not want the citizens to have an opportunity to vote up or down lest the voters approve a recommendation with which LAGRI disagrees.
It seems bizarre to ask the voters, as LAGRI is now doing with a petition, to vote to prevent the citizens from having the right to vote on the CRC recommendations that Council intends to send to the voters.
It may be reasonable to have an honest disagreement with one or more of the CRC recommendations, but it is not reasonable to prevent all of the citizens from voting on the recommendations.
It is a sad commentary on our society when a few individuals so distrust the citizens of Los Alamos that they want to block and circumvent a basic democratic process.
-John Hopkins, CRC Chair
