The amendments to Dorchester County’s charter that voters put in place last year have now been invalidated by the County Council.
Council President Lenny Pfeffer said it’s a result of a failure to have properly advertised the charter amendment vote leading up to the November election.
Normally we'd take an ad in the banner, the star Democrat or the banner or whatever for two weeks for public hearings notice, which we did. We had it up on our website for quite a while. The newspapers had run articles about it. No, but it wasn't five continuous weeks posted in the paper.
Pfeffer said the matter was brought to the county’s attention a few weeks ago when an attorney for the local sanitary district reviewed the county’s steps in conducting the election last fall. By law in Maryland, any change to a county’s governing charter must have five continuous weeks of public notice advertisements in local newspapers before the referenda items are voted on.
The county commissioners discussed the situation with county attorney Charles "Chip" McCloud.
"He said by state law that the charter amendments would not be valid to modify the charter since that five weeks was overlooked.
"Since we don't do referendums on a regular basis, this is something that overlooked all of our staff, including legal counsel."
Allen Nelson, who served on the citizens committee that spent months reviewing county laws and came up with six recommendations, said he was disappointed when the commissioners disclosed that the charter changes were invalid.
Nelson said it was regrettable that officials overlooked the advertising requirement.
McCloud normally provides the commissioners with the steps needed to meet legal requirements for their various actions. But in this case, he didn’t advise them to advertise a public notice for five weeks before the vote.
McCloud did not respond to our request for his comments on this story.
Voters approved four of six charter amendments in November. One amendment specified that the county commissioners must perform an administrative review in the first year following a commissioners election. Voters also approved a two-week extension on preparing the county budget so that Dorchester could coordinate with officials from other counties and the state.
Another amendment voters approved clarified the powers and responsibilities of the county manager. Also, voters endorsed a charter change to ensure transparency of county government through online and telephone access to meetings, as well as access to public records.
Two amendments voters rejected would have removed the requirement that the county manager and the finance director must be Dorchester residents.
Despite the fact that the charter amendments are now not legally binding, Pfeffer said, commissioners intend to abide by the terms voters favored anyway.
"The only things that we can't do that were voted on, where that it would give us more time, extended time to do the budget bill. It would add two more weeks to us, allow us to have two more weeks to complete the budget bill. So we'll have to go along the old charter schedule and have it done in May."
This is the second time that Dorchester county officials nullified charter amendments that a citizens review commission recommended. In 2022, then county council president Jay Newcomb led a three-to-two vote of the county commissioners to cast aside the charter amendments that the commission had recommended.
In that instance, the county was two years overdue on the legally required charter review, and commissioners delayed appointing the citizens charter review committee until well after the date needed to start. The committee nevertheless produced 10 amendments for voters. However, Newcomb commented before the commissioners’ vote that there wasn’t enough time left to put the amendments into legal form for the election.
In this latest incident, though, Nelson said there is a big difference in the council’s attitude.
Council president Pfeffer said current commissioners intend to bring those charter amendments that voters approved in 2024 back for their consideration in the next election.
"So we're not trying to circumvent the voters' wishes. We're not trying to go ahead and remove the county manager residency or the finance director's residency. We're not trying to circumvent any of that. If they say they don't want to do that again in two years, then we don't have to put that in there as people have spoken already, but we're just trying to move forward from here."
- Jim Brady