City Hall Fights Hard and Dirty to Keep Peace Resolution Off November 7 Ballot

Cambridge politicians are making it clear that they do not want a peace resolution on the ballot in the Nov. 7 City election. They are fighting it in the courts. They are also waging a kind of administrative guerrilla warware--sniping at it from behind--by exploiting procedural delays to prevent the resolution from being processed in time for the election.

Finally, they are being unashamedly hostile in their public dialogue with the peaceniks. When one group supporting a peace resolution attended a recent City Council meeting, Councillor William G. Maher asked one of them if he were a Communist. "That's a rather low blow," the petition pedlar said. "There is no blow too low," Maher retorted, "you are the lowest of the low."

To everyone's surprise, the peace forces have come off with victories in the initial skirmishing. A Middlesex Superior Court judge ruled Monday--contrary to City Solicitor Andrew T. Trodden's opinion--that there was nothing illegal about an initiative petition bearing a peace resolution. The City Election Commission determined last Friday that the peace petition filed by the Cambridge Neighborhood Committee on Vietnam bore the number of valid signatures required to put it on the ballot.

Today, however, the City is appealing the Superior Court decision to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. In another discouraging development, the Election Commission has refused to order the printing of the ballots because of a technicality requiring competitive bidding on the printing contract. "The ballots are miles away," Thomas J. Hartnett, one of the three commissioners said Friday. And there are clearly not miles of time before the deadline.

Time has been a big problem from the beginning. The CNCV didn't decide to launch a petition drive until the end of July, barely four months before the election. Another local peace group, Cambridge Vote on Vietnam, had been circulating an antiwar petition since February. But the CNCV disagreed with the ideology expressed in the other group's resolution.

Progressive Labor Petition

Cambridge Vote on Vietnam was organized by three members of the Progressive Labor Party, a Marxist-Leninist group which sides with Peking in preferring revolution to co-existence. Its petition reflected the PL analysis: "We are opposed to the U.S. policy in Vietnam. The war in Vietnam is against the interests of American workers and students because it spends out men and our money to suppress the Vietnamese. The war serves only the interests of business. The U.S. should get out of Vietnam."

"We thought it would be better to have a referendum on the war, not on Lenin's theory of imperialism," Michael L. Walzer, CNCV co-chairman and associate professor of Government remarked last week.

Accordingly, the CNCV drafted a statement they felt anyone who opposed the war could sign. Its main thrust was "Whereas: This war is not in the interests of either the American or Vietnamese people: Now therefore be it resolved: That the people of the City of Cambridge urge the prompt return home of American soldiers from Vietnam."

The CNCV asked assistant City Solicitor Edward D. McCarthy for help with the precise wording of their petition. McCarthy, who is now arguing the City's case against the resolution, rewrote the original CNCV version, putting it in the correct form. A technical, but perhaps crucial, point in the CNCV's legal case is based upon a word which was McCarthy's substitution.

Middle Initials

The CNCV set itself a Sept. 1 deadline to collect the 3624 signatures (8% of registered Cambridge voters) necessary to put a question on the ballot by popular initiative. The CNCV's canvassers -- mostly young, college graduates--stood on street corners and rang doorbells. In one month they collected over 8000 signatures. Then they checked the signatures against voting lists searching for incorrect signatures. (A signature which differs by so much as an omitted middle initial from the person's name as it appears on the voting list is considered invalid.) They went back into the streets and had over 800 people sign their names again, correctly this time. That extra effort was crucial. The Election Commission certified Friday that 3893 of the CNCV signatures were good, a surplus of less than 300. The rival Vote on Vietnam group was not so painstaking, and its petition effort seemed doomed to fall short late last Friday. With one-third of its 8000 signatures checked, the commissioners were throwing out three out of every four names.

The CNCV filed its petitions with the Cambridge City Clerk on Sept. 12, and its struggle with City Hall began immediately. The law gives the Election Commissioners 5 days from the date a petition is filed to determine whether it carries enough valid signatures. Instead of checking the signatures, the Election Commissioners asked City Solicitor Trodden for an opinion on the petition's legality. Trodden wrote them, "There is no need to further process this socalled Initiative Petition." It was illegal, he said.

When Superior Court Judge Joseph Mitchell overruled Trodden last week, in his decision he criticized the Commission for failing to process the petition; they "exceeded their authority," he wrote, when they sought Trodden's opinion. The Commission's duty is limited by law to "the ministerial function of ascertaining whether the procedural requirements for submitting an initiative petition have been met," he stated. Judge Mitchell gave the Commissioners just 48 hours to do their job because they had already wrongly wasted so much crucial time. Eight people worked through Columbus Day in order to comply with the court order.

So, instead of five days, it was almost exactly one month before the petition was ready to be sent to the City Council. The City Council is allowed 20 days to consider the petition and then it must either adopt the resolution or place it on the ballot. Had the Commissioners performed their "ministerial function," the Council would have received the petition on Sept. 17. The Council and the Superior Court could have deliberated concurrently. As things stand now, the Council will take up the petition tonight for the first time.

A new source of delay is developing over the printing of ballots. In his decision, Judge Mitchell also ordered that the Election Commission "forthwith have printed, and appropriately distributed, ballots containing the resolution in the petition." But the Election Commissioners have found it impossible to go ahead with the printing of ballots, they say, because of the City's competitive bidding statutes. Any contract over $500, they say, must be advertised in local newspapers for two weeks before bidding begins. The bidding then must be kept open for another week, amounting in all to a built-in three-week delay.

CNCV lawyer Hans F. Loeser viewed this latest source of delay as a contrived tactic, and a weak one. He claimed that the only Cambridge competitive bidding statute which mentions the two-week period for advertising applies to contracts over $2000. (It will cost just $1700 to print the 60,000 ballots for the peace resolution, according to the Election Commission.) Further, Loeser argued, the court order to print the ballots immediately excused the City from complying with such statutes. The fact is, though, that the City isn't printing ballots--and isn't close to printing them.

Today, the City will appeal Judge Mitchell's ruling that the petition is legal. Councillor Cornelia B. Wheeler last week issued a public statement urging the City to forego the appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court, and all other "stalling measures." McCarthy, however, opposed Wheeler's suggestion and explained why the City should appeal the lower court decision. "We feel this is an important enough matter to be decided by the highest court in the state," he said. "The CNCV would have appealed had the lower court ruling gone against them, so why shouldn't we?" he asked.

The City's case against the CNCV petition is based on a narrow interpretation of the right of popular initiative. The purpose of an initiative petition is to enact a law, not express an opinion, McCarthy argues. The CNCV resolution is clearly beyond the legislative domain of the City of Cambridge, and therefore it is not a proper subject for an initiative petition, he reasoned. "If they want to hold a public opinion poll, they should go talk to WBZ," McCarthy said last week.

Loeser countered that the real purpose of the initative petition is to empower the people to do whatever a city council or other legislative body can do. City councils make a general practice of memorializing on matters over which they have no legislative authority. Therefore, Loeser reasoned, the people can use an initiative legitimately to express an opinion.

The Cambridge City Council, Loeser pointed out, has passed numerous resolutions which are no more than expressions of opinion--on Vietnam, foreign relations between Czechoslovakia and the United States, and the Portuguese Navy, to name just a few.

Judge Mitchell upheld the broad interpretation of the right of initiative: "I ... rule that whatever the Cambridge City Council may lawfully do of its own motion may be accomplished by citizens of the City of Cambridge by initiative petition...."

If the Supreme Judicial Court has not acted on its appeal before Nov. 7, the City will ask for a "stay of execution," on Judge Mitchell's orders. If the stay is granted, that's all for the peace plank, at least in this election. So Loeser will be doing everything in his power to speed up the appeals process. Thus far, the City--under pressure from Loeser--has cooperated in expediting some aspects of the legal battle. For example, Superior Court hearings were scheduled for Oct. 10 by Judge Mitchell, but McCarthy agreed to move them up to Oct. 6 at Loeser's request. McCarthy was optimistic last week that arrangements could be made to get a verdict out of the high court in time for the election.

If the court upholds the petition, will ballots be ready? McCarthy promised last week they would be, in spite of the City's current flirtation with a competitive bidding statute which seems to rule out signing a contract for the printing of ballots until Nov. 6, the day before the election.

What will the City Council do with the CNCV resolution? All the Council's own resolutions on Vietnam have been hawkish. Yet, "there is a possibility," McCarthy said Friday, "that the Council will adopt this [dove] statement ... anything can happen ... who knows?" That would be one sure way to keep the question off the ballot.

Some observers contend that the Councillors view the peace resolution as a serious threat to their political skins and will do almost anything to keep it off the ballot. The resolution would undoubtedly draw to the polls many people who have never before bothered to vote in a municipal election. All the Councillors are up for re-election and they are worried, some say, that the new voters will swing their weight against them.

Mayor Daniel J. Hayes remarked Thursday, "I wouldn't mind a referendum on the war being on the ballot--one day after the local election.