Your editorial opposing the charter change for Boston’s budget process is clearly wrong about the legal issues (“Healey shouldn’t allow City Council’s power grab onto ballot,” June 25). I say that with some confidence as the former state Elections Division lawyer who wrote the official “Local Charter Procedures” legal guide, to which your editorial links.
Our state constitution and state law specify this “charter amendment” process that you wrongly deride. That process is plainly available, rather than the more-complicated “charter revision” process, so long as the charter change does not affect “the composition, mode of election or appointment, or terms of office of” major city officials, as this one obviously does not. Our state attorney general has already given written legal advice affirming this process, and no doubt she will again.
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It is no “power grab” for Boston voters to decide their own city government’s structure. Why not trust them to do so?
David E. Sullivan
Cambridge
