Vacancy issue has plenty of legal twists and turns

By Charles Sercombe
The vacancy on city council has certainly brought up a number of issues.
The city charter clearly states the next person in line is whoever finished in fourth place in the last general election for council.
Well, the last general election in 2013 had two council races, one for three seats with full four-year terms, and another to fill the remainder of Cathie Gordon’s term.
In 2013, Gordon opted to run for mayor instead of remaining on council for the two years she had left in her term. According to the charter, she had to resign from her seat, but that resignation didn’t take effect until Dec. 31, a month after the November General Election.
So why didn’t the city wait for her seat to actually become vacant and appoint her successor from that general election?
The short answer is not all vacancies on council follow the same rules.
In the case of a councilmember who runs for mayor during the middle of their term, the charter says the councilmember must resign. The charter then says to fill that vacancy, an election will be held for that seat during the same general election for the mayor’s race.
In other words, instead of going back to a previous general election for council, a new election is held when a councilmember runs for mayor with time still left in their term.
There are some who say that the current vacant seat should be filled by the fourth place finisher in the 2013 election who ran for a four-year term – not the seat vacated by Gordon.
And then there is a legal opinion from 2007 — when a similar vacancy came up — from former City Attorney James Allen who says that when there are two different races for council, the fourth-place finisher is determined by combining the election results of both races.
There was only one previous general election before 2007.
In 2005 a new era began for Hamtramck’s city government. That’s when a new city charter kicked in, and that first election for six seats on council was staggered.
Three of the seats were for a four-term, and three were for a two-year term. The thinking was that in this way all future council elections for council would be staggered to avoid all seats being up for grabs at the same time.
The framers of the new charter wanted continuity to continue on council to avoid the chaos that would sometimes occur under the old charter when a new slate of candidates were voted in and who, inevitably, would often clash and cause deadlock.
After that initial 2005 election, all future council elections would be for a full four-year term.
Unless, in the case of Gordon, a councilmember decided to run for mayor in mid-term.
The city charter does not make a distinction between two separate races for council seats when it comes to determining who should be tapped when a councilmember vacates his seat, either by death or for other reasons not having to do with running for mayor.
It simply says the next person in line is the fourth-place finisher in the last general election.
Is the legal opinion of the city attorney necessarily the last word? For those who disagree, and in this latest case there are many, a challenge can be filed with the circuit court.