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What I want to know is why the people of Central Falls weren't allowed to hold an emergency election to elect new officials instead of giving a judge dictatorial control over the town?
So what do you guys think? Is this the beginning of the end for American democracy? I mean if this goes unchallenged in a small town, who's to say other levels of government won't start pulling the same crap?
CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. (AP) When the state stepped in to take over financially struggling Central Falls in 2010, Rhode Island's smallest city lost something fundamental: its democratic government.
Mayor Charles Moreau would be forced to give back his key to City Hall, and the City Council was relegated to advisory status unsure for months whether it was even allowed to convene.
"They're being governed without elected representation," state Sen. Elizabeth Crowley said of Central Falls' 19,000 residents. "That flies in the face of the democratic principle that our country is founded on, not only our little city. Maybe we should have a tea party and dump some tea in the Blackstone" River.
Crowley, a Democrat and lifelong Central Falls resident, uses a twist on Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address to describe government there, under a state-appointed receiver, these days: "of the receiver, by the receiver and for the receiver."
That receiver, former state Supreme Court Justice Robert G. Flanders Jr., is often criticized for sweeping like a dictator into a city he doesn't know, where he doesn't live and where, with the state's blessing, he unilaterally decides matters that go far beyond the fiscal.
What I want to know is why the people of Central Falls weren't allowed to hold an emergency election to elect new officials instead of giving a judge dictatorial control over the town?
So what do you guys think? Is this the beginning of the end for American democracy? I mean if this goes unchallenged in a small town, who's to say other levels of government won't start pulling the same crap?