Woonsocket City Council removes Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt from office

In an extraordinary move, the Woonsocket City Council removed Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt from office in the early hours of Thursday morning. 

The 3-to-2 vote took place around 1:30 a.m, after nearly 12 hours of contentious meetings that spanned two consecutive nights.

Baldelli-Hunt is poised to return to City Hall as soon as December. She is running unopposed for reelection this year.

As required under the city charter, City Council President Daniel Gendron will serve as interim mayor. Gendron recused himself from voting on Baldelli-Hunt's removal, saying that he wanted to avoid the perception of a conflict of interest, and was sworn in immediately after the meeting. 

Previously:Woonsocket Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt Encouraged by Support at Removal Hearing

The removal proceedings were triggered by a complaint filed by Councilwoman Denise Sierra, alleging that Baldelli-Hunt had repeatedly overstepped her authority as mayor. (Sierra also abstained from voting on the mayor's removal, and is not running for reelection this year.)

Baldelli-Hunt, mayor since 2013, has feuded with the council for years. Many of the disputes have boiled down to a difference of opinion over how much decision-making authority is granted to the mayor. 

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Baldelli-Hunt argues that by removing her from office, the council is disenfranchising the citizens who voted for her. During the proceedings, her attorney, Michael Lepizzera, indicated that the mayor would probably appeal to the Rhode Island Supreme Court.

The turmoil has drawn attention to Woonsocket being the only Rhode Island community where the City Council has the power to remove a sitting mayor.

Good-government advocates – without weighing in on the case against Baldelli-Hunt – say that process needs more safeguards. 

Currently, the city charter "makes it too easy for the council to overturn the will of the voters," said John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island.

Ouster follows disputes over dog pavilion, police raises

Tensions between Baldelli-Hunt and the Woonsocket City Council have flared for quite some time, but some council members point to a recent schism over police contracts as a breaking point.

In July, the council approved two new collective-bargaining agreements with the police union. Baldelli-Hunt vetoed those contracts, arguing that negotiating with unions was the mayor's job and that the council had usurped her authority.

The council overrode the veto. However, according to Sierra's complaint, police did not receive the raises that they are entitled to.

During this week's proceedings, Baldelli-Hunt maintained that the contract was "illegal." She also indicated that she wanted larger raises for police officers.

In what was described as a "warning shot," the council voted to censure Baldelli-Hunt over a different separation-of-powers dispute last year. 

The council had authorized spending more than $11,000 to build a shade pavilion at Woonsocket's existing animal shelter. However, Baldelli-Hunt had the pavilion built at the River’s Edge Recreation Complex, where the city was creating a new dog park. 

Baldelli-Hunt said that the proximity of the sewage-treatment plant had made it impossible to construct the pavilion at the shelter, but conceded that she should have sought council approval before having it built at a different site, according to the Woonsocket Call. 

The nine-count complaint that Sierra filed last month also accused Baldelli-Hunt of ignoring directives or making decisions without council approval on a number of other occasions. 

"Her disdain of the city charter and the City Council's role in government is palpable," Sierra said during the proceedings.

An intense cross-examination by Baldelli-Hunt's attorney, which went on for several hours on Tuesday night, revealed that some of the charges in the complaint relied on incomplete or incorrect information. The council ultimately voted to reject five of the counts.

Four counts were sustained – including the charge that Baldelli-Hunt had willfully violated the city charter by failing to recognize the new police bargaining agreement.

Mayor seeking to unseat council members who voted to remove her

Voting in favor of Baldelli-Hunt’s removal were council members John Ward, James Cournoyer and Roger Jalette.

All said that they were not enthusiastic about doing so but felt that the mayor had left them with no choice since she had already received a warning in the form of a censure.

“This has been a hassle, it’s been a time-suck, it has been a distraction,” Cournoyer said.

The two dissenting votes came from David Soucy and Valerie Gonzalez, who argued that removing the mayor would be unfair to the voters who put her in office.

"I want to put it on record that I believe this was a massive waste of tax dollars," Gonzalez said. "We’ve had to hire three different attorneys and I don't look forward to seeing the bills."

In an attempt to unseat her foes on the City Council, Baldelli-Hunt has been supporting a slate of candidates who are challenging Gendron, Ward, Cournoyer and Jalette in the November election, the Valley Breeze reported.

She told WPRI that she believed that the attempt to remove her from office was "orchestrated" and intended to hurt the candidates she is backing. 

Concerns raised about council's power

Some of Baldelli-Hunt's most persistent critics have voiced misgivings about her ouster, citing discomfort with the council's ability to unseat a sitting mayor. 

The council serves as the "judge" for removal proceedings initiated by one of its own members, former council member Alex Kithes noted on Twitter. Meanwhile, the council president, who is next in line to replace the mayor, stands to benefit from the outcome.

Woonsocket is an "outlier," according to Marion, of Common Cause Rhode Island.

In other Rhode Island communities where voters elect a mayor – including Providence, Cranston, Warwick, Pawtucket, East Providence, Central Falls, North Providence and Johnston – the city council does not have the authority to remove that individual from office. 

A number of other cities, including Providence, allow voters to recall the mayor. However, several ban recall attempts in the months leading up to an election, Marion noted. (Woonsocket also allows recall elections but does not have any such rule.)

The process for the Woonsocket City Council to initiate removal proceedings is "dangerously simple," according to Steve Brown, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island. The only thing required is a written complaint from one member of the council.

Once that complaint is filed, the council is supposed to hold a hearing and make a decision within 10 days – an "unconscionably short timeline," Brown wrote in a recent letter to the Woonsocket City Council. 

He suggested that the city charter should be revised so that the council has a higher bar to clear before it can "essentially overturn the results of an election." 

Marion, similarly, said Woonsocket's current charter was "woefully deficient from a separation-of-powers standpoint" and "makes it far too easy for the legislative branch to remove the head of the executive branch."