Swampscott asks for 'Charter Commission' volunteers, but state law uses that term for an elected body

← All news · September 6, 2026

The town opened a Charter Commission page and interest form Sept. 1, and the Select Board takes the subject up again Tuesday. The board's record points to an appointed study group and special act, not the elected commission process under state law.

Swampscott has opened a Charter Commission page and an Express Interest Form for residents who want to serve. But the Select Board record so far describes a different process: an appointed study group whose work would go to the Select Board, Town Meeting, the Legislature and the governor.

That difference matters because state law uses an elected charter commission for a voter-driven process. It begins with a petition signed by at least 15% of the town’s registered voters, elects nine commissioners, goes through Attorney General review, and ends with a vote of the people. The Select Board does not appoint that commission.

The town’s Sept. 1 form asks for residents “interested in serving on a Charter Commission and helping take a closer look at how our local government is structured and operates,” and invites anyone who “cares about Swampscott” to describe “perspectives you believe would contribute to the Commission’s work.” The contact is Shannon O’Leary, executive assistant to the Town Administrator and Select Board.

The board returns to the subject Tuesday, Sept. 8. The agenda item is E.5, “Discussion of Charter Commission,” carried over from Aug. 27, when the board agreed only to turn on the interest form.

This article gives legal context, not legal advice. It does not assert that the board intends any particular route or that the town’s wording is improper. The word “Commission” appears on the agenda and the web page.

The Aug. 27 Record

The item came up near the four-hour mark of the Aug. 27 meeting. The voice introducing it, in a staff/administrator register and inferred by role and context to be Town Administrator Nick Connors, said the plan “we are planning to do is to just turn on … a place that someone can express an interest.” Later, he said, “we will turn that on. We will have a list of people that volunteer.” A board member asked “what we anticipate the timing looks like”; the answer was to “present at a future meeting.”

When a board member walked through the process, it was not the process for an elected commission. Committees would be asked for feedback. “David was chair at the time,” a reference that fits former Select Board chair David Grishman (inferred), and the body would “come forth with a” recommendation, which the group corrected to a “revision.” Another member finished the chain: “That would go to us, then to town meeting, then to the legislature for signing by the governor at some point in the future.” Wayne Spritz, named on the record when the discussion turned to “Wayne’s question,” had asked how a “review committee” typically works.

That is Swampscott’s special-act route: an appointed committee whose product moves from committee to Select Board to Town Meeting to the Legislature to the governor. No vote was taken. No size, charge, appointing authority or target Town Meeting was named. The only “Commission” spoken aloud was the agenda title, read at the top of the item.

Elected Commission or Appointed Committee

State law gives a town two different tools, and a volunteer interest form fits only one of them.

An elected charter commission under G.L. c. 43B is voter-driven from start to finish. It begins with a petition signed by at least 15% of the town’s registered voters. The town then elects nine commissioners at large. The Attorney General reviews the draft for conflicts with state law. The finished charter goes back to the voters for ratification, not to Town Meeting or Beacon Hill. The board’s required role is to put it on the ballot.

On Swampscott’s rolls, 15% is roughly 1,900 signatures. That is an estimate, not an official figure, derived from about 12,600 voters at the November 2024 state election. The clerk’s certified count could not be confirmed for this piece.

An appointed committee is whatever the board makes it. The board picks the members, sets the charge, and its work becomes a recommendation carried by Town Meeting and, for structural change, a home-rule petition to the Legislature. A form that collects volunteer names for the board to choose from is, in its mechanics, an appointment pool. That matches the committee route the board described, not the commission the statute names.

In the meetings on the record, no board member has used the words “c. 43B,” “elected,” “petition,” or “special act.”

What Each Route Can Change

The distinction matters because the board already has a list of things it wants to change, and the routes reach different parts of the charter. G.L. c. 43B § 10(a) reserves to an elected commission “any change in a charter relating in any way to the composition, mode of election or appointment, or terms of office” of Town Meeting, the Select Board, or a town manager.

Most of the board’s stated grievances sit outside that reserved core. An appointed committee’s recommendation, carried by Town Meeting and, where needed, a special act, can reach them. Those issues include moving the Moderator’s sole power to appoint the Finance Committee into the board’s hands, which was struck from the spring warrant and deferred to a full charter review; converting the elected Board of Assessors to appointed, a town-administrator proposal in 2024 that was pulled from the warrant with no recorded objection; and realigning the charter’s town-administrator review calendar, which a board member has said points to June while Connors’s contract runs from October.

The exception is moving town elections to November, which a board member raised in charter context on April 15 as a way to keep new members from arriving mid-warrant. That may touch “mode of election” or “terms of office,” the ground § 10 reserves, and may be beyond an ordinary Town Meeting amendment. It is also a live problem elsewhere: the Town Election Review Committee floated it in March, and by August the town clerk had called a November town election “statutorily impossible” and recommended Saturday voting instead. This article flags that issue but does not resolve it.

None of the board’s stated grievances requires an elected commission. The commission is the route voters can force over the board’s objection, and the only one that carries Attorney General review and a ratification vote. A board-run interest form does not do that.

One legal question belongs to town counsel, not this paper: whether the § 10 Town Meeting route is even available to Swampscott, whose charter is a special act rather than one “adopted or revised under” c. 43B.

No 2026 Requirement

There is no rule that 2026 is charter-review year. The charter has no periodic-review clause; Chapter 9 is “INTENTIONALLY OMITTED.” The “every ten years” cadence, which a board member on April 15 put at “2006, 2016, 2026,” is custom, not law.

The town’s own dating is inconsistent. The record variously fixes the last review at 1999, 2015, and 2016. The “2006” review is harder to place: the 2016 special act’s own repeal list names earlier Swampscott charter acts of 1998, 2000 and 2002, with no 2006 act among them. The discrepancy is reported here, not resolved.

The charter can change without waiting years. It was already amended this year. Chapter 32 of the Acts of 2026, approved Feb. 26, added a fall annual Town Meeting through the same special-act route the board described Aug. 27.

Prior Charter Work

The last rewrite came from a small appointed body. A 2023 recollection described the group that produced the current charter as “a really small committee, three people.” Anne Driscoll, a Precinct 1 Town Meeting member who is also president of the Swampscott Tides, identified herself in 2024 as a member of that Charter Study Committee, along with Gary Perry and Mike Devlin. She used the occasion to warn that the charter “is our constitution in essence … not something to be taken lightly.”

That is the model Swampscott has used before: an appointed study group, a recommendation and a warrant article.

Questions for Tuesday

The board can settle what residents are being asked to join by answering several questions Sept. 8. Is the town pursuing an elected c. 43B commission or an appointed committee headed for a special act? Who appoints the members? How many members will there be? What is the charge? Which Town Meeting is the target? How many interest forms has the town received?

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