The Charter Review Commission will be recommending the county tweak its rules on referendum petitions.

The commission decided Thursday, Oct. 27 that for a referendum petition to be successful it should be signed by 5 percent of qualified voters, based on the number of votes cast in Howard County for governor in the last election.

The proposed amendment would update the wording of the 43-year-old charter, which currently says: "The referendum petition against any such law shall be sufficient if signed by five per centum of the registered voters of the county, but in any case not less than 1,500 nor more than 5,000 signatures shall be required."

The majority of commission members felt the language was outdated, given that the minimum and maximum number of signatures needed were set when the county's population was much smaller. Members also felt that measuring five percent using registered voters is an inappropriate tool given that many registered voters are inactive.

Eliminating the minimum and maximum and using votes cast for governor in the most recent election as the measuring tool, commission chairwoman Donna Richardson said, "covers us moving forward, makes it very clear."

The only commission member to vote against the recommendation was Tom Coale.

"I certainly respect what the other commission members were doing in changing it to a percentage," he said, but 5,000 signatures "is nothing that anyone can say is easy to accomplish.

"This county isn't plagued with referendum petitions, so I didn't see the need to change it," Coale added. "I probably would have left the language as it was."

The 14-member citizens commission is charged with identifying sections of the charter that need to be revised and recommending revisions to the council by May 1, 2012. Any changes the council votes to adopt will have to be affirmed by voters in the 2012 election.

The commission unanimously agreed to several other recommendations, which include:

•updating language in several areas of the charter that require information be made available to the public to include "in at least one electronic medium readily available to the public."

•changing the number of hours in which the council administrator has to post a copy of an emergency bill after its filing from four hours to 12 hours.

•inserting language that prevents the council from approving more than two 30-day extensions to the life of a bill, which the charter says is 65 days.

At the Oct. 27 meeting, the commission heard from councilman Greg Fox, a Fulton Republican who wants the panel to entertain charter amendments on eminent domain and capital budget changes.

Fox introduced a resolution in September to amend the charter to regulate the county's ability to use its power of eminent domain for economic development purposes. The council voted Oct. 3 to table the resolution so the Charter Review Commission could weigh in on it.

The commission members listened to Fox explain the need for a charter amendment on eminent domain, but did not vote on his proposal.

Fox said he introduced the resolution to highlight concerns surrounding the redevelopment of the former Gateway School site in Clarksville. The county terminated an agreement this summer with a developer that was slated to buy the 7.8-acre parcel because of issues over access to the site. Last month, Fox and many Clarksville area residents believed the county was considering using its power of eminent domain to take land from private business owners to build an access road.

"They (the county) could have, under the guise of public use, actually done a taking for economic development," Fox said.

Given what could have happened to Clarksville area business owners, Fox said the charter should have language that would "at least protect the rights of the property owner" in eminent domain cases.

"I'm more than willing to have things tweaked," he said. "I just think the issue needs to be addressed."

Fox also suggested the commission consider a charter amendment that would clarify how many votes are needed to approve funds for a capital project proposed after the budget has been approved.

His concerns stem from the recent transfer of funds from one existing capital project to another to pay for a traffic study in Clarksville. The transfer was unanimously approved by the council but only after members passed two amendments to qualm concerns about the proposal.

Fox said he worried the funding could have been approved without the amendments because the transfer only needed three council votes, according to the Office of Law's interpretation of the charter.

The charter says that funds cannot be authorized for "any capital project not included in the county budget as finally adopted for such year" unless recommended by the county executive and the Planning Board and approved by two-thirds of the council members.

That means four of five council members would need to approve funding for any capital project that is proposed in the middle of a budget cycle. Funding for the study was initially proposed under new a capital project when it went before the planning board.

But when the administration decided to ask for the funding for the traffic study as a transfer, the office of law concluded that it only needed the normal three votes for council approval since it was being proposed under an existing capital project.

Fox said the charter should be more clear on the issue, but he didn't have a specific solution for how to fix the interpretation problem.

The commission is planning to vote on both of Fox's proposals at its Nov. 10 meeting, which is expected to be the last time the commission meets before sending its recommendations to the council.