Strengthening Town  Meeting 

In this series of commentaries, I have tried to show that Town Meeting is an appropriate and effective check on the executive branch of town government.  It is central to the tradition and character of Amherst.  It is democratic, representative and a blend of the civic with the political.  It is all of these things, but it does them imperfectly.  Here are some suggestions for strengthening Town Meeting.  If it turns out that we do elect a Charter Commission, I urge their consideration.

1. Reduce the size of town meeting to 180 members - 18 (instead of 24) from each precinct.  This number is still large enough to make Town Meeting representative of the town, yet it would increase the likelihood of competition for membership in more precincts.  Since I believe strongly that candidates for Town Meeting should not seek signatures to run (since they do not represent their precinct but are representative of their precinct), I think that more competition for seats would be a good thing.
2. In the newspaper, candidates for town meeting are given a few words to explain why they want to serve.  We get boilerplate answers.  Instead, the Town Meeting Coordinating Committee should construct an issue-based question for candidates to answer and the newspaper should give them enough space to answer.  If the newspaper does not do this, it should be a separate leaflet distributed within each precinct.
3. The Town Meeting Coordinating Committee should also follow up with each member who misses a meeting.The idea is not to shame them, but to remind them that membership has its obligations.
4. At the same time, Town Meeting should have fewer sessions in the spring especially.  A smaller number of members and the advent of electronic voting should both contribute to this.  All votes can be recorded votes, no longer necessitating standing votes or ballot votes.
5. Only elected Town Meeting members should vote.  Ex officio members (town officials, select board, school committee) may make motions, present arguments and answer questions, but not vote.
6. Discussing and amending should be separated from voting.  For any article, discussion pro and con, amendments, substitute motions, and motions to refer, table or dismiss should be made at one session and voted at the next session.  In between the two sessions, the Moderator serving as parliamentarian can organize the proper sequence of votes under that article, and at the subsequent session voting will occur without discussion or further parliamentary action.  This would be a significant change in the way Town Meeting acts but it would have many advantages and would conform to the procedures in other complex voting bodies.  It would eliminate the confusion that occurs when motions and amendments are made from the floor and would clarify in writing on the motion sheet the sequence in which motions will be voted.  It will give members time to consider their positions on such motions so they can come to the voting session prepared to vote.  It will eliminate the need for “calling the question,” since discussion and voting are separated.  
7. The franchise should be strengthened by allowing resident non-citizens and high school students to vote in town elections and to be candidates for Town Meeting.  Enfranchising resident non-citizens in town elections has been proposed many times to Town Meeting and passed overwhelmingly each time, only to die at the Statehouse.  Let’s keep trying and asking Rep. Story and Sen. Rosenberg what it would take to make it actually happen.  Allowing teenagers to participate in local politics  seems to me obviously a good idea.  I see no downside to either of these moves, and a great strengthening of our town and our civic life as a result of them.
8. The Town Meeting Coordinating Committee (TMCC) was a good idea that was insufficiently thought through.  It has no legal status and no real role in the matters coming before Town Meeting,  It should be written into the Town Charter, and its name changed to reflect its enhanced role.  It should be the voice of the membership in procedural dealings with the Moderator.  

If the petition drive is successful, as I expect it to be, I hope that voters committed to preserving and strengthening Town Meeting can be urged to run for the Charter Commission.  Discussions among the Commissioners could become a model for conducting political debates in Amherst.

Town Meeting: Civic or Political?

Town Meeting:  Civic or Political?

It’s funny how two words, civic and political, with virtually identical roots ( in Latin and Greek) have seen their implications separate over the centuries.  Once they both meant being active in the affairs of the community.  Now they have come to have subtle differences.  To be civic is to serve disinterestedly; to be civic-minded is to put the interests of the community before one’s own.  To be political is to want to win; to be engaged in shaping acts of government in a particular direction or in accord with a political sentiment one shares.

Civic activity has come to seem higher, nobler, more virtuous, striving for the best, while political activity is down-and-dirty, compromising, horse-trading, settling for the good-enough. Ordinarily, “we” are civic-minded, while “they” are political.  “We” have the interests of the community at heart, while “they” are serving a special interest or set of resentments.  “We” know what’s best for the town; “they” are engaging in social engineering.

In the current long-lasting debate about Town Meeting, defenders of that institution speak as though it were wrapped in civic duty, while a town council would easily succumb to partisanship and deal-making.    Partisans of the mayor/council form of government, of course, turn this on its head and claim civic virtue for their imagined sober-minded councilors, while pointing to the conniving within town meeting.

But one person’s conniving is another person’s coalition-building.  For one person, politics is a dirty word; for another it is the essence of democracy.  Citizens treat political life just as they treat social life.  They join together in quasi-permanent organizations like political parties and in situational coalitions around specific issues.  There is no difference between civic and political.

In Amherst, and most towns with a town meeting/select board form of government, candidates run for office unaffiliated to any political party.  In cities with a mayor/council form of government, candidates often run with labels affiliating them with a party or as an independent.  Amherst certainly has political parties active in state and national politics, but they stay clear of local politics.  Personally, I like this absence of labels in local politics, but it does mean that in town meeting coalition-building becomes especially important and increasingly noticeable.

Some of the coalitions in town meeting mirror state and national politics.  One continuum has “less spending” at one end and “more services” at the other.  Another continuum has “economic development” at one end and “open space” at the other.  Still another has “general support of town government” at one end and “general suspicion of town government” at the other.  Of course I am painting with too broad a brush; there are a great many shadings and nuances, and attitudes can shift from one issue to the next.

Town Meeting is the ideal arena for these coalitions and attitudes to confront each other.  It has specific and quite rigid rules of procedure and decorum.  When a majority of members feel that a debate has gone on long enough it stops.  Town Meeting is the place where civic-mindedness and politics meet.  We need places like that.

What would happen if we didn’t have town meeting?  For a while, Amherst would continue to be a place where “only the h is silent.”  But gradually, I suspect, Amherst residents would become less political - would leave politics to the pros, like the councilors we elect and pay.  This would change the character of our town.  Decisions about the quality of life in Amherst would be made by five or six councilors,  not 240 residents and neighbors.  Would these councilors exemplify the melding of political action with civic-mindedness?  I will write about this in a subsequent commentary.

The Case for Town Meeting:  Representation

One of the common criticisms of Town Meeting from those who wish to abolish it is that it is not representative of Amherst’s voters.  In fact, I suspect that their real concern is that it is all too representative.  While they point to the frequency with which elections to Town Meeting seats are uncontested,  the age and relative well-being of most town meeting members, the lack of racial and ethnic diversity,  they rarely point to the diversity of opinions, points of view and positions on the issues.  One can be forgiven for thinking that it is this diversity that critics really object to.

How representative is Town Meeting?  My answer is, very.  That is to say, it is representative of the registered voters of the town.  But that begs a more fundamental question: how representative of the town are the registered voters?  Here the answer is more equivocal.  It is in the nature of our community that individuals and families come for a few years and then leave; their degrees are finished, they do not receive tenure, their children grow up.  Many of these families are temporarily poor. Further, we have many long-term residents who are not citizens, who choose to retain their citizenship in their birth countries.  We are, in other words, an educational community.  Not only that, we are an expensive educational communities; the consequence of having so much tax-exempt land in Amherst is very high taxes on the rest of the property.  Many choose to live in the numerous rental developments in town or in less expensive adjacent communities.  So many residents choose not to register to vote in Amherst because they are transient. Other residents would register if they could but they are proscribed by law from either voting for or serving in Town Meeting.

I would remedy this inequity by two changes:  I would allow resident non-citizens to vote in local elections and serve on local boards and in town meeting.  And I would lower the franchise for local elections to age sixteen.  This would allow registered voters to more closely mirror the residents of the town.  But these matters sadly do not belong in this discussion.

So given that town meeting does not and cannot mirror the town’s demography (nor does or would any elected body like a town council),  how representative of differing opinions and positions and even fundamental political philosophies is town meeting?  Here the record is very good.  When the representative town meeting was established in 1938, the membership was deliberately set high: twenty-four members elected from each of the ten precincts.  The thought was that the larger the body the more likely it was to be representative of the diversity of opinion and philosophy in Amherst.  These 240 members did not represent other Amherst voters, they were representative of Amherst voters.  While they were expected to form their own opinions and vote their own minds, by having so many minds it could be reasonably assumed that a wide range of opinions would be represented.  And so it has.  It is easy to be a candidate for a town meeting seat, and so it should be.  But perhaps it should not be quite so easy to win that seat.  Like its opponents, I would gladly see more contested races for town meeting membership.

I am happy with a large representative town meeting.  However, I also believe that a somewhat smaller size can be representative and democratic. There are good reasons to support a smaller number.  Town meeting would be shorter, because fewer voices would ask to be heard.  And it is more likely that these voices would have won their membership in elections that were contested, thus making it more likely that they would be representative of voters who voted in higher numbers.  In 1994 the number I was willing to support was 180.  Today I would consider going even lower.  A smaller town meeting, combined with the electronic voting that will be introduced next year, will make for shorter and more efficient sessions.  And this in turn will make serving in town meeting more appealing to more voters.  Right now the number of members is inscribed in our Town Charter, so a lowering in membership would require a change in the charter.  Perhaps other changes in the charter would enhance town meeting’s representativeness.  If a Charter Commission would  examine these things I would be delighted to support it.

Currently the leaders of Amherst for All have changed their tune a bit - they are now framing the drive for a Charter Commission as an opportunity to “study” our town government.  Great.  Let’s take them at their word.

The Case for Town Meeting:  Democracy 

I have already referred to democracy several times in earlier commentaries.  I have not yet mentioned the familiar old bromide ascribed to Churchill and many others that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.  We have watched, at the national level, as basic democratic institutions have been threatened,  weakened and corrupted by big money, by gerrymandering, by income inequality, by lingering racism, by political extremism.  And here and now it is being threatened for a third time in less than twenty-five years by the desire to eliminate Amherst’s town meeting.

Melodramatic, I know.  Proponents of a new mayor/council charter can rightfully point to low voter turnout, excessive absenteeism among Town Meeting members, and reluctance of candidates to offer themselves for elective and appointed boards as threats to democracy.   And the newish phenomenon of online snarky comment has lowered the quality of public political comment to subterranean levels.  Why would anyone volunteer for public service in order to be attacked, to have their motives and abilities impugned, by anonymous trolls?  The Open Meeting Law, which makes boards and committees transparent, also makes it virtually impossible for new ideas to germinate and then flourish without being cut off and attacked before they are fully grown.  It is easy for disagreements in an open session to be nudged into conflict, for committee members to seek (and find) partisans in the blogosphere until elections for town boards become debased the way our national elections have become.

In this environment, town meeting, with its face-to-face character, its insistence on decorum, its rules to limit the length of speeches, seems an especially valuable political institution for the town.  And, like all democratic institutions, fragile.  At all times, Town Meeting is valuable, but in this time it seems essential.

But is Town Meeting living up to its democratic nature?  Its critics - who are sponsoring the current petition drive to replace it — have valid and important beliefs about this.  Those (of us) who believe in it cannot overlook their criticisms or be sanguine about its future.  I shall devote a future commentary to Town Meeting’s problems.  But the important question for Amherst voters as they contemplate the creation of the third Charter Commission in twenty years is whether the faults in Town Meeting can be fixed or whether they are so intrinsic that the institution should be abolished?

And if town voters were to vote to abolish it, would it be replaced with another form of government that still allowed town residents a substantial voice in their government?  The first Charter Commission proposed a smaller town meeting and an enhanced town council.  The voters did not like it.  The second Charter Commission proposed to do away with town meeting and to create a council with both at-large and neighborhood councillors.  On two occasion, voters rejected that.  The first charter — which I participated in crafting — preserved the essence of democracy.  The same cannot be said of the second.  Perhaps we should wonder why?

Town Meeting is democracy at work.  It is messy.  The motions presented to it by boards and committees can be upended by amendments and substitute motions.  Debate can be cut off too soon or not soon enough.  Opinion leaders speak out and others take their cue from them.  Some are regularly suspicious of town  government and town boards.  Some are suspicious of any motions that seem to be advantageous to developers or landlords.  Some members speak too much; others not enough.  In addition to the business presented to it by boards and committees, Town Meeting considers petitions from individual members and citizens.  These are always serious but not always pertinent.  Factions form and fade away.  Some members seem not to have read the article under debate; others have read it all too carefully and are ready to nitpick it to death.  Debate is lively, argumentative and sometimes edgy.  

All of this leads to frustration and annoyance for the town leaders who have spent much time crafting and debating articles before they appear on the floor of town meeting.  Even more irritating to them are members who apparently have not read the materials that provide the rationale for motions on the floor.  

This frustration is understandable, but it needs to be curbed.  Democracy is predicated on the assumption that voters are of different minds on issues.  Not only different minds but also different priorities; what is essential to one group is frivolous or trivial or ominous to another.  It is reasonable for neighbors to be concerned about unexpected changes in zoning; it is incumbent upon the Planning Board or other proposers to demonstrate that such changes are for the greater good.

This messiness should be abided because town meeting is representative of Amherst’s voters.  Amherst for All, which is spearheading the current petition drive to establish a Charter Commission, has raised doubts about this.  They believe that town meeting does not represent the voters of Amherst and they even question whether it is representative of the voters of Amherst.  I will write at greater length about this question in a subsequent commentary.  Here I will only say that a large representative town meeting is more representative than a small board or committee, however chosen or elected.  A political structure containing both a large body giving voice to the people and smaller boards and committees to do the hard work of governing and crafting legislation is on a strong foundation.  Both should learn to bear with each other and  their deficiencies.