FACT-CHECKING "AMHERST FOR ALL"

Amherst For All (AFA) is revealing its true position in its commentary of January 22, 2016. This is no surprise to the 85% of Amherst voters who did not sign their petition, but it may come as a surprise to some of the 15% who thought they were endorsing a "study" of Amherst governance. AFA is unabashedly dividing Amherst voters into good guys and bad guys, supporters of "real changes" vs supporters of the "status quo." This is a demeaning kind of argument, one with which we are all too familiar in this election season. So, just as fact-checking is a feature of presidential politics, let's fact check AFA's assertions.

1.  AFA quotes Stephanie O'Keefe to the effect that no individual has both authority and accountability to make things happen. She thinks that this is a shortcoming of "local democracy." She has a great deal of credibility to talk about this, but her position is bizarre and contradicted by her own record of service on the Select Board. A strong town manager, supervised by an elected select board, has all the authority and accountability "local democracy" needs. Indeed, more power in the executive would have the tendency to undermine local democracy. Neither AFA nor O'Keefe gives one scintilla of evidence to support their claim. That is because there is none.

2. "Whether by design or confusion," AFA asserts, "the current system has effectively dissolved any form of real accountability." (Note the rhetorical argument: design or confusion are our two choices. Someone in 1938 either maliciously planned to dissolve real accountability or was so inept as to undermine it.) Then they say "the result is apathy." This faulty application of cause- and-effect argument is just not true. Voter turnout is low when there are not competitive races or important issues. Check out voter apathy next fall when the voters are asked to override the 2.5 limit on tax increase to support a new elementary school. And check out voter apathy in Northampton (which has the form of government AFA desires) when council seats are uncontested.

3. AFA is a new group but their animus towards Town Meeting is old. So are their arguments. This is too bad, because some of their criticisms have merit. It's just that their cure is worse than the disease. For example, they claim that Town Meeting isn't representative of the town as a whole because it is "older, whiter, and richer." Their solution is to replace Town Meeting with a council that will also be older, whiter and richer. And less democratic. The response to this demographic challenge should be to enlarge the franchise for town elections as I suggested on my blog: downwards to age 16 and widened to include non-citizen residents.

4. AFA also complains that Town Meeting members don't face consequences if they are significantly absent from Town Meeting sessions. This bothers me too, and steps are being taken to deal with this. Starting this spring electronic voting will be introduced to Town Meeting. Not only will this speed things up but it will provide a record of voting. In the old days, the local newspaper used to provide a record of how town meeting members voted; it would be good to restore that practice. And perhaps also list their attendance records.

5. But AFA comes closer to revealing its animus when it claims that Town Meeting "wastes valuable citizen and employee time . . .Unproductive votes to reject months of work by citizen committees. . .or opine on issues beyond Amherst's jurisdiction extend the length of the meetings. . ." This should send a shudder down the spine of voters. It reveals a mind set that

we have seen before. AFA is engaged in a kind of benign bullying: if your argument is weak, demonized those who disagree with it. Their January 22d piece is full of this.

What AFA seems to want is less discussion, less dissension, less democracy. Caveat emptor.