HOW WE ARE GOVERNED NOW

Amherst For All is so obsessed with Town Meeting that they neglect to mention that the new charter proposal does away with our entire governance.  What we have now is a model of good government.  Maybe I should stress the word “model.”  Just as the charter commission is offering a model of a new government - a model without the substance of real people, real decisions and real controversies - so too the model of our current government should be seen the same way for the sake of comparison.  It is harder with our current government because there are real people, real decisions and real controversies - and people feel strongly pro and con about them.  But let’s get them out of the way for a moment so we can see our government structure clearly and compare it to the model on offer.

The Executive Branch - The executive branch of Amherst’s government consists of its boards and committees and the supervisors who oversee the workings of town, school and library administration.  For my purposes here I will focus on the Select Board and Town Manager, but the School Committee and Superintendent and the Library Trustees and the Library Director are equally part of the executive branch and most of my comments here refer to them as well.

The Select Board has the traditional powers of an executive branch.  It sets policies and priorities for the Town.  It does this in close consultation with Town Hall working under the independent supervision of a strong Town Manager.  The Town Manager appoints and oversees, among many important others, the Finance Director and the Planning Director.  The Town’s financial priorities are presented annually to Town Meeting in the Finance Committee booklet in clear prose supported be graphs and charts.  The Town’s priorities for land use and development are contained in the Master Plan approved by the Planning Board (appointed by the Town Manager).  Importantly, the Zoning Board of Appeals is appointed by the Select Board.  The Town Manager’s appointments are not subject to Select Board review, but of course all matters of policy and priority are.  The most important policy statement is the annual Town budget, which sets and funds the Town’s priorities for the following fiscal year.

The Select Board also controls the Town Warrant, which it submits to Town Meeting for legislative action.  The articles on the Town Warrant really comprise the executive branch’s policy leadership. (The Warrant importantly also contains articles based on citizen petitions, but they are not our concern in this commentary.)

The tremendous powers of the Executive Branch are checked by internal structures which preserve the autonomy of each part while requiring their working together.  The Town Manager has many powers of appointment, including the important Planning Board, which are not subject to review by the Select Board, but his/her own tenure is subject to evaluation and rehiring by the Select Board.  When articles finally appear on the Town Warrant they are the result of ongoing collaboration between the appointed Town Hall and the elected Select Board.

The Legislative Branch - The legislative branch of Amherst’s government consists of Representative Town Meeting, its committees, and the Town Moderator.  It must act on each article on the Town Warrant.  Most actions require a simple majority, but by state law borrowing money and changing the zoning bylaw require a 2/3 majority.  The Town Moderator controls the debate on the floor, decides procedural matters in dispute, and assures decorum in debate.  

The committees of Town Meeting consist of the Town Meeting Coordinating Committee (TMCC), elected by Town Meeting members, which provides reviews of the Warrant before spring and fall town meeting, assistance to new Town Meeting members, and opportunities for voters to meet candidates for Town Meeting membership.  The Subcommittee on Policies and Procedures, appointed by TMCC,  provides a standing mechanism for improving Town Meeting administratively and by modification of the Town Bylaws.  The Finance Committee, appointed by the Town Moderator, works with the Finance Department to evaluate Warrant articles in terms of their financial impact on the Town.  The new Town Meeting Advisory Committee, whose membership is both elected and appointed by Town Meeting, the Town Moderator, and self-nomination, advises Town Meeting on the non-financial benefits and impacts of Warrant Articles.  Like the committees of the executive branch, legislative committees have different appointing authorities.

Actions -  A shorthand motto describing the relationship of the executive and legislative branches is that the executive proposes and the legislature disposes.  This is true in Amherst, in Massachusetts, in the United States.  It is an illustration of both the separation of powers and the balance of powers.  There is, of course, often tension between the executive and legislative branches but in most cases they realize and respect both their independence and their interdependence.

“Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest,” cried Henry II when Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, resisted royal control over the church.  And four knights promptly murdered the archbishop.  It is no longer 1170, but the king’s imputed plea has echoed through the centuries as frustrated executives have complained of and sometimes acted to silence or at least control their adversaries and legislatures.  

But good government requires both independence and interdependence.  The term “checks and balances” is sometimes used glibly, but it is the foundation of republican governance.  The joint ideas of separation of powers and balance of powers more accurately describes the delicate situation that preserves both stability and democracy.  Tensions are proof that it is working.

In my next commentary I shall examine the proposed charter and compare it to what we have.

COUNCILS

As Amherst For All reminds us, there are councils everywhere.  And since the council is really the oldest form of governance in human history, we know a lot about it.  Before I came to Amherst in 1970 I lived in five communities governed by some sort of council.  Many of us have.

Some are good and some are bad. Some are elected, and some are appointed and some are almost hereditary.  Some are reflective of the electorate and some are not.  Small governing bodies are ubiquitous in politics and organizational life, and most of us know a lot about them.

The idea that a council should be representative of its community or organization is, however, not that common.  Historically, rather the opposite is true.  Councils were expressly intended to be unrepresentative; they were drawn from the “best” men (almost always men), those with special and sometimes mystical powers or knowledge, those whose leadership the community would most readily accept.  In modern times, those characteristics have largely been replaced by wealth and influence.

If you think Amherst should be governed by people of wealth and influence, a Town Council is the government for you.  If you think that ordinary citizens are too ill-informed, too lazy. too old or infirm, too prone to fall asleep in meetings, or too easily duped,  then vote for a Town Council.  

But be careful what you wish (or vote) for.  Councils are long-term propositions.  Do not be overly influenced by the issues currently roiling the town.  Do not think too much about the Town Meeting members you would like to silence.  They, or others who share their views, could easily become councillors in the future.  If you want a council to reflect a point of view about, say, sustainability, don’t be too sure that the council’s viewpoint will always be one you share.

Who becomes a councillor depends upon whom is elected, and whom is elected depends upon who chooses to run.  Or who is chosen to run.  And who is doing the choosing.

Amherst For All has said that if we don’t like the council offered to us in this charter, we can always change it in 2024.  That’s wrong on two grounds.  First, any substantial change in the town government, like reducing the size of the town council, or adding a mayor, requires the election of a charter commission.  Have you enjoyed this process so much that you want to do it again?  And again?  Second, while the charter mandates a review of the governance every ten years in years ending in 4, it doesn’t preclude a review at any time by vote of the town council.  The town council may propose and implement minor changes.  What’s a minor change?  The charter proposal doesn’t say.  Indeed, the charter doesn’t say anything about changing the charter.   But my point here is that if you love a 13-person council, that’s good because that’s what we’d have for a long time.  No Town Council can change that or submit a change to the voters.

Councils are susceptible to being controlled by groups with agendas for the town.  Sometimes those agendas are good and sometimes less good.  For example, on the contentious issue of development, Amherst For All has some interesting ideas that deserve to be debated.  But it doesn’t really want to debate them.  It wants to elect councillors who share its ideas.  Inevitably other groups will support candidates who have different priorities and we will very quickly find ourselves with party politics.  Regardless of what names, if any, the parties have, an elected council will take our town into party politics.  And party politics quickly changes debates from what you are for to what you are against.

Councils do hold public hearings; Amherst’s boards and committees have been doing that for a long time.  The Charter Commission itself held a mandated public hearing in May, 2016.  Many, including me, addressed it.  I have seen no evidence that it paid any attention to comments addressed to it.  The proposed charter mandates public hearings but doesn’t require the town council to pay attention to them.  Indeed it doesn’t even require the town council to be present at them.

It’s silly to be against councils; many of us have been on councils, boards of directors, and similar small groups that make decisions for the larger community or organization.  But over three hundred years ago, refugees from Europe came to this continent with a better idea: self-government through the town meeting.  Let’s not romanticize it; early town meetings in Amherst were dominated by a few powerful men, whose names we recognize on our street signs.  The advent of Representative Town Meeting in 1938 actually democratized the process; it is no longer possible for wealth and influence to exercise such dominance.  Amherst voters should ask themselves whether they really want to return to a governance that makes it possible once again.

TOWN MEETING AND THE SCHOOL VOTE - III

I recently watched the magnificent HBO miniseries Show Me a Hero for the second time.  Not only is it superbly directed and acted, it is a valuable primer about local government.  It follows the Yonkers, New York, mayor, city councillors and city residents as they all grapple with a court order for low income housing thirty years ago.  The series is factually true, but it is also true to the F Scott Fitzgerald quotation that gives it its title:  “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.”  I recommend it highly, particularly now when Amherst is also wrestling with a contentious issue - its future form of government.  And it forces me to think about the last couple of years when the school proposal was our version of the housing issue that Yonkers faced.

One takeaway from the series particularly pertinent to the charter debate is how important it is to distinguish among the institutional structures of government,  the individual and social dynamics which they house, and the issues they must decide.  The description of Yonkers’s government is perfectly straightforward - a mayor, a 7-person city council with its own president, majority and minority leaders, and an administration.  Like all such descriptions, it sounds pristine.  Like all real governments it is conducted by people with divergent ideas, biases, personalities and priorities.  Like all real governments it must deal with issues that are messy. divisive and volatile.  It needs to govern people some of whom are passionate on all sides of issues, while others are indifferent to local government and uninformed about it.

On March 27th  Amherst is voting on the institutional framework of its governance.  It is important to emphasize that.  The two frameworks - select board/town meeting and council/manager - are both empty.  It is difficult to realize that, since our actual select board/town meeting government is not at all empty.  It requires a thought experiment to empty it, as the proposed town council is empty, so that the two structures can compete on equal ground.

When we populate those empty forms in our minds, it is important that we populate each of them with divergent ideas, biases, personalities and priorities.  And throw in a dash of distrust and a pinch of personal animosities.  To both structures.  Another way of conducting the thought experiment is to imagine our Select Board enlarged to thirteen members. Populate those new eight seats with people whose views diverge from the current Select Board.  Or if that is too difficult, recollect the times over the past fifteen years when each of our elected boards has experienced volatility over issues and when disagreement descended into acrimony.

However you do it, imagine the school proposal in the hands of a council that has to achieve a two-thirds vote to raise taxes and borrow funds.   Then watch Show Me a Hero.  And think hard.

In Yonkers in 1987, the popular sentiment was strongly opposed to low income housing.  The sentiment was largely racist, although usually couched in terms of class.  The majority on the city council shared these views, although a few were realistic enough to understand that the city had no choice but to accede to the court’s ruling.  It was nasty.  Here in Amherst we are amateurs of animosity compared to Yonkers.

So put the school vote in front of a town council.  How do you imagine it?  Is the council a group of thirteen independently elected individuals, who won their seat in a contested election?  Or do you imagine a council in which members were elected by being on a slate supported by political action groups such as Amherst For All?  Do you imagine a council whose members fairly represent the range of opinions and concerns of Amherst’s citizens, do you imagine a council representing a particular viewpoint, or do you imagine a council elected as a protest against incumbents? 

Whatever you imagine, it is imaginary.  We don’t know.  Councils nation-wide have conformed to all of these configurations.  We have seen Amherst Select Boards and Charter Commissions reflect all of these configurations.  What an Amherst Town Council would have been like as it confronted the school vote is anybody’s guess.  

If you believe that an Amherst Town Council would have councilors who think like you, maybe you are right.  Or maybe not.  Or maybe right this year but not right two years from now.  What we can say with confidence is that councils, by their very nature, are more volatile than Town Meeting.  They are more dependent on the actual individuals elected than is Town Meeting.  They are more prone to internal animosities than Town Meeting.  

Yes, that’s right.  Passions - even animosities - among Town Meeting members can be strong and can be heard in the corridors and lobbies.  But not on the floor.  In Town Meeting debates, all points of view can be heard but decorum reigns.  Widely divergent ideas are received in silence.  And during those silences, members are thinking hard.

Will there ever come a time when Amherst’s civic passions can be “recollected in tranquility,” to  misuse Wordsworth’s famous definition of poetry?  Perhaps not.  But the silences on the floor of Town Meeting while the Moderator is choosing the next speaker are testaments to a civic maturity that we should prize and praise.  They are the symbols of a political culture that stubbornly resists being categorized into majority and minority, and where the outcome of a controversial vote remains a mystery until it is cast.

During the school debate, Town Meeting was a source of stability and equity but never predictability.  That’s why I love it.  That’s why Amherst needs it.  We lose it at our peril.

TOWN MEETING AND THE SCHOOL VOTE - II

In my first commentary on this topic,   I reviewed the history of the school project and the four votes, two referendums and two Town Meeting, taken on it.  In this post, I want to reflect on the actual debate in Town Meeting.  My comments are directed particularly to those who supported the school proposal and are angry at Town Meeting because it did not.  I believe that Town Meeting acted in an exemplary fashion and deserves the support of those who supported the school proposal.  Here’s why.

First to state the obvious: matters are controversial because people disagree.  Town Meeting provides a forum for disagreement, and that should be highly valued by all citizens.  It is sometimes not so highly valued by boards and committees which seek approval of their proposals; this is understandable.  Boards and committees devote time and effort to crafting proposals, usually reflecting the organizations they both oversee and represent.  It has often been remarked that those proposals come to Town Meeting with unanimous or near-unanimous recommendations for approval.  This is a complicated matter; what leads to such unanimity on boards and committees?  And why are they surprised and distressed when Town Meeting does not manifest the same degree of unanimity?

By the time that Town Meeting convened in November, 2016, the school controversy had been raging in town for a long time.  The School Committee was dealing with its own internal disagreements and other stresses, and these were all being played out in public.  My own view as an interested observer was that all members of the School Committee acted honorably and were committed to the best interests of Amherst’s children but that they did not handle disagreement particularly well.  This may be one of the complicated byproducts of the Open Meeting Law particularly in this age of social media where even a cough is subject to analysis, attack and scorn.

So sides had already been drawn, positions firmed up and disagreements transformed into antagonisms.  Under these conditions, the Town Meeting debate, while passionate, was orderly and respectful.  Some speakers supported the proposed new schools while others regretted, sometimes with anger, the breakup of K-6 schools and the amount of busing the new configuration entailed.  Some speakers emphasized the $34 million that the state had awarded to support the project.  Others claimed that the Fort River and Wildwood physical plants could be rehabilitated for much less.  One suggestion, that the state contribution could be reallocated to another configuration, became the locus of considerable anger. It was proved incorrect, as project supporters said it would be.  Some who are angry at Town Meeting, blame the faulty prediction about state funding on Town Meeting.  But this is clearly not the case.  While the school project could not win a simple majority in November, it did win a significant one in January.  And in the subsequent referendum the project also won a simple majority of voters.

However, none of the votes - not the two referendums and not the two Town Meeting votes - approached the 2/3 level required by the state for borrowing the money needed to build the new schools..  (The first referendum, approving an override of the limit on taxation, did not require a 2/3 majority.)  As a body Town Meeting moved closer to the School Committee position, but not close enough to enable the borrowing of money.  Throughout the anguished months, Town Meeting was remarkably reflective of the Town voters, and this is worthy of respect and appreciation.

Could the Town Meeting vote have turned out differently?  I think it might have been different if the School Committee rather than - or in addition to - the Finance Committee had been in the front of the auditorium.  While the then-acting superintendent of schools, Michael Morris, did an impressive job of explaining the project’s educational dimensions, he was not - and should not have been - in a position to deal with the issues at the center of the controversy.  The absence of the School Committee spoke loudly, especially since the Moderator always gives deference to committees at the front of the room.  The technicality - that the article at hand was about funding rather than about the project - should not have prevented the School Committee from speaking to and defending its proposal.  Some individual members, who were also members of Town Meeting, did speak from the floor but they were voices among many.

One other point requires comment.  Town Boards and Committees seem remarkably unprepared for disagreement.  Sometimes it seems even worse - that they think there should not be disagreement.  Too often over the years, their arguments seem reducible to “We work hard and long. We want the best for our town. We have access to professional analysis.  Trust us.”

I do trust them.  I appreciate and honor their long and hard work.  I have no doubt that they want the best for our town.  But professional analyses do not always come out at the same place.  And they alone may not be sufficient guides for decision-making.

Tensions between the legislature and executive seem healthy in retrospect but rarely feel healthy at the time.  Town Meeting includes many members who at one time or another have served on boards or committees which belong to the executive.  It includes members who have not before served in town government.  It also includes some members who are generally suspicious of executive power.  This is often a volatile mix and has had a volatile history.  But it is a useful mix and Boards and Committees should be more prepared to deal with it.

Town Meeting has served as a stabilizing influence in town. Members of Boards and Committees should listen to it, respect it, and be better prepared to deal with divergent points of view. We should all  appreciate and honor the importance of disagreement in a free society.