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p>do you think the Lowell Court House will EVER be build with Panagiotakos walking away?

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p>No sir. The Speaker is the Speaker of the House for the entire state of Massachusetts, not Revere and Winthrop.

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p>This is why the state distrusts Beacon Hill. The power of the Speaker needs to be severely watered down.  

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p>When George Keverian was Speaker he kept his promise to “democratize” the House.  The results were chaos, special pleading run amok, and a power shift to the Senate where William Bulger (never encumbered by sentimental reformism) became de facto Governor.

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p>This so traumatized the House that its institutional culture will never again permit a weak Speaker.

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p>Nor should it.

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p>The issue is not and never has been the “power of the Speaker”.  The problem is a decades long vacuum in Statewide politics that accrues power to whomever in Legislative leadership has the intelligence, strength and ruthlessness to grab and maintain it.

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p>The only solution is the reestablishment of a grassroots politics (again absent in the Commonwealth these past thirty-plus years), based upon the tangible interests of its citizens.

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p>And should the State Senate try to power grab, they should know the exact same reforms could happen to them, too. They’re better off than the House ethically, but I’m sure there’s room for improvement.  

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p>The problem is that the relative power of legislative leadership does not rank high on the concerns of those constituents in most State Representative elections.  

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p>The Keverian example is just as valid today, because effective legislating requires institutional stability, and power still abhors a vacuum.  The political vacuum today, as in the Eighties, is at the grassroots, and absent addressing this, no reform will prevent unaccountable concentrations of power.

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p>This is Local Politics 1a, and the reason why in many ways the old ward-and-precinct operations were more accountable than the professional activism that replaced them, at least in Boston.

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p>Any competent politician knows that the breadth of concern per issue is eclipsed by intensity of concern, which is why satisfaction with a given rep trumps abstract concern for good government.

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p>All politics is still local…including the institutional politics of the Great and General Court. Which is why the parochial needs of DeLeo’s District are prioritized by the Speaker – as they should be.

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p>I doubt that “the People” – outside of the traditional goo-goo Districts – give a damn about the Speaker’s legislative games.  Gambling in isolation is not a Commonwealth-wide hot-button issue, much as I would personally prefer the contrary.

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p>  

The problem is that the relative power of legislative leadership does not rank high on the concerns of those constituents in most State Representative elections.  

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p>This is just absolutely false. I know too many very active, frequent voters who have this as there #1 issue. Not one, but two, people just resigned from my town’s democratic committee because they’re angry with leadership. It’s a big issue to a great many people more on the committee. I’ve heard it on the phones talking to random people phone banking. This is actually a major concern to people in Massachusetts right now — and it’s a problem precisely with the kinds of people likely to vote in a state legislative race.

The Keverian example is just as valid today, because effective legislating requires institutional stability, and power still abhors a vacuum.

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p>Which doesn’t mean all that power has to be filled by one or two people at the top. There are different recipes, in different states, that work better. Even the Senate way of doing business is better, fairer and more representative. Please remember that just because the Keverian way of doing things didn’t work, doesn’t mean that there’s not a better way of doing things today.

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p>You said that what we really needed was an active, progressive movement that can wield power outside of Beacon Hill. I agree with that, and I’d go so far as to say that already exists is is growing stronger every day. But one of the major problems any group will have is that, unless we replace a majority of legislators in a single year, leadership in the House has too much time to target the individuals we elect and cap our movement off at the knees, no matter how good and effective we’ve become in electing progressives. Simply put, so long as leadership in the House controls the insane amount of power that it does, it doesn’t matter how strong the progressive movement is or becomes, we won’t be able to exert the pressure necessary to get the legislature to do the right thing o issues that matter most.

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p>

All politics is still local…including the institutional politics of the Great and General Court. Which is why the parochial needs of DeLeo’s District are prioritized by the Speaker – as they should be.

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p>Quite frankly, that you think the Speaker of the entire state “should” prioritize his “parochial” special interest needs in his own district over the needs of everyone across the state offends me as a human being. I have some language I’d like to use to describe what I think about your offensive opinion, but it would absolutely violate the Rules of the Road.