Open debate, especially about the state budget, not only benefits the public, it benefits the legislature. If the public sees that it is an open process, they will be less suspicious of the end result. No wonder people are fed up with government.
Open debate about the budget this year is important because there are many of us who think the Governor’s budget proposal has merit. Without an open process, we have no way of knowing which legislators were against or for certain proposals contained in the Governor’s budget.
Please share widely!
The Constitution was debated in private. Some issues are hard to discuss openly in public, yet such discussion can be beneficial to everyone. Maybe a combination of some secrecy and some publicity is best.
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If I may ask your question of another article in today’s Globe…
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“Cohen, after several days of declining to provide information about the panel, strongly defended soliciting input from an informal group that includes private companies and lawyers that have financial interests in public transportation funding.”
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Despite protests to the contrary, there is a huge conflict of interest here. Should transportation industry professionals from the private sector be invited to provide input into the future of Massachusetts’s transportation network? Sure. Should Transportation Secretary Bernard Cohen have looked for firms with equal expertise but no financial interest in that future. Yes. Did he? No.
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How about academics? Some of the top transportation experts in the country are at MIT and BU’s Center for Transportation Studies. Nope.
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And Cohen spent several days avoiding the very question of the panel’s composition.
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This whole think stinks. Are we now going to demand Bernard Cohen’s head on a platter next to DiMasi’s now?
debating the budget that the Commonwealth’s taxpayers are funding and where that money is going to be used with the composition of an informal group advising the Transportation agency about how to address significant transportation issues? I suppose that’s more of a rhetorical question.
There’s a huge difference between the two and the Globe article indicates as much. Pam Wilmot’s statement is all you need to distinguish the two. The House budget will directly effect every person in the state and the amendment process, or lack thereof, is the primary mechanism for members to restore earmarks (pork if you will) that were eliminated from the House budget (merely a draft) released two weeks ago. The taxpayers foot the bill and a handful of people gain benefit that can hardly be considered services. The informal meeting with a bunch of transportation experts and the head of the agency about prioritizing the dreadful state of transporation infrustructure may not impact a single person. And whatever comes from that meeting will gain the light of day long before the deal is done.
If, in a few months or years, you have funding decisions that favor the members of this group or legislation drafted by the administration to that effect, then there is every reason to want access to the deliberations that occur and Cohen must account for the decision-making. But you’re trying to connect two completely different things.
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Do we have that right? I mean, that’s not obvious to me at all. There are limitations to sunshine in government. The extremes are easy, the middle not so much.
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Legislation involves compromise and consensus, and I suspect that can be harder to come by with cameras in people’s faces. The budget matters (and should be public). The votes matter (and should be public). It’s not clear to me, however, that the process by which the bills were created must be public.
Compromise may indeed be harder to come by with cameras in people’s faces, but isn’t that only because politicians feel the need to grandstand as paragons of principle in front of the cameras knowing full well that they can cut their backroom deals – ‘scuse me; make their compromises – once the cameras are off?
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“There are limitations to sunshine in government” is, to me, not a normative statement but a descriptive one. And what it describes are the circumstances for top-down, undemocratic government.
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There are times when that’s appropriate, such as legitimate public safety concerns (intelligence, police, hazard locations, etc).
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But nevertheless, the law is what matters. Whether it was one guy who wrote the law on TP while sitting on the john or 4 legislative buddies on a fishing trip, or a committee in some session somewhere… neither judge nor jury care. The words matter.
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Get those words right, make them public, and make the votes on them public. Then, the voters can ultimately decide if the people making the laws are doing their job well, regardless of whom those lawmakers go to for inspiration.
This logic that only the final language and the votes matter is flawed because of the secretive way bills are being constructed. These ‘consolidated amendments’ being voted on in the house budget prevent the accountability associated with individual votes on amendments offered. The resulting affect of the sweeping unanimous votes is to provide cover to all of the legislators on defending the merits of their individual amendments at a time of fiscal crisis. If this is the way business will be conducted, then our only option is to put the entire process out in the open.
The budget is written by staff for the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. The Committee does not meet at all, or discuss, or debate. Then, the Chair deigns to meet privately with each legislator, who tells what they want, and hopes the Chair will allow some of it. The basic purpose of the budget currently “is to support programs already in place” unless leadership allows something else to be funded.
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The amendment process is even worse. The legislators are given 2-4 days to file amendments. Leadership reviews them, and legislators try to advocate for their own amendments. All the representatives are herded into room 348, which is a largish but poorly ventilated chamber just off the publicly visible House Chamber with a gallery and the Sacred Cod. A far stack of paper is handed out and all members are told this is what they are to vote for. It took a hotly fought amendment to get even 30 minutes to review these so-called consolidated amendments which are often 100 pages or more in length.
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Representative Fallon, when herded into room 348 at 11:30 or so last night, and herded back onto the floor balked. There IS a rule that sessions can only go on past midnight if there is no objection. He objected. He refused to be strong armed. So the house recessed some time after midnight last night, until 10:00 AM this AM – and were told that they [all legislators] were to receive a new version of THAT consolidated amendment…in room 348.
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So, well, thanks for posting the article, but it [the state of democracy in our legislature] is actually even worse than that article depicts…and I, for one, would find this a very difficult environment to feel that I was upholding the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as written by John Adams…in this current legislative culture. I have been watching for some years now, and in my opinion, this is the least open, the least collaborative, and the most consolidated leadership power in the House has ever been.
I don’t particularly have a dog in the hunt when it comes to the state budget process. I do find the hand-wringing though a bit naive. I pick on this post only as an example of posts on BMG and of a type of argument common for many ardent Patrick supporters. Now, I am a strong Patrick supporter, but I also understand that it’s not nearly as simple as many are making it out to be and don’t like the demonizing of the Legislature as opposed to the Executive.
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Massachusetts like most governments of modern industrialized societies has a complex and large administrative structure to govern a lot of complex systems. The point of these administrative systems is to make it possible for the government to efficiently handle very complicated and technical issues so they don’t have to be handled by the legislature which isn’t equipped to handle them.
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Now, many Patrick supporters say, “That’s why we don’t like the earmarks! The Governor should give the discretion to his agencies!” Yet, these same progressives don’t really address issues of administrative behavior like, for example, regulatory capture. The administrative state is not free from influence and politics in government agencies. Removing the earmarks and putting it under the discretion of the executive just raises the likelihood of shifting the corruption and influence into the administrative structure. This is not a new phenomenon and is well-documented in administrative law.
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I believe in progressive government. I would feel much better if someone in these debates representing the progressive/Patrick position would demonstrate an understanding of how government works and an ability to govern. If you are trying to address a structural problem of openness and transparency in government, you can’t start by trying by doing the budgetary equivalent of shifting from 60MPH to reverse without slowing down first. Government is complicated and messy. I’m not saying the Massachusetts budget process isn’t a mess and full of pork, it is. It’s just not as simple as a lot of progressive discourse is suggesting.
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Cross posted here.
I am not sure WHAT was meant by “hand wringing” and WHICH post was being viewed as “naive”.
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My concerns have to do with the fact that neither the House nor the Senate are any longer televised – and that there appears to be a lack of debate – not about earmarks.
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I have, as it happens, nothing against making sure money goes where it is supposed to go, rather than having all money vanish into the dark maw of an executive agency which, as you rightly stated, has its own problems and pressures.
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If money is intended to address homelessness – make sure it goes to housing by specifying what it is for [I view “earmarks” as protection for specificity of expenditure].
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For example, I would far rather see money in the DSS budget go to social workers or services for children and families, not the so-called lead agencies which are consultants, and a layer of beauracracy. But because much of the DSS budget is not earmarked, Harry Spence initiated these lead agencies and siphoned money away from actual services and workers.
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While governance requires collaboration and negotiation in all levels, whether a town meeting or the legislature, the lack of openness really is a concern and the budget process which I have observed for several years really has become less open.
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We are free to disagree as to the value of public negotiation and collaboration and hearings – but historically, what I see is that the more power is consolidated and the less decision making occurs in public view, the more wealth and a single-mindedness of vision become entrenched.
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I meant the top post by The Open Society.
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I agree. My point is that agency decision-making and transfer to the Executive is more consolidated and less open to view than in the Legislature.
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Anyone can find how messy the process is. It was described to me as sausage-making. The dysfunction is absolutely transparent and open to the public. It just makes me nervous with impulses to radically shift the entire structure without a sense of how to really do that practically.
I did not say anything about “agency decision-making and transfer to the Executive.” I find it perplexing that you think my post is “naive” or that you can assume from my post that I do not understand the process.
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The budgetary process in the Massachusetts legislature did not became less open because of the messiness of debate; that is just the excuse being used by the legislative leaders to justify their actions. The legislature’s actions have become less open than they were in the past because it makes it easier for those in power to maintain control. It is naive to think that there is any other reason for making the budgetary decisions in secret.
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The legislative budgetary process should be open and tranparent and it is not in Massachusetts. By the way, I also have made the same point about certain things the Administration has done.
I elect my Rep and Senator to make choices up on Beacon Hill for me….I know how he votes because he has to stand and be recorded…I am sure that he has more information on the voted than I would by watching on television. ( I actually watched some of the House budget session on the internet for the first time this year)
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The work of any democratic institution is always done behind closed doors – I don’t recall Leslie Kirwin and her staff televising how they put there budget together. I do remember her sitting before a Budget Hearing at the State House and commmenting and responding to questions from legisaltors.
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I think we should deman the media to report what the votes are rather than try to play gotcha up on Beacon Hill.