Pam Wilmot of Common Cause just sent out the following:
Politicians in Massachusetts are being indicted at an alarming rate. This sad state of affairs comes with one silver lining: an opportunity to change politics as usual. To that end, Governor Deval Patrick recently appointed me to his task force on government integrity. Other committee members include former Common Cause President Scott Harshbarger, former State Ethics Commission Executive Director Peter Sturges, former Anti-Defamation League New England Regional Director Andrew Tarsy, and more.
Citizens can submit testimony in person to the Task Force at a public hearing Wednesday, Dec. 3, at 3pm in Room A-2 at the State House. Or you can send in your ideas by email to integrity.taskforce@state.ma.us.
the task force and the ethical issues surrounding its creation give Common Cause a unique opportunity to push for real reform.
When it comes to the appearance of corruption, we suffer an embarrassment of riches. Since Bill Belichick had Spy-gate, things have gotten out of control. Senator Wilkerson and Councilor Turner face Liquor-gate. DiMasi has Compu-gate, and Majority Leader John Rogers has VacationHouse-gate.
Eliminate all state legislative control over the issuance of liquor licenses by cities and towns. Let each city and town decide for itself how to regulate this industry.
Insofar as we cannot force people to be ethical there is no ‘fix’ to this mess. It is axiomatic that, whatever the endeavor, some subset of the participants will be shady and underhanded. Sad, but true.
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p>But to be ethical ourselves (our only real responsibility) we MUST NOT put ourselves in a position to be either coercive or punitive before the fact. Term limits cast a wide net and will deny the able and fit as well as the morally infirm. This is a clear ethical wrong. Nor do term limits require ethical behavior to begin with. We can have a revolving door of ethically challenged individuals trading places yearly. That is no ‘fix’. Excessive regulation for every perceived infraction (campaign $$ for cars?? Hidden cameras?) will likewise cast an odious burden on the innocent as much as the guilty. This, too, is clearly an ethical breach and a practical nightmare.
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p>Removing liquor licensure to the local towns and cities is likewise only moving the problem: there is no guarantee that more local control will provide either more transparency or more ethical behaviour. It just gives a different group of people access to the ethical choices. While there is nothing wrong with giving different people access it should not be presented as the solution: it does not guarantee that behaviour will be more ethical.
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p>The only ethical way to ‘change business as usual’ is for more and greater transparency. A large part of which is already in place, though more does need to be done. Anything that is punitive a priori or pre-emptively coercive will be a moral lapse on our part. This is also, perhaps not co-incidentally, the solution that calls for the most diligence on the part of politicians and the citizenry . Any procedural ‘fix’, like term limits or regulation, is merely an admission of our inability or unwillingness to pay close attention to the workings of our government.
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p>Shame on us
The politicians just find a new way to scam.
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p>Martha Coakley isn’t worth a rat’s azz. She should be called out for failing to go after these pols. But of course, she doesn’t. Billy Bulger; er, Therese Murray and Sal would cut her funding if she did.
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p>We tolerate this ethical mess. It is a matter of changing the culture on Beacon Hill and in city and town halls, not changing laws. That is a cop out.
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p>What would Sal do!?!
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p>Somebody needs to lead Sal and the Cognos gang on a perp walk before anything changes. As I said before, someone clean for speaker.
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p>Oh, no one ever had the guts to comment on my Billy Bulger post. I guess his ghost still walks the halls under the golden dome!
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If anyone has specific suggestions that’s great, but Wilkerson, Turner, and DiMasi are already in varying degrees of legal trouble. That suggests to me that such laws already do exist and they are in fact being enforced. It would be great if these could be enforced politically by having incumbents more regularly challenged. Then the people can decide on an ad hoc basis whether their elected officials have violated their trust. For many of these offices we theoretically should only have to tolerate a bad egg for a couple of years at the most. What I can’t explain, however, is constituents looking the other way. The number of Wilkerson’s constituents, for example, who STILL support her after every ethical, political, and legal failure on her part absolutely amazes me.
The real nub of ethics improvement is the risk-even a slight risk-that a legislator might actually lose their job if arrested, slothful, incompetent or crazy. We need competitive elections in Massachusetts and nothing of lasting change will occur in the culture until there is a feeling of accountability to voters. With that principle in mind, I suggest:
Preliminary Elections: The notion of primary elections, while quaint, means that most legislators in Massachusetts are elected to office by fewer than 5% of the persons eligible to vote in their districts. Political parties always can endorse particular candidates via the convention or caucus process, so there’s no need for the state to fund a political party endorsement process other than to list party endorsements on the ballot. Instead, we should abolish primary elections and replace them with preliminary elections that run the top two candidates against each other in the general election. Where only two candidates square off in the preliminary election, the winner is the victor in that election;
Independent Redistricting Commission: Redistricting in recent decades in Massachusetts has become an exercise in incumbency protection and maintaining existing bases of political power. The Legislature has an inherent conflict of interest in undertaking this task and we should look at the recent adoption of an independent commission by California as a possible model for improvement in the Commonwealth. Fair and competitive elections, where all votes have equal value and all voters are equally valued regarding of race or political affiliation, are the core value of our system of government.
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p>My two cents.
…since we can all take the day off to appear at a hearing at 3 pm on a Wednesday.
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p>If ANYONE attends who is not an ‘activist’ or a professional political ‘consultant’ – I’ll eat my quills.
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p>BTW – the only way to get integrity in office is to elect people with integrity, not people because it’s ‘their turn’.