Look to our Massachusetts Attorney General and our Secretary of the Commonwealth for guidance with respect to negotiating with our municipal governments. Consider making available to citizens information about negotiation on the Public Records Division web pages. When he was in office Attorney General Scott Harshbarger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Harshbarger began making available information about negotiating. He provided negotiation information for teens on his AG web pages.
Negotiation resources could be listed, for example the Program on Negotiation
at
http://pon.harvard.edu
or
http://www.gerryspence.com/howtoargue.html
How about our Public Records Division, the State Secretary, Division of Open Government, our State Attorney General sponsoring a high school essay and college essay contest?… as is done in Connecticut offering students opportunity to write about principles of open government FOI Freedom of Information public records, Sunshine open public meetings, negotiation
http://www.state.ct.us/foi/
http://www.state.ct.us/foi/Students/Contest/CFOG%20Contests/2010CFOGEssay/CFOG_2010_Essay_Contest_Winners.htm
These are the kinds of activities that government agencies can do to attract people better qualified and actually interested in improving our state and local governments.
