I have, at various times, served in local (town) government. I’m guessing that most of my fellow BMG participants who have done or now do the same have encountered the venerable “Streetlight strategy”, used by self-serving public officials to manipulate open government to their own often venal benefit.
Town meetings, whether open or representative, are generally scheduled to run a few successive nights. Most require a warrant to be published ahead of time, presenting every article to be acted on by town meeting. Those warrants often include items that would almost surely be rejected by informed town meeting members voting on the basis of a full presentation of the relevant facts and issues. The purpose of the “Streetlight strategy” is to assure the passage of those unpopular articles.
Here is how it works.
First, the offending article is buried as deeply as possible in innocuous surrounding language. As an example, consider a town that has decided on a “Town Manager” form of government. The compensation of such a position is frequently pegged to the size of the payroll managed by the individual. More town employees at higher wages generally translate to more compensation for the manager. Political influence also tends to increase with employee headcount. In smaller towns, the friends, neighbors, and family members of town workers become a potent political force. Even without outright political corruption, that same group often becomes a lucrative economic engine for those in power.
Given this context, it is therefore not surprising to see warrant articles that result in significant increases in both headcount and payroll for departments like police, fire, and public works. The first step in the “Streetlight Strategy” is to identify a particular arcane town account (“Municipal repair reserve”, or “Snow removal reserve”, or similar items) and write a warrant article proposing a dramatic increase. Usually the article cites accurate facts about how little has been placed in the reserve historically and paints a dire forecast of what happens if the reserve is exhausted. It’s crucial that the writing be very dense, contain lots of buzzwords, and be buried deep in the middle of the warrant.
A companion article is put forward proposing a significant increase in the streetlight replacement account. That account is always small (in comparison to others), so it’s easy to propose doubling or tripling it without proposing to spend an unseemly amount of money. That “Streetlight” article is written clearly and concisely.
Now comes the fun part. The Town Manager works unofficially with the town meeting moderator to develop a proposed agenda, specifying the order in which articles will be considered. The streetlight article is ideally placed somewhere in the middle of the agenda, so that comes up near the start of the second night of a two-night town meeting. It must precede the reserve article.
It is generally not hard to encourage discussion about the streetlight article. There will always be certain “conservative” town meeting members who can be counted on to squawk about any large percentage increase, regardless of the absolute dollar amount. Very few town meeting members (or attendees) actually take the enormous amount of time required to fully understand the import of every change in every article. So a discussion about the huge increase in the Streetlight Repair budget will always begin. The moderator (following the guidance of the Town Manager) will work the town meeting to ensure that the streetlight discussion is lengthy, protracted, and acrimonious.
With any luck at all, and with the help of a moderately skilled moderator, the streetlight debate will consume the bulk of the evening. A good moderator can stretch things out by making sure there are a few quorum calls, lots of debate about the fairness of calling for a vote before members have had their say, and so on. Ultimate, the streetlight article fails.
Now, the remainder of the warrant remains to be acted on. Nobody wants to stay another night. Nobody wants to stay past 11:00p or so. Thus, members themselves (again encouraged by the moderator) push their way through the rest of the warrant. Folks who stand to ask questions are not greeted warmly by their fellow members or the moderator. Since nobody understands the reserve article anyway, it generally passes with minimal discussion and with overwhelming support.
The deed is done.
Once the article is passed, the Town Manager will use his or her hiring authority to increase the head-count or payroll as desired, but with no increase in the budgeted line-item for that department. Since no increase is proposed, town meeting approval is not required. Somewhere around Q3, that department will (of course) run out of funds. At that point, the Town Manager will go before the fincom and propose to transfer funds from the reserve account passed at town meeting. The Town Manager will cite the dire consequences of failing to act (“We’ll have to lay off police”, “We’ll have to restrict water consumption”, and similar arguments). The fincom will invariably approve the transfer, and the deed is done.
The strategy is reminiscent of the “Strawman” or “Bait-and-switch” sales strategies. It is devastatingly effective.
I encourage those who suggest that this doesn’t happen to take another look at the on-going “Welfare Fraud” issue. Beacon Hill would MUCH PREFER us to have a lengthy, protracted, and acrimonious debate about welfare fraud.
“Welfare Fraud” is the streetlight article. We should, in my opinion, be working very carefully to identify the “reserve article” that is the real purpose of the exercise.
Maybe something sort of like this has happened some place, but it is a funny and long lead-in to the “Welfare Fraud” scam, which actually needs no introduction and is pretty well understood.
As for your town meeting (not living in Somerville any more I guess), perhaps had you confined yourself to an actual description of an actual appropriation in an actual town you could have been clearer and avoided the factual errors.
As it is, you describe a conspiracy that is so broad as to involve, apparently, such a substantial segment of the town as to suggest it’s not so much trickery but rather just a result legitimately reached, if perhaps an unwise one.
A big distraction from the issue of the 2013 version of Reagan’s welfare queens.
I won’t name names, but it did happen — in the town of Billerica. I served as both town meeting member and as a member of the fincom.
I may not be able to offer the specific line item numbers after 30 years, but I assure you that it most definitely did happen. I apologize if my description was so unclear that you weren’t able to follow it.
The “conspiracy” actually isn’t broad at all. It requires a Town Manager with enough political chops to run the game and a Town Moderator who the Town Manager can work with. The rest of the players are just normal public servants doing their best to enlarge their departments — no “conspiracy”, just typical self-interest.
So I wonder — what issue do you think today’s “Welfare Queen” scam operators are hoping to obscure?
Roll out the fainting couch for Somerville Tom! Manipulating the agenda to ensure a measure will pass by detracting a bunch of nay-saying voters! Democracy trembles. Note that all the cliche characters are here: the evil town administrator, the pliant moderator, the wily finance committee. Good grief. BTW here in SmallTown, we limit the size of the Reserve Fund to about $10,000 each year so this gambit can’t succeed. “Politics ain’t beanbag” as Mr. Dooley advised.
I don’t know if Billerica in the early 80s counts as “small town” in your book. Does your town have only one reserve fund? As I recall, the Town of Billerica had many.
As a member of the fincom, we found that the most effective strategy for controlling this particular gambit was to require town meeting approval of any transfer request in excess of a fixed maximum. That, in turn, meant that the Town Manager had to convene a special town meeting to accomplish the goal of the strategy (or wait for the next regularly scheduled one).
I offered this post after participating in an exchange on our current Welfare Fraud thread where christopher wonders why requiring Photo IDs on EBT cards is a bad thing.
I was struck by the similarity between that exchange and the endless debates that used to rage in the Billerica town meeting about the expected lifespan of the bulbs why some other bulb wouldn’t be better — the outcome of which would not move the overall budget (never mind the property tax paid by any home owner) by a measurable amount.
I agree that politics ain’t beanbag. We are in the process of destroying our public transportation infrastructure because we allegedly can’t afford to improve it, and instead of debating that we are passionately arguing about welfare fraud.
…between alleged welfare fraud and self-serving and your reference to an exchange with me on another thread got my attention. For the record I’ve rethought my comments on EBT IDs based on the points you and others made, but am still confused about the link between the two issues. Are you saying that it is the habit of politicians to use phony scandals to distract the public’s attention from real concerns? If so you’ll get no argument from me and I doubt much from anyone here.
Yes, I am saying that politicians (even Democrats) use high-profile and ultimately meaningless issues to distract voters (and therefore legislators) from the real issues. The media, and especially newspapers, used to be better at helping the public ignore the smoke and focus on the fire.
I suggest that this latest round of excitement about “welfare fraud” conveniently distracts attention from the far more substantive question of what happens to our state if we fail to invest in our transportation infrastructure.
I appreciate the kind words, and the visibility.
Dracut tends not to play games with its town meetings (open rather than representative, one of the largest towns to still do that) and rarely do they last more than one night. There are of course from time to time articles which genuinely attract lengthy discussion. I ran for Moderator a couple years ago and had I succeeded I would not have acted as you described. I would see myself as working for the legislative branch and ensuring that process ran smoothly, not as the Town Manager’s lackey.
Wish this was true of the state.
Having just fought 5 years to get a public building approved (2013 success) – I’ll tell you there is not a lot of waste in your local town – especially if you don’t have elected town meeting representatives.
The Town Moderator and selectman are elected and meant to be a check and balance – it works in my town.
the state of Massachusetts is an entire other issue.
I know that Wareham does not have a set order of warrant articles. Rather, after each article receives a vote, a random draw is held to settle which will be the next discussed. How rare is this?
Pettifogging : The practice of inundating listeners with petty details in order to obscure the larger, more vital, point.
What somervilletom describes is just a version of pettifogging in that it uses a mundane, somewhat petty, issue to gin up excitement to obscure the real issue, the reserve warrant.
The Declaration of Independence itself has a long list of grievances that detail methods by which George III ostensibly agreed to demands or otherwise recognized the legitimacy of the grievances but made the process and/or the administration of those demands so onerous as to make them unreachable. It’s another species of what is described here but the essence is the same. It’s the very theory behind the filibuster in the Senate (and formerly the HoR): make the exercise of government uncomfortable to a degree that lesser mortals (read: all of us) will not have the stamina or will to see it through to the end.
However, what bothers me the most about this practice is the possibility of its necessity: since (at least in Mass) the passage of proposition 2 1/2 town managers and others may have had to resort to such tactics to get revenue because, except in the direst of circumstance, prop 2 1/2 overrides are rarely successful. If there were more possibility of revenue would town managers and others resort to such tactics that are, while unethical, have a greater likelihood of success. What are the options: a straight vote to raise revenue or underhanded tactics?
What Tom describes does not raise any revenue, though it might have before 1983. It spends revenue.
Consequently it would be pretty unlikely today, since the success of such a gambit would require a big conspicuous cut elsewhere.
I’ve consulted my excellent sources and there IS a dasterly plan to sneak by while we’re all focused on welfare fraud. It was conceived by the (United Nations) Heritage Foundation, secretly funded by (George Soros) the Koch brothers and it’s point is to have all sales of alcoholic beverages subject to the 6.25 % sales tax. Oh, wait…..
Town employee headcount has been flat for a number of years.
Town Meeting (open) is a real snoozer.