Big day in Billerica yesterday. Governor Baker dropped in for a ceremony designating it “Yankee Doodle Town.” (The backstory: in 1775 a young Billerica patriot seeking to join the Minutemen was captured by the British while he was trying to buy a rifle. After tarring and feathering him, the Redcoats mockingly called him “Yankee Doodle.” And then, as so often happens, cultural appropriation transformed a term of derision into one of honor.)
The Yankee Doodle Town law (Chapter 240 of the Acts of 2016) was only one of many designations among this year’s enactments. Other laws bestowed honorifics in memory of various beloved local community members upon: a bridge, a courtroom, a basketball court and a traffic island. The third Monday in April is now to be celebrated as First Responder Day. (In some years in the future First Responder Day will fall during the second-to-the-last full week in that month, aka Licensed Practical Nurse Week.)
And designations like these are just one of the categories of laws the Legislature passes that apply to only one town, or to only one public space, or to only one job title or one person. We have lots of laws exempting a single position (like the deputy police chief in the town of Haverhill) from the Civil Service laws, or establishing a sick leave bank for one state employee, or granting an additional liquor license to one municipality.
It occurred to me recently to wonder whether one-shot laws like these are making up a greater share of the Legislature’s statutory output than used to be the case. It seems I was right: in the 1997-1998 session, about one law in ten fell into this category, but in the two most recent completed sessions, that ratio has increased to closer to one in three. During that time, the Legislature gave special designations to 67 public spaces, or days (or weeks, or months), established 200 sick leave banks for state employees, exempted 34 positions from Civil Service laws, and granted additional liquor licenses to municipalities on 104 occasions.
This development, while nowhere close to the most worrisome legislative trend on Beacon Hill (disclosure: I confess to tuning in to the as-yet uncompleted contest between “Roadrunner” and “Dream On” for the title of Official State Rock Song), may be a symptom of another, more ominous tendency among legislators to adopt leadership’s position on issues of real significance and then to content themselves with hyperlocal items lacking in wide application or great import. If I were among the 50 or so legislators whose positions on gambling underwent 180’s after pro-casino Bob DeLeo succeeded anti-casino Sal DiMasi as Speaker of the House, for example, I might think it wise to keep my head down on the big stuff and and deliver some constituent services instead, even if they are services of the merely symbolic kind.
After the 2015-2016 session ends, I’ll check the numbers again to see if this trend is continuing. In the meantime, don’t forget to commemorate Eddie Eagle Gun Safety week, which starts on Saturday.
Part of a bill that’s on the move in the House today:
to see how much money is actually takes to do this sort of thing? That would make for an interesting advertisement for anyone challenging the leadership of the house.
How do you measure marginal cost when (nearly) all the people involved are on salary? I mean, what’s the argument that they’d be doing anything else if that item wasn’t in the bill?