Will Your Vote Count on the Budget Referendum?

In a recent article, I discussed some fundamental and serious flaws with the proposed charter for Groton, CT. Today, I'm going to explain how the referendum in the new charter does not actually give voters any control over the budget and can and will be completely ignored.

The proponents of this new charter believe that the budget referendum will somehow be the cure for every problem that Groton has. Groton certainly has it's challenges, and reasonable people can differ on the efficacy of a budget referendum to fix them, but to do that the referendum must have the power to control the budget, and due to a flaw in 9.12.6.6 of the proposed referendum, the referendum does not actually control the budget.

9.12.6.6 Interim Budget and Fixing the Tax Rate In case a Budget is not approved by June 30, the budget submitted by the Town Council per Section 9.10.3 shall be utilized as an interim budget until a new Budget is approved by referendum. Within three (3) business days after an interim budget is approved goes in to effect, the Town Council will set a mill rate that shall be sufficient, with the income from other sources, to meet the estimated expenses of the Town for the next fiscal year.

So there's an interim budget. That's a good solution to the budget chaos that neighboring towns have, right?

Well, yes, it does prevent budget chaos, but it also removes the teeth from the referendum. Let's look at an example.

Whatever the charter was supposed to do, it doesn't do it.

Since the budget referendum must be held every two weeks after the initial vote fails, 9.12.6.6 effectively says that there can be up to three referendums before the interim budget takes effect.

Let us imagine that the Town Council puts up a budget of $45,000,000 for an initial vote. The referendum fails, and the Town Council makes a good faith effort to offer a new budget with deep cuts, this time $43,000,000. It fails as well. So, the Town Council makes a third effort with a $41,000,000 budget. A $4,000,000 cut means a lot of cuts in services, but the people are speaking and they are trying to listen.

The people vote no again. June 30th comes around and 9.12.6.6 comes into effect. The first, $45,000,000 budget goes into effect and the Town Council sets a mill rate accordingly.

If your car keeps breaking down, you fix the car.
You don't throw away your tool box.

The initial budget that the Town Council wanted is now in effect. Why would they ever put forth another budget for vote that was lower? If no budget ever passes, the $45,000,000 sticks, and the Town Council has all the power to determine what gets voted on.

After the Town Council offers $45,000,000 a couple more times, the referendum will either pass when people realize it is already in effect, or it will keep failing... until it passes because people realize it's already in effect.

The following year, there's no reason for the Council to mess around. They'll just put forward the budget they want in the first place, and it doesn't matter if it passes or fails because after three votes it goes into effect anyway.

Of course, this exercise in fake democracy costs taxpayers about $100,000 every year, or $400,000 over the course of a Town Council's four year term. That's the same amount it cost to get the Fitch Community Center up and running. That's a lot of money to waste to pretend the public can influence the budget.


Ultimately, the check of the RTM and it's reduction of 1-2% every year from the budget is gone. The Board of Finance is powerless. The referendum is easily ignored. In any system with no checks and balances in place, the natural result is budgets slowly but inexorably growing.

Spending money on a referendum that doesn't matter.
Yeah, it's kind of like that.

Whatever this new charter was intended to do, it doesn't do it. The people of Groton trade away their representation through the RTM for a vote in a referendum that ultimately doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you like big government or small government, lower taxes or more services, there is no possible agenda you could have that is served by this poorly written and deeply flawed charter.

The only reasonable vote on the proposed Groton charter is NO.

The Christmas Tree Scenario

I have been writing a series of articles about the proposed charter revision for Groton, Connecticut. This article gives a good understanding to start from if you are not familiar with the issue.

One of the great promises of Groton's proposed Charter Revision is that of better control of the budget, but is that promise really true? I'd like to discuss what I call The Christmas Tree Scenario.

Let us imagine a town called Charter Town. Charter Town is a town of 40,000 people that operates under the Charter as proposed.

We have been assured that the public will have sufficient knowledge of the budget to make an informed decision, and we're accepting that assumption for this scenario. In fact, we're going to assume that the public is not only fully knowledgeable but that the people of Charter Town are magically able to understand the importance of every aspect of the budget and know the motivations of the Town Councilors.

The optimum budget for Charter Town this year is $100,000,000, and everyone would agree to that budget because everyone knows it's the right number.

But Councilor A would really like to see the town dock renovated, which will cost $110,000.

Councilor B is okay with that, as long as she can get a new sound system into the high school auditorium for $110,000.

Councilor C really wants to see another police officer hired, which will cost $110,000.

Etc. Etc. With all 9 Councilors each adding their own $110,000 addition.

We call this the Christmas Tree Scenario because in certain situations, everyone will want to hang their own ornament on the Christmas tree.

None of these little additions are inappropriate, and some would be nice to have, but they are also not necessary. They are what is often referred to at the Groton RTM as "nice to haves." But each little Nice to Have adds up. In this case, to a million dollars.

9 councilors, each adding their own small pet project add $1,000,000 to the budget, turning an optimum $100 million budget into a $101 million budget: a modest 1% increase.

The well informed and rational voters are faced with a choice. Should they approve this budget, recognizing that the small additional expenditures are actually nice to have and don't cost that much, or should they vote to fail the budget, incurring the additional expense and uncertainty of one or more potential revotes?

If Charter Town had a Representative Town Meeting reviewing the budget line by line, it could excise the unneeded line items and bring the budget down to the $100 million optimum budget, but having only a referendum, they can either say yes or no to the whole thing.

Knowing that $100 million is perfect and $101 million is only a tiny bit more, a rational electorate can be expected to approve such a budget.

Let us assume a 2% rate of inflation. In that case, next year's budget in Charter Town should be $102 million, but with last year's budget being $101 million, the budget with inflation is $103.02 million. More importantly, in the next cycle, everyone gets to hang an ornament on the budget tree again. We'll assume that they never add more than a million dollars of special projects.

So, what does that do after a decade?

Charter Town Budgets
Year	Optimum	Actual
2020	$100,000,000.00	$101,000,000.00
2021	$102,000,000.00	$104,020,000.00
2022	$104,040,000.00	$107,100,400.00
2023	$106,120,800.00	$110,242,408.00
2024	$108,243,216.00	$113,447,256.16
2025	$110,408,080.32	$116,716,201.28
2026	$112,616,241.93	$120,050,525.31
2027	$114,868,566.76	$123,451,535.82
2028	$117,165,938.10	$126,920,566.53
2029	$119,509,256.86	$130,458,977.86
2030	$121,899,442.00	$134,068,157.42

By 2030, Charter Town's budget is $12,168,715.42 higher than it would have been with a line item budget process, or 10%. By 2065, it's 30% higher than it should have been. All because of a tiny increase of less than one percent of great projects that are simply a little more than is strictly necessary.

A complaint of Groton's RTM is that it only trims a percentage point or two off of the budget. If Charter Town had an RTM that trimmed 1% from their budget, their taxes would be 10% lower in ten years.

But the Voters Won't Do That

Perhaps you believe that the voters in Groton are more like the voters in another very similar town called Budget Town. They also have 40,000 residents and they also follow our proposed charter. The difference is that their voters are strict. They will have none of this one percent shenanigans. To the Town Council they say, "You trim the fat or we vote your budget down. We have the ultimate power here!"

After all, the voters hold the final authority through the budget referendum... or do they.

What happens if the voters fail the budget? In the new proposed charter...

9.12.6 Should either budget fail to be approved by a majority of those voting thereon, the Council shall, within seven days after a failed referendum, recommend a revised budget for each rejected budget, which may be less or greater than the failed budget, as the Council shall deem appropriate based on the results of the referendum.

I bolded a key word in that section. It says "may" not "shall." That means that they Council can return the same budget in the next referendum, as Stonington did recently when they put up a budget that was rejected and then put up the same budget which was accepted.

But what happens if the budget fails three times?

9.12.6.6 Interim Budget and Fixing the Tax Rate In case a Budget is not approved by June 30, the budget submitted by the Town Council per Section 9.10.3 shall be utilized as an interim budget until a new Budget is approved by referendum. Within three (3) business days after an interim budget is approved goes in to effect, the Town Council will set a mill rate that shall be sufficient, with the income from other sources, to meet the estimated expenses of the Town for the next fiscal year. 

Back to our Budget Town scenario, the Town Council puts up a $101 million budget in May, and it fails. It puts up the same budget in June, and it fails. It then returns the budget to the voters a third time, and fails again.

It is now June 30th, the original budget which has failed in referendum three times now becomes the "interim budget," and the Town Council sets mill rates based on it. At this point, the Town Council can simply keep sending out the same budget every two weeks until either it becomes the next year or the voters give up an accept it.

The check on this is that the Town Council can be voted out in the next election... except that the terms are now four years, so if they do this early in their term, it is likely it will be long lost to memory when an election finally comes around.

Or the other way...

After the budget passes, the Town Council sets the mill rate. This means that, when the voters vote, they do not actually know what the budget will give them in terms of a tax rate. It also means that the Town Council could choose to add a small margin of safety into the mill rate to make sure it will cover all expected expenses. They could do something modest, say 1%. That's just prudent budgeting, right?

Oh, what's this?

9.15.2 The Council may make Emergency Appropriations not exceeding one-hundred thousand dollars ($100,000), by a vote of not less than seven (7) members of the Council, provided a public hearing, at which the public shall have an opportunity to be heard, shall be held prior to making such appropriations. The notice shall be made in accordance with Section 9.19. Such hearing and notice of hearing may be waived if the Council by an affirmative vote of not less than eight (8) of its members, shall decide that a delay in making the Emergency Appropriation would jeopardize the lives, health, or property of citizens.

Remember how Councilor A wanted to put money into the town dock? Well, now it's really falling apart. It could become dangerous before the next budget cycle. Better make an emergency appropriate. After all, we have a little more than expected in the general fund.

If the town dock repair is an emergency, that additional police officer that Councilor C wanted is definitely an emergency. The police force has been dangerously understaffed, and there is that unanticipated cash in the general fund.

As a side note, let's also hope there's never a real emergency that requires more than $100,000, because there's no provision for doing so.

Who's Empowered?

In summary, the Town Council, which now has 4 year terms, has the ability to force a budget around referendum objections, and gets to set the mill rate after the budget is passed.

This Charter Revision definitely empowers someone, but it's not the voters.

Three Great Loopholes In the Groton Charter Revision

I have been writing a series of articles about the proposed charter revision for Groton, Connecticut. This article gives a good understanding to start from if you are not familiar with the issue.

There are three crucial loopholes in the proposed charter for Groton, CT, which are exacerbated by the increase of their term from two years to four.

• The Town Council can effectively ignore the referendum results
• Mill rates are set after the budget is approved
• Emergency allocations without check

Ignoring the Referendum

The voters hold the final authority through the budget referendum... or do they.

What happens if the voters fail the budget? In the new proposed charter...

9.12.6 Should either budget fail to be approved by a majority of those voting thereon, the Council shall, within seven days after a failed referendum, recommend a revised budget for each rejected budget, which may be less or greater than the failed budget, as the Council shall deem appropriate based on the results of the referendum.

The Groton Town Council is normally comprised of
good, honest people looking to serve the people, but the
Charter must be written to prevent abuse by those who
might act poorly. Bad rules encourage bad behavior.

I bolded a key word in that section. It says "may" not "shall." That means that they Council can return the same budget in the next referendum, as Stonington did recently when they put up a budget that was rejected and then put up the same budget which was accepted.

But what happens if the budget fails three times?

9.12.6.6 Interim Budget and Fixing the Tax Rate In case a Budget is not approved by June 30, the budget submitted by the Town Council per Section 9.10.3 shall be utilized as an interim budget until a new Budget is approved by referendum. Within three (3) business days after an interim budget is approved goes in to effect, the Town Council will set a mill rate that shall be sufficient, with the income from other sources, to meet the estimated expenses of the Town for the next fiscal year. 

If the Town Council puts up a budget in May, and it fails, it can put up the same budget in June. When it fails, it can return the same budget to the voters a third time to be voted down a third time.

It is now June 30th, the original budget which has failed in referendum three times now becomes the "interim budget," and the Town Council sets mill rates based on it. At this point, the Town Council can simply keep sending out the same budget every two weeks until either it becomes the next year or the voters give up an accept it.

The check on this is that the Town Council can be voted out in the next election... except that the terms are now four years, so if they do this early in their term, it is likely it will be long lost to memory when an election finally comes around, meaning there is really no check at all.

The Mill Rate Is Set After the Referendum

The first thing that this means is that voters do not know what tax rate they are voting on. This is like buying a car knowing the sale price but not knowing your monthly payment. You're not paying $119,000,000, you're paying your share of taxes, but that's a mystery until the Town Council chooses it.

While there are guidelines to what they should do, they have quite a bit of latitude, which becomes important when you consider the power of Emergency Allocation, which was previously checked by the RTM, but will be checked by no one at all under the proposed revision.

Emergency Allocation Loophole

After the budget passes, the Town Council sets the mill rate. This means that, when the voters vote, they do not actually know what the budget will give them in terms of a tax rate. It also means that the Town Council could choose to add a small margin of safety into the mill rate to make sure it will cover all expected expenses. They could do something modest, say 1%. That's just prudent budgeting, right?

Oh, what's this?

9.15.2 The Council may make Emergency Appropriations not exceeding one-hundred thousand dollars ($100,000), by a vote of not less than seven (7) members of the Council, provided a public hearing, at which the public shall have an opportunity to be heard, shall be held prior to making such appropriations. The notice shall be made in accordance with Section 9.19. Such hearing and notice of hearing may be waived if the Council by an affirmative vote of not less than eight (8) of its members, shall decide that a delay in making the Emergency Appropriation would jeopardize the lives, health, or property of citizens.

Seven Councilors will have the power to determine any
emergency and act on it... unless it's over $100,000.
Then we're just out of luck.

With the agreement of 7 Councilors, they can agree that anything they like is an emergency, and many issues can be spun as emergencies. The police department is dangerously understaffed. Hiring another officer is an emergency. That road is a hazard, paving it is an emergency. That building is about to collapse. Fixing it is an emergency.

Under the present system, all such transfers must be approved by the RTM, requiring accountability and giving a check in which the transfer could be prevented.

Under the proposed charter, items that could not get approved in the referendum approved budget, could be slipped back in as "emergencies," and there's no one who can stop them.

On the other hand, let's also hope there's never a real emergency that requires more than $100,000, because there's no provision for doing so.

Who's Empowered?

In summary, the Town Council, which now has 4 year terms, has the ability to force a budget around referendum objections, and gets to set the mill rate after the budget is passed.

This Charter Revision definitely empowers someone, but it's not the voters. So, if you're planning to vote Yes on this revision because you think it will empower you as a voter, you may find yourself somewhat disappointed.

Thoughts on Representative Town Meeting, Applicable to the Present State of Groton

1. A single Assembly is liable to all the vices, follies and frailties of an individual. Subject to fits of humour, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities of prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments: And all these errors ought to be corrected and defects supplied by some controuling power.

2. A single Assembly is apt to be avaricious, and in time will not scruple to exempt itself from burthens which it will lay, without compunction, on its constituents.

-John Adams, Thoughts on Government, Applicable to the Present State of the American Colonies

In 1776 John Adams was asked for suggestions on the form that the new colonial governments should take, and he responded with a treatise called Thoughts on Government, Applicable to the Present State of the American Colonies, in which he discussed the importance of having a bicameral rather than unicameral legislature.

American government is based on the principle that voters with incomplete information will make choices to elect flawed human beings to represent them, as all humans are. Systems of checks and balances are created throughout the system to counterbalance the natural limitations of humans in roles of leadership.

The Founding Fathers worked with the idea of the Few and the Many. The Few constitute the influential, the monied, the connected, those who are familiar with the gears and levers of government. The Many constitute the the general population who simply wish to live their lives, raise their families, and pursue happiness.

Our state and federal government were created as they are so that one house (the Senate) might represent the Few, while the other (the House) represented the Many.

In Groton, we see in structure of our town government an absolutely beautiful example of bicameral governance on a local level. In Groton, there is a Town Council of 9 members elected at large, and a Representative Town Meeting (RTM) of 41 members elected among 7 districts.

Members of both bodies volunteer their time for the good of their community, but Town Councilors are expected to spend 15 hours and more every single week for what is ultimately a very thankless job. The RTM, by contrast, spends a few hours per month in meetings, except for during the month of May when they spend considerable time poring over every line of a 250 page budget.

Naturally, the pool of potential Town Councilors, individuals who have the talent to serve and the willingness to invest hundreds of unpaid hours, is quite a bit more limited than the pool of those who might serve on the RTM. The result is a difference in the character of the two bodies.

Town Councilors tend to be people of greater political involvement in the town and its history, which is multiplied once on the Council as they work closely with staff throughout the town. This is both an asset and a hindrance. It is an asset as their familiarity allows them to better understand the inner workings of our town. It is a hindrance as their increasing familiarity may cause them to overlook errors and inferior solutions, much as one ceases to notice a creaky step in their house after many years of living there.

41 regular citizens coming together for the benefit
of their community and their neighbors. There can be
no better representation of true republican democracy than
the New England town meeting.

Covering this blindspot is the relative enthusiasm and inexperience of the RTM members. For any given issue, some of the members are encountering it for the first time, giving them the opportunity to approach it with fresh eyes, possibly asking questions that have not been asked before, while others have decades of experience in government giving them a seasoned outsider perspective.

In the most extreme circumstances, the RTM can come together and even reverse actions of the Town Council or initiate their own actions. These tools are rarely employed, but their existence weighs into every decision that the Town Council makes.

All of the meetings of the Town Council and the RTM are recorded by Groton Municipal Television and uploaded to YouTube. Watch a couple Town Council meetings and contrast them to RTM meetings. Much of the work of the Town Council is done behind the scenes in caucuses and planning meetings. Their meetings are quick, efficient, and orderly, which is good for the conduct of business but often fail to allow the viewer to fully grasp the function of the government.

The RTM, by contrast, contains many members who are effectively members of the general public coming forward to serve their neighbors. They may have little more involvement in government affairs than anyone else living on their street, so the questions that they pose to the Town Manager, the Superintendent of Schools, or any other staff who come before the RTM are the questions of their neighbors. The RTM gives voice to every citizen, both through direct citizen comment and though their representatives.

The RTM is one of the most incredible tools of democratic engagement. The question may be posed as to whether the RTM has been employed to its best potential here in the town of Groton, but it is like any tool. It must be employed by motivated and skilled hands to create a beneficial result.

There can be no doubt that the mere capability of the RTM to veto an ordinance has caused the Town Council to give a second thought to a flawed ordinance.

There can be no doubt that items of the budget have been refined and cut prior to coming to the RTM, knowing that the RTM would reduce it if the Town Council did not.

There can be no doubt that the ability of the RTM to inquire has brought sunlight to many functions of our town.

There can simply be no doubt that the town of Groton, Connecticut is a better governed town because of the powerful direct influence that the RTM allows the common citizen to have on the government process.

The Groton Charter Revision In Brief

On November 6th, Groton, Connecticut will vote on a proposed revision to the Charter which governs the structure of the town.

Presently, Groton has a 9 member Town Council and a 41 member (1 per 1000 residents) Representative Town Meeting. The Town Council is the seat of primary authority in the town. They have the power to create ordinances, develop the budget, and make contracts with employees among other powers.

The Representative Town Meeting reviews the budget line by line, approving or reducing the Town Council's proposal. They can also restore funding if the Council cut the Town Manager's or Board of Education's recommendations. The RTM has the power to veto ordinances of the Town Council and even the Power of Initiative to create their own.

It is effectively a bicameral legislature, with the Town Council as the upper house and the RTM as the lower house, with diminutive authority but providing a check on the power of the Town Council.

Groton's Right to Vote is the political action committee advocating for this revision, and you can find a summary of their arguments on their web site.

What's Changing
The main thing that the charter revision will do is eliminate the RTM and create a Finance Board and budget referendum. Rather than the Town Council creating a budget to be reviewed by the RTM, the Finance Board will work with the Town Manager to create a budget recommendation. The Town Council will then take that recommendation and craft the actual budget. This budget will then be voted on in a referendum.

The GRTV web site summarizes this as follows:

• Gives citizens the right to vote on our annual budget, like they do in the City of Groton and the Towns of Stonington, East Lyme, Guilford, Clinton, Madison, Newtown, Cromwell and many other communities in CT.  Town and Education budgets are approved separately.
• Greatly simplifies Town Government by eliminating the RTM, no other Town in Connecticut has a Town Council and an RTM like Groton has. 
• Provides for a Board of Finance, a stand-alone elected body, to support the Town Council in financial matters and keep the public informed.
• Provides for a transparent annual budget development process with many opportunities for citizen input including mandatory budget guidance by the Town Council.

What's not Changing

• Maintains the Town Council/Town Manager form of government. Town Council, sets policy for the Town, elected at-large, stays at 9 members. Town Manager executes policy and runs the town. Virtually no change to the core of our town government.
• The seven voting districts will remain as is.   No changes.

That might sound pretty good to some, but is it really?
All that sounds pretty good, doesn't it. I mean, who doesn't want the "right to vote?"

It's a little more complicated than that. In future articles, I'll be going into great depth on a number of these topics, but let's just spend a few moments on each of these points.

The Right to Vote

Sprague just recently passed a budget after four months of
revotes. North Stonington once required 9 elections to pass
a budget. Groton could see similar problems.

They do indeed have budget referendums in many other towns, most of them smaller than Groton, and if you speak to people who live in those towns, you will find that most of them are quite disappointed with the results of this system. A town official from a local town explained that about ten years ago, there was a wave of charter revisions replacing town meetings with referendums, and almost without exception, the towns that have undergone such transitions regret their choice to do so. The election process creates uncertainty and unnecessary expense in the municipal governance process. Recently Sprague, a town of 2,900 people (compared to Groton's 41,000), took four months to pass a budget. North Stonington once took 9 votes to finally approve a budget. In small towns, a budget referendum only costs a few thousand dollars. In Groton, each vote will cost $20,000-$25,000

Massachusetts, which has town property taxes on average 1/3 what they are in Connecticut, has a town meeting in every town, but a referendum for any tax increase of more than 2.5%. This is called a Prop 2 1/2 Override. Thus, they are able to have an efficient and representative system of budget creation with a check against excessive tax increases. To many, this would seem to be a more reasonable, less costly form of a budget referendum for Groton to adopt, rather than the extreme version being proposed.

Greatly simplifies Town Government by eliminating the RTM

Simple government is not necessarily better government. The RTM provides an opportunity for ordinary citizens to participate in the government process. Whether a town has a council or board of selectmen, the close involvement of the town leadership with the day to day workings of the government can induce a form of groupthink, sometimes causing them to overlook obvious solutions or problems that an outsider might spot at once. The RTM is a simple and effective solution to this problem, allowing 41 engaged citizens to take a second look at all the major activities of the town.

The founding fathers intentionally created complexity
in government called checks and balances to ensure a
balance of power which would create stability and fairness.

Eliminating the RTM makes town government simpler and smaller in one way, but our government is intentionally built on a system of checks and balances. The President requires Senate approval for appointments. Congress must get a Presidential signature to pass a bill. The Judiciary may review the actions of either. In the same way, the RTM provides a check and review on the actions of the Town Council. Take away the RTM, and 5 members of the Town Council (a simple majority) have a lot more power with no check or balance.

Board of Finance and Transparent Annual Budget Process

An argument of GRTV is that the early part of the budget process is behind closed doors, led by department heads, and that by the time the budget reaches the Town Council and the RTM, much of it is already set. The GRTV supporters argue that the new charter will create public hearings earlier in the process as the Board of Finance has meetings to create the budget. However, the truth is members of the public can speak to the Town Council and RTM anytime, all year long, and the Council holds a public hearing on the budget before the budget process begins. It’s not so clear anything the BOF does will be different.  Furthermore, the BOF in Groton has no actual power or authority. They are “advisory” only. Groton will be the only town in the state with a BOF with no actual power or authority. In every other town that has a BOF, they have actual power.

The RTM, along with the Town Council and Board of
Education can control staffing costs by reducing
positions, as they have done in the past.

The GRTV group argues that because the Town Council approves employee contracts, the RTM doesn’t have authority over the 80% of the budget that is employee costs.  Nothing could be further from the truth!  Most of the budget is made up of personnel costs, and those are based on contracts approved by the Town Council prior to the budget process. Only the Town Council and Board of Education approve contracts, and that won’t change with the new charter.

But, all three bodies, the Council, BOE and RTM can control overall employee costs (80% of the budget) by reducing positions, which has been done over the past two decades.  Many positions have been eliminated. Again, nothing will change in this regard, with the new charter. The claim that the RTM can’t act on 80% of the budget is inaccurate.

Virtually no change to the core of our town government

It is a bold statement to suggest that the elimination of a 41 member elected representative body constitutes "virtually no change to the core of our town government." The RTM not only reviews the budget, but reviews ordinances, financial transfers, and other town activities. Beyond the official powers of the RTM, the RTM creates a method for 41 additional members of the community to be involved in their town's government, and to provide oversight of every activity of the town. That's 41 more sets of eyes to notice potential cost savings. 41 more people to spot errors or even malfeasance. 41 more people keeping an eye on the cookie
jar. Many of these people become interested enough to go further and later run for Town Council or Board of Education. We lose the valuable learning opportunity for residents who want to be involved but cannot necessarily commit to weekly meetings all year long.

41 citizens getting involved, providing oversight, creating
solutions, identifying problems, and keeping an eye on
the cookie jar.

In the next few weeks leading up to the November 6th vote, I will be writing a series of articles to provide additional background and information on various aspects of the proposed revision.

You see, I came to this issue at first with not particular interest one way or the other, but the more I researched and studied, the more I found that our current system of government, while not perfect (what system is?), has an incredible elegance in its system of checks and balances. I have found the proposed charter revision to be unrefined, unfinished, and undesirable for the future of our town, and I believe that as I share what I have learned with you, you will come to agree with me that this revision should be rejected.

Groton's charter is not perfect, and revisions may be needed, but this revision, the one before us in November, is not the right choice for Groton.

Michael Whitehouse presently serves a representative on the Representative Town Meeting from the Fourth District. His opinions do not represent any official stance of the town of Groton. His opinions are his alone, but he hopes that you may find them compelling enough to share them.

Talk More, Smile More

There are two lines from Hamilton that are frequently quoted but which have limited utility in the real world. The first is:

Jefferson: If there’s a fire you’re trying to douse/You can’t put it out from inside the house

This is a catchy line except I checked with a friend of mine who's a firefighter. If you're trying to douse a house fire, you have to go inside the house. The only thing you can do from outside the house is keep the fire from spreading to other structures.

It's also wrong metaphorically. If there is an organization that is doing something wrong, the only place that change can really occur is from within. Sure, you can protest or boycott or legislate, but all of those things simply apply pressure so that those who are inside will create the change you desire. If you apply enough pressure from outside, you may simply cause the organization to collapse taking the good with the bad, which is often an undesirable outcome.

So, dousing fires: must be done from inside the house.

The other is:

Burr: Talk less, Smile more. 

I've been more reticent than I would normally be for two reasons. The first is that my business involves acquiring clients, and it is important not to offend prospective clients with strong political views. The second, more recently, was that I was trying to save an event, Steampunk Worlds Fair, in the face of an angry mob on the Internet.

For the first issue, I find that I offend when I talk a little, such as sharing a partisan meme or short video clip, but I rarely offend when I speak in long format such as a blog post. This may be because people don't like to read a lot of words so they don't actually read the posts, or it may be because a longer format gives me the opportunity to fully explain the issue and the nuances of it, discussing common ground and possibly educating rather than just inflaming. Either way, it works better to talk more.

In the second effort, I was unsuccessful. In retrospect, I believe that part of my lack of success was because, as an organization, the team I was working with chose a strategy of reticence. Official statements were few and far between meaning that rumors, offhand comments, and other scraps of information could not be clarified or explained. We were helpless before the winds of rumor, tossed in a stormy sea of innuendo and suspicion which is born of silence.

Thus, all signs point to the conclusion that I must talk more. Now that I am no longer involved officially with any event running organization, it is time that I share some clarifying details and background information which may not have been shared previously, and which I feel may help to inform the ongoing discourse.

Even in other arenas, I feel that I have something to contribute. I had become frustrated trying to discuss political issues because I had been doing it in the wrong format. I have spoken elsewhere about the tragic descent of discourse when we moved from Live Journal to Facebook and Twitter. Live Journal was a shared journaling platform. People communicated in long form, at least a few paragraphs. Now we communicate in 140 characters or a meme or image. We've devolved from arguments to schoolyard taunts and our society is all the poorer for it.

I, for one, shall be returning to the longer form of discussion. You will agree with some things I say. You will disagree with others. My intention is not to make everyone agree with me by any means, but simply to make them understand where I am coming from.

Perhaps you shall join me, share your own views in long format. I am eager to read them.

If there is something you'd like me to write about, please reach out to me at feedback@michaelwhitehouse.org.

Talk Politics Like a Salesman

What do I think? Well,
what do you think?

A good salesman has no political opinions. Well, that's not true. They have opinions just like anyone else, but they are not going let those opinions get in the way of a sale, and that means that you are unlikely to learn anything about them in a sales context. In fact, should you start talking politics to a salesperson, you might even come to think that they agree with you politically.

In my years of selling, I have encountered a great many people whose politics I disagreed with. Some radical left, some radical right, many radically wrong on basic points of fact. My job, however, was to sell, not educate, so I said a lot of "hmmmm" and "interesting" and "wow."

An interesting thing happens when you are listening to people espouse their political views but you cannot argue or disagree: you actually find yourself listening. Not agreeing, but at least understanding.

You come to understand a few things. First, everyone wants what's best for our country. They have different opinions on how to get there, different views of the size of the pie to be shared, different concepts of economics and justice, but the goal is still to find what is best.

You also come to see that many opinions are the result of the source of your information. If a person gets all their information from a place that claims that the Republicans are all Russian spies or Democrats are all socialist revolutionaries, their opinions on issues will follow. You will also find that when you are able to compare sources of information, that you have a great deal of common ground with most people.

This advice is also excellent for avoiding duels.

So, I encourage you all to try this exercise: next time you find yourself in a conversation about politics with someone you disagree with, approach it like a salesman. Say as little as you can about your own beliefs. Ask specific questions about how they learned that and explore their beliefs. Try to find common ground.

You will be amazed just how much you can hear when you are trying not to talk.

Win and Lose By the Rules of the Game

Like him or hate him, if you're an American,
he is your President.

I see a lot of liberals claiming that Trump didn't really win the election because he lost the popular vote. You see this #notmypresident hashtag. And this really bugs me.

I'm not a Trump supporter. I didn't vote for him, and I think his administration will be a negative experience for many people, especially already disadvantaged populations. A lot of the people who are so upset about his election have good reason to be so upset.

But he did win.

Some of this may have its roots in 2000 when there really was shenanigans: votes being "misplaced", miscounted and a legitimate doubt as to who was the legitimate winner. 2016 is not that. The votes are pretty clear, and, under the rules that were in place, Trump won.

Look at it this way. The other American past time, besides half of American convincing itself that the other half will destroy us all every four year, is Baseball. In Baseball, you win by getting the most runs. But what if we have a game between the Red Sox and the Yankees and the score is:

Red Sox - 5 runs, 12 hits
Yankees - 3 runs, 18 hits

You have to touch to hard pentagon thing to score, not the
soft square one. See, I know sports.

I don't know if this scenario is mathematically reasonable, but it's an example, so roll with it. No one would say, "well, the Yankees really should be called the winner because they got the most hits. They got more men on base and maybe even advanced more bases, so they should be the winner."

Of course not. The rules say that the most runs win. If you don't like it, then maybe you should create a new game called Buntball in which the most hits win, and runs mean nothing. But even if you created Buntball, you can't say that the Yankees would have won if they were playing Buntball because you would play Buntball totally differently than you'd play Baseball. You'd be pushing for hits instead of runs, and that's a different strategy.

Same thing in electoral politics. In the Electoral College system, it's by state, so if you aren't going to win a state, you don't compete for the state. You save your resources. In a Popular Vote system, you would compete for every vote, everywhere. Clinton would have needed to campaign in the deep red country. Trump would have been out in upstate New York and Western Massachusetts (not the Pioneer Valley, the rest of it) and Eastern and Northwestern Connecticut.

Would he still have won? I cannot say. But the way the race would be run would be entirely different, so the outcome would be different.

While I hate to say "You lost. Get over it," or more accurately "We lost. Get over it," the fact is that's the case. We lost. Get over it.

That doesn't mean that liberals should just give up and go home and wait for the next election. It means the opposite. It means that we need to stop wasting energy whining about what already happened and put our energy to the changes we can make.

The midterms are 22 months away. It's not too soon to start recruiting and supporting candidates.

Many important decisions are made at the state and local levels. Do you know who your state and local representatives are? That seems like a better investment of energy than complaining about an election gone by.

Why Democratic Socialism Is Good For Everyone

A lot of people have the idea that Bernie Sanders wants to steal from the rich and give to the poor. They say things like "No one is entitled to anything. If you want something, you have to earn it!" There is one crucial flaw in that statement. Plus a few other small flaws.

I am, in fact, a Bernie Sanders supporter. My family is middle class. We are well above minimum wage. We get our health insurance through our jobs. Bernie's reforms would not directly benefit my family, but they would benefit the country, the economy, and society as a whole.

First, let us be clear that our current industrialized form of an economy only goes back about 200 years to the industrial revolution. Before that, the economy was unrecognizably different. The advent of the industrial revolution allowed the concept of unskilled labor to be a main concept of our economy.

First let's talk about how a free market works. Here's a summary of microeconomics in a few sentences. To the right is a basic supply and demand curve. You have a supply curve and a demand curve. The supply curve shows the cost of making a good. The more you make, the more it costs because after a certain point you have to build more factories or use more expensive techniques. Demand drops as you increase quantity because there are some people who really really want the item and would pay anything for it, but other who would pay less.

That point labeled equilibrium is the quantity and price where the market settles. Obviously there's a lot more to it, but this is enough to understand the labor market.

The market achieves equilibrium by the producers adjusting their production. Further, the market creates equilibrium by removing producers from the market. In other words, firms go out of business, stop producing, and move the market along the supply curve. It's a beautiful and elegant system.

Now let's consider the labor market. In the labor market, the supply side is workers. Some workers will work for any job they can get. Others need a much higher wage to get them into the market. However, there are far more people on the desperate end of the curve than the picky end.

Demand is created by employers. Of course, workers want to get as much as they can and employers want to pay as little as they can. The problem is that there are a lot of unskilled workers and a far more limited supply of employers. This means that the equilibrium can (and will) fall below the wage rate at which a worker needs to survive.

Fortunately, the free market has a mechanism which will shift equilibrium to support the producers. Unfortunately, the mechanism is to remove producers from the market. That requires workers to find income outside the market, leave the country, or die.

The free market solution to raising wages. Technically effective.
Morally repugnant.

Oh, maybe the free market is not the perfect solution to setting wages. So, this is why strict free market creates a problem.

The end game of severe income and wealth inequality.

Our economy is a consumer based economy. In other words, wealth is created by people buying stuff. People without money don't buy stuff. (Four years to get an econ degree to explain this concept.) As wealth becomes more and more misdistributed, more and more people are in a position where they don't have money to spend. This happened before the 1927 start of the Depression. When the rich get more money, they save it, invest it, spend it overseas. When the poor get more money, they spend it. They buy TVs, they eat at restaurants, they buy toys and video games and clothes and all kinds of other things. This spending moves money, creates jobs, and gets the economy going.

The cities that have experimented with increasing minimum wage have found that jobs have not been lost and economic activity has increased for the reasons described above.

Now, let's go back to the believe that some people have that nothing is owed to anyone and that you must earn anything you get. Their point is that you should work hard and find a better job to support your family. That is awesome if you have the education, support, energy, health, and confidence to do that. However, for most people who are in that position, they lack one or more of those traits. They do not know where to find that "better job". They cannot get more education. Many have children and families to support and can only survive from day to day.

Imagine, if you will, that you have children to support. You work as hard as you can and still cannot support your family. You are desperate, and the system is structured in such a way that know that you cannot ever get ahead. Now imagine that your whole community is in this position. How do you "earn" a better life when the system is stacked against you?

The easy way to change the system.

The only solution is to change the system. Break the system. When the establishment tells you that you cannot feed your children or support your family, your own choice is to take down the establishment.

The system can be changed in two ways: the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is the ballot box and through the legislative process. The hard way involves taking to the streets and tearing it down.

Our society certainly has issues, but it is still a great and free country of opportunity. And, writ large, I think the system we have is better than the one that would be created by violent overthrow. So I am personally against violent overthrow of our system. This is one of the main reasons I support the very sensible reforms that Bernie supports.

Making sure that corporations pay their fair share of taxes (as opposed to 1/4 of them using offshore tax shelters to pay nothing) and increasing the marginal tax rate on people making half a million a year is a much more modest redistribution than could occur if a massive, desperate, hopeless underclass develops in this country and a spark ignites their will the do something about it the wrong way. 

The hard way to change the system.

Raising the minimum wage, providing education and health care for all, and other such reforms is not about taking what the rich have and redistributing it. It's not even just about fairness (although it would be more fair). It's not just about preserving the dream that America is a land of opportunity for all (that's part of it too). Most importantly, it's about stabilizing a system which is increasingly becoming a powder keg and making sure that a more catastrophic redistribution can be prevented.

Mayor Bloomberg's Soda Rule: Right Move, Poor Outreach

If you ask a nutrition expert what the single most effective thing that you can do to be healthier is to cut sugary drinks. It is all to easy to fill up a Big Gulp and pound down 800 calories of sugar without even thinking about it.

Mayor Bloomberg of New York City, realizing that the toxic American food environment is literally killing America, where 1 in 2 New Yorkers are obese, and 1 in 3 Americans are Diabetic or Pre-Diabetic, is moving to ban sugary drinks over 16 ounces. If you carefully avoid the news, read these short articles to get a rundown:

Yeshiva World News
NBC New York

Also useful to read before my commentary is this post by Craig Fear, nutritional expert from Northampton, Massachusetts. Sugar: Why It's Killing Us and What We Should Do About It

The first thing that I notice about both news articles is that they fail to mention Diabetes. Until I met Craig Fear and read his blog, I thought that sugar was harmless as long as one exercised enough to burn it off. After all, it metabolizes into energy which you consume. What could go wrong with that? Well, what goes wrong with it is that every bit of sugar you take in has to be dealt with by the Pancreas, which is only built to take so much. Like any other piece of equipment, if you put it under constant strain, it wears out more quickly than it should causing Diabetes and Pancreatic Cancer.

No matter what form our health care industry takes in the future, ultimately, society carries the cost of health epidemics. The epidemic of Diabetes will cause a massive spike in disability, meaning reducing the productivity of the American population, while, at the same time, increasing greatly the cost of care for the American population. You don't need a degree in economics to realize that this is a long term recipe for economic disaster far worse than anything that the Republicans or Democrats could cook up in their wildest dreams.

When you see 16 oz for $0.89, 32 oz for $0.99 and 64 oz for $1.09, you will buy the 64 oz. I know I used to before I learned the consequences. Once you have the 64 oz of sugary soda (that's half a gallon, by the way, also all the fluid you need for the day), you will drink it because otherwise you'd be wasting it. You just consumed about as much sugar as your body is built to handle in a month. Imagine what it would do to your body to do this every day?

The new regulations would not prevent you from getting 32 oz, it would just make it cost twice as much as 16 oz, eliminating the marketing ploy which makes you buy and drink far more sugar than you really want or need.

Mayor Bloomberg, in taking this action in the face of public opposition, is making a very brave move with the kind of integrity and courage that is too often sadly lacking in politicians. I personally applaud him for this, and you should too.