Should Town Meeting Endure?

The bigger problem in Danvers, Massachusetts, is not the worry over their town meeting moderator’s interpretation of voice votes, but instead, the members’ ardor to wrap up an entire year’s worth of municipal business in a few hours. Such a notion isn’t reserved solely to Danvers, where prevailing opponents to an article regarding voting clickers complained that the use “would add to a town meeting that generally flies by with few contested articles and votes.” All across the Commonwealth lots of town meeting members pray, even before setting foot into the meetingplace, Please, God, not two nights!

So, what are they doing there? We complain that our state and federal legislators spend too little time discussing and debating issues that affect us all. We question their commitment to governance as we compare their time in session to the number of days in a year. So, why do we tolerate lawmaking by a group whose interest in the practice borders on indifference?

As a result of their lack of engagement with committees and boards that would ensure knowledge of and access to their own governance, too many town meeting members choose to remain uninformed about the often complex issues presented in the warrant. They arrive at the auditorium ill-equipped to understand even the basic workings of local government, and they have no notion of the protocol followed at the meeting itself. And, why would they? The resume to hold their office is flimsier than any other. The single requirement to vote at a representative town meeting is merely to have a few friends or a bit of name recognition in your precinct when ballots are cast on election day. Worse, open town meetings let any registered voter of the municipality vote on the floor – including the guy who drank a six-pack of beer right before attending.

Direct democracy may have worked in colonial America and even during the early twentieth century, when Brookline became the first to adopt a representative town meeting. But it has no place in the twenty-first. Sure, all forms of government are imperfect, but please – give me a local republic. Send in a mayor and city counsel who want to get to work.