Archive - 2010
March 2nd
Lebanon CT Rejects Budget Ordinance
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 03/02/2010 - 12:51Yesterday, I received a phone call from a Lebanon, CT resident concerned about a town meeting that had been scheduled for last night. The purpose of the meeting was to ‘Consider and act upon an Ordinance providing for the separate consideration of the General Town Budget and the Board of Education Budget’. However, last November during the municipal elections there had been a ballot question asking if the town should enact such an ordinance. If it was already voted on in November, why was there this special meeting?
Lebanon is a small town in eastern Connecticut. The population was just under seven thousand at the 2000 Census. In 2005, there were about 4,800 voters in the town. The local paper is the Norwich Bulletin from the city 12 miles to the southeast.
Last November, there was a ballot question about whether or not the town should enact an ordinance separating the town budget from the education budget. Prior to the vote, there were a couple of informatory meetings to discuss the pros and cons of the proposal, but only a few people showed up for the meetings.
According to the town clerk’s office, this ballot question received 954 yes votes and 391 no votes. However, this question did not have the language of an ordinance and was only informatory to the town boards. Based on the results, a town meeting was scheduled to vote on the ordinance.
On February 18th, the Board of Selectmen posted a Legal Notice of the Special Town Meeting. It was posted in the Norwich Bulletin, on the town website and at town hall. Still, many people did not know about the meeting or about the issue.
Last night, around 150 people showed up for the town meeting. After a discussion of the proposed ordinance there was a paper ballot where 101 people voted against the ordinance and 49 voted for it.
It may well be that there is something about this in the Norwich Bulletin, but my search online turned up nothing. Previously, I’ve written about Public Notices and Covering the News. In order for ballot questions and votes on proposed ordinances at town meetings to be meaningful, voters need to know about the town meetings as well as understand the issues they are voting on. I suspect that many of my friends could argue strong points on either side of whether or not a town ordinance to separate the town budget from the education budget would be a good thing. Unfortunately, this debate did not seem to happen in any visible manner in Lebanon. Either people didn’t know, didn’t care, or couldn’t attend the town meeting.
Yesterday, Chris Powell, posed the question, What are legals worth? in a column in the Journal Inquirer. He writes:
In determining whether the legal notice requirement gives value, the value of news reporting about government has to be considered, since that is also what legal notice advertising pays for and what will diminish if that advertising diminishes. Right now Connecticut's newspapers report about state and local government all out of proportion to the public's interest, apparently in the belief that the public should be more civic-minded than it is and that newspapers should strive to compensate for the long decline in civic virtue.
I do believe that newspapers should strive to compensate for the long decline in civic virtue. They need to do it for the good of the country as well as for their own good. He is right in noting that newspapers report about local government disproportionately to the apparent public interest. Yet there may be a chicken and egg problem here. Why are people interested, or not interested in something? Does some of it have to do with whether or not it is being reported on?
Unfortunately, despite the legal notice about the town meeting, the Norwich Bulletin does not appear to have covered the event and there was low turnout. Yes, Mr. Powell is right, the value of news reporting about government needs to be considered, and in this case I have to question the value of the legal notice in the Norwich Bulletin and the value of any reporting it might have generated.
CT Senate Debate
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 03/02/2010 - 10:26Tuesday morning. The first debate of Democratic Candidates for U.S. Senate in Connecticut this year took place at University of Hartford last night and everyone is bound to be out spinning the results and claiming victory. As is often the case, I have my own peculiar perspective which I hope will flavor some of the discussion.
Friends of mine spoke highly of Merrick Alpert’s appearance last night and a Richard Blumenthal support wrote to say that she did not think Blumenthal helped himself by debating Alpert so early.
Alpert did do very well, trying to wrap himself in the mantle of Paul Wellstone and Howard Dean by claiming to represent the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party. He went on the offensive against ‘incrementalism’. However, his rhetoric did seem a bit over the top at times. For example when he spoke about his mother-in-law and Cuba, it almost sounded like he said he could see Cuba from his mother-in-law’s house.
One of the narratives leading up to the debate was that Alpert is a fringe candidate that shouldn’t be taken seriously. I always dislike and distrust such narratives and I think Alpert did a good job of destroying that narrative.
On the other hand, Attorney General Blumenthal delivered a steady and solid performance. In fact, he seemed to take the famous Goldwater quote and turn it inside out. Incrementalism, in the pursuit of justice, is, in fact, a virtue. Alpert called for immediately normalizing relations with Cuba and for a single payer health care system. I agree with him that these are goals we should seek to obtain. However, it seems like Blumenthal, through his willingness to work incrementally through the system is much more likely to obtain them.
Another narrative that I would be very concerned about if I were part of the Blumenthal campaign is that Blumenthal is Coakley 2.0. Indeed, many have compared the current Blumenthal campaign to Coakley’s campaign and even gone so far as to suggest that Blumenthal might have been better served by Coakley’s team than by the team he’s assembled so far.
Blumenthal’s charismatic nature, showing up at just about every event in Connecticut has not been shining through in the campaign so far. Rob Simmons has ten times as many people following him on Twitter as Dick Blumenthal does, and they do a great job or repeating Simmons’ talking points.
This only furthers the Coakley narrative. Coakley was the Massachusetts Attorney General who seemed likely to inherit Ted Kennedy’s seat. She was challenged by two progressive candidates in the primary, and while she received twice as many votes as her nearest competitor, she still did not receive a majority of the votes. She did not seem to get out there and campaign the way it has felt that Blumenthal has been campaigning for ever.
Fortunately for Blumenthal, he deflated this narrative a little bit last night. He showed himself willing to debate even a long shot underdog in an effort to talk seriously about the issues our state faces. He spoke about the importance of listening, something he’s always seemed good at doing. He would be well served to take attitude into the rest of his campaign.
Yet Blumenthal isn’t running just against Alpert. He is also running against Rob Simmons and Linda McMahon. It appears as if he has given bait to Simmons and Simmons has take the bait and ran with it. Simmons tweeted during the debate “Say what?! Blumenthal says his lawsuits “actually create jobs.” Bizarre. #ctgop #ctsen”. This was promptly picked up by his supporters and retweeted broadly. He then used it in a press release.
It seems striking that a former CIA operative like Rob Simmons would be so weak on crime. Typically Republican candidates are strong on crime, wanting to see state laws enforced. Simmons seems to be saying the corporate crime does not hurt citizens or honest business people.
In the end, Merrick Alpert came out much stronger than many suspected and it will help his campaign. However, Richard Blumenthal came out even stronger and showed why, despite his lackluster campaign so far, he would be a great senator. Rob Simmons on the other hand came out in defense of corruption and that is going to have to hurt his campaign.
March 1st
Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, Lion and Lamb
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 03/01/2010 - 11:45The wind was strong last night and I did not sleep well. It was March, coming in like a lion. The weather forecast for the next couple of days calls for rain and snow, but the sun is shining right now.
March seems like a turbulent month, as winter passes to spring and new growth comes. It seems like a particularly good month to start off with the childhood invocation for good luck, “Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit”. Perhaps this turbulence and luck will come through for people starting new jobs, looking for new jobs, or simply for exciting new projects. Perhaps the turbulence and luck will come to people as they rebuild their lives after earthquakes or personal traumas.
There are so many things I need to write about, but many of them take a bit of time and so I’ll go through my normal start of day, start of week and start of month activities, and hopefully have more to show a little later.
February 28th
Thinking about Citizen Journalism
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 02/28/2010 - 17:12In 2008, I attended a New England News Forum where there was a long discussion about ‘Citizen Journalism’. After the event, I wrote a blog entry, I am not a Citizen Journalist. Today, I was on a conference call helping plan a ‘Citizen Journalism’ preconference to a national media conference and I received an email from an honor student majoring in English with a minor in journalism who had written to ask my thoughts about citizen journalism. It seems like a good chance to think a little bit more about Citizen Journalism.
The student asked several interesting questions which I thought it might be useful to put into a blog post. She asked, “What do you deem citizen journalism? Why do you think others view it as an insult?”
Let me start off by presenting what I see as idealistic and as cynical views of citizen journalism.
Ideally, every citizen of our great country should have access to what is happening in our government. They should be able to take this information and synthesize ideas about what our government can do better to meet the needs of its people. They should be able to write and distribute these ideas in an open discussion that we can all learn from. Not only should they be able to do this, but they should feel a civic compunction to do so. This is the ideal of citizen journalism I would like to see more of and aspire to.
On the other hand, there are plenty of bloggers that take third hand information combined with talking points crafted by one advocacy organization or another to produce poorly written and poorly thought out screeds about something politicians are doing wrong.
Professional journalists with degrees from great journalism schools, who are struggling to get by in these days of contraction of the news industry cynically point to such bloggers to illustrate why citizen journalism is bad and why you need paid journalists with good journalism degrees. As much as I deplore such writing as the anti-thesis of what good citizen journalism should be, I must admit that I’ve probably produced some ill-written nasty screeds myself.
To channel Joni Mitchell briefly, it’s citizen journalism’s illusions I recall. I am careful about how I use the phrase citizen journalism. If I am speaking with someone that seeks with me increasingly informed participation in our civic institutions, then I am glad to call myself a citizen journalist or at least admit to aspiring to be one. If I’m speaking with a grumpy old reporter who has recently been laid off, or is worrying about such a layoff, then I usually just call myself of blogger. Sometimes, when I’m working on a story that requires a bit of digging, I might even call myself an independent investigative reporter.
Ultimately, however, the phrase ‘Citizen Journalism’ isn’t what matters. What matters is more people getting better access to more information about events that shape their lives. We can all work together to make this happen, or we can sit at conferences arguing about various phrases. Personally, I’m more interested in the former.
February 27th
Virginia’s Proposed Incumbency Protect Program
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 02/27/2010 - 11:16In 2006, political scientists studied a group of 180,000 voters in Michigan. Using a control group and four study groups, they researched what efforts would be most effective raising voter turnout. They found that people who were told that it was their civic duty to vote were six percent more likely to vote. On the other hand, voters who were sent letters describing how often their neighbors had voted in previous elections where twenty seven percent more likely to vote. In a Washington Post article, Your Neighbors Could Find Out, So You'd Better Vote, researchers talked about the implications of this research.
Gerber, who also works at Yale, said campaigns would have to use the technique with caution, because the last thing a candidate wants to do is annoy people who are going to vote for him or her. But Green said nonpartisan groups, even public authorities, might consider using the technique to boost turnout, especially in municipal elections that often bring out just 15 percent of eligible voters.
One non-profit decided to act on this. In October 2009, the Know Campaign planned to send out a letter to voters in Virginia informing them of how often their neighbors had voted in the previous elections. The idea of being shamed into voting did not sit well with people from Virginia and the Know Campaign was investigated by the Virginia State Board of Elections. An article in the Washington Post, Va. investigates legality of access to voter list reports:
Under Virginia law, the Board of Elections can furnish lists of voters only to the courts, the Department of Motor Vehicles, bona fide political candidates, political parties, political action committees and nonprofit groups that promote voter education or registration. The law further restricts access to voting histories, prohibiting the Board of Elections from giving the histories to anyone except candidates, elected officials or political party chairmen. Those who do obtain the lists are also required to sign a statement, under penalty of perjury, promising not to disseminate the information to those not authorized to have it.
According to an article in PilotOnline
The State Board of Elections has already been sued once by the Know Campaign … That suit was settled, but the group has promised to sue again if the law is not changed to allow wider access to the lists…Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's office has advised lawmakers that the current law won't stand up in court because it gives candidates and parties privileged treatment over others seeking access to a voter history list.
Del. John Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake stated, "We had two options. We can make it available to everybody or we can make it available to no one." The idea of not making voter history available to candidates was a concern to some Delegates. They noted that it is already very expensive to run for office and losing the access to voter history would make it even more expensive.
Del. Johnny Joannou, D-Portsmouth, however, argued "Voting is a private function of a private citizen. If it costs too much money to run, don't run."
This sounds like the ultimate in incumbency protection. First off, carrying out one’s civic duty should not be considered a private function. It is a public responsibility. Yes, how people vote needs to be protected and kept private, but not whether or not they voted. We need to encourage citizens to get out and vote. In addition, we should not be placing additional hurdles to people running for office. Failure to encourage people to vote and placing additional hurdles to running for office are two effective tools for protecting incumbency.
Let us hope that the people of Virginia contact their elected officials and encourage them to make it easier to run for office and to encourage neighbors to get out and vote.
