For many months, the Select Board has been wrestling with the issue of whether or not to continue extending Special Municipal Employee status to members of town boards and committees. But discussions at Select Board meetings suggest that this designation is not well understood.

Anyone elected or appointed to a town board or committee is considered a Municipal Employee, because in that capacity, the person is an agent of the town. Paid town staff are also Municipal Employees, and both groups are subject to the strictures of the state’s conflict of interest law. Among the prohibitions of that law is that Municipal Employees may not represent private parties before any town board. That makes sense in most cases. You don’t want the Town Assessor lending or selling his authority to pals by handling their cases with the ZBA, nor do you want the Finance Director to be appealing folks’ parking tickets.

But the law recognizes the gray area of those who meet the Municipal Employee definition, but who aren’t quite the same as town staff. A lawyer who serves on the Council on Aging might also reasonably represent a client before the Planning Board; an architect on the Historical Commission might also conduct business for clients with the Conservation Commission. The part of the law that allows for such scenarios is the designation of “Special Municipal Employee” status. Regular Municipal Employees can’t do such things; those Municipal Employees whose positions have the “Special” tag can. The default situation is that all town staff, board and committee members are held to the strictest conflict of interest interpretations; the action of giving boards and committees the “Special” status recognizes the need for more flexibility.

The argument put forth for ending the Town’s practice of essentially a blanket application of this status for boards and committees is to end perceptions of cronyism and “old boy network.” But if that is a problem, the way to address it is through the committee appointments. And it is the Select Board who makes those appointments, so they have the power to exclude cronies and old boys.

Using the lack of “Special” status and the inherent vulnerability to conflict of interest violations as a means to dissuade people from applying to serve on town boards and committees, or to induce their resignations from current positions, is like buying a cow to eat your grass so you won’t have to mow the lawn anymore. Sure, it might work, but not very efficiently, and it introduces a host of new complications for your yard.

If we make it too onerous for lawyers and builders and business people and architects and other talented professionals to be willing to serve the town as volunteers, then we will be sacrificing tremendous resources. The reply to that argument is typically either “There are plenty of smart people in Amherst – we’ll be fine,” or “We’ll give it to the committees that need it.”

The former is a guess, and seemingly counterproductive. One does not increase the diversity of the people serving on board and committees by eliminating whole swaths of eligibility.

The latter seems doomed to being completely unworkable or absurdly cumbersome. Will people apply for appointments only on the condition that their committee gets SME status? Or will they not bother applying at all? And if you give it to one board because a particular person there needs it, do you take it away once his term is up? What if he wants to be on a different committee next time? Will future Select Board meetings be endless marathons of committees that don’t have the status vying to prove that their need for it is at least as worthy as some other committee that has been granted it?

And to what end?

At Monday night’s meeting, Ms. Greeney and Mr. Weiss were right to question the necessity and intent of this policy change by the Select Board. A problem must be clearly identified before choosing the best tool for its solution. If it is true that perception of cronyism is the problem, then tinkering with SME designations is not the right tool.

Here are a few good resources for learning more about this:

From the State Ethics Commission:
www.mass.gov/ethics/sum16.htm
www.mass.gov/ethics/specials_memo.html

From the Massachusetts Municipal Association:
www.mma.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=560&Itemid=287
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-- Stephanie O’Keeffe