Your thoughtful comments lead me to ponder the difference between the annual Shutesbury and Amherst town meetings.
1. Length. The Shutesbury meeting dealt with 28 articles (40 in Amherst) in 7 hours. Scheduling it for a Saturday in May gives incentive to complete it in one session. Would two Saturdays work in Amherst?
2. Budget. The budget is presented by the Fin. Comm. in the context of the overall financial picture. There is little discussion on any line item except for requests for information.
In sum, the meeting: conducts routine business (approving items prepared by staff); acquires information (through reports)about how things are going; and discusses items such as zoning which require a townwide decision.
The Open Town Meeting is a tradition that allows folks to feel good about participating. (Even when some of the votes go the 'wrong' way). I wonder if the Representative Town Meeting places a different type of responsibility on its elected members?

Stephanie’s important and elegant commentary models the best kind of political discourse: sharp and civil. I agree with her about zoning. I disagree with her about petition articles. I may decide to comment about these two areas at a later point, but I want to focus on the budget process because I agree that the current process is flawed and the flaws can be rather easily fixed.

First, some general observations: The budget is an approximate document. Mr. Musante and the Finance Committee make educated guesses about both revenues and expenses. We have experienced both unanticipated revenues and unanticipated expenses in recent years, and it is important for the town manager to have the flexibility to deal with them. This means that it doesn’t make much sense for town meeting to be more precise than the rough figures and managerial decision-making allows.

However, the budget is also a policy document that reflects the town’s priorities. Here, the role of town meeting is to confirm or question the priorities of the School Committee and Select Board. The School Committee, after discussion and hearings, votes a school operating budget to recommend to town meeting. The Select Board doesn’t quite do this and it should. After it has its hearings on the various parts of the municipal operating budget it should vote that budget. If it wishes to move funds between different functional areas it should do that before the budget gets to town meeting. It should be the Select Board’s budget that is presented to town meeting.

The role of the Finance Committee is clearly central to this process. Its most important responsibility is the setting of fiscal guidelines at the beginning of the budget process. Its next most important responsibility is presenting fiscal projections and analyses of the accuracy of prior projections (which I could not find this year). Its third most important responsibility is proposing strategies for maintaining the financial health of the town, including, of course, the management of reserves.

But after this it gets sticky. I don’t think the Finance Committee should have a role in determining the town’s priorities, and this suggests that it should never be the budgetary presenting agency as it currently is. The School Committee presents the school budget, the Select Board presents the municipal budget, the JCPC presents the capital budget. For all of these budgets, town meeting should listen carefully to the advice and recommendations of the Finance Committee, but we should never find ourselves again in the awkward and embarrassing situation we confronted this spring when the Select Board offered amendments to the Finance Committee motions. That is exactly wrong. The Finance Committee should not be making motions.

I find that I have lots more to say about Stephanie’s stimulating post, but perhaps this is enough for starters.

Thanks, Stephanie, for opening this discussion.

Michael Greenebaum

To cut down on the petition articles increase the number of signatures required. This would never pass so, maybe someone could try to sabotage town meeting by putting hundreds of petition articles on the warrant - then things would change. Of course, you couldn't tell if the articles were real or just ploys.

Here is some ideas from messages on the town meeting group site:

No privatizing water
No to Cape Wind
Biotech guidelines
SCHIP funding
China food safety
NCLB reauthorization

Go to issues.org to come up with your own.

I am an enthusiast for petition articles; I can’t recall any that seemed to be on behalf of “special interests”, unless one considers the opportunity for “resident aliens” to vote locally a special interest. Many scoffed and resented having to consider the more humane treatment of animals but most now feel that our animal welfare officer (once a dog catcher) is a welcome improvement to our town.

The right of citizens to petition their government is at the core of democracy; it should be cherished and protected in Amherst even at the risk of annoying and vexing some town meeting members (and I too have been annoyed and vexed every so often).

Michael Greenebaum

This was so thought-provoking, Stephanie, it made me feel as though you had laid out all the information a political scientist would need to prescribe a simple solution to whatever is ailing Amherst. Then, d'oh, I remembered there probably isn't a simple solution in government -- or there would be examples of governments operating well over long periods of time. I don't think there are any of those, are there? Maybe they operate very well for a little while in periods when there is suddenly the right mix of people and circumstances. Penny's observations about the difference between open and representative town meetings is very interesting and the relationship of the Finance Committee and Select Board to each other, Town Meeting and the entire process also seems like a good area to focus on. I also like the petition articles, although maybe there could be a particular slot of time set aside for them and the people who rather not participate in those discussions wouldn't have to.

Other small towns I know of that still have an Open town meeting all deal with their ATM the way Penny reports about Shutesbury, and in one or two sessions. It might be useful to find out from towns with a Representative town meeting how things work there.
Eva

Chris (Hoffmann?:

What is SCHIP? NCLB?

Eva

Thanks to all for commenting and e-mailing on this topic.

I agree with Michael’s suggestion that the Select Board should be more involved in the budget’s creation. He is absolutely right that they are not a part of the municipal budget in the same way the School Committee is part of the school budget. I think that the alterative recommendations that we saw from the Select Board this spring were an expression of that. As the Town’s elected, policy-making board, they very reasonably wanted to have a say in the budget. But the way the process and that body currently function, the only option available to them at that point was to offer a couple of very specific changes. I think that the Town Manager’s proposed new process will address that situation.

I also agree with Michael that the Finance Committee should not be setting the Town’s priorities. But I don’t believe that they currently do. That they present the budget to Town Meeting does not mean that they created the budget. Their “recommendations” are actually a bit of a misnomer. They are recommending the budget created and proposed by the Town Manager, as well as those created and proposed by the schools and the library. I don’t know if this misunderstanding (and I’m not saying that Michael doesn’t understand this) is a result of the fact that they physically present the budget, but I am quite sure that it is exacerbated by the perception that the Finance Committee isn’t representative of a broad range of local political views. People are skeptical. They perceive bias. The Finance Committee’s recommendations get vilified, when in fact their recommendations are just a “seal of approval” as to the fiscal soundness of the Town Manager’s/Library Director’s/School Superintendent’s proposals.

I think this is a central misunderstanding of the column by Bob Ackermann in last week’s Bulletin, proposing that the FinCom be elected rather than appointed. It says: “If the Finance Committee is now to decide where our property tax money is best to be spent, there is an argument that it should now be elected rather than appointed.” But the Finance Committee DOESN’T decide where to spend the money – it projects how much there will be to spend.

The one aspect I would agree could be considered “policy” was the 1% guideline. Having done the math of expected revenue, the Finance Committee determined that we could afford only a 1% increase per budget area – Town, Schools and Libraries (not per department, not per line item – another entrenched misunderstanding.) I would suggest that this is exactly where the Select Board could have more appropriately exercised its authority. As the policy-making body, they could have recommended reallocating the dollar figure represented by that 1% budget increase, or more, however they saw fit. More to the schools, less to the Town? More to the libraries, less to the Town and the schools? Whatever. I doubt the Finance Committee would have opposed such a re-distribution, and if they did, I think they would then have been overstepping their mandate, because that would be a policy decision. Recommending that one area of local government – departmentally or by sector – requires a larger share is policy. Getting into the line items within those divisions is micromanagement. I don’t think the Select Board should do that and I don’t think that Town Meeting should do that.

I hope that by gathering the priorities of the Select Board and the public early in the process, that line-item-level tinkering at the end will no longer happen. Mr. Ackermann’s Bulletin column also makes the point about this that I made above. He says “Town Meeting will have little to do on the budget but applaud the synchronized ballet before it, provided only that a quorum can stay awake long enough to vote.” He considers that a problem, but I don’t think I do. The community will have already had its chance to give input. Town Meeting will not need to fill its usual role of representing the community – the community will have represented itself.

That doesn’t mean that all of the community’s or Select Board’s suggestions will make it into the proposed budget. Presumably, they will be considered and prioritized within a big-picture framework, and included or excluded accordingly. I think that having provided such input, we need to then let the Town Manager, School Superintendent and Library Director make the final call.

It might be useful to review what the Amherst Town Government Act says about all this.
2.23 Finance committee
… It shall be the duty of this committee to investigate all proposals in the articles of the warrant for any town meeting that shall in any way affect the finances of the town and to recommend to the town at the time of said meeting a course of action thereon, and in general to make recommendations to the town in regard to any financial business of the town.
Select Board
3.21 Policy making
The select board shall initiate policy proposals as well as consider and make decisions on policy recommendations brought to it. It shall make guidelines for the manager in preparation of the annual budget proposal. It shall review and make recommendations on the proposed annual budget.
3.251 Budget
The select board shall make recommendations to the town on the annual operating budget and the capital program.
3.254 Encouraging joint financial planning
The select board shall encourage joint financial planning among town, school and library officials.

I was not aware of this blog until someone told me that Stephanie O'Keeffe had discussed my op-ed about the Finance Committee here. Let me start by noting that her summary of my remarks to the Select Board about the Homelessness Task Force elsewhere in the blog is completely, deliriously accurate. But on the matter of the Finance Committee, I feel compelled to make a few remarks that are not a million miles from those made above by Michael Greenebaum. For starters, Stephanie (whom I do not know) begins the deconstruction of her own position by noting that when the FC sets a budget goal of 1%, which then becomes the accepted budget target, it is making a decision that in not merely a matter of math. And then this -- when the distribution of that 1% total is fixed equally across the major budget categories, policy is clearly in view, as a judgment is being made as to the relative importance of the school budget and the municipal budget, and that is clearly not a matter of math. So my major point is this. If the FC is to set the financial parameters of the budget, and the other discussions are merely about fine-tuning how to divide up sums within the resulting categories, the FC is no longer offering advice to TM on the budget priorities of others, but is setting the large outlines of the budget for TM, and I realize that it is done in concert with other town agencies. The FC is not presenting a bad budget, but the conflicting views about priorities, which in my opinion only TM is authorized to resolve according to the TM act, have been weeded out by a process in which public opinion plays only a small role. The Town Manager's proposal, to me, sounds like an advanced version of the same in that the FC will set the financial targets, and other agencies will have inputs into the distributions, and so will the public at special sessions. The difficulty here is that the special sessions will be heavily influenced by special interest groups that happen to show up. TM, in the end, is supposed to be the (legal) representative of the entire town. If the new role of the FC is to be accepted, and I think that should be a matter of discussion, then I think it should also be a matter of discussion whether the FC should be elected (as a way of trying for what Stephanie O'Keeffe refers to as bipartisanship), or perhaps chosen in some manner other than by Town Moderator appointments, which has resulted in complete stasis in some of the FC slots. I am not attacking the FC (please). It does a reasonable job in working out its budget recommendations, but I think its current role has drifted from its founding intention, and I think that the way in which its members are chosen needs to be looked at in terms of its transformation over time. (I would note that I was in town meeting twice for considerable periods of time, and I see quite a difference between then and now, much of which I attribute to the malignant consequences of Proposition 2 1/2.)

The Finance Committee does recommend a budget guideline in the fall which, in their judgement and with the assistance of the knowledgable Town Finance director,will provide a prudent expenditure of available and projected funding for the next year. The Finance Committee does not say that all budgets have to follow that guideline. The select board, schools, and library (and later Town Meeting)can work out a different division of the funding than an equal percent increase. The three respective budgets have each stayed at a relatively constant percentage of the entire budget for the past several years. Changing the proportion spent on the three budgets would involve agreement on priorities and would have involved agreeing to cut some budgets much more deeply than others.

Cutting within any of the three budgets is challenging. Cutting far more deeply into the town or schools to provide additional funds for the other would require the boards (and citizens) to come to some agreement on the priorities across all the budgets and to agree that the cuts in one of the budgets were too severe. Leaving the budgets in the same proportion has been an approach which maintained detente and provided an illusion of fairness when the real discussions of priorities haven't occurred.

Within each of the major budgets of town, schools, regional schools, and library there have been obvious shifts in where the money is being spent. For example, the police budget took a huge hit this year compared to other town departments.

Thinking about the lengthy discussion for months about where cuts could be made,I do understand why discussion of the prioritization of needs across the budgets, not just within the budgets, hasn't progressed - in spite of general agreement that it is necessary (and even more necessary as funding has fallen behind costs so dramatically).

FinCom only gave a guideline for the whole set of budgets together; it's always been up to the boards etc. whether they make different budgets and push for them and whether they can agree to shift money between the major areas and have the budgets grow by different percentages.

Having Select Board discuss budget priorities before the Manager produces his budget could/will lead to a town budget with expenditures they agree with. Having the Select Board begin evaluating the town budget in January will allow them to make their final budget decisions before the Finance Committee writes their own report to help Town Meeting understand the proposed budgets and the financial ramifications associated with them. It's only in the past couple of years that the select board has made budget decisions so very late in the budget season. (That change in when the SB has voted on their decisions has resulted in a larger role of the Finance Committee in providing a town budget for Town Meeting.)

There used to be joint four board public meetings in the early fall to discuss the budget picture ahead. (Those were the so-called "gang of four" meetings.) I think that decisions about what the real budget priorities across all budgets should be will require more than a public meeting with whoever shows up, as Bob also points out.

The Budget Coordinating Group (administrators and reps of the four boards make up the relatively young BCG) began talking immediately after the last Town Meeting about having a group of financial types really analyze the budgets, talk more widely with citizens about their needs and relative priorities, and then lay out for everyone the financial realities of the costs, town expectations, and funding needed. We need real planning.

Elaine

This is only my second time, but I may have to fight yet another addiction problem if I keep returning. I would like to comment briefly on the post by Elaine Brighty. Of course it is true that the "recommendation" of the Finance Committee is not legally binding. The School Committee and the Select Board could choose to opt out of the deliberative process that leads to the final budget and propose their own for Town Meeting to consider. I could do that myself. But while my budget would be daffy on its face, a School Committee alternative budget under these circumstances would very likely be hammered as evidence that the School Committee will not abide compromise, a serious hurdle for the School Committee given the emotions that seem to steer some Town Meeting decisions. Why is the Finance Committee "recommendation" (which it is not) so coercive? Aside from our dreary financial situation, which almost forces a single painful compromise, there is the structural fact that the Finance Committee proposal goes down as THE MOTION, then (usually) the discussion occurs, and THEN alternative proposals may be moved. So the actual way in which this happens at Town Meeting (which is not written down anywhere) gives the Finance Committee proposal pride of legitimacy, with other options being seen as deviations from its centering authority. This is a very coercive structure. My main point in this discussion is this: if this is to be the role of the Finance Committee for the near future anyway, then perhaps the Finance Committee should be chosen in a different way than by Town Moderator appointment, which was devised when the Finance Committee served the purpose of recommending among the various budget proposals (not from the Finance Committee) that were put before Town Meeting on a more or less equal footing. There are ideas other than electing the members of the Finance Committee around, and all of them need to be thought through, but I would like to see the members of the Finance Committee (they might all be back on the Committee after any change, but with a clearer legitimacy in terms of representing the entire town) have to explain to all of the citizens of the town in some regular process why they make the decisions that they do (or remain silent). For example, my opinion is that one reason the override went down this year is that a three year projection of spending 2.5%, then 5% and then 5% so obviously involves some jiggery pokery with the rough mathematical fact that the average annual budget increase cannot deviate much from 2.5% (of the caculable base) under current law. If plans had been made for three 2.5% years unless some windfall occurred, the outcome might have been different. Currently, the only way I could express my feelings about this during possible changes in the composition of the Finance Committee would be for me to discuss it with the appointing authority, who is perhaps not anxious to take input from everyone with an opinion about town finances. In any event, the chances of influence through that route are not as satisfying to my democratic impulses as a vote.

We have certainly come up with many hours worth of discussion from one post -- bravo, Stephanie! I wish to simply address one little piece: the appropriate role of the Amherst Finance Committee as determined by the Amherst Town Government Act and the MGL . I believe a Town Meeting member named Jody Simpson recently held a gathering to discuss possible other ways to run a town finance committee, so those interested in that topic should talk to her.

In the meantime, for FY09's budget, please refer to Kay Moran's 080907 post of material from the Amherst Town Government Act:
http://www.amherstma.gov/Charter/CurrentCharter.htm
Again, the Amherst Finance Committee is defined thus:
2.23 Finance committee
There shall be a finance committee consisting of 7 members to be appointed by the moderator. It shall be the duty of this committee to investigate all proposals in the articles of the warrant for any town meeting that shall in any way affect the finances of the town and to recommend to the town at the time of said meeting a course of action thereon, and in general to make recommendations to the town in regard to any financial business of the town. It shall have control of the reserve fund of the town and make appropriations therefrom.

and the MGL about Finance Committees states:
http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/39-16.htm
ART I. ADMINISTRATION OF THE GOVERNMENT
TITLE VII. CITIES, TOWNS AND DISTRICTS
CHAPTER 39. MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT
TOWN MEETINGS

Chapter 39: Section 16. Appropriation, advisory or finance committees; appointment; tenure; powers and duties

Section 16. Every town whose valuation for the purpose of apportioning the state tax exceeds one million dollars shall, and any other town may, by by-law provide for the election or the appointment and duties of appropriation, advisory or finance committees, who shall consider any or all municipal questions for the purpose of making reports or recommendations to the town; and such by-laws may provide that committees so appointed or elected may continue in office for terms not exceeding three years from the date of appointment or election.

In every town having a committee appointed under authority of this section, such committee, or the selectmen if authorized by a by-law of the town, and, in any town not having such a committee, the selectmen, shall submit a budget at the annual town meeting.

Stripping down that last sentence, it ends up as "In every town having a committee appointed under authority of this section, such committee shall submit a budget at the annual town meeting."

In terms of what actually happens on the ground,see pg 3 of the LWV Town Meeting Handbook:
http://www.geocities.com/lwvamherst/docs/TownMeetingHandbook.pdf
C. TOWN MEETING COMMITTEES
The Finance Committee is a standing committee of Amherst Town Meeting. It reviews the capital and operating budgets of the town, libraries, and schools, presents the operating budget to Annual Town Meeting, and studies and makes recommendations on all articles on the warrant that, in its judgment, may affect the finances of the town. It also acts between Town Meetings to make transfers from the Reserve Fund to cover extraordinary and unforeseen expenses.

However, moving on to pg 23:
November
The Finance Committee recommends spending guidelines for the next fiscal year (FY) to Town Manager, Select Board, School Committee,Superintendent of Schools, Library Trustees, and Library Director.

Of course, the LWV description certainly accurately reflects current -- and many years past -- practice, and is also shown here on the Town website:
http://www.amherstma.gov/budget/

However, in light of the Amherst Town Government Act, and the MGL, I believe that such a recommendation is based on tradition, not on any legally binding requirement. It could arguably be done a slightly different way if it was discussed at the October meetings, where all four boards review financial materials; it does not seem to take anything away from the Finance Committee's expertise if they considered writing a summary of the joint four board discussion including their particular insights, and then the report was labeled something like "the four boards considered this material for the FY09 financial picture" rather than "the Finance Committee's FY09 budget guidelines." Given that the Finance Committee does not include the issuance of guidelines in its own description of the budget process on page 4 of its FY08 Report to Town Meeting:
http://www.amherstma.gov/PDFs/FY_08_Finance_Committee_Report.pdf
I suspect that perhaps the Finance Committee began that tradition of issuing guidelines simply so people had a common set of information to work from, not out of any intention of unduly influencing the process.

Last time I looked the FinCom voted unanimously to support the article for Town Meeting to “strongly urge” the Town Manger to rethink his idiotic decision to reject the Niblick Management offer of $30,000 annually for three years to run the moribund Cherry Hill Golf Course.

Town Meeting overwhelmingly rejected that article. So what does that say about the Finance Committee? Or better yet, what does that say about Town Meeting!

Our system of government depends on a very important but very intangible personal quality of the leaders within it: persuasive authority. The cruel reality is that the current membership of Select Board is lacking in that quality in Town Meeting. I suspect that a majority of Town Meeting members, at the present time, view the Finance Committee as hard-working, experienced students of the various components of our budget, more so than the Select Board. I am confident that this unequal distribution of persuasive authority has not always been the status quo.

Although Town Meeting members perhaps should listen with equal attention to all speakers, some speak with more authority, and others listen to them with more interest, than to others. That's just human nature, human nature that's accentuated by the long, grinding, droning Town Meeting sessions we insist on having.

If we had a Select Board that more Town Meeting members looked to for direction, or, altenatively, if the Select Board were appointing the Finance Committee, I suspect that we would not be having the long illuminating discussion above. Ackerman, Simpson, et al want to subject the Finance Committee to the rigors of the ballot box, but their desires are a function of the situation I've just described involving the current cast of leaders.

Our moderator is up for election every year, not every three years. He had an opponent who made a concerted public issue of his Finance Committee appointments. She lost. That seems to me to be a good mix of protection from and accountability to the voters for our Finance Committee, more protected and less accountable than the Select Board, less protected and more accountable than, for example, the US Supreme Court.

We need to be very careful about altering our system of governance in Amherst in reaction to the particular circumstances of the present political moment.

If there needs to be a counterweight to our Finance Committee in the yearly budget process, perhaps we should be electing Select Board
members who have the personal qualities to provide it.

Electing the Finance Committee seems like a bad idea to me. Their work requires the kind of keen understanding of numbers and budgets that far too few people have (and I don’t know if the folks I suggested above are among those who do.) That someone can get elected to a position does not mean he or she has the skills that position needs. (See Bush, George W.) I think the current system is a good one.

I don't want an elected finance committee either, but I think Stephanie sets the bar way too high for membership. Any citizen willing to devote time and attention to issues of numbers and budgets can be an effective member of the finance committee; a lot of the technical work is done by the finance director and his staff. (And in spite of her kind earlier remarks, I am not interested in serving.)

Michael

My views on democracy and the Select Board are so orthogonal to those expressed by others in this discussion that I think I will check out after these remarks. It is tricky to attack W's presidency as a sign of the weakness of democracy, since it should not be forgotten that he was appointed president by the Supreme Court. In any event, democracy works best (even in theory) when voters have accurate information for consideration, something that is much easier to obtain as the scope of a democratic election narrows, say to our town where it is fairly easy to find out what we need to know about one another. To dump on the Select Board as another sign of the perils of democracy and praise the work of the Finance Committee by comparison as a sign of the efficiency of a benevolent dictator is also curious. The Select Board made interesting "corrections", at least in my view, during the budget discussions at Town Meeting, including rescuing War Memorial Pool and some social service funding against the recommendations of FinCom. I will not rehearse my points (see above somewhere) about the recent less than optimal performance of the FinCom (at least in my estimation), but it was interesting to notice in today's Gazette that a majority of respondents in the visioning poll support increasing taxes for schools and public safety. Curiously, this did not carry over to passage of the override. Is it possible, as I have conjectured, that sufficient voters were put off by the details of this particular override (designed by FinCom) that it was defeated, where a more straightforward proposal might have passed? In actual fact, I think both the FinCom AND the Select Board are doing quite reasonable jobs. I think the process of resolving their differences (and differences between the School Committee and FinCom) should be more equitable and transparent. I also think that voters are capable of deciding which candidates for FinCom would be good fits, especially in a context (I agree with Michael Greenebaum above on this) where it is recognized that the mathematical and financial skills required for FinCom work are not that severe, and that much of FinCom work involves value judgments that might be shared around in election cycles where the work of the FinCom received more public attention than it does now.

I'm curious about the comment above, "...much of FinCom work involves value judgements...". My understanding is that FinCom is not a policy setting body, which is where value judgements would need to come in. My experience has been (as a town meeting member for the past two years) that they are all about the numbers. The only value I've seen reflected in their recommendations has been that of fiscal responsibility. It has been, in my experience, when that overarching value has clashed with others, as in the desire to better fund social services or schools, for example, that conflict and divisions have occurred. The question of how and by whom the FinCom should be selected is, in my view, superfluous to the issue of how and under whose (hopefully) collective leadership we will resolve to improve our revenue picture. Until that point, our ability to implement of any of our values will remain compromised.

Mr. Ackerman enters this website and immediately he demonstrates the limitations of this particular medium. Did I "dump on the Select Board as another sign of the perils of democracy and praise the work of the Finance Committee in comparison as a sign of the efficiency of the benevolent dictator"? No, that's not what I wrote, or what I mean.

Is this the way that debate goes in academia these days? You deliberately misstate your opponent's argument in order to ridicule it?

Mr. Ackerman thinks that the Finance Committee should be subject to more direct democratic oversight by the town's electorate than exists currently. That's a perfectly respectable argument, but it's one that I happen to disagree with strongly. At the risk of being further caricatured by Mr.Ackerman as some sort of Robert Bork-like strict constructionist, I think that there is a logic to the original design in our current Town Government Act, a logic that transcends the political conditions of today.

I recall defenders of our current system of government repeatedly citing the "checks and balances" embedded in it, in our recent Charter debate. The FC selected by a Moderator who is up for election every year seems to me to be one of those checks and balances.

This is an argument as old as the Republic, about how much democracy is enough and how much democracy is too much. You can see it played out beautifully in the Federalist Papers. What's wrong with striving for the level of debate you see in there, rather than the cheap shots we get from Mr. Ackerman above?

I, for one, like the idea of representative democracy in which we delegate certain functions to others who are then responsible to the voters for their decisions. It turns voters into compromisers of necessity, in which they have to assess an elected official's performance in total, not just on a single issue or function. It gives elected officials room to maneuver and to lead. That's what I believe the Moderator has done in his appointments to FC.

Our override votes under Prop 2 1/2, on the other hand, demonstrate a different political trend: government by referendum. As we've seen in the past, sometimes you get an elevated, intelligent, illuminating debate and sometimes not. I ask you, dear reader, on balance, how's that been working for you?

For me, more democracy is not always better. Isn't that why we have Representative Town Meeting and not Open Town Meeting here in Amherst?