To the Charter Review Committee,

I sincerely appreciated the opportunity to give testimony at your November 10th public hearing. I hope you are not discouraged that, from mildly to passionately, all but one person who spoke was critical of your preliminary recommendations. That may explain why the hearing, which was scheduled to be broadcast at least five times on the city’s cable channel, never was.

I respectfully suggest that you might have begun the work of your committee by gathering evidence on how Somerville government is benefiting or injuring its citizens and, therefore, how it should be changed. In just five meetings, you covered a truly remarkable range of topics. Yet I detect scant mention in your meeting notes of the Somerville-specific historical context and conditions that inform your judgment. So please consider my own view.

There were times when Somerville’s government was more explicitly rife with patronage than it is today. It has been over two decades since city officials went to jail. But even then, citizen watchdog groups, a vigilant local press, and extensive, diverse, and politically active relationship networks helped keep city government honest. They have faded away. In their absence, the executive branch has steadily accumulated more power. The legislative branch has disappeared in all but name.

For as long as anyone can remember, our mayors withheld city services from the wards of disobedient aldermen and worked for the election of obedient ones. But in the absence of vigilant watchdogs, aldermen have become more vulnerable to such pressure.

This parallels and is fed by the enormously increased size and volume of donations going to mayoral campaign funds, particularly from interests living outside of Somerville. The current mayor won his position by spending $35 per vote, more than any municipal campaign in Massachusetts. By comparison, aldermen seldom spend more than $2 per vote.

The resulting autocracy expresses itself in many ways. The current administration refused to release elected officials’ ethics statements as required by law. In response to a Freedom of Information Act action, they released them with key blocks of information blacked out. They offer the laughable excuse that the Massachusetts Ethics Commission does not require the release of officials’ phone numbers.

From 1975 to 1985, the Board of Aldermen vigorously debated and passed legislation regarding at least twenty major issues, often with 5-to-6 votes. In the last ten years, I count two significant pieces of legislation originating from the Board. The rest were the mayor’s initiatives, submitted by a Board member. Dissenting votes were rarely more than 2 or 3.

The eclipse of aldermanic power, trends in campaign financing, and the deal making that takes place outside of the public eye are, taken together, troubling. So many significant decisions over recent mayoral tenures flaunted the best relevant evidence, suggesting the extent to which they were influenced by political considerations. Their outcomes speak eloquently to their quality.

Over the past century, the response advocated by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt and Louis Brandeis to such conditions was a council/manager municipal charter. So I was disappointed by your easy dismissal of it. At your July 9th meeting, you had “agreed to research and discuss a city manager [i.e., a council/manager] form of government.” Then at your September 10th meeting, “the committee agreed that there is no desire to move away from a mayoral form of government.”

When I asked what your research on council/manager government had involved, your response was that some committee members read the book, The Adapted City. When I asked what your discussion had involved, you said that committee members had made these observations: there is a trend among municipalities toward a mayoral form of government; some committee members believe that an elected mayor is more responsive to the voters; some believe that council/manager government is more appropriate for homogenous, suburban cities, while strong-mayor government is better for diverse urban ones; and some believe that our strong-mayor government is working well, so there is no need to change it.

I would suggest that
• trends mean little without understanding the historical reasons for changing governmental forms specific to each municipality that comprises the trend;
• over the decades, our own strong-mayor government has become unaccountable to the voters;
• you should actually examine objective conditions before you pronounce Somerville government to be working well;
• and Lowell, Worcester, and Cambridge are all larger and more diverse than Somerville, but have done quite well with council/manager governments.

Lowell and Lawrence had very similar economies when Lowell adopted council/manager government, as did Cambridge and Somerville when Cambridge did the same. It is fascinating to compare the subsequent trajectories of these two pairs of cities’ fiscal health, political participation, and general wellbeing.

And then there is diverse and urban Chelsea, whose strong-mayor corruption and incompetence made it the first U.S. city forced into receivership since the great depression. In fact, only about 10% of Massachusetts’ municipalities have strong/mayor governments, but they account for all but one of the Commonwealth’s significant municipal corruption scandals. I imagine that your colleague Gerry McCue can describe how Chelsea has steadily come back since it adopted council/manager government.

Somerville citizens now have no real means of redress other than by voting for a mayoral challenger. Without an incumbent’s bulging campaign coffers and patronage-based army, a challenger’s chances are miniscule. If you summarily dismiss consideration of council/manager government, then I am astonished you have not recommended initiative and referendum, which do not exist in our charter.

I do applaud your recommendation to finally grant the Board of Aldermen authority to appoint their own staff. How about their own counsel? Your fiscal and financial recommendations are very much appreciated as well.

The notion that a person of color appointed by the mayor could effectively represent fifty ethnic groups is dubious, however, as is the notion that School Committee members should possess some kind of “expertise” other than speaking for their constituents.

Taken together, the recommendations you have made thus far are feeble in the context of our history and objective conditions. Council/manager government is not intrinsically superior in every situation. But its adoption would leaven an inertial, old-boy-network political culture that excludes the recruitment of fresh and diverse talent, perpetuates patronage, and fails on your criterion of benefiting all citizens. Somerville’s structural fiscal deficit is one of its products.

When our nation’s founders decided to change their form of government, they began the Declaration of Independence by stating that “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind” required them to state their reasons for doing so. They defined the values that would guide the transformation of their political institutions. And they cited the history and resulting conditions that compelled that transformation. I would encourage you to do the same.

There are many among Somerville’s citizens who would simply like unpoliticized consideration of their job applications and performance, impartiality in service distribution and zoning decisions, or a city government that tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Most do not enjoy the luxury of dispassionately discussing forms of municipal governance.

Do you believe that the conditions they experience are unworthy of your consideration? Do you believe that the recommendations you are offering will transform those conditions?