Don Howell's Blog

If My House Were Built In 1913, Would You Care About It, Too?

In the last two postings, I have discussed the lack of representation which comes from the comfort zone created by spectacular money and influence exerted by PAC’s (who only care about government insofar as it can advance their narrow one area of concern – the one the PAC was created for) and the warm feeling you get from having 141 members out of 160 coming from the same party. In the case of the latter, the party line is the same; “those other guys can hold their caucus in a phone booth; if you want any real influence on Beacon Hill, we’ve got the numbers to get it done!” O.K., so what have they done?

One obvious flaw in the logic of “one party rule rules, man” is that nothing that goes on in the party caucus is subject to any public scrutiny. You see, a caucus is not part of the government process, no need for open meetings; the caucus is just to thrash out our party’s position. Yet, with numbers so compelling (nearly 90% of the total), anything that can get agreed upon in the caucus will become the outcome once the legislative session convenes, no matter how public the legislative discussion is. Heck, once the good folks who constitute the leadership get a head count, you can even be allowed to play to the crowd; the folks back home. If you knew something would be passed or blocked from a caucus head count, you could take a conscience vote, knowing the leadership still got its way with the ultimate outcome. Wow, could that really happen, you ask yourself? How would you know, I say!

Let’s take a look at this dance in a practical situation (please note - this will, of course, be totally fictional, as I never got inside the caucus, did you?). My opponent made a lot of promises on the way to office two years ago. The first one – just email me and I’ll email you back because I’m so open – went by the boards pretty quickly. Indeed, I’ve knocked on the doors of some folks who actually believed that stuff (who phoned her office or emailed). Many are still waiting for their response. Guess they weren’t towing the party line, or something.

Moving along, she made it pretty clear what her social agenda was all about; gay marriage. Now, as a matter of civil rights, I don’t really like the government butting into people’s private business. So, if this was about equality, I was for it.  But, if it's about superiority or control, then count me out. Any way, one would have thought that we’d have moved on to the other pressing problems of the day. Remember, we have all three braches of government under the control of one party; the agenda – if anyone was really serious – could have sped along like a rocket ship. Yet, a lot of the legislative clock (coming down to the wire) was given over to the 1913 Marriage Law repeal and Trans-gender rights hearings. Too bad Homeowner’s Insurance Reform wasn’t as important. I guess that’s what happens when our political parties get intoxicated with social reform (i.e. now that we are in, we can control those other guys). Just so no one feels me partisan, both parties are guilty of this.

Unfortunately, even as our current Rep – Our Voice – feigned interest in insurance reform (though we’ll never know for sure; see above for that discussion), nothing passed. What was Our Voice thinking? Maybe something like: “…calm down, it’s only been a mess for four or five years, there’s really no rush for this. So people are paying more for their Cape Cod homeowner’s insurance than they pay for their property taxes. So what? So more wind damage payouts occur in the Worcester area of the state than on the Cape. So what?” Well, good data (modeling that we could pay for and use) might reveal that fact. But ahhhh, that data might p…s off her caucus brethren from Worcester! Better to just say she cares to the folks back home; the public won’t know what she said in a caucus anyway.

The point is, the 1913 Law was repealed (and Sarah was very proud that it did so with no legislative discussion according to her interview in the Provincetown Banner), but nothing happened in the area of homeowner’s insurance reform for yet another session. Good thing none of her constituents live in a home!

Again, if you want government to get back to listening to you, you need real reform. If I get elected, I can assure you the insurance mess would not be just a hobby for me. Moreover, I would file an 8 year term limit bill in every session; I would encourage a ballot initiative (if anyone in the legislature would pay attention to your vote); and I would leave after 8 years – not for higher office as is rumored about my opponent – but just leave. I did that when I was a Selectman. I thought the honorable thing to do was run for one office at a time and not promise people in my town that, if elected, I would serve out my term, even as I was running for State Rep. My opponent made that promise in her last run for Provincetown Selectman, but left one year later with two years remaining in her term. Hmmmmmm, can we trust her?