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An Earthshaking Question: Should the RTM be abolished?

This post will be of interest, if at all, to my readers in Groton.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a member of the Groton Charter Revision Commission. We are charged with suggesting changes to the Groton Charter.

At our next meeting (September 10th) we will be voting on whether the Representative Town Meeting (RTM) should be abolished. I invite any Groton residents with opinions on the issue, pro or con, to send an email to me with their thoughts. Click on contact me in the upper right hand corner of the home page.

If I were charged with creating a charter from scratch for Groton, I doubt that I’d create an RTM. When the charter was adopted in 1957 it replaced a system in which actual town meetings still played a part. The RTM was designed to take the place of the town meeting. While I probably would not include an RTM if I were writing on a blank slate, one can’t ignore history, and the probably outcome if one took such a step in isolation, so I’m against abolishing the RTM.

In my opinion, the RTM has worked fairly well. The RTM is truly representative, sometimes to a fault. There are some excellent, highly intelligent people in it, and there are some who occupy the lower regions of the IQ continuum. As in life, however, so with the RTM-the most capable members tend to wield the greatest amount of influence. The minority representation requirement prevents domination by any well organized faction, including, unfortunately, factions with which one might agree.

The overall result is of a piece with the rest of the system here in Groton. We have competent, if unimaginative government institutionally skewed toward what is often called fiscal conservatism, but not so much as to utterly destroy good government or the school system. I’ve been living in Groton for thirty years, and in all that time there’s been no hint of corruption in town government. Our tax rate is low compared to surrounding towns. Our schools are better than pedestrian, which is about average for this area, at least that’s my impression.

The major function of the RTM is to serve as yet another brake on spending, since it can reduce line items in the budget by a mere majority vote, while it takes a super majority to restore funds cut by the council. I was on the RTM for one term, and I believe the body, as a whole, took its role seriously. I was on the education committee, and I attended every budget meeting of the Board of Education, along with all the other committee members, so we could get a good understanding of the Board’s budget. Other committees boned up on their own jurisdictional areas. Overall, our votes were fairly well informed.

The push to abolish the RTM is a precursor to a call for the institution of a budget referendum. The result would be replacing a flawed system in which the decision makers are reasonably well informed and fairly representative of the citizenry with a system in which the decision makers are poorly informed and, due to the dynamics of referendum votes, unrepresentative of the citizenry.

To be clear on the last point, referendum votes are held in the summer. Many people are unaware they are even happening. Turnout tends to be low, dominated by the highly motivated “cut my taxes at any price, particularly cut the school budget because I don’t have kids anymore” type of voter. A very small minority of voters can effectively control the budget process.

At some point, as time goes on, I may elaborate on my objections to budget referenda. Suffice to say at this point that government is about outcomes, and the outcomes of referenda tend to be destructive. Witness the state of California, which has been almost destroyed by referendums.

That’s my take on it in any event. I’d be interested in hearing from anyone on either side of the RTM issue. I will pass on any communications I get, without editorial comment, to the entire Commission.

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