Friday’s Newport Daily News article on possible changes to the financial town meeting (FTM) system in Tiverton contained these worrying paragraphs:
But the council and the School Committee, it was noted, are prohibited from using public funds to influence a vote, per a charter amendment that was crafted by Caron and approved several years ago. How then, council members wondered, would they get the word out to voters about a budget they recommended?
[Town Councilor Louise] Durfee suggested doing away with that charter amendment, which is number 1218.
Section 1218 of the Town Charter (PDF) reads as follows:
No officer or employee of the Town, including the school Department, shall use, or cause to be used, Town property, goods, money, grants, or labor to influence the outcome of an election, ballot question, Financial Town Meeting, or referendum; the foregoing shall not prohibit the distribution or publication of election, ballot question, Financial Town Meeting, or referendum information by the Town Clerk, the Board of Canvassers, or a Charter Review Commission.
There is simply nothing in that language that would make a public hearing prior to an all-day financial referendum or special election different from the open forum of the financial town meeting. Town Council and School Committee members could still use their meetings (all televised on cable and available online) for political theater and manipulation. They could still speak in public and private forums. They could still use their own time and resources to advertise and promote their views in person, in print, on the Internet, on the radio, and on television. Just like anybody who does not share their privileged positions would have to do.
The real impetus behind the otherwise inexplicable introduction of 1218 to the discussion of changing the town’s budgetary process is that certain folks in Tiverton government do not like the restriction that the people of Tiverton voted into the charter just a couple of years ago, and they’ll seize any opportunity to eliminate it. Taxpayers provide various resources — including personnel — to elected and appointed officials in order to conduct the business of running the town, and some of them (Ms. Durfee leading the pack) would like to use those resources to influence outcomes.
Their reasoning isn’t entirely implausible. After all, they see absorbing an ever greater percentage of Tiverton residents’ wealth to be part of the business of running the town. From their perspective, they come up with budgets that they believe to be crucial to the town, and those who disagree are acting in contravention of Tiverton’s best interests.
The point lost in that thinking — and it’s a point that the people of Tiverton desperately need to relearn — is that budgetary control is an invaluable tool by which residents have input into municipal and school operation. It’s a check and balance beyond our regular elections — typically putting into office people with whom few voters are actually very familiar. A budget debate that gives those outside of government a fighting chance against those within is crucial because it requires groups that stand to gain financially from town expenditures to go that extra step beyond promoting preferred candidates and promote the actual dollar amounts that they’d like to extract from residents.
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