How pols hide their compensation

(Submitted by John Feeney)

Whenever we the people try to exercise some control over the compensation of those who lead our governmental and business organizations, the officials we are trying to control show extraordinary cleverness at finding ways around the limits we try to set.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported on how chief executives have managed to turn stock options – which were designed to align the interests of stockholders and management – into a feeding trough for themselves, their board members and their top executives, at the expense of stockholders.

Examples of the same sort of chicanery in government have been reported recently in the Cape Cod Times. The Times tells us that some state officials are manipulating state pension rules to pad their retirements. Former State Senator and UMASS president Billy Bulger, for example, got his perks (like housing allowance) added to his salary and raised his pension by $29,000 t(o $196,000 a year.

Now, the Times tells us, former Representatives Thomas George of Yarmouth and Marie Parente are trying to get travel and office allowances calculated as part of their compensation so they can get thousands of dollars per year added to their pensions. (George has already managed to get credit for years of service as town moderator, boosting his pension by about $24,000 a year.)

One such manipulation that has yet to make the news as far as I can see is the attempt by Sandwich selectmen to grant some of them lifelong health benefits despite the vote of Sandwich Town Meeting.

At the town meeting last spring, the voters of Sandwich voted to stop giving paid health insurance to town officials who work part time. This article had to be submitted to the state legislature as a home rule petition, which took several months.

The legislature passed the home rule petition, making it law in Sandwich, but the Selectmen decided that it needed some interpretation. They submitted it to attorneys to decide whether or not it covered current selectmen.

After asking Representative Jeff Perry (who was not at Town Meeting when the vote was taken according to records of Town Clerk’s office), what he felt the legislature was voting on, the lawyers (who were paid by the selectmen out of town funds for their opinion) decided that the bill did not apply to current selectmen. In the end this will probably give lifetime benefits to one Selectman elected just after Town Meeting passed this petition and will do the same for two more selectmen if they get reelected this year.

This legal opinion could cost the town more than one million dollars per individual over the lifetime of those eligible and their spouses! Not bad for a $1,500 a year job and six years of service.

I wrote the petition on which the town voted and I can assure you that I intended to have it apply to current selectmen. Nothing that was said at town meeting contradicted that interpretation. But no one asked me. Instead they relied on the testimony of someone who was not present!

There is no easy way to stop this sort of thing. Those who benefit are very clever at hiding the benefits they receive. My suggestion is that we switch all state, city and town employees to a “defined contribution” plan for both pensions and health insurance.

A defined contribution system would do two things. It would make it much easier for taxpayers to know how much they are giving to their elected officials and employees, and it would limit our obligations to the defined contribution.

John Feeney is the former Chair of the Finance Committee in Sandwich

Equal Rights for ALL

Wirt & King: Local politicians and the gay marriage question
By Tobin Wirt and Robert King/ Guest commentary

Joe Burns, columnist for the Upper Cape Codder newspaper, per usual was right on the mark when observing the absurdities of the Romney Administration and those who do his bidding. The Liberty Sunday gay-bashing rally in Boston that Joe wrote about (“Who Cares,” Oct. 19) for us is just another example of the blurring of lines between church and state.

Thomas Jefferson is widely quoted on civil and religious matters. In the preamble of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Jefferson proclaimed, “Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.”

The fact is, where there is more religious freedom one finds a society withmore religion. The Romney style of civic government would seem to curtail religious freedom by narrowing the diversity of creeds (or no creeds) in civil society.

Given the recent allegations that Romney is using his Mormon connections in Utah to advance his presidential aspirations, we hope that timing will ultimately derail his hopes for the presidency. Americans seem to be reaching an end point with awareness and alarm at the religious overreach into politics. We feel Romney fooled and misrepresented his views to the voters in 2002 and postured himself a moderate on most social issues but then swiftly moved to the right when the corner office was secured and Iowa and New Hampshire became more important to his future. Bashing the Bay State on his many trips around the country does not endear him to many proud Massachusetts citizens.

Locally, our state representative, a nice guy with many supporters, does Romney’s bidding in lockstep. Rep. Jeff Perry has never met a gay-rights bill he could vote for except one. It funded elderly gays as part of a larger bill tied to funding elderly affairs. It was unanimously passed in both houses, hardly a leap of courage on his part. Perry has reassured gay groups and us personally that he is supportive but is beholden to the views of what he says is the majority of his constituents and therefore votes against any advancement of gay rights. Most troubling are Mr. Perry’s votes, which are consistently against funding programs that help teenagers deal with the ever-present difficulties they encounter in our public schools. While wanting to give Jeff the benefit of the doubt with his assurances of support, we feel his voting record speaks for itself.

A seemingly purposeful omission on Perry’s Web site under Political Philosophy, where all the perfunctory groups who are protected in this Commonwealth against job and housing discrimination are listed, there curiously is no mention of sexual orientation. When asked why, Rep. Perry claimed that he hadn’t updated the Web site since the gay marriage issue had come to the forefront. While believing him at his word, it seems odd since civil rights protections have nothing to do with the ongoing marriage question. Those protections have been on the law books since the early ’90s for sexual orientation. Why then didn’t he include sexual orientation with the others to begin with? Reason would bring one to question if he does indeed support the state-mandated protections in jobs and housing for gay citizens (let alone gay partnerships of any kind). Mr. Perry said he was thankful for having the omission pointed out and that he would “re-evaluate” his Web site after the election. However, a check of the Web site last week showed that on Oct. 2 the site was altered and the references of the aforementioned in the Political Philosophy link are gone.

Cape Cod has witnessed an odd juxtaposition of stances on gay marriage by three GOP hopefuls in elections this fall. You have Aaron Maloy, 4th Barnstable District, an openly gay man who is against gay marriage but for civil unions. You have to wonder how much this guy wanted to win when he is willing to throw his gay brothers and sisters overboard to solidify “separate but equal” status on them.

Next we have Rick Barros, running for the Cape and Islands senate seat, a decent, good man of color who also says marriage is between one man and one woman and that the people should be allowed to vote on it. In the not so distant past (in the ’70s) only one out of three Americans supported interracial marriage and it was the courts that ultimately ended that bigotry, not the voters. Mr. Barros acknowledges his engagement to soon be married and it will be an interracial marriage.

Lastly, Rep. Perry, a gracious and respectful man who speaks openly of a close gay family member, continues to do the work of the people who demonize gay people, apparently forsaking people in his district as well as those close to him. We feel he eludes accountability for this.

Mr. Perry will be asked to vote again on whether to advance the anti-gay marriage petition at the Constitutional Convention. And despite his past verbal assurances that he could probably not support this petition (which he expressed over a year ago to a small group of people of which one of us were in attendance) he has since backtracked and is on record already as voting to throw it to the populace for a vote.

We encourage all constituents to contact Mr. Perry’s office if you agree that he is wrong-headed on the matters of gay rights. Recent attempts by his office to poll citizens in his district regarding gay marriage predictably supported his anti-gay stances. We implore Upper Cape voters to speak up if you haven’t had the chance to do so thus far.

Legal gay marraige isn’t what you might think.

About ten years ago I visited my daughter in Northampton, not long after she had ended a difficult relationship with her live-in boyfriend.

As we sat in the restaurant having lunch my daughter said, “I have something to tell you.” Being the pessimist I am I started thinking about all sorts of terrible things. Was she a drug addict? Had she committed some crime? Maybe she was moving to South America?

Then she said, “I’m gay.”

At first I could not even process the information. My brain spun. Words failed me. This was totally unexpected. Terri had recently been living with a man.

As I was able to focus on the situation, I found that my only concern was that Terri was going against the grain of society, and society would make her pay a price for that. I was right.

I think one of the great strengths of this nation is toleration of diversity. We may not be great at it, but we are better than most (not all) other countries. However, we have a way to go on some issues. Not being heterosexual is one of those situations that still brings out intolerance.

Terri leads a very conventional life. She has been in a stable long-term relationship with a wonderful partner whom we have come to love, and they are planning to have children. It has pained me to watch how much more difficult many things are for her than they would be if her partner had a beard and a deep voice.

For example, Terri’s partner was transferred to Switzerland by her company, and had she been a man, Terri would have had no trouble getting a residence permit. But even though she and her partner had been legally married in Massachusetts, Switzerland, like almost all of the United States, does not recognize gay marriage.

So even though they are married and one partner had a legal work permit for Switzerland, Terri could not get a residence permit without the expensive services of a lawyer and help from her partner’s company. Even so, she was forced to leave the country for two weeks! The whole process took more than a year.

Very recently her partner was transferred to Ireland. Again, lawyers had to be retained, and because the process takes months, Terri had to deny her connection to her partner and enter as a visitor in order to get in. She said the customs officer flirted with her, and she flirted back.

If all goes well the lawyers they have hired will get her a residence permit before her visitor’s visa wears out. If that effort is not successful, Terri will be expelled and her life will be totally disrupted. Why? There would none of this if Terri’s partner had been her husband.

Legalizing marriage in Massachusetts is an important step in tolerance. It helps thousands and thousands of people, and I do not see how it hurts anyone. But it is just a start. Massachusetts marriage has no standing in the rest of the United States and only limited recognition abroad. The world has a long way to go before we can say we have given full rights to all people, including my wonderful, loving, intelligent daughter and her equally wonderful spouse.

Taking another shot at public financing of campaigns

Suppose you were self-employed and were a member of an association of people in the same business. One day a group comes to your association’s meeting and asks the members to vote to endorse state grants to people who wanted to open up businesses that would directly compete with each and every member of the association. How would you vote?

Sound like a “no brainer?” That’s roughly what has been going on with the idea that government should fund election campaigns. The people whose jobs are at stake – members of Congress, state legislators — have done everything they could to prevent potential competitors from getting government support for their campaigns.

Massachusetts is one of the few states that has come close to changing the system, despite broad opposition. After 6,000 volunteers gathered 150,000 signatures in 1997 and 1998 to put an initiative petition of the ballot (thus bypassing the legislature), two-thirds of Massachusetts voters cast their ballot in favor of public financing of campaigns, making Massachusetts the only state in the nation to have a comprehensive “clean elections” system.

But the legislature refused to provide the funds necessary to make the system work. In 2002, several candidates won public financing for their campaigns through the courts. As part of that process, the state Supreme Court told the legislature to fund the law or repeal it. In 2003, the legislature, to its shame, repealed the law.

But the idea is not dead yet.

Mass Voters (www.massvoters.com) is launching another campaign provide public support for candidates’ campaigns. They feel that the situation has changed in the last few years. “Within the Massachusetts Legislature there is a new openness and spirit of change,” as they put it.

So they are organizing another campaign to get clean elections passed. They are now gathering signatures for a non-binding advisory question in several legislative districts, including Cape Cod.

Here is the question that Mass Voters members are working to put on the November 2006 ballot:

“Shall the state [senator/representative] from this district be instructed to vote in favor of legislation that would provide public campaign financing for elections to the state Legislature whereby candidates who agree to strict fundraising and spending limits could receive public matching funds, with a cap on the amount of public money available per candidate?”

Will Rogers is usually credited with saying “We have the best Congress money can buy.” Anything we can do to avoid the influence of private funds on public office holders should be worth the money we spend.

We Get The Government We Deserve

We have no one to blame but ourselves. Politicians have found that if they tell us what we want to hear, we will support them, no matter how unrealistic, or untrue, their statement or promise might be. All they have to do is repeat a statement enough times, and we will come to believe what they say.

These claims and promises are usually short and simple; sometimes just a phrase printed on a banner visible behind the speaker. They are sometimes called “Mind Messages” (or “MIMES” for short), because even if we fail to consciously acknowledge them, our subconscious mind stores them for future use.

Unfortunately there is seldom much relationship between the politicians’ promises and their actions. Our politicians know that if they talk the talk, they do have to walk the walk.

One of the most common delusions which our politicians take advantage of is our current belief that we can have what we want and not have to pay for it.

For example, in 2002 Massachusetts elected the gubernatorial candidate who said he could balance the budget, cut the income tax and not touch “vital state services” — even though the experts said this was impossible. Now we know that the experts were right.

The same MIME games have been played by George Bush. For months he stood in front of a wall or repeated phrases and told us his proposed tax cuts would provide an economic stimulus to rescue our sagging economy.

But as the Economist magazine pointed out in its January 11th issue: “…make no mistake about it. The package will have next to no stimulative effect in the relevant time-frame, — and, if the administration succeeded in pushing it through, by the time the proposal does interject some extra demand it may well do more harm than good.”

William Gale, an economist with the Brookings Institution said of the Bush proposal, “If you asked economists to come up with ten things to stimulate the economy, none would have come up with that.”

Bush also claimed that his tax cuts would benefit everyone. His current MIME is that that the average tax payer would save $1,100. But as columnist Al Hunt pointed out in a Wall Street Journal article, while “…92 million Americans would get an average tax cut of about $1,100; half of taxpayers…get less than $100, while people making over $1 million average $90,200….that does average to $1,100 apiece, just the way baseball’s Aaron brothers hit an average of 385 home runs – Henry hit 755 and Tommie hit 13.”

The tax cut passed. Don’t hold your breath while waiting for the resulting job growth.

The politicians know they can tell us one thing, do another and we will vote for them anyway. We get the government we deserve.

How To Improve Political Discourse

We are among that group of people who like to attend candidate meetings and watch our Congressional reps on C-Span. Most of the time, we are not pleased by what we hear. Politicians have become experts at “warmly warmly” generalities that say nothing, offend no one, and leave us wondering how they will vote when the time comes.

Their aim, it seems to us, is to allow both sides to think that they can have what they want. Most of the time that is simply not possible. Compromise is typically necessary.

No plan is perfect; and every proposal needs to be carefully reviewed, but we should stop letting our candidates and politicians off the hook when they give us answers comprised of generalities designed to avoid angering anyone. These statements do not inform us. They do not tell us where the politician really stands. And they often give us the impression that we can have our cake and eat it too.

We can’t. With some exceptions, we can’t have better schools and lower taxes. We can’t have cleaner air and lower-priced electricity. We can’t have more government spending and lower taxes. We can’t stop the “build-out” of Cape Cod, but we do have a lot to say about how it is done. (Do we really want nothing but single family homes on acre lots?)

On the national level, we can’t have a big increase in the defense budget, a major tax cut, a prescription drug program, a social security “lock box” and a surplus, no matter what the president tells us. Unless the tooth fairy leaves a few billion under our pillows, we are about to have several years of major deficits and a huge increase in the national debt.

Shame on us if let ourselves be duped by those who tell us otherwise.

We have a prescription for improving political discourse.

1. Do not let politicians or people get away with objecting to anything without proposing a specific solution. If someone says that they like renewable energy but do not want a wind farm near their house ask them exactly where they would put it. If they don’t have a specific answer, ignore them. If they do, ask them if the people in that area are OK with having the wind farm in THEIR back yard. If someone says that their neighborhood should not get low-income housing, ask them what neighborhood they would put it in. If they say they wouldn’t have any more low-income housing in town, ask them where our low-paid workers should live.

2. If someone says we need to spend more money on something, ask them where they are going to get it. And don’t accept generalities like “make government more efficient” unless they cite exactly how they would do that. If they say “raise taxes” ask them which taxes and by how much.

The devil is in the details. It is easy to speak in generalities that make us feel good, but hard to be specific. Details are difficult, but we need to demand specificity of our politicians — and ourselves!

INSTANT RUNNOFF VOTING MAKES SURE MAJORITY WINS

Bills have been filed in the state legislature this year (2005) to initiate “Instant Runoff Voting” (IRV) in many races in Massachusetts. We think this is an idea whose time has come. So do people at both ends of the political spectrum, like John McCain and Howard Dean. (You can see their statements at http://www.fairvote.org. Other information is available at http://www.instantrunoff.com.)

When there are only two candidates in a race, you do not need IRV. But when three or more candidates are competing for an office, it is possible (even likely) that the winner will get less than half the vote. In a society that believes in the rule of the majority, electing candidates with less than half of the vote makes no sense -especially when it is so simple to make sure that only a candidate approved by the majority can win.

Local officials are often elected by less than half of those voting. This has become common in presidential elections, but it frequently happens at the local level too. Here are a few random examples from Cape Cod: In Harwich, McManus and Peterson were elected selectmen by 37% and 40% of the vote respectively in 2004. In Sandwich in 2004, Dexter was elected selectman with 43% of the vote, just slightly ahead of the third (and unsuccessful) candidate, Guerin, who got 42%. In the recent Sandwich school committee race, the winner got votes from 38% of the those voting, while the second candidate elected had only 31% of the vote!

IRV would make sure all elected candidates get a vote from at least half of those voting. Here’s how it works: Instead of voting for a candidate, you rank all of them (or as many as you want) by putting a “one” next to your favorite candidate and a “two” next to your second favorite, and so on.

If you are one of those people who wants to let everyone know your favorite is one of those candidates who represents a minority party with little chance of winning, then you do not have to throw your vote away to make your statement.

For example, if in a Mass gubernatorial election ( which typically has four or five candidates on the ballot) you could, if you wished, give your “one” vote to the Libertarian candidate — or the “Green” candidate. Then you could cast your “two” vote next to the Republican or Democrat.

In this case your “one” vote would make a statement, and your “two” vote would help determine whether it is the Republican or Democrat that wins. In either case, the winner would be favored by a majority of the voters.

Exactly the same system could be applied to the primaries, making sure that the candidate nominated by any party was favored by at least half of the voters of that party. That does not happen today. If it did, all political parties would be more likely to nominate winners.

Here’s how winners are determined in IRV elections: All the “one” votes are counted. If anyone has “ones” from 50% or more of the voters, the election is over. If not, then the last candidate is eliminated (or you could eliminate all of the other candidates except the top two), and all the “two” votes from eliminated candidates are counted.

When the counting is finished at least one candidate will have more than 50% of the vote, and the one with the most votes wins.

This system is simple and would require no change in equipment here on Cape Cod, as we all use optical scanners, which have been proven to work.

Many countries have been using this system for years, and more states and cities — ranging from Utah to San Francisco — are using it in the U.S. We encourage our legislators — of both parties — to support IRV.

Jack Edmonston and Paul Schrader

MAKING MASS. PROPERTY TAXES FAIRER

About three decades ago, the cities and towns of Massachusetts changed their system of assessing real estate for property tax purposes. This was necessary because the courts had ruled that the haphazard systems being used were in violation of state law, creating essentially unequal taxation. People with the same value of house in the same town might have very different tax bills.

In Massachusetts, assessments are supposed to represent the full market value of the property. The system set up in the 70’s was supposed to make sure that happened. There was an initial careful assessment based on viewing of every home, followed by updates at least every three years. Most towns use a computer-based service for this.

This was a huge improvement over the old ways, and we are aware that accurate assessments are very difficult; but we have found some troubling indications that the system could still be flawed.

Lacking a research staff, we did a small, unscientific study to compare assessment to market value of 38 more or less randomly selected homes both across the state. What we found surprised us.

Of the 38 homes we checked, just over half had assessments that were between 75% and 100% of the market value (which in two-thirds of the cases was measured by actual selling price). While anything less than 100% is not really “full market value,” most real estate people we have talked to believe it’s acceptable, given the difficulties involved.

But if half of the assessments were in what some consider to be the acceptable range, almost half were not. Two houses were assessed at more than their market value. One quarter of the houses were assessed between 50% and 75% of their estimated market value, and about 16% had assessments that were less than half of the selling price (one was assessed at less than a third of the selling price). In any individual case there could be some special reason (like a sale under duress) for an assessment outside the acceptable range, but we doubt that this would apply to half of all homes sold.

If our unscientific study proves to be accurate, this is not fair. The homeowners in our survey whose assessments were more than the real market value could be paying almost four times as much in taxes per thousand dollars of real house value as the house with the lowest percentage assessment.

Our results are not enough to reach any definitive conclusion, but we think they merit a call for more study. We recommend that state tax officials organize a scientifically valid survey of assessments versus selling price. It would not be very hard (with a computer and a good data base) to check the assessment of every house sold in the last year against its selling price. If they find the same unequal spread we did, we think it would be a good time to hold an open debate on how we might make property taxes more fair and equal. We have a suggestion we would like to submit for discussion:

It is a variation on what they do in California: Reset assessed value every time a house is sold to the actual sales price. The market does not lie. But, unlike California, which freezes assessments until a house is sold again, we think the assessed value of all houses in a town should be raised by exactly the same percentage annually. That number could be the percentage increase of the median increase of all houses sold in the county or state that year.

This system would make no changes in the ability of every town to set its own tax rates. It would affect only assessments. It would make assessments much more predictable, and it should be fairer and cheaper.

Jack Edmonston and Paul Schrader