Domesticated dogs and absent advocates

By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

Mayor Joe Curtatone has demonstrably achieved the opposite of his claim to lead an administration that is more open, accountable, and participatory than its predecessors. But he is not some amoral cartoon villain who lusts after power for its own sake. In person he is warm and cordial. He does want what is best for the city. He wants to expand the scope of his authority because he sincerely believes that he knows what is best, and is the most able in achieving it.

He may be egotistical and ambitious, but the very structure and culture of Somerville’s outdated strong-mayor form of government selects for that in its chief executives. It encourages the kind of secrecy, manipulation of public perceptions, and striving for more power that I have described in this series.

His will to power is probably no greater than that of his predecessors, but he has been more effective in its pursuit because of two broad changes in Somerville’s political environment. The first is that the three watchdogs that historically held these tendencies in check have all been housebroken.

From the 1970s into the early 90s, the Board of Aldermen served as a counterbalance to mayoral  power  by fulfilling its obligation to deliberate, debate, and decide changes in policy. It considered every issue that affects Somerville residents, and it continually challenged mayoral misconduct and ambition.

Aldermen were unafraid to say, sometimes unfairly, that the emperor had no clothes. At virtually every board meeting, Alderman Billy Joyce pointedly criticized mayoral performance. Yet his constituents regularly re-elected him by the city’s largest majorities.

In the days when twenty candidates contested for the at-large alderman positions, aldermen were paid $1,500 per year. That’s about 6,600 of today’s dollars.

The majority of aldermanic watchdogs have been defanged. They drowse by the throne, sleepily gumming their $27,000-per-year-plus-benefits bone and luxuriating in the occasional pat on the head or scratch behind the ears from their master’s hand.

Occasionally, those pats take the form of jobs for relatives. In the past, mayors and aldermen were reluctant to make such arrangements, fearing press scrutiny. But the press watchdogs have defanged themselves.

If you go to the Somerville Library and read Somerville Journal news stories from past decades, you will find depth of coverage, pursuit of evidence, and tenacity on an issue that is unrecognizable when compared to that, or this, newspaper’s current offerings. They lack the healthy journalistic skepticism and tenacious search for the truth that are the fourth estate’s redeeming virtues.

The Boston Globe is often worse, sometimes adding little to a paraphrased press release. A story reporting on the mayor’s intention to appoint a charter committee, for example said that the only way to change the Charter is for the Board of Alderman to pass, and both houses of the legislature approve, such changes. In fact, the more democratic method, specified in MGL Chapter 43B, is to elect a charter commission.

Few past mayors have enjoyed such lax coverage. Many readers will remember that I was a critic of Mayor Dorothy Kelly Gay’s development policy. Even so, her administration was significantly less overreaching and more forthright in its conduct than this one. Yet the local press regularly whipped it like a rented mule.

When the Gay administration declined to release the transcript of a deposition in which a former Inspectional Services Division chief leveled charges against it, the Somerville Journal published stories every week for a month, culminating in transcript excerpts. Today, investigative reporting by the likes of Dan Goren and Hillary Chabot seem to be as extinct as the pterodactyl. The Journal’s recent coverage of city government’s withholding of ethics information is a noteworthy exception.

The third historical watchdog, activist citizens’ groups, also seems to be on the courageous-canine endangered list, if not extinct. Somerville United Neighbors regularly mobilized hundreds of residents to advocate for needed city policies and actions. Citizens for Participation in Politics crusaded against patronage and backroom deals, and for openness and honesty.

Most wards had their own civic association, nonpartisan advocates for good government. As its name implies, the Somerville Taxpayers’ Association opposed waste and fraud. Whatever each organization’s constituency and purpose, their persistently focused attention kept government more honest.

Taken together, the whole of these three watchdogs’ work was greater than the sum of its parts. Citizens’ groups monitored aldermen and worked for or against their re-election. Issues raised by them became the basis for local press investigations whose results, in turn, empowered citizens groups. And press and organized citizenry together kept aldermanic and the mayoral conduct in the spotlight, rewarding aldermanic independence and punishing mayoral manipulation.

The most effective citizens’ groups no longer exist, even in the memories of a majority of current Somerville residents. And that is key to the second broad reason why the Curtatone administration has been able to get away with more. A majority of those who gave life to the citizens’ groups no longer lives here. Those families that do, have less attention for civic life because making a living requires more attention. Both changes have unraveled the networks of social relationships that vitalize community associations.

Low-income immigrants who must focus all their attention on survival, and more affluent professionals who choose to focus most of their attention on work have replaced the departed majority. The professional newcomers are often slow to form relationships within Somerville, although some exceptional few have engaged local issues of education, the Green Line, and revitalization of the Squares.

The Curtatone administration is secretive, autocratic, and unaccountable, not because it is led by bad people, but because those are the requirements for power within Somerville’s antiquated political culture and strong-mayor form of government. They are necessary to achieve and sustain dominance, even if the dominators’ intention is to do good. And the forces that historically checked and balanced those tendencies have faded away.

It’s time to create a new Charter and political culture that can effectively serve Somerville’s citizens in this new reality. Attempting to do so through a committee selected by the chief executive of the old reality won’t get it done.