{"id":22057,"date":"2019-11-13T13:43:44","date_gmt":"2019-11-13T18:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=22057"},"modified":"2019-11-13T13:43:46","modified_gmt":"2019-11-13T18:43:46","slug":"an-agenda-for-political-reform-in-massachusetts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=22057","title":{"rendered":"an agenda for political reform in Massachusetts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Today at the Boston Foundation, MassINC & Tisch College released our report<\/a> on reforming state government in Massachusetts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The major theme is that a small number of people who lack the diversity of our state dominate the process of governance, which includes voting, running for office, assessing problems and possible solutions, consulting stakeholders, and building coalitions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

State government is very powerful because of a lack of county governments and weak home-rule for our cities. Within the legislature, especially in the House, power is strongly concentrated in the leadership. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strong leadership is not necessarily problematic, and it is typical of large legislative bodies, such as our House. But centralized control is problematic if the leadership lacks diversity. In our case, of the 76 legislators who hold leadership positions, four<\/em> are people of color. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And centralized control is problematic if people outside the center lack the capacity to play their own important roles in governance In our case, most state representatives employ just one staffer–not enough to play a meaningful role in legislating. The parties are shells, employing very few people. And state and local newspapers are near collapse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As solutions, we propose:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Synchronize state\nand local elections. <\/strong>Holding local elections in odd years dramatically\nreduces turnout leading to an electorate that is unrepresentative and\nvulnerable to influence by special interests. To attract more voters, Massachusetts\nshould follow other cities and states that have moved municipal contests to\neven years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Provide public\nfunds for candidates and parties<\/strong>. Public financing increases the racial,\neconomic, and gender diversity of those running for office. Massachusetts\nshould join a growing number of cities and states that provide public funding\nto both candidates and parties. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Increase the\ncapacity of the whole legislature to legislate. <\/strong>All legislators should have\nthe capacity to consult with citizens and experts, analyze legislative\nproposals, develop their own proposals, and build coalitions. Massachusetts\nshould follow the practice of 46 states and create a research office to provide\nnonpartisan analysis of pending legislation. The Legislature should also\nprovide rank-and-file legislators with more professional staff and ensure that\nthey are adequately compensated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Invest in the press. <\/strong>Concerted effort is needed to find new business models for state and local news. The legislature should act expediently on pending legislation that would establish a commission to examine policy options to ensure that residents in all of our communities have access to quality state and local news. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also endorse civic education, lowering the voting age, Ranked-Choice Voting, Election Day Registration, and the Citizens Initiative Review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the whole thing here<\/a>. It can be cited as: Peter Levine, Benjamin Forman & Laurel Bliss, MassForward: Advancing Democratic Innovation and Electoral Reform in Massachusetts<\/em> (Boston: MassINC, 2019)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today at the Boston Foundation, MassINC & Tisch College released our report on reforming state government in Massachusetts. The major theme is that a small number of people who lack the diversity of our state dominate the process of governance, which includes voting, running for office, assessing problems and possible solutions, consulting stakeholders, and building […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22057"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22062,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22057\/revisions\/22062"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}