Managing the Managers (VNews Submission)

"Practice makes perfect," someone's said, but they can't have meant democracy. 

The democratic debate over competing interests -- from New England Town Meeting to state capitols to Washington -- remains as fractious and messy as ever.  Messier, maybe, as that democratic debate is increasingly filtered through a vast and growing bureaucratic layer of government administrative roles and regulation. 

Indeed, throughout the Upper Valley, New England's experiment with direct democracy is giving way to a more modern, suburban, bureaucracy.  Town meeting gives way to the Australian ballot. Volunteer selectboards cede ever more authority to professional administrators, signaling that American government, even in small communities, may no longer be a matter for amateurs. 

Here in Norwich, our experiment with professional administration began in 2002 when we hired our first town manager.  Barely ten years later, convulsed by a series of public controversies, we're on to our fourth town manager with new controversies brewing.  While the details of these spats are fascinating to the participants -- and make good Valley News headlines -- the underlying struggle they signify is relevant to all your readers: 

Where do we, the amateur citizen-taxpayers, fit within this increasingly bureaucratized democracy?

Last September ("Due Diligence" 9/23/12), the Valley News took the position that voters unhappy with our Selectboard's decision to pursue a contract with VTel must content ourselves with the opportunity to elect different selectboard members when these face re-election in 2014.  We've taken a more robust approach; twice gathering sufficient signatures to place the VTel contract before town voters.  Twice we've been rebuffed by a narrow three-member majority of our selectboard.

Knowing we would secure the necessary signatures to force a bond vote over their opposition, we offered the Selectboard an opportunity to warn the bond vote themselves -- on their terms and for an amount they felt adequate to build a municipally-owned tower in place of the VTel contract.  They could not muster a majority to offer an alternative so we gathered nearly twice the signatures necessary essentially over a weekend. 

A little dose of direct democracy?  Not so fast. 

The bond vote now just a week away, our town manager, seeking to short-circuit the vote, is now pressing our selectboard to enter into a binding contract with VTel at their meeting this Wednesday. Resorting to a now familiar pattern, we are told doomsday scenarios, that VTel is the only option, suggesting this decision is simply too important to be left to the voters. 

While I don't question the sincerity of our town manager's ultimate goal, the methods he's employed exemplify the risks we face in this brave new world of bureaucratized democracy.  It also suggests your paper's confidence in the curative qualities of a ballot box may no longer apply.

Where do amateur citizen-taxpayers fit in if a town manager dictates the selectboard agenda and controls the flow of information to define the grounds for debate?  How can amateur citizen-taxpayers match the time and resources our own tax dollars provide our town manager to manage that debate?  We can't simply "vote the bums out," because we don't get to vote for town manager.

Instead, in today's bureaucratized democracy, we must hope our selectboards learn how to manage the managers.  We have to find ways to hold bureaucrats accountable without making them political appointees (or scapegoats).  And we need to recognize the same complexity that makes direct volunteer management of town affairs unrealistic also makes volunteer oversight of professional management very, very difficult.  Wish us luck.

(This piece was subsequently edited by the Valley News prior to publishing on 2-26-13)