In fact, Plan E protected local politicians from themselves by allowing them to delegate day to day operations to an appointed and hopefully professional manager while the city council legislated city policy.

Moreover, Plan E empowers a city manager to be the professional punching bag that the city council can hammer with its rhetorical fists while winking its mischievous eye.

Plan E and, to a lesser but still important extent, Proportional Representation voting deserve credit for the success of Cambridge as a municipal government and for ensuring that discreet factions are represented. Plan E gives the racial, ethnic, and philosophical factions some measure of representation. It creates a city-wide multi-member district so that all candidates are encouraged to maintain some level of civility. Even the fringe factions get a seat now and then. If, as Burke said, “The individual may be foolish, but the species is wise,” then the species of Cambridge voter has done well. Almost seventy years largely free of the corruption which was problematic before WWII.

Also, the success is in no small measure a function of personalities playing their roles within Plan E.

The City Manager form of government is generally a big plus – assuming you are willing to appoint a competent professional from among the field. In fact, the current city manager retains his position because he’s probably the best municipal administrator in the state.

His predecessors were generally able and honorable people even though some did not survive the politics. The firing of a good city manager excited the voters enough to change the majority of the city council back in the days when people paid attention. (Bob Healy is the only permanent city manager not to have been fired or pushed out reluctantly. Healy’s predecessor and mentor, James Leo Sullivan who left voluntarily to take another position before handing the job off to Healy, was fired during his first stint in 1970 and rehired in 1974.)

Having the mayor sit on the school committee is a major plus and a reason that there is comparatively little tension between the two bodies and adequate school funding has not been a problem. Many town and regional school committees are at war with their selectmen and town meetings because the selectboard and town meeting members have no idea what school governance is about.

The natural progression for some to move from the School Committee to the City Council (Henrietta Davis, Tim Toomey, Denise Simmons, David Maher) brings to five the current number of city councillors who served there. (Ken Reeves, the former mayor, served ex-officio).

I’d make a few fine tuning changes including forcing the Traffic and Parking Department to be accountable to the city manager or the city council. Right now for some strange reason, it is accountable only to itself and the arrogance it manifests is an offense against public policy.

And, people should know that there is no such thing as a Vice Mayor, but the charter does recognize a Vice Chairman of the City Council. How this position began to achieve sub-royalty status as Vice Mayor is beyond me.

One other minor charter blip is not in the charter itself but in dubious interpretations by various city solicitors is to allow the Vice Chair of the City Council (or the most senior member in his/her absence) to act as Mayor and chair the School Committee. No other Plan E city pulls that one – but its history is steeped in politics and the pressure the CCA applied in the mid-1980s in its zeal to install Frank Duehay upon the death of Lenny Russell. No other Plan E city ever pulled that interpretation (Worcester and Lowell among the current, but Gloucester and Medford in the past.)

Some legitimate questions exist – even ethical ones:

1. Is it fair to discriminate against the voter who cannot understand how PR works so they can mark their ballots more completely?

2. Will managerial authority serve us well in the hands of a future city manager who decides that control is more important than the public interest, or does the ability of the city council to terminate the manager at will provide an adequate check?

3. What can we do to make certain city departments are accountable to someone other than themselves (i.e., Traffic and Parking) where arrogance is so strongly evident that it is inexcusable.

4. How will the city respond to the effort to usurp local authority and transfer it to the hands of state officials, regulators, and others sitting in cubicles in Boston? I call your attention to current efforts to make a super-czar out of the Commissioner of Education.

While we can disagree on PR-which we will get to later I am glad we reached some consensus on Plan E its benefits and pitfalls.

Just three things:

I wasn’t arguing that Plan E in fact decreased grassroots participation merely that grassroots participation is vital to keeping Plan E a viable form of government. The City Manager could be a corrupt autocrat when no one is minding the store so to speak, not saying Healy is the corrupt autocrat his opponents make him out to be, but he is also not the saint his supporters make him out to be either. I would argue he is a mediocre manager who has the financial and administrative chops to maintain the status quo but does not have the visionary leadership it would take to bring us to the next level. And he does wield his authority and quashes dissent internally and externally which are not good leadership qualities. I would argue, and again I am sure you would disagree, that Fowler-Finn was a similar mediocre manager with severe leadership flaws and not a visionary leader. But this is a debate we can only have with a City Council and a community that cares and I think we need new grassroots movements both to inform and educate but also to advocate as well.

Secondly on the issue of newspapers, I like the Chronicle, some of their reporters, and the need for a viable local paper especially in this day and age. I am just disappointed every year come election time when they spread misinformation about PR and endorse candidates on the basis of faulty merits. Also with Neil it was a combination of losing money and shifting priorities in his life, but while I disagreed with his politics I think he ran a great paper.

Thirdly, I was once a big proponent of electing the Mayor, and still am if ‘the Mayor’ is defined as a councillor who gets paid more, treated to perks, and tries to claim leadership over the city. If ‘the Mayor’ is merely a chair of the Council then I would argue calling them City Council Chair or President makes more sense then Mayor which implies executive authority they do not have and I would either give the chair to the most senior member to avoid a divisive election or have an election but cut the perks of the office. I could understand a modest salary increase since they also have to chair School Committee meetings as well, but the perks of the current office are excessive and hurt the council’s business.

Section 100. The mayor shall be recognized as the official head of the city for all ceremonial purposes and shall be recognized by the courts for the purpose of serving civil process and by the governor for military purposes. In time of public danger or emergency, as determined by the city council, he may, with its consent, take command of the police, maintain order and enforce the laws; and he shall have all the authority and powers conferred upon mayors by sections eighteen and nineteen of chapter thirty-three.

(I think the thirty-three above is really forty-three; at least I certainly hope so since Chapter 33 is about the Militia.)

And then there is the Auditor who could provide some real services and information to the council about city expenditures – but I’ve never seen the council really use this relationship.

4. The council in any city adopting Plan D or E shall, by a majority vote, elect a city auditor to hold office for three years and until his successor is qualified. He shall keep and have charge of the accounts of the city and from time to time audit the books and accounts of all departments, commissions, boards and offices of the city, and shall have such other powers and perform such other duties as the council may prescribe, in addition to such duties as may be prescribed by law.

James Conway writes:
Voters don’t care
A complacent council is bred by complacent voters, with such a low turnout and such a narrow base we the citizens of Cambridge make it easy for the idiots to get elected since we usually stay home on election day.

I think it’s important to note that voter turnout in local elections has plummeted generally. In fact, places like Worcester and Boston have fared far worse than Cambridge in recent years. In Cambridge, my sense is that the lack of significant issues as well as the disappearance of some of the long-time councillors and their loyal supporters are the primary factors. It’s also fair to say that most Cambridge residents are able to peaceably go about their business without too much fear and loathing, and this basic level of satisfaction probably leads to a feeling that the local elections are inconsequential. There’s nothing like a good crisis to drive up voter participation.

It’s worth noting that the absolute number of people who vote is not nearly as important as whether those who do vote are representative of all the residents. The jury’s still out on that one, but my sense is that newer residents are somewhat underrepresented. That’s their own fault, of course, but they probably don’t lose much sleep over it.

Similarly I would argue the PR voting system is so overwhelmingly complicated that nobody outside of the election commission and Robert Winters understands how it works. There has also been no effort to even remotely educate the populace about how to vote in Cambridge, no civics class, no engagement whatsoever to get the youth of the city excited about local government and civic participation, no effort to make any changes at all lest it rock the boat and maybe threaten some of the crazier councilors who are so unqualified to have a real job they need the 80k plus benefits the city gives them. Not to mention the 30k jobs they can doll out to their campaign workers.

While I may understand how the votes are tabulated to produce the winners, I disagree that the actual voting is complicated. You just rank the candidates in order of preference. That’s really pretty simple. That said, I agree that we do a pretty poor job of communicating this to voters and to those who are all too willing to unfairly criticize Cambridge. I’ll post a couple of other forum topics on the PR elections shortly where we can get into this in greater detail – one on the idea of proportional representation and another on the mechanics.

I would like nothing more than to see widespread civics education (I do try to do my part!) and greater voter participation from all of Cambridge – and not just the “most likely voters.”

James also writes:
The Chronicle is run by idiots
…..Chronicle reporters are also completely ignorant of how the city works and how its government is chosen and functions. Every year when they make their endorsements they butcher how PR actually chooses candidates and never seem to accurately explain how it works. Most reporters I met during my time on the school committee aren’t even from here or live here so they really have very little to care about what happens to our city.

It’s best to not comment on this so directly (remembering what H.L. Mencken had to say on this topic), but it does concern me that there is so little connection between the people writing for the Chronicle and the city about which they are writing. They favor sensationalism over the reporting of facts, scandal over substance. I’m all for them exposing corruption when it’s discovered, but they choose to inflame rather than inform. That said, we’ve had the Chronicle for over 150 years and it’s good to have a “paper of record,” so I would prefer to see them rediscover their past credibility rather than encourage their demise.

Good alternative papers like The Bridge and The Alewife folded because its just too damn expensive to keep a good paper running (especially when both papers were free-hard to make money when you give it away). Also only 1% of the city even is subscribed to the Chronicle so again its not like most citizens bother paying attention even if their reporters were competent and actively went after the excesses in local government as well as reporting its strengths.

I don’t know about the economics of running these alternative newspapers, but my guess is that it wasn’t the economics that did them in. I believe “The Bridge” disappeared more because of conflicts within the local Green Party affiliates (which is funny in light of all their talk about consensus). The Alewife was really Neil McCabe’s baby and you’ll have to ask him whether it was economics or if it was all the other things on which he wanted to focus (he’s in Iraq now, for example). Perhaps we should mention the short-lived “Cambridge Day” from a few years ago, a daily newspaper that only lasted a month. It was pretty clear to me at that time that this could not be sustained economically.

5) No grassroots organizations
Sadly since Plan E was put in place both the good old fashioned ward politics which it replaced as well as the do gooder meritocratic group that sought to replace it disappeared. Cambridge is now a city mostly full of transplants, very few people know their neighbors, there is very little civic cohesion and most people don’t really care unless they have kids in school or are being priced out. And sadly the average yuppie, the modern day likely candidate to be a progressive do gooder like the WASPy Rockefeller republicans of old, are either childless or enroll their kids in private schools. And as long as rent control is dead they are incredibly satisfied with their city and all the unique culture it gives them.

I disagree with your association of the decline in civic and political participation with the introduction of Plan E. In fact, I would argue that civic and political participation, especially issue-based participation, grew substantially with the introduction of the Plan E Charter. Prior to that, much of the politics would be around who would be the king of a particular ward. The Plan E era brought with it the political dichotomies of patronage vs. “good government”, unregulated vs. regulated rents, traditional vs. alternative models for education, and a lot more. Sure, personality politics will always be a dominant factor in our elections, but we’ve also elected our share of issue-based candidates, primarily during the CCA era. We’re in something of an anomalous period right now where personalities often eclipse substance, but this may be only a phase we’re going through.

…..In the 1940s when the CCA was a real political force to be reckoned with and not the farce it is today, there was an active citizenry to ensure that the City Council was full of honest, competent, and aggressive overseer’s to ensure that the needs of the city were met. Thus the City Manager can be removed or held accountable through democratic means by the elected city council. This is only true if the city has an active and vigorous fourth estate to check corruption (we don’t!), a voting population that actually cares about and is educated about local government (10% participation in municipal elections seems to indicate that we don’t), educated politicians who understand the city manager works for the people and is accountable to them and not the other way around (other than Craig Kelley-no one has the guts to challenge the City Manager), and active grassroots organizations that can organize resistance and pressure the elected (again the CCA is dead, really no other local group in its place).

My personal belief is that the CCA from perhaps 1970 through the mid-90s took on many of the traits of the political establishment they originally opposed back in their early days. Some have claimed that the CCA Board and its endorsed School Committee members supported additional resources for the alternative school programs where their own children attended, possibly at the expense of other school programs. The CCA promoted the creation of new City departments, programs, and commissions of questionable value which created footholds in City government for people more to their liking. I believe there are clear elements of political patronage in these entities in both paid and unpaid positions. A strong case can be made that rent control was in large part a means of providing financial rewards to voters who would continue to vote for the CCA Slate (and the nearly identical Tenant Slate) in order to continue that financial benefit.

Nonetheless, there is considerable value in having a “good government” civic organization. In the absence of such an organization, we get treated to one or two narrow-agenda wannabe entities every other year who dream of running a slate of candidates that they hope to convince voters is the new equivalent of the old CCA Slate. In each instance, these pseudo-civic entities have been created by one person or a very small group of persons with a narrow agenda who try to latch onto some manufactured issue in order to gain some air of legitimacy. I haven’t yet encountered such an entity in the post-CCA era that had anything other than a selfish motive or a deep-seated grudge.

I would eliminate the position of Mayor and Vice Mayor, since a) they aren’t actually in the charter and b) it creates confusion as to who actually runs the city, not to mention they waste money (higher salary than regular councilor) and the city council’s time (in 03 the council didn’t meet for two months since the mayoral election was deadlocked).

I would agree with you that the “Vice-Mayor” position has no function and would best be eliminated. Regarding the Mayor, this is really the functional equivalent of City Council President (with the added role of being Chair of the School Committee). In Boston, nobody advocates eliminating the job of City Council President or making it a popularly elected position. It’s just the Chair of the City Council, and every elected body needs a Chair. I think we should just de-emphasize the role of Mayor (though maybe we’re already there). I’m very comfortable with the idea of electing representatives to the City Council who then decide who they prefer as their Chair. What I don’t like is the dealmaking that’s often associated with that choice, but this is not so different from Boston and elsewhere.

One last note – the inability to choose a mayor doesn’t restrict the City Council from meeting and conducting business, except that the City Council committees will not exist until the new Mayor appoints them. In the absence of a mayor, the most senior councillor in terms of service acts as Chair. That said, the inability to choose a Mayor in a timely fashion does not reflect well on the elected councillors. Of course, making a poor choice in haste doesn’t reflect so well on them either.

Also I would agree that they need to put more of their programming online. They should also consider a podcast option and perhaps getting a regular schedule. But as someone who has a public access radio show on my college station I can assure you its a wonderful opportunity from the other side, even if not that many people are listening to you, the experience you get is invaluable. You should get your own show John! Its just $50 a year and you have to endure a one hour training session.

I believe that federal telecommunications law requires at least one public channel per cable area in order for the cable company to have its license. I think we can thank Gaylord Nelson, Wayne Morse, or some other lefty senator for that. Also CCTV does some great work getting CRLS students exposed to television production which helps students interested in acting, producing, or otherwise finding a career in television which is a valuable asset few public schools have and will help CRLS be competitive against the privates and charter schools that are taking away some of the students it desperately needs-not to mention it gives some children opportunities they otherwise couldn’t afford.

I disagree with the libertarian/utilitarian stance that any publicly funded program that doesn’t automatically spur the economy or contribute to improved productivity is a bad program. Frankly improving the quality of life for the people of Cambridge is a good investment.

I would argue though that perhaps some auditing and reform is needed to ensure that the money is being well spent. I would also argue that again, the City Manager and City Council should be a visionary leaders rather than ones who simply maintain the status quo, and they should really advertise CCTV and public access tv and radio in general to make sure that every Cambridge citizen knows that his/her residency entitles them to this wonderful opportunity. CCTV is a great resource that is heavily underutilized, but reforming its funding and expanding its audience and membership are certainly good priorities. Cutting the program outright is both illegal and irresponsible.

I will defer to you Robert on issues of Cambridge history and filling in the details of the broad picture I tried to paint. Thanks for clarifying my points. As a history major, and in general, I feel it is important that everyone understand the history of the status quo and understand its context before they start advocating for massive amounts of change.

Correct me again if I am wrong, but I was told during my time at the election commission that the Plan E with proportional representation was adopted primarily to offset specific corruption with the Mayor at the time over the construction of the then brand new Rindge Tech School (now the main building at CRLS) was it not?

I think the fact that our city has avoided the indictments and corruption investigations of other comparatively sized and larger cities is indicative of the fact that a non-partisan and experienced City Manager is an essential component to a well managed city of our size and rooting out corruption. My main concerns are the lack of civic education and engagement amongst my fellow citizens of all ages but especially those my age. I know for a fact that I am the only person in my age cohort (18-30) to vote in minor elections in my precinct, including municipal elections, and amongst my group of friends from the CRLS class of 06 I can safely say I am the only one who votes in local elections. And in many regards this is not entirely our fault. Our generation was instrumental in propelling President Obama to victory in the nominating contests and to a lesser extent in the general election. But local government, in spite of the fact that our votes have more value and the change we can produce makes a much more immediate impact, is considered much less sexy and relevant than the presidential elections by media, our education system, celebrities, and thus subsequently my generation.

Similarly though the PR system and the complex and unique form of government confuses most people in the city. Most adults I have talked to cannot name our city manager or delineate what his powers are. While you make a compelling argument that Plan E was reaffirmed several times by city vote and that anyone can attend these meetings, few people do. Moreover most of those voters who did affirm it back then are either deceased or out of Cambridge. Thus in order for this compact between the citizens and their government to be truly representative in the Lockian sense it is crucial we reaffirm the charter every ten years or so. This ensures that new residents, and lets admit it most Cantabs are transplants these days or have lived here for less then a decade, can actually consent to their governance. It also ensures that we would be regularly updated and educated about the charter. I also suspect most people are happy with Cambridge the way it is and would realize the Charter has had a lot to do with that especially compared to our neighbors Newton where the mayor is going to be indicted and in a climate where we trust non-partisan managers more than professional politicians.

But the charter can only be democratic so long as our officials are held to the task of keeping the City Manager accountable and I would argue they are either too afraid of Bob Healy to do that, too ignorant of local government to understand how to do that, or much more willing to pass symbolic and utterly useless ordinances that appeal to their political base from anti-war ordinances to street names. And our councilors are only as good as the voters that elect them and we need to have a civic education campaign to teach our citizens how to vote in a PR election and how their government actually works. 10% turnout is not the mark of a truly democratic state.

Lastly, I would also argue that it is high time we eliminate the position of Mayor and Vice Mayor. They serve to confuse the voters who believe that these individuals actually run the city, and certainly Mayor Simmons in the wake of ‘gates-gate’ did her best to intentionally confuse the voters in that regard. They waste taxpayer money on higher salaries, travel allotments, and perks. The waste the city councils time with the bickering and deal making that goes on in smoke free backrooms to determine who gets these spots. And these positions are ultimately unaccountable to the voters themselves since they are not directly elected.

So civic education, a city manager that actually cares about educating the citizenry on what he does and getting their input, a city council that actually understands its role within the city government, a community of voters engaged to participate, and eliminating confusing and wasteful ceremonial positions should all constitute the basic reforms needed to re-energize the Plan E government for the 21st century. I would also add eliminating PR but that is a topic for another day.

Let’s look at the Cable TV (Channel 8) department. Not that I am trying to pick on a particular department but this is just an example – It’s IV-285 in the budget book. This department has a budget in FY10 of $607 K with 6 people. BYW, in FY09 it was $519K and in FY08 it was $458 with same number of people- one wonders why there is a >30% increase in two years – there may well be a good reason but it is hidden. In my opinion the goals as described in the budget book are pretty meaningless. An example of a goal is – number of departments served: plan=30, actual=30 (same number for 07, 08, and 09 which is true for their other goals.) There is no way to evaluate how well they are doing their job from these goals and there seems to be no emphasis on improvement in quality, quantity, or general productivity.

So what are we getting for our now $600K? They produce a small number of programs and record all City council meetings (about 30 of them) and a few other meetings or events. I watched some of the stuff they produce and they do a nice job editing. Now no-one knows how many people watch their programs but I’d bet it is pretty small. How would anyone find out what is on? They sometimes show the schedule with very brief descriptions on the city web site but when you look, it usually shows last week’s schedule – today it shows nothing. And if you look at the departmental web page it has a mission statement, the names of the staff, and content information – and that’s it. There is an archive of meetings that can be gotten from the city web site. All the City Council meetings since Feb 06 are there. For other events it shows 3 for 08, 4 for 07 and one for 06 most of which are budget hearings. So where are all the special events that they covered? You can also get from the website what they are currently are showing; however, I just tried it now and their server is down or else there is some incompatibility with my Mac but I tried several different players. I was able to view an archived city council meeting.

The Plan E charter, which was created by the state legislature during the progressive era (1900-1930) was adopted by Cambridge in the 1940s. Other cities had this charter but to date only Worcester has it besides Cambridge.

Actually, the Plan E Charter was only made an option by the state legislature in 1938 after lobbying primarily from people in Cambridge. It failed at the polls in Cambridge in 1938 but prevailed in 1940. I’ve spoken with people involved back then in the campaign to adopt Plan E and had it verified that people were voting in favor of the city manager form of government much more than for the new election method. The Plan D option (available since 1915) would also have moved Cambridge to a city manager form of government.

The city adopted it in a referendum in 1940 that passed by a narrow margin. It created the Plan E charter and stripped away the previously large powers of the Mayor. It consolidated the Board of Alderman with the City Council to form today’s at large nine member body with a ceremonial chairman (note the chairman was never called the Mayor officially and had no additional powers, also no ‘vice chairman’ or ‘vice mayor’ in that language). Thus the patronage system that had been built up, the ward politics associated with the alderman, and the system of favors and kickbacks that resulted in the indictment of one mayor in the 1930s for fraud was eliminated in favor of a system that was ‘more’ democratic and meritocratic.

In fact, the original Cambridge vote to adopt the Plan E Charter in 1938 was 19,955 YES and 21,722 NO with 4,615 blank ballots cast – a relatively narrow defeat. In 1940 the vote was 25,873 YES and 18,310 NO – a decisive victory. The wide margin of victory has largely been attributed to the inability to pass a budget in 1940 due to widespread mismanagement and corruption.

The main body backing this was the CCA which was a progressive grassroots organization that had a largely WASP membership. It fought the group trying to maintain the status quo which had a largely Irish and immigrant Catholic membership and enjoyed the patronage system. Perhaps ironically to modern day Cantabridgians the CCA was primarily Republican (of the Roosevelt-Dewey progressive wing) while the forces maintaining the status quo were Democrats (of the Tip O’Neill James Michael Curley wing). In any case the CCA won, along with the provision making us a PR Plan E city, it beat back a Supreme Court challenge to both PR and Plan E, and it was reaffirmed in three subsequent referenda. By the 1960s the wing formerly opposing Plan E had died down, and the CCA lacking the rational to exist since it had nothing more to defend faded into obscurity until finally fielding no slate at all by 2007.

Several corrections are in order. First, the force behind the movement for charter change in both 1938 and 1940 was called the Cambridge Committee for Plan E. It was not until 1945 that the Cambridge Committee for Plan E, the Cambridge Taxpayers’ Association, the Cambridge Citizens’ Committee, and individual members of the League of Women Voters consolidated to form the Cambridge Civic Association (CCA) and the Cambridge Research Association. It is a fair statement to say that many and probably most of the early CCA people were of the college educated, possibly Harvard affiliated, Yankee Republican sort. Those on the opposite side tended to be more Irish and working class, but it’s certain that soaring property tax rates during the Depression years would have swayed a lot of working class people to vote for less corruption and a better managed city. So the truth is probably a lot grayer than many would have you believe.

The Mass. Supreme Judicial Court decision that James refers to is Moore vs. Election Commissioners of Cambridge (1941). There were, in fact, five referenda to throw out proportional representation (1952, 1953, 1957, 1961, and 1965) all of which were defeated. I do not believe any of the referenda called for the abolition of the city manager form of government.

The CCA remained a substantial political force through the early 1990s, though just how much control they ever had over their endorsed elected officials is debatable. They did, however, have a lot of control over which new candidates were elected from their side of the political coin. The fact that they strapped themselves to the mast of the ship of rent control is the primary reason for their rapid descent as a political force after the 1994 statewide referendum that ended rent control. I believe the CCA still exists on paper, but it is for all intents and purposes nonexistent except in history. It’s last candidate endorsements were in 2003, but the CCA Board in both 2001 and 2003 voted not to do any endorsements (I was on the Board then). They only ended up doing formal endorsements and mailing out slate cards at the behest of their endorsed incumbents.