A frustration in covering Massachusetts politics is seeing the staying power of bad ideas. Perhaps the worst idea with the most staying power is the notion that local self-government as we know it is finished. Efficiency, modernity, technology all demand that the 347 colonial relics we call the cities and towns of Massachusetts surrender their powers to a metropolitan form of government.
In this happy upland of regional authority, enlightened committees of the informed would study problems scientifically. They would reach rational conclusions by consensus; and the solutions they would prescribe would be assented to by a grateful population by acclamation. Parochialism would be a thing of the past. The political reporter would join the town crier at Sturbridge Village, for there would be no politics to cover!
I have been hearing this tune, or something like it, since 1964. In 2004, the call for curbing the evils of local democracy comes in the name of “affordable housing.” In a recent published column, Matthew Hindman of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard writes that “powerful town and village governments, and their ‘Not In My Back Yard’ attitude toward development, are the real reason the Boston-area housing market is a colossal mess…. A new metropolitan government…could rise above…parochial concerns…and ensure that the inevitable
headaches of growth are fairly distributed….”
This argument is not driven by greed, favoritism or partisanship, as political arguments often are. But it is wrong about affordable housing, fatuous in its political assumptions, and scurrilous in its prescription for the body
politic….From its passage in 1969, Chapter 40-B, or the “affordable housing,” or “anti-snob-zoning” law has tweaked the public envy without serious public purpose. “Affordable” — being subjective — is an absurdity. I do not have a constitutional right to be able to afford a house in Lincoln!
“Anti-snob zoning” really gives away the snobbery of those who call it that — and exposes their lack of serious purpose. Matthew Hindman notes that in 2002 Massachusetts ranked 47th in the nation in multiple-family housing starts, and he calls for regional government to “decide on the region’s housing needs, and then parcel out an equitable share of the required growth to each city and suburb.” I do not question his diagnosis, but his draconian prescription shows he doesn’t understand how markets work.
We learn from gas-price spikes that markets only need to be tweaked at the margins to fail the consumer. The same can be true in getting markets to stop failing the consumer: Before creating a new layer of government, the legislature should look at modifications to Chapter 40-A – the fundamental state law governing real estate development — so as to increase the annual number of multiple-family housing starts in the state as a whole, and without pitting the Commonwealth against a handful of affluent Boston suburbs.
Once markets start to work they usually accelerate their work. An appropriately adjusted Greater Boston housing market should, realistically, be able to correct its distortions within ten years. Under more of Chapter 40-B, activists will still be complaining about “snob zoning” 35 years from now.
Democracy in its local form is loud and inefficient. Among its subspecies: 1) The Seinfelder — the one who has no visible means of support nor anything else to do in life but to be in the middle of every scene. 2) The Frazier — the one with a very small point to make, but who awfully likes the sound of his own voice. 3) The Archie Bunker — the one who feels impotent and unimportant, and who vents and rants when handed a microphone. But local democracy with all its characters is democracy. It gets things done. It settles disputes without force of arms. To assume that removing it to a regional level would free it of inefficiency, manipulation, parochialism and politics is, as I say, fatuous.
At its worst, regionalist propaganda represents our communities as amounting only to the least of their elected officials and their noise-making NIMBY-ist residents. In truth, what is wonderful about our communities is their whole selves — from unelected boards, to voluntary organizations, to public employees, to people simply caring about one another. People who move to New England from states with plenipotentiary county governments, and without local governments, usually find themselves unexpectedly welcome. Soon they are serving on boards or in organizations, and soon enough acting entirely like natives. There is nothing like this in most parts of the country, and living democracy is at the heart of it. Calling it “outdated” I call scurrilous.
Footnote: By no means am I opposed to cooperative regional planning. The good work of organizations such as the Old Colony Planning Council is for another column.
