Town meeting is the purest form of Democracy?

How many times have your heard someone say "Town meeting is the purest form of Democracy"?
That belief may well stem from the observations of Alexis de Tocqueville when he visited New England in the 1830’s. At that time he found our young Republic was functioning on structures built out of necessity in the early 17th Century. Typically, in each small town there were nearly 20 officials - each elected annually at a public meeting of citizens. Following the election, the meeting carried out the business of the town. "Every inhabitant is required, on pain of being fined, to undertake these different functions, which, however, are almost all paid, in order that the poorer citizens may give time to them without loss. In general, each official act has its price, and the officers are remunerated in proportion to what they have done." He explained: "In New England Towns - each town began as in independent nation. The English kings seized only central power thus "left the towns as they found them". No powers were granted them but they functioned regardless".

The typical Town Government in the Massachusetts of today bears a superficial similarity to the early 19th Century version. But today, only a tiny minority attend town meeting which is, nevertheless, the final authority on laws, budget, and salaries of town officials.
How does government manage to function? First and foremost, today it is largely governed by state law. many things have changed. The citizens of earlier times all lived and worked within walking distance of their homes. There were no utilities - gas or electric - and the railroad was yet to be built. Only one adult of most two adult households could vote and there was no state financial aid -only levies and mandates such as the requirement that all children must given an education. A few regional services were assessed to the towns - the judicial system was established at the county level, appointed by the governor.
Today our experiment in self government has become a charade of a once useful institution -nicely illustrated by Town government in Sharon.

As a case in point, we should take the May 3, 2004 Sharon Annual Town meeting- faultlessly democratic in its operation - but largely a meaningless exercise.
In three nights and just short of twelve hours, the Town Meeting dealt with a 36 article warrant, including a $60 million operating budget and Capital expenditures of $4 millions, a new cell tower by-law, a new Historical District, and authorization to place the adoption of the Community Preservation Act on the November ballot. We also "elected" several citizens to the Finance Committee without debate or opposition.
Yet out of an eligible electorate of about 12,000, just 267 citizens on the first night, 186 on the second, and 177 on the third showed up for some seemingly serious business. Since some of those present were the 60 or more elected and appointed town officials who needed to be present, the actual public at large were represented by slightly over 1.5% the first night, and about 1% on the following two nights. Of that little band, my guess is that a sizable number had only cell towers on the mind although Article 24 didn’t come to the floor until the third night.
Why did 98.5% of the citizenry stay away from the annual meeting? Explanations often range from the weather, two working-parent families, conflicts with working hours, to intramural sports.
The voting public may have far better reasons for not showing up. Perhaps the fact that 15 of the 36 articles on the agenda were listed in the warrant as "report to be given at Town Meeting" diminished voter interest. Perhaps the lack of any long range capital plan made discussion of the pot pourri of 12 Capital borrowing articles unlikely. Or was it the absence of any cost estimates on the taxes lost for Senior exemptions or employee retirement costs or an approximation of the amount expected from the Highway fund for off-the books expenditures on the town’s roads?. Or the "election" on the town meeting floor for new members of the Finance Committee - the names to be announced by the nominating committee from the floor of the meeting!.
A voter entering the meeting with the warrant in hand and the town report in the other would still have no clue as to the assessments for various state programs such as MBTA, MAPC, Norfolk County. Or was it the lack of any estimate of the tax impacts of the actions in the warrant or a general program budget showing the impact of earmarked state funds - or even any indication at all of the impact of state aid such Chapter 70 educational aid - on the town budget?

Be careful about what you hope for. Let no one misunderstand the point of this discussion. If we succeeded in presenting all this information and attracting any significant number of voters (the quorum of most bodies is 50% of those eligible) we would all petition for reform. Sitting in one room with 6000 voters, debating, amending, tabling, postponing, passing 36 articles could well take a month. Let also be said that this muddle of information is no recent phenomena: little is different from the process of my first town meeting in 1949!
For several years, the Town Government Study Committee has been thinking about - and in several instances - changing the way Town meeting is conducted. But these changes are very small in comparison with the challenge.

To many observers the failure of local government is the confusion of responsibility. The detailed consideration of the actions of town meeting are reviewed in detail by the essentially unelected Finance Committee and are not publicly debated by the Selectmen until a few days before the town meeting.