This week Pioneer Institute introduced a two tier structure of democracy for Massachusetts that we’ll call the Beamer vs. Beater Theory of Democracy. If you’re driving a Beamer you get all the voting rights of full citizenship. If you’re driving a Beater, you get some voting rights but don’t get to vote for school committee in your town.
Here’s how it would work according to Charles Chieppo and Jamie Gass of Pioneer Institute writing in CommonwealthMagazine. Low-income districts receive a sizable contribution from the state to support K-12 education. So the state should “appoint local school committee members commensurate with the portion of school district funding it provides. For example, if the state provides 85 percent of the funding in a district with seven school committee seats, it should also appoint six school committee members.”
If you’re in a low-income district (more likely to be driving a Beater) you get less democracy; you don’t get to vote for school committee members. If you’re in a high income district (styling in a Beamer) you get all the democracy you can stand. Let’s say you live in Lincoln, Weston, Wellesley, or Dover – you get lots of democracy. Let’s say you live in Springfield, Holyoke, Lawrence, or Sturbridge – all singled out by Pioneer – you get less democracy.
My first thought on reading Pioneer’s proposal was to reflect back on Alexis de Tocqueville’s praise for New England towns in their execution of direct democracy. There are still many town meetings in New England but even in cities without direct democracy taking away such a large facet of their citizenship seems anti-Tocquevillian. Tocqueville also pointed out a positive aspect of town government I’ve always admired – by participating at the local level we learn how to get things done in a democracy. It’s the vital training of citizenship.
But then my thoughts turned to another of Tocqueville’s insights. Since there are many more voters of limited means than there are the rich, the many may find the riches of the few a tempting target – taxation to provide public goods.
This is a major preoccupation of Pioneer and of its funders, such as David Koch, the Walton Family Foundation, Bradley Foundation, etc. The problem is that the less well-off might agitate for policies that would make their own lives better but which would require more in taxes from the wealthy. Rich people do not like that. Thus the Kochs and others want to place Democracy in Chains – that being the title of an essential book by historian Nancy MacLean. Democracy must be put in chains precisely because the many might use democracy to demand a better life at the cost of higher taxes on the wealthy few. Thus it is an important goal of agents of the Income Defense Industry to restrict minority access to the ballot and to political offices. Like school committees.
As to the prosaic arena of state politics, who would appoint the state approved school committee members? The obvious person would be the governor. When Governor Baker finishes his term, Republicans will have held the governorship for twenty-four of the last thirty-two years. It is the only office of consequence Republicans have any chance of winning and it would be a prize to enhance its powers.
But then there is the ticklish matter of the communities that would lose their elected school committee members. Let’s take a look at the four municipalities Pioneer mentions, using data from the 2010 census:
| Municipality | Population | White alone | Black % | Asian % | Hispanic % |
| Lawrence | 76,377 | 20.50% | 2.30% | 2.30% | 73.80% |
| Holyoke | 39,880 | 46.80% | 2.3 | 1.00% | 48.40% |
| Springfield | 153,060 | 36.70% | 19.60% | 2.40% | 38.80% |
| Southbridge | 16,719 | 68.60% | 1.40% | 1.80% | 26.60 |
Here are some pics of the Springfield and Lawrence school committees, pre-Pioneer:
What we have here are school committees from very diverse and less well-off municipalities.
Pioneer’s proposal opens an interesting political question in that some of Pioneer’s funding has come from the Waltons, who are also funding political groups like Massachusetts Parents United which tries to appeal to Latinx. What’s it going to be, Waltons?
Playing with democracy in order to restructure power toward elites isn’t new in Massachusetts. Over a hundred years ago, in horror at rising populations of Irish and other newcomers in the cities the Republican legislature passed reforms including non-partisan municipal elections, in hopes of holding back the immigrant led Democratic surge.
An example Pioneer might like even better is from the state’s founding. We had property qualifications for voting for certain offices, including senate and governor. The Pioneer proposal isn’t exactly a property qualification, but it does give more democracy for more property.
How much democracy do you get? It depends — are your driving a Beamer or a Beater?
Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money (and other things)].
There is another aspect of Alexis de Tocqueville’s insights — the problem of “the voters discover[ing] that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.”
Conversely, boxes of tea were once tossed into Boston Harbor over the concept of “No Taxation Without Representation” — if the revenue is raised on a statewide basis, then democratic principles would mandate that voters on a statewide basis have a say in how it is spent. And, respectfully, what you are missing here is that a lot (all?) of those ritzy white suburbs are also getting a substantial portion of their school funding from the state — and this provision would apply to them as well.
Now if you want to keep democratic elections, these state school committee members could be elected on a statewide or regional basis, much like members of the Governor’s Council are. And any community that doesn’t want to have state members doesn’t have to take state money (including the MSBA-funded Taj Mahal schools being built throughout said ritzy white suburbs) — it the state money was restricted to those communities who are truly unable to provide for their own schools, there’d be a whole lot more money to provide.
As to the legitimate BMW versus Beater issue, the same thing applies to MassHealth. When I want new glasses, I go to the guy at Costco who does an eye exam and then I take the prescription wherever I want to. But (as I understand it) those on MassHealth have to go to specific places and then are restricted to a specific list of approved frames (or they can pay for it themselves) — such is the downside of receipt of public assistance. Likewise you can paint your bedroom purple if you own your own house — but not if you live in public housing.
And this state assistance for local education is public assistance — and public assistance has always come with strings attached. You can’t buy beer with your EBT card….
Dr. Ed, always a pleasure to hear from you. I take it you are prepared to do away with over 400 years of local governance? This falls most heavily on poor and minority communities. State-sponsored disenfranchisement. I always understood conservatism as preferring local to more remote government, but that seems to be suspended for poor and minority communities.