Those citizens with a grammar school-level understanding of representative democracy, may be surprised to learn the State Legislature’s Office of Fiscal and Program Review (OFPR) recently completed an experiment in direct democracy. The office, operated under the auspices of the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee, offered a virtual suggestion box allowing residents to make their own recommendations about how to cut bureaucracy and provide services more efficiently (or not at all).
By Sept. 14, when the suggestion box was closed, the office has summarized the suggestions into roughly 130 bullet points, running the gamut from the reasonable (“Eliminate State Nuclear Safety Advisor… Maine has no nuclear facilities whatsoever, except for the low-level waste site in Wiscasset”) to the likely controversial (“Implementation of a 4-day school week for smaller districts”) to the seemingly silly (“providing a notarized letter option for persons who successfully complete a high school or general equivalency education…instead of giving them a diploma”).
The OFPR staff is currently evaluating the suggestions and scoring them according to their potential for savings. Their evaluation should be published next week.
While we are all for saving money in state government and allowing the people to have their voices heard, we can’t help but feel the Legislature has abdicated its role in our democratic process. After all, members of the Legislature are referred to as representatives for a good reason – their duty is to represent the concerns and ideas of the people. But the suggestion box replaces the role of the representative as interface between the people and the machinery of government.
There is no shortage of ideas on how to make the government run better. One need only listen to a few minutes of talk radio, stick a finger into the blogosphere or read an opinion piece by one of the many special interest advocacy groups for prescriptions to cure Maine’s economic woes.
Representatives across the state likely can’t drink their coffee in peace without a constituent bending their ear about this or that.
The problem is those ideas rarely translate into actual policy. When they are bad ideas, this is a good thing. But when it is a good idea that is scuttled in the face of entrenched interests it is evidence of legislators failing in their role as representatives once again.
The true measure of the suggestion box will not be how many good ideas are generated, but how many good ideas become laws.