The Empire Page

Francis S. Barry's The Scandal of Reform (Rutgers U. Press, 2009) is a major re-evaluation of the impact of reform organizations in New York City politics.  Today Frank Barry is Senior Policy and Communications Advisor to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.  We talked to Barry about his book and related issues.

Q#1: What prompted you to write "The Scandal of Reform"?

A: The history of political reform in New York, and today's reform groups, are both poorly understood - and if we're ever going to fix an election system that I consider badly broken, we need to understand that is reform laws that got us into the mess, and it is reformers themselves who are now are standing in the way of fixing it.
 
I wrote the book in hopes that it would lead people to step back and re-consider election reforms generally, and one reform in particular: nonpartisan elections.  I worked on a Charter Revision Commission that Mayor Bloomberg appointed in 2003, which proposed a nonpartisan system that would put all candidates, regardless of party, on the same primary ballot, and all voters, regardless of party, would be eligibe to vote.  And then the top two finishers would advance to the runoff.  The reform was designed to address a few fundamental problems in New York City elections, especially the fact that nearly all elections for nearly all offices (except mayor) are decided in the Democratic primary, when turnout is very low among Democrats, and independents (and others) are prohibited from participating.  So, the idea was: rather than choose winners in low-turnout elections open to some, why not choose them in higher-turnout elections open to all?  Parties would still play a role and would be free to nominate candidates, but the government would no longer pay for elections for them to do so.
 
Nearly the entire political establishment lined up against the proposal, including the good-government groups.  Unraveling the reasons for this required unraveling the history of reform, separating myth from reality - and I found it to be a fascinating story.

  

Q#2:  In "The Scandal of Reform," you provide a new framework for how we look at reform organizations -- new at least to most people who are used to "good government" groups being treated by the news media as the prince charmings of the political universe.  How have those groups reacted to the book?

A: I haven't heard much from them. I don't expect them to love the book, but I do hope it causes some internal conversations within their offices.  In fact, the conclusion of the book challenges them to live up to their claims of nonpartisanship by committing to a real balance on their boards and committees between Democrats and Republicans.  And it challenges them to practice what they preach in terms of transparency by disclosing that balance, perhaps by putting it on their web sites.  No group has taken me up on that challenge yet, but I hope they all do.  (After all, you can't have nonpartisanship without first achieving, or at least striving for, broad-based bi-partisanship.  And right now, by and large, they don't have that.) 
 
It's funny, the old party machines used to disguise their structures to conceal the fact that a few people at the top were calling all the shots.  Now, it's the good-government groups who seem reluctant to reveal the party breakdown of their boards, presumably to conceal the fact that those calling the shots are nearly all Democrats.
 
But I have two reasons for optimism: First, I have been encouraged by my conversations with Dick Dadey, excutive director of Citizens Union.  He came to the organization after the 2003 referendum debate on nonpartisan elections, which Citizens Union opposed, and he recognizes the problems with the current system. And second, I'm friendly with some of the leaders of these groups and they're very good people who are very dedicated to public service.  I have great respect for their earnest desire for reform - I just think it's time for them to take a dose of their own medicine.
 

Q#3: When the energy association lobbies on behalf of the utilities or the healthcare association lobbies on behalf of hospitals, there's no attempt to disguise who they speak for.  With the so-called good government groups, however, there's no attempt to disclose who they represent.  Instead, they claim to be acting for the common good, by which they mean anything they support.  Further, by definition anyone who has a different view is a "special interest."  Isn't that a deeper problem than getting the groups to add a few Republicans to their boards?

A: It's a good point - and I think the problems are related.
 
The power of good-government groups has always been rooted in the public perception that they are the white knights of politics, and it is a perception that is reinforced when they appear in news stories as the arbiters of political morality, as they regularly do.  But the reality is, good-government groups have always been and will always be special interests themselves. 
 
The good-government groups of old advocated for many good ideas (e.g., better management of cities) and many terrible ideas (e.g., disenfrancising the masses).  But what made them distinctive was their pragmatic, nonpartisan, non-ideological approach and the diversity of their membership.   Today, that's no longer the case.  Adding Republican balance to the boards and membership of today's groups won't change the fact that they're still a special interest, but it will help to restore some legitimacy to the notion that they put partisanship aside in favor of "the common good."  The "common good" is by definition a subjective term, but traditionally, groups that claimed to speak for it at least worked hard to find common ideas and and common policies and common approaches that members of both major parties could support.  They may not have always been right - and often they weren't.  But they represented something different.  Today's good-government groups generally represent traditional liberal interest group positions.  But becuse of their reputation, and because reporters often seek arbiters of right and wrong, they've held onto their public position as white knights.
 

Q#4: I'm sure you paid attention to our "constitutional crisis" this past summer when the lack of a procedure to fill the lieutenant governor vacancy tied up the Legislature for more than a month.  At the time some people, including former Governor Cuomo, called for a constitutional convention.  What would be on your list of reforms that you'd like to see a convention consider if one were held in the near future?

A: I believe the 1997 referendum on a constitutional convention was a real missed opportunity, but if we were to have one in the future, I would put nonpartisan redistricting near the top of the list.  The practice of using sophisticated computer programs to draw district lines tailored around incumbents, with the lines snaking in and out of streets and neighborhoods, is bad for democratic competition at elections and bad for democratic representation in government.  Today we joke that voters don't pick legislators; legislators pick voters.  But unfortunately, there's a lot of truth to that.
 
I think the State would also benefit from writing into its constitution some of the fiscal reforms that it wisely imposed on the City in the 1970s but has never adopted for itself.  Basic reforms such as using generally accepted accounting principles and restrictions on fiscal gimmicks.  But there's no shortage of other issues that deserve a close look, including ethics, judicial, and campaign finance reform, as well as ensuring there are mechanisms for breaking the kind of constitutional deadlock we saw last summer, and possibly even looking at ways to consolidate the many layers of local government, which help put upward pressure on local property taxes.
 

Q#5: From your research and analysis what are the conditions under which communities should consider switching to non-partisan municipal elections?

A: Every community is different, and while I think nonpartisan elections can work well in any community, they are an especially good fit in places where one party is dominant - including Albany.  When was the last time Albany elected a Republican mayor?  (Was it James Watt, elected in 1918?) And how many Republican mayoral candidates have presented more than token opposition?  The idea behind nonpartisan elections is: allow the strongest two candidates, no matter which party they belong to, to face off in a general election rather than a primary - giving all voters, including independents, a real choice.  And, for cities with long-serving mayors, nonpartisan elections make it easier for outsiders to mount a challenge, becuse closed party primaries create substantial advantages for the party organization's candidates. 

We forget, but northeastern cities used to have the most competitive and dynamic general elections in the world!  But Progressive era election laws have forced all competition into closed primaries, leaving general election voters very little in the way of choice.

 

Last Q:  Where is the pressure going to come from to advance reforms that would democratize New York's election laws given that the Democratic Party has reaped the benefits of the current structure and the so-called good government groups and much of academia have sold their souls to the Democrats left-wing?

 

A: Traditionally, pressure for reform has followed scandal, but scandal is more likely to drive ethics or campaign finance reform than a more fundamental restructuring of elections.
 
Pressure could come from an electoral coalition - something Tom Suozzi bravely attempted in his 2004 "Fix Albany" campaign.  Perhaps he was just ahead of his time, but one of the reasons it failed was that so few groups - including good-government groups - joined him. 
 
Pressure could come if the Republican party fails to nominate a mayoral candidate.  When this happened in Jacksonville, Florida, it was something of a civic scandal, because voters felt that elections shouldn't be decided in a Democratic primary.  Voters demanded reform and the city adopted a nopartisan system. 
 
Pressure could come from the growing ranks of independent voters, who have the most to gain from a reform that opens up the process, and who are the fastest growing bloc of voters.  At some point, a tipping point may be reached where a system that excludes them is no longer sustainable.  But we could be years away from that point.
 
In short, there are no easy answers, but I think part of the process starts with Democrats (of which I am one) acknowledging the problems and talking about solutions.