Rules Committee Update, Aug 2019

By Moderator appointment, I currently serve on the Town Meeting “Rules Committee”. The Rules Committee explores proposals and makes recommendations to Town Meeting about Town Meeting procedures. With two meetings complete, here’s the latest topics we’re looking into and my current leanings on them:

The Rules Committee is subject to Massachusetts Open Meeting laws, and meetings are broadcast live, as well as available for viewing on demand, via Norwood Community Media.

Committee Topics For Aug 2019

• Consent Agenda

  • General

  • Specific: Number of Members Required For Holds?

  • Specific: Who’s tasked with compiling Consent Agendas?

• Electronic Voting

  • General

• Saturday Meetings

  • General

Consent Agenda: General

Overview: At the last Town Meeting, a proposal was made to adopt a “Consent Agenda” procedure for Town Meeting, where standard and non controversial topics are grouped together and approved with one vote instead of voted on motion-by-motion. Any item that turns out to need discussion can be flagged by Town Meeting member(s) to be pulled back out for individual discussion. Any items not pulled out are considered approved in bulk. Town Meeting referred the proposal to our Rules Committee for study.

Arguments in favor: “Consent Agenda will reduce time wasted on items that don’t need any discussion and are never rejected.”

Arguments against: “Town Meeting members may flag every item for discussion anyway, defeating the purpose of Consent Agenda."

My latest stance (last updated 8-27-2019):

While I’m skeptical that Consent Agenda will prevent multi-night sessions of Town Meeting, with a thoughtful implementation I think that it can be useful to lump together some of the routine motions that never get rejected or discussed and are simply motions for formality’s sake due to old Bylaws or requirements by the General Court. The purpose of a Consent Agenda is to optimize time by bulk approving the stuff that nobody ever debates nor rejects due to its routine nature. I am currently leaning in favor of the Committee recommending to Town Meeting to approve adoption of some flavor of Consent Agenda, though I will provide details on specific aspects of the proposed Consent Agenda procedures that the Committee is considering for recommendation. The implementation details will make the difference.

To me, the primary risk of a Consent Agenda is that behavioral economists have long studied the “status quo” heuristic - statistically people are less likely to change a “default” setting, no matter what it is set to. It’s why Organ Donation programs have higher participation if you need to opt-out of them rather than if you have to opt-in to them. For this reason, a poorly defined Consent Agenda procedure can be exploited - getting your motion included in Consent Agenda makes it vulnerable to the status quo heuristic effect, and increases the likelihood that it will be passed as part of bulk approval, particularly if you have a partisan Moderator (which we thankfully don’t have). Hence why a well implemented Consent Agenda should increase efficiency without being particularly vulnerable to that kind of procedural exploit.

Consent Agenda: How many Members required to perform a hold action

Overview: The basic process of Consent Agenda is that ahead of Meeting, a list is given to Members of what motions are proposed for Consent approval. At Meeting, the Moderator reads a list of the motion numbers for Consent, and then member(s) of Town Meeting can call out “hold” for any item(s) that they think actually needs some discussion after all. In our investigations, the Committee has discovered that the number of people required to do a hold can vary. We have found towns with as few as 1 Member may perform a hold, and as many as 5 needed to perform a hold. The Committee is currently split on how many should be required.

Arguments in favor: “Requiring multiple members will discourage griefing behaviors such as flagging all Consent items as held.”

Arguments against: “Requiring multiple members will discourage error catching; other towns use 1-person holds without issue.”

My latest stance (last updated 8-27-2019):

On this topic I’m more adamant. I am in favor of the standard 1-person hold requirement, and against a 5-member hold requirement.

• A Consent Agenda is a “rubber stamp” approval of routine motions, and is not meant to short circuit the floor lobbying process.

• A 1-person hold ensures oversight by discouraging Consent Agenda proposer(s) from adding inappropriate motions hoping that no one notices.

• A majority of towns that we’ve identified as using Consent Agenda use a 1-person hold without issue.

Although I don’t believe rubber stamping of malicious proposals will be the primary problem. My main concern is motion typos (example: an approval for “$1,000” dollars that says “$10,000 dollars” by mistake). We know the reality of Members reading Town Meeting materials at the very last minute. That means error catching is going to happen at the last moment too. Requiring 5 people increases the odds that errors slip through in the following way: 

Other Members mistake the Member as wanting to debate a trivial matter or to troll, when the Member is trying to place a hold to point out an error in the motion. The Member can’t quickly explain this to 4 other Members to request a hold before the Moderator has already moved past the item (in a Consent Agenda, the items are moved through quickly compared to a typical motion-by-motion). Then the error is passed in the bulk Consent approval, doh!

I’m currently reaching out to the Moderator to see what the impact is if Town Meeting were to accidentally approve a financial typo of this nature. But generally, I weigh the “worst case” for each extreme and compare which consequences are worse. So from that position I landed at

• The worst case of a 1-person hold is: we’re annoyed and back at status quo.

• The worst case of a 5-person hold is: errors get through and the Town spends extra money that it didn’t need to, or holds extra Meetings to fix the problem.

My personal annoyance is not worth $10,000, and therefore, I'm in favor of a 1-person hold.

I could be talked into a 2-person hold (essentially 1 person and a Second), but I’d also like to point out that: the more people required to hold increases the amount of time spent verifying how many people held, and pads time onto a process that was supposed to be about saving time. If we spend more time counting how many holds, or challenging the count of the holds, we will have spent more time on that than procedure than the damage a 1 person hold can inflict, and perhaps more time than it would have taken to just approve the typically-discussion-less motions without a Consent Agenda at all.

Consent Agenda: Who’s responsible for compiling items for the Consent list?

Overview: There’s many options for how a Consent Agenda is compiled and proposed, and who has oversight of that process. The Committee is investigating this, trying to identify a logical place for the process to exist without mistakenly adding a ton of work for Officials and Members. The current thought was for us to recommend appending the process to the existing Motion process.

Arguments in favor: “It dovetails with a process that’s already in place with the correct members overseeing it.”

Arguments against: “Are the participants of the Motion process the correct persons to have decision making power on what is or isn’t worthy of Consent Agenda?”

My latest stance (last updated 8-27-2019):

I don’t feel particularly strongly one way or another about this yet. My instinct was for the people who propose the motions to denote whether they wanted to try for inclusion on Consent Agenda, with Moderator discretion to punt it. The Moderator is the most likely person to look at a given Motion and know whether it’s a motion of “yeeeeah, they’re going to wanna talk about that, keep as a normal separate Motion” or whether that type of motion never ever gets talked about nor rejected. However, I’m not familiar enough with the Moderator’s workload to know if that would prove onerous. Hence the idea of combining it with the existing Motion process makes a lot of sense to me. I am in favor of the process description including either requirements for what may be included or providing guidance for the typical types of things that are appropriate/inappropriate to include. Having good guidance will likely ensure that whomever is tasked with Consent Agenda building sticks to the spirit of the idea properly.

Electronic Voting Devices: General

Overview: The discussion is still early, but during our research we’ve found several towns that use methods of electronic voting devices, and have rules to facilitate their proper use during Town Meeting business. More details are being gathered about devices and we’re reviewing existing rules around them.

Arguments in favor: Easier to verify, good for accessibility

Arguments against: Cost

My latest stance (last updated 8-27-2019):

It’s early yet, but I’m in favor of electronic voting, though three areas of concern must be met before I’m totally sold on it:

• Sufficient digital security standards to ward off tampering

• Good accessibility design for eyesight & hand strength concerns

• Should not place a personal financial burden on Members in order to participate

I love the idea of providing better accessibility for members - some members (whether now or in the future) have physical conditions that make participating in voice or hand raised votes difficult. I believe the Moderator does their very best to try and ensure no one is missed. Still, the electronic vote would likely help in this area. Also, the Moderator has spoken of the difficulty of seeing and hearing Members who sit in the very far back of the Chamber. Electronic voting may even reduce the need for extra motions around having a voice vote only to have to then make motions/vote on having raised hand or roll call votes, keeping the Meeting efficient.

A the thing that would make me the most excited is it could potentially allow for citizens in the town to follow along with the votes more easily. Civic engagement is a passion of mine, so I love any tool that allows Town Meeting to be more optimized while also helping Norwood residents be more engaged. I have seen some implementations where the electronic vote is considered a “secret” vote (i.e. you get the totals but not who they are), and I would not be in favor of that. Fun fact: did you know that “secret ballot” style Town Meeting votes exist in our rules already? They can only be requested with a proscribed amount of support in the chamber (a motion, someone to Second that motion, and a 2/3rd majority). I’m not a fan of Secret Ballot for Town Meeting business. A voter should be able to know how their Representative represented them, otherwise how can they know whether to re-elect them? To me, a representative’s voting record is kind of like a credit score … no record = no score, and no score = no credit.

One caveat about a digital vote: I'm not very in favor of a personal smartphone app solution. By virtue of being hooked to a wider internet platform they’re more vulnerable due to the security surface to manage being so much bigger. Second, what about Members who don’t own (nor want to own) a smart phone? Most electronic Town Meeting votes that I’ve seen are from closed loop systems managed by the Chamber/Town. But if push came to shove I could live with a smartphone solution as long as we figure out what to do for Members who don’t have one, and as long as there is digital security oversight.

Saturday Town Meetings

Overview: Another very early topic here, and the Committee member is still providing the details of the proposal, but the general idea is: would having Town Meetings on Saturdays improve quorum? We tabled this topic for later to allow the proposing Committee Member to represent their idea fully to us.

Arguments in favor: (Pending Committee Discussion)

Arguments against: (Pending Committee Discussion)

My latest stance (last updated 8-27-2019):

I’m currently leaning against Saturdays, but not yet strongly. I want to hear the full proposal and reasoning behind the idea, and my current data is merely anecdotal …

For the last 16 years, whenever I’ve had to schedule recurring activities with my static groups of a mere 7 to 10 people monthly, I have a more difficult time getting quorum on Saturdays or Sundays than I do during proscribed weeknights. Interestingly, when my attendees were younger they had an easier time with Weekends than Week Nights, but then something flips and in their post college years Week Nights became the better attended sessions. I attended both a week night session and a Saturday session of some of the Town Meeting educational seminars, thinking the Saturday would be easier for people. But attendance seemed stronger at the weeknight one than the Saturday one. The Town also provides child care for anyone who needs it at the Meeting on week nights, but I don’t know that awareness of this fact is high enough yet (the Town Manager mentioned in passing that no one has requested it yet even though they offer).

That said, I totally get the problems of a fried brain after a work day, hectic slow traffic, and an awkward dinner schedule, especially if you have kids (There’s a little silly mental exercise that I’ve been doing where I denote what the favorite snack foods of Town Meeting are). There’s also something to be said for having a longer block of uninterrupted time as a possible option too.

So this is a topic I’d like to explore more, hear from more people, and weigh the up and down sides.

Other Topics

The Rules Committee is always interested in feedback about Town Meeting procedures and ways to improve productivity, understanding, efficiency, and healthy engagement during Town Meeting. I like to gather feedback from fellow Town Meeting members in my district, as well as constituents, to inform my stance on Committee discussions. District 7 Meeting Members and Residents can send their thoughts to agrow@usa.com