In today's New York Times, David Brooks discusses the trend of people migrating from blue states to red states in the US. Between 2010 and 2020, the fastest-growing states were mostly red, such as Texas, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina. This growth is attributed to lower taxes, fewer restrictions on home construction, lower housing prices, and more pro-business policies. However, the growth in red states is concentrated in metro areas, often blue cities in red states. The dynamic success stories are a result of a red-blue policy mix where Republicans provide a business-friendly climate and Democrats influence education, social services, and civic atmosphere. The column argues that no political party is currently embracing this policy blend, which has proven effective in creating a dynamic and cosmopolitan society. The author suggests that the Democratic Party's growing strength in Southwestern states could potentially give rise to a new kind of Democrat that promotes this policy mix.
David Brook's career began as a police reporter in Chicago, and he recognizes the significant impact it had on his perspectives. His experiences on the crime beat shifted his views from a more liberal standpoint to a more conservative one. Brooks seems to be highly conscious of the concept of black-and-white morality, which leads him to seek a balanced approach where both sides of an argument have valid points. In essence, Brooks proposes that a third option, which incorporates ideas from both sides, is often attainable.
Here, I think Brooks misses some of the essential characteristics of how cabinet-style dynamics function, which I generally accept as a starting point for analysis of most government decisionmaking. In "The English Constitution," Walter Bagehot highlights the significance of blending old and new minds in the British parliamentary cabinet system for effective governance, emphasizing the importance of secrecy and trust in maintaining unity and functionality. By combining experienced ministers' continuity and institutional knowledge with new ministers' fresh ideas and energy, the cabinet can adapt to changing circumstances and address contemporary issues. Secrecy ensures confidential cabinet discussions and disagreements, fostering open dialogue and consensus-based decisions. Trust among cabinet members is essential for upholding collective responsibility and loyalty, even when personal disagreements occur. Ultimately, Bagehot argues that the balance of experience and innovation, combined with secrecy and trust, contributes to the effective functioning of the government.
Bagehot argues that the most dangerous person to a cabinet government is the disloyal insider. A disloyal insider can undermine the collective responsibility principle, where all ministers must publicly support cabinet decisions, even if they personally disagreed during internal discussions. By breaking this trust and revealing confidential information or dissenting opinions, the disloyal insider can weaken the solidarity and unity of the cabinet, disrupt its decision-making process, and potentially harm the government's credibility and stability. Thus, Bagehot emphasizes that disloyal insiders pose a significant threat to the cabinet government's effectiveness and overall political structure.
Bagehot's central argument highlights the importance of consensus in a government composed of both cautious old minds and and fresh energetic ones. Brooks fails to consider that a political party's drive to act stems from their shared values and the aspiration to advance them. Brooks appears to suggest that experienced and fresh minds together would embrace a logical compromise on the very shared values that unite them. However, it is more probable that both groups would view this approach as flawed and dismiss those promoting it.
Brooks doesn't offer realistic solutions for a feasible third way, and his argument appears at odds with the realities of media influence and political communication. Rather than individuals blending positions, a stronger argument would recognize that blue cities in red states play a vital role in holding their governments accountable, encouraging debate, and preventing complacency in the ruling red-state governments. By remaining committed to the nation and their democratic values, these blue cities enhance the political system's stability and effectiveness while pushing the red-state governments to improve and refine their policies. Ultimately a stronger America emerges from that dynamism, as has been noted in the Economist recently.
One thing I like to do from time to time, is recommend a good book. Brad DeLong has been an economics and history professor at UC Berkeley for a long time, and I have enjoyed reading his posts. He has recently put together many of his thoughts in a book, Slouching Towards Utopia, which I am reading and recommend to anyone interested in the history of the "Long 20th Century" from 1870-2010. The Economist's very positive review of the book is here.
Brad DeLong has come up on this blog before -- here's a list of the times I've mentioned him previously:
This past week the Economist's Bagehot columnist wrote about the implementation of what are Zoom meetings for the United Kingdom's House of Commons, and some of the practical consequences. Adrian Wooldridge writes the column at this time. It is named after Walter Bagehot, a former editor of the Economist and author of "The English Constitution" (one of the books I kept from undergrad). He's also known for his rule for central bankers in a panic from "Lombard Street ("lend freely and at a penalty rate"). Both have been very practical of late, given COVID-19.
I wonder how we will regard the hybrid approach described herein in a few years. While change has come for everyone, not least the "Mother of Parliaments" (churches were closed in the UK this year for Easter for the first time since apparently 1218), the piece makes clear the essential work that elected officials must do to support newspapers in their efforts to scrutinize the government. In the UK it is essentially only MPs that possess the combination of three critical tools -- they may ask written questions that the relevant ministers are obliged to answer, they have detailed knowledge of their own local constituencies, and they have the ability to speak on behalf of the voters.
Perhaps the "hybrid" we should be watching is not online versus in person meetings of Parliament. Instead it may be that recognizing that government accountability in the United Kingdom increasingly depends upon cooperative joint scrutiny by MPs and the press. Perhaps it would be best to call this the era of the dual hybrid Parliament ...
In the wake of the defeat of Sonoma County's Measure A yesterday, I started thinking about what other alternatives are available to mitigate Sonoma County's roadway issues. As many of the readers of this blog are aware, Measure A was a quarter-cent sales tax in Sonoma County intended to fund pavement improvements. The stories in the press before the election focused on the low quality of Sonoma County's roads, and indeed there's ample evidence of the problem. Sonoma County is generally considered to have the worst Pavement Condition Index of any county in the San Francisco Bay Area. That's saying something, as the region isn't known for the quality of its roadways.
However, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors' proposed solution, a sales tax, always seemed strange to me from a policy standpoint. Sales taxes are regressive, and aren't closely tied to the use of the roadways. Gas taxes have historically been used to fund maintenance (let alone improvement) because the use of the roads was (loosely) tied to the amount of tax paid. Of course, that system in the United States has been failing for decades. Improved fuel economy has delinked miles travelled from the amount of tax paid. But there's also another problem with fuel taxes.
That problem turns on the primary complaint of voters when it comes to matters such as these. It isn't actually the quality of the roadways. Instead, it's typically roadway congestion. For, as no less an authority than Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert has noted, "[d]riving in traffic is a different kind of hell every day." So, while charging users for miles driven isn't a bad solution, charging them for driving those miles at the most congested times in the highest traffic areas is generally best. It provides revenue to improve the roads not based on the damage done to the road, but instead on the inconvenience imposed on all the other voters for inefficient timing of one's travel of the right-of-way.
I concede, without argument, that, for the moment, for Sonoma County, trying to introduce a comprehensive system of congestion charges is asking too much. While Sonoma Valley's per-square-foot real estate prices may be approaching those of London or Singapore, that doesn't means the voters are yet ready for Zurich or Stockholm style road pricing. But there is lower hanging fruit whose benefits could be substantial.
Take, for instance, the junction of Highways 37 and 121 in the southeastern corner of Sonoma County. As many are aware, the traffic in the afternoon heading from Sonoma County into Solano County, where 37 shrinks from two lanes to one, produces epic traffic jams. The problem isn't inter-Sonoma County traffic– instead it's the commuters trying to reach Solano County. For residents of Sonoma Valley returning home from San Francisco, it's a regular annoyance. For a tourist destination like the City of Sonoma, it's a foot on their economic windpipe. The Press Democrat has reported on the problem before, and motorists have even started petitions asking for help with the situation.
The nasty congestion at 37 is a classic example of the overuse of a public good (a free highway). Since each driver need not pay any fee to use the roadway, commuters over-exploit Highway 37. Each motorist gets a small benefit from traveling the road, and many are motivated to maximize their use by traveling it every workday, becoming reliant on it. Yet the costs of their use are imposed on the residents of Sonoma County, whose use (and the use of their tourists) is less (often, much less) intense. Pretty frequently, the problem snowballs around 3 PM, until the resource collapses, in the form of a traffic nightmare.
The irony of all this is that the builders of the roadway were well aware of these kinds of problems. Indeed, Highway 37 was originally built as the "Sears Point Toll Road," managed by the Golden Gate Ferry. The imposition of tolls is an obvious solution to the tragedy of the commons–frequent users pay a higher price. But when the State of California purchased the roadway in 1938, the tolls were eliminated.
Now, that was probably a decent idea during the Great Depression. Collecting tolls in that era was much more disruptive than billing the FasTrak equipped cars of today, and spending on roads to improve the general welfare was politically uncontroversial. But the technical problems of toll billing have long been resolved, as the improvement in traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge heading into San Francisco since mandatory electronic toll collection began in March of 2013 illustrates. And the overall impact of congestion charges worldwide has been positive, from London to Singapore.
User fees imposed on Highway 37 from Sonoma to Vallejo (a step toll is preferred) would improve the ability of tourists to reach upvalley destinations in a timely fashion. Such a solution is consistent with the history of the roadway. It helps resolve the primary concern of the voters, congestion, while avoiding politically impractical roadway expansion. It provides revenue to resolve the pressing policy problem, roadway maintenance. And it promotes efficient use of a public good. At a stroke, it uses technology to help resolve a series of different thorny problems.
This kind of a solution isn't limited to the junction of 37 and 121. The politics of such a solution at San Antonio Creek are somewhat different (the commuters causing congestion there are residents of the County, those at 37/121 generally are not). But if the remedy proves practical at Sears Point, there are other locations where such congestion pricing would make a great deal of sense (for instance, upon entering Sonoma Valley ...).
Before yesterday's vote, congestion pricing in Sonoma County was largely a mere gedankenexperiment. But after the failure of Measure A, it's another matter entirely. As Ernest Rutherford was fond of saying, "[w]e've got no money, so we've got to think." In that vein, I suggest it is going to have to be creativity, then, rather than higher taxes, that Sonoma County will have to rely upon to resolve its long term traffic problems.
So, it's my birthday today, and those of you that know me will be unsurprised that my gift to myself was speaking at "Career Day" at Adele Harrison Middle School in Sonoma. I always find it rewarding to talk with students about their plans for the future. But this year, and in this instance, I had just that little extra bit of a reason to be positive. Because I've been spending some time reviewing the consistently increasing performances delivered by students just like those I spoke to today when they reach Sonoma Valley High.
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Data courtesy Sonoma Valley Unified School District.
Framework from Elaine M. Allensworth,
Julia A. Gwynne, Paul Moore, and
Marisa de la Torre, "Middle Grade Indicators of
Readiness in Chicago Public Schools.”
available online at http://tinyurl.com/myq87ag
On the right is a graph tabulated from freshman grade information at Sonoma Valley High since 2006. But first, a bit of background.
Recent research shows that middle school attendance and GPA, when combined, are the single best predictor of high school GPA. Qualitatively, most (public) high schools grade students similarly; however, similar students perform differently depending on school, with some schools improving performance up to .5 of a grade point – and with most of those benefits received by the students between a 1.0 and a 3.0. Those student who manage to reach or exceed a 3.0 in high school increase both their chances of attending college, and graduating from college, the higher their GPA moves.
The study really caught my eye because, beginning in 2011, Sonoma Valley High School created their Freshman Teams, small communities of incoming students with shared schedules. To the extent that the context students enter high school can affect performance, should the Freshman Teams have been functioning positively, an improvement of approximately .5 of a GPA would be expected, with the primary benefits impacting students who would have earned between a 1.0 and a 3.0.
And lo and behold the graph shows exactly what I'd hoped when I started looking at this data. Since the program was instituted in the 2011-2012 school year, Sonoma Valley Unified has moved the majority of its students into the college-potential category as of the end of freshman year, nearly doubling the number in the top tier. Attendance improvements were positively correlated with GPA improvements. Further, as would be expected, the biggest GPA change impacted students between a 1.0 and a 3.0, with essentially a third of the students expected to fall into the range moving into the college potential or college probable tiers.
That wasn't all -- at the same time this was going on, the number of students taking accelerated coursework (math & language) nearly doubled. Sonoma Valley High gives the students no break on grading for their initiative in choosing a harder schedule – there is no bonus weight assigned to their GPAs for this effort. So not only are the students earning better grades, but they've been doing it taking harder classes at the same time.
The students I saw at Adele will now more likely than not be in a position to pursue college when they attend Sonoma Valley High in the years to come. The full handout (with the citations and backup) is here. And the question this data makes me ask myself is: will we give these students the schools and the facilities that their performance deserves?
Can we execute on our school district's Master Plan?
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Poll, Sonoma Index-Tribune
screenshot taken February 12, 2015.
The voters of Sonoma have long been the heroes of their own
community's schools, not leaving that role to the State of California.The electors of the Valley, time and again,
have fully committed to public stewardship of our educational infrastructure.
As parents (and grandparents), our lived experience shows the enormous benefits
to health, safety and education that have always accrued from carefully
spending the money necessary to develop the structures, fields and facilities
worthy of a Valley as successful as Sonoma.
The men and women of our community have always counted on
their educators and trustees to manage — cautiously — the development of our
school campuses. We want our District to
be neither the family shopping only for the day's needs at 7-11, nor the one
gone Costco crazy. Instead, we hope
they'll be like a mom and dad sitting around the kitchen table, carefully deciding
on the nutritious groceries they'll buy for the week ahead, before they go to the store. For like that family, we as a community know
we'll face expenses to maintain our District, and we'll have to frugally weigh
options, one against the other.
I think this is the moment that we find ourselves at that table. For
notwithstanding the emergence of a second dot-com bubble to our south, interest rates remain at historic lows because investment and demand in America remains
depressed.These conditions were not
seen for seventy years, and it is quite possible they will not be seen again
for another seventy.As prudent
shoppers, now is the time to write our list of the purchases we know we're
going to need — the framework for accelerating our students into the balance of
the 21st century that lies ahead.
The green eye shade of the accountant, and the graphs of the
economist make the dry case for improving our schools — that action now can reap
outsized dividends, consequences we will see in the improved living standards
and enhanced productivity of our entire community. But it is our concern for
justice that should ultimately resolve questions in favor of an investment in
our shared future.It is no accident
that I started this section with a rewrite of the first sentence of David Copperfield, Dickens' story of individual perseverance despite an undisciplined
heart. Our shared belief is that America is defined by the notion that the
condition of your birth does not determine the outcome of your life, a truth voiced by both Paul Ryan and Elizabeth Warren. Whether Republican or Democrat,
liberal or conservative, our covenant with our future selves is that education will
remain the key to unlocking the American Dream.
However, it is our common fear that each element that leads to
such success is eroding before our eyes. We find ourselves in a time where
educational opportunity in the United States has become inverted. We are one of
only two members of the G20 that spends more on richer students than poorer (the other is Turkey). We cannot rely on
the State of California to resolve these issues for us. Our Governor is backing away from California's School Facilities Program.The State is essentially leaving Districts like
ours on their own in providing for future school facilities and modernization.
This is where the case for implementing the District's master plans, now, for all of the campuses, finds real traction. As Winston Churchill said, "we shape our buildings; thereafter they shape
us."The voters of Sonoma have a
once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape the future of the Valley for decades
to come — and there is no one else ready, willing, and capable of doing so. We
can put in place the scaffolding our students, the voters of tomorrow, will
need to succeed.
We have an opportunity
to make educational equality more than a dream.We have a chance to make it a reality.
--- So despite being another year older, I found in the faces of our students reason for optimism. But I also found a challenge and a call to action. Rare indeed are opportunities such as the one available to the voters of Sonoma today. It is my hope, and indeed I believe we can make it our shared goal as a community, for us all to pull together to create the infrastructure to match the performances being delivered by our teachers and students.
And so I say to the students who gave me a resounding cheer today when their principal told them all it was my birthday, that we can see that they are doing their part. And that I hope that, as voters, that we will now be able to do ours.
Back in June of 2014, I took a look at the provisional results of the California Primary. It was partly due to a comment in a newspaper article arguing the Bay Area leads the State in voter turnout. Based on the data, I concluded
that the northern counties, and those of the Sierra foothills should really hold the title.
I've wanted to revisit the final results for a while. I did so today. The coefficient of determination was essentially unchanged (R²=.757 versus R²=.758). In doing so, though, I realized there was a way to get at the point Paul Mitchell, the vice-president of Political Data Inc., had made to the newspaper reporter that led to my post in the first place.
Paul had contended that "[p]oor people from Sonoma are far more likely to cast a ballot than someone living in poverty in Echo Park [Los Angeles]." This time, after plotting the results, I then set the y-axis to 100% of turnout as predicted by the trend line, leaving the x-axis at the number of registered voters per county. Graphing the data this way actually supports Paul's argument – that Sonoma County is the outlier from the trend. Sonoma County comes in at 137% of expected turnout, the highest in the table.
Voter turnout has been on my mind because of a line from Serrano v. Priest that's come up here before. In contemporary discussions of education, the "twin themes" of the Serrano I decision tend to be collapsed into one – "[t]he pivotal position of education to success in American society." But it is the second of the twin themes, where Serrano I finds its support in Brown v. Board of Education, that causes me to return to this data.
I hand the microphone to California's former governor, circa 1954:
"[E]ducation is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship." [Emphasis added.]
The language is lofty, but not complicated. Democratic society is (of course) based on voting. In performing that public responsibility, education is a lens allowing us to distinguish the differences between competing choices. But Earl Warren (and a unanimous Supreme Court behind him) say it's more – that education is the foundation of good citizenship. Education doesn't just help us when we step into the voting booth, it shows when we choose to go to the polls in the first place. Education is the self-evident spark, pump primer, and boot loader of democracy.
And so I take that proposition, and come back to the graph once more. And I ask myself – is it education in Sonoma County that has led to this result?
And if I accept for a moment that the statement is true, I then must turn to the far more difficult question. For what, then, would I point to about Sonoma County that has made this difference?
And what can the rest of California learn from Sonoma's experience?
I caught this on Twitter yesterday, and found it revealing. The Pew Research Center (previously came up here and here) conducted a survey across the United States to determine which media sources are the most trusted. However, the researchers introduced nuance into their model, by investigating the ideological identification of the respondents.
One irony of the survey is that the sources that Americans trust the most are the Economist (a British newspaper masquerading as a magazine) and the BBC (the British Broadcasting Corporation). The most trusted American sources are NPR and PBS, followed by the Wall Street Journal (which happens to be the only publication more trusted than not across the spectrum).
One interesting feature is the "hard shift" in this table, where the spectrum doesn't gradually adjust from one side to the other through the "equally trusted and distrusted" data point, and instead goes right to "distrusted" -- and where the "mixed" group also distrusts the source. There are only three -- The Daily Show, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck.
I also note (without comment) that even those who identify as "mostly conservative" express skepticism towards Rush Limbaugh, who is the least trusted generally known figure in the table ...
"It's time to do away with workplace policies that belong in a 'Mad Men' episode. This year, let's all come together – Congress, the White House, and businesses from Wall Street to Main Street – to give every woman the opportunity she deserves. Because I firmly believe when women succeed, America succeeds."
The City of Sonoma has an eight member Planning Commission, entirely composed of middle-aged men. The six voting members from the City all live in expensive homes on the "East Side" (the average value exceeds a million dollars). The Commission has become a class-and-gender monoculture that's failing in its basic role of providing predictable evaluations of the viability of any given project with the voters, because its members no longer represent the community -- the essence of representative democracy.
Change won't come easily. There are many in Precincts 1801 and 1805 that, like me, if asked, are inclined to turn down the opportunity to serve. It's no accident that they would -- the system's built-in hostility to those perceived as "outsiders" shunts away potential representatives with a different view -- diverting them to places like the City's Cultural and Fine Arts Commission, which has ended up being composed of eight women. The selection process -- appointment -- encourages those motivated to participate to curry favor with elected politicians -- a craven process at best -- rather than to get to know their neighborhood, the essence of the metis our governmental system depends upon.
The problem's getting out of hand. The City faces expensive litigation that might have been avoided if the Planning Commissioners had been able to give voice to the concerns that led to the Council blocking AT&T's cell tower. Developers like SunLever can't count on the Planning Commission's approval to mean much of anything when the City Council's overruling unanimous decisions. And Measure B was a not-veiled-at-all effort to hamstring the ability of the Planning Commission to approve any hotels, a clear-cut vote of no-confidence from half of the electorate.
This post is devoted to explaining why allowing the situation to continue is outrageous. If this post makes you upset, that's a feature, not a bug. A body of unelected individuals, serving lengthy terms, that rarely (if ever) are subject to supervision or direction from the council (let alone frequent replacement) isn't democracy in action, and it isn't serving the best interests of the community. When we establish a system that depends on a process of currying favor, we shouldn't be surprised when it gets dominated by wealthy, middle-aged men. But Sonoma County's a different kind of a place - it's a place where women win elections. The appointment process has produced a dramatically unbalanced group, and it should be changed. Promptly.
Because when women succeed, Sonoma succeeds.
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It's been an interesting ten weeks since Measure B went down to defeat, as illustrated by two sets of events. The first is the City of Sonoma's turning down AT&T’s request to install a cell tower, and the second's a "meeting" called by Owen Smith of the SunLever Companies, regarding the old Sonoma Truck and Auto site on Broadway.The loss by AT&T was surprising -- the proposal had won 7-0 at the Planning Commission level, and AT&T went so far as to seek reconsideration of the decision, which was denied (expensive litigation is now expected.) The meeting by the SunLever Companies was perhaps even more unusual -- the potential developer told participants he was "open to any reasonable idea" for the parcel -- the opposite of the choreographed presentation usually made to the public for what are preconceived projects.
And in the midst of these two issues, a third point, a quote from the Mayor, came to mind. Tom Rouse (the only member of the City Council to vote to allow AT&T's cell tower) argued that the City should trust the unanimous decision of the Planning Commission. "We have a commission we put our trust in," he said, and "I must believe they did their homework."
Watching an elected leader deferring on the weighing of private rights versus public goods, trusting in an unelected commission to make decisions about the balance and character of the community, caused me to raise an eyebrow. In general, that sort of decision making is at the core of why people run for a City Council seat -- they're personally engaged with the facts, motivated by a sense of duty to serve their constituents even where their individual interests are not at issue -- and that such leaders aren't therefore prone to defer to the decisions of unelected appointees whose relationship with the voters can be tenuous at best.
Yet in a certain sense, I feel like Tom's not entirely wrong -- he should be able to rely on the Planning Commission. But he can't. And then I realized why SunLever feels the need to go directly to the public rather than develop a proposal first ... and why AT&T (and indeed the Mayor) were surprised the cell tower went down to defeat. And it turns on the makeup of Sonoma's Planning Commission.
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Who planning commissioners are, as most every voter agrees regardless of what the voter knows about embodied cognition, is directly relevant to the execution of their duties. Their names are posted on the City's web site, and unless one of them is concealing a very significant secret, they're all men. Further, where the different commissioners live is anything but hidden -- their addresses arefreelyavailableontheweb.
I've run the map on the right before; it is the map of the precinct returns for Measure B. Those precincts in favor of hotel construction are in silver (gray). I've gone and highlighted the lots where each of the six Sonoma residents who are voting members of the planning commission live, and have added flags so that the locations are clearer. I also mapped the location of the residence of Tom Rouse (his flag is the yellow one).
As can be seen, every one of the six voting planning commissioners from the City lives in the portion of the town that voted to allow hotel construction; none live in the west, or “green” side of town.
"The Magnificent Seven,"
Image available at http://tinyurl.com/ml2uldv
I also grabbed the Zillow valuations for each of the properties. The average value of a planning commissioner’s home in the City of Sonoma is $1.277 million (and one is over $2.5 million). I note that the Mayor's $1.462 million home is on 5th St E, and that he and the City's voting planning commission members are thus effectively the "Magnificent Seven" -- middle aged men living in expensive homes on the East Side of Sonoma.
But it wasn't until after hearing the President's State of the Union speech last night that I decided that I really should publish something about this. Because criticizing the Planning Commission solely on the basis of the neighborhoods its members are drawn from is an instance of me pulling my punch. Because the really atrocious part of this situation is that not a single member of the Planning Commission is female.
It's not hard to see why Tom Rouse felt he could trust the Planning Commission -- they pretty much all look and live exactly like he does. But elections in Sonoma aren't solely decided by the policy preferences of the East Side of Sonoma, and the City Council doesn't measure decisions solely based on their acceptability in Precincts 1802, 1804, and 1813. The Planning Commission is an excellent vehicle for assessing projects to the degree it represents the community -- the essence of representative democracy -- and the unpredictability of the AT&T outcome and the uncertainty surrounding SunLever's project are evidence of the fact that the Planning Commission is failing in its basic role of providing predictable evaluations of the viability with the voters of any given project, due to the fact that it has become a class-and-gender monoculture.
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This situation has been a long time in the making. Planning commissioners can serve three terms -- a two year term, followed by a four year, and then another two year term. Commissioners are rarely removed once appointed, and the ability of the City Council to take action to make the Planning Commission reflect the community is limited by the current status of the City's code.
But municipal codes can change. And millionaire middle-aged men aren't the only occupants of the City of Sonoma. Reform could include adding commissioners, changing the composition, or moving to a system where council members each appoint a commissioner (or two) to serve coterminously (as Sonoma County does). But none of these would address the core problem that reform should be designed to address.
There is no substitute in democracy for personal engagement with the facts. Developing that kind of local knowledge means abandoning the influence-oriented appointment process we have in favor of the kind of institution that encourages metis -- democracy. There is every reason to shift to direct election of planning commissioners on a per-precinct basis.
Precinct elections encourage Commissioners to get to know their neighborhoods. Such elections recognize the importance of the two-way relationship between our representatives and our government's professional staff -- that oftentimes it is our representatives who will explain our government's policies to us, rather than merely supervising the conduct of those decisions by the experts we hire in specific policy areas -- a function of elected officials that will only gain in importance with the burgeoning of smaller-scale "social" media. Frequentprecinct elections (these should be two year terms) are a natural stepping stone for Commissioners to move to higher office, because it causes them to learn how to conduct smaller elections and develop campaign teams-- and developing qualified candidates by providing them a zone of proximal development is an important characteristic of any political system -- for we must recognize that we are constantly engaged in the process of developing our own leaders.
For the development of those leaders, the nurturing our leaders, is why elections are really the solution to the problem we face. As David McCuan, the Sonoma State political scientist, has noted before, female candidates in Sonoma County typically do 5 to 8 percentage points better in elections than men. This is not a point that should surprise anyone -- there's a reason that Nicole Mann came from Rohnert Park ... or the New York Times national education reporter is from Petaluma ... or that the Maria Carrillo High women's soccer team is often the best in America. Because when it's not about influence or favor, when it's on the merits, our voters reward the self-evident ability and achievement on display.
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I can see how this argument would lead one to conclude that the City should change the Council itself to precinct elections. This has come up in other cities in Sonoma County before. The charter process is a burdensome, overwrought solution that's looking for a problem; a Council elected by the City proper encourages a broader view of problems, that allows an important second pass in any process of decision making, and one of the key reasons that direct elections work best at a lower level. We want the Council to consider the common good, and Commission decisions are always subject to the retained power of the Council to overrule the Commission.
Pragmatically, electing commissioners is a process that could be done at the General Election on November 4. The Council should act, to ensure that the planning commission proceedings are a fair prediction of what will occur at the Council. The appointment process has produced a dramatically unbalanced group of middle-aged men living in expensive homes nearly next door to each other. Cronyism has resulted in the exclusion of women from the decision-making process, to the detriment of our community. This situation should be brought to an end. Now.
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"Nothing in life that's worth anything is easy."
-SFCCory Remsburg.
I quoted Obama to start this post, and I end with a link to the video of the key part of the speech. Because the quote was the applause line of the night. When Nancy Pelosi stands to clap, and John McCain smiles in agreement ... when Dianne Feinstein rises and leads the standing ovation, it's clear that on a federal level, the unique characteristics of California, where Malala Yousafzai becomes Janet Yellen, should and very well could have the same power nationally as they can in our little town.
Reforming Sonoma won't come easily. Nothing worthwhile is, which was the second applause point of the evening, for Sergeant First Class Cory Remsburg. But it is high time we take the action necessary to reform our small, broken, but important political system here in Sonoma. All it takes is the same commitment to achievement, merit, and democracy that, increasingly, is defining the Golden State's model. And the audience that is watching stretches far beyond the bounds of our own familiar shores ...
