On Government

We need a city government that works with and for the people. When you call about lead paint in your apartment or crumbling sidewalks on the walk to school, the city should get right on fixing the problem and connecting you with the resources you need. Fixing problems is what government is there for; that alone is a full-time job. In a world dominated by powerful interests, government exists to empower the people—every one of us—so that none of us go up against those forces alone. But every right and protection, every regulation and legal line, ceases to exist without an executive branch interested in enforcing it.

City Hall’s preoccupation with planning expensive, unpopular, city-transforming projects has been devastating to the core functions of our local government. It has imposed austerity cuts on our essential services and institutions with nothing to show for it but pretty websites and promises of wildly ambitious projects on the horizon. Our executive branch has usurped the power of the legislature, leaving us with a City Council that lacks purpose or power and acts more beholden to the mayor than to its constituents. Our essential oversight boards and commissions, designed to protect our history, environment, and neighbors, have been marginalized or rendered effectively meaningless. The public is all too often forced out of the process completely while costly consultants are paid to tell the mayor what her residents really need. I’m running to change all that before it’s too late, and if elected, I promise you I will.

The government should be accessible—citizens should feel like they can ask for help and get it. Northampton’s official website should be accessible—a tool for empowering the people who visit it. City Hall should be accessible—and one of my first priories in office will be making the front entrance open and accessible to all. Public notices must be displayed conspicuously by law, and I would finally enforce that requirement so that the walls of City Hall would become the public resource they were always intended to be, alongside any artwork the public schools can provide.

We must ensure that our oversight boards and commissions are independent, empowered, accountable, and available to the public instead of hidden away and wielded by the very departments they exist to review. None of this works without a legislature that actually wants to legislate and listen, and this year we thankfully have the chance to elect one that does. Let’s reassert the separation of powers that are core to the city charter, make democracy work for the people, end the wasteful spending of consultant culture, and harness the innovation and economy of our own abilities and imagination.

The people of this city know what they need. Together, with a government that works and a public that trusts it—and vice versa—Northampton truly can do anything.