Town Meeting Passes Rules Most Did Not See

Know What You Are Voting on...

by Bill Gouveia

(This column appeared in the Sun Chronicle on Monday, October 28, 2019)

Even longtime defenders of the venerable town meeting system of government have to be shaking their collective heads after what happen at the Norton Town Meeting last week. In fact, had I not been there (I’m the town moderator — full disclosure) I might not have believed it myself.

The cemetery commissioners wanted town meeting to accept a newly-compiled list of cemetery regulations. The motion called on the meeting to accept the rules “as filed with the town clerk’s office.” Town counsel said this was acceptable.

There were just a couple of problems. The rules had apparently been filed with the clerk’s office hours just hours before the town meeting, thus making it nearly impossible for most voters to review them. Additionally, neither the commissioners nor anyone else had enough copies of the regulations to give people attending the meeting. In essence, voters were being asked to accept rules 95% of them had never seen.

And yet despite that, by a vote of 70-67, those in attendance did exactly that. They accepted rules they had not seen and that had not been detailed. Kind of reminded me of the old saying about “you can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.”

Now, this was not exactly high-level stuff. It was about adopting a list of cemetery rules. Maybe people just trusted officials who told them the rules were just “standard stuff taken from other towns.” It’s not like it was changing a zoning bylaw or voting to build a new school.

But think about it. Norton’s legislative governing body voted to formally adopt a list of rules they never saw and knew nothing about. That’s pretty amazing.

Imagine what would happen in a town like North Attleboro, which recently changed from a town meeting to a town council format, if this had happened there. Suppose a proposal came before the council to adopt a new list of cemetery rules. The councilors were told there was no actual copy of the rules available for them to review, but not to worry — a copy was filed with the town clerk’s office hours earlier, and they can view them later.

And the councilors said sure — and went ahead and voted them sight unseen. Can you imagine the public response that would generate? The charges of failing to do their duty, or even read the regulations before adopting them?

Well, that is what Norton’s town meeting did Monday night.

To be sure, folks at that meeting had the absolute right to do what they did. It is perfectly legal. They violated no rules. Town meeting is free to do as it pleases, whether it makes sense or not.

But this situation clearly highlights one of the obvious flaws in using a town meeting form of legislative government in a municipality the size of Norton.

This time it was just a list of cemetery rules. Who knows what might get through without explanation next time? Is it really too much to insist legislators — even volunteer “citizen legislators” — actually look at what they are voting on?

If local governments start voting on things without reading them, pretty soon we’ll have to start calling them “Congress.”

Bill Gouveia is a longtime columnist and local official. He can be emailed at billsinsidelook@gmail.com and followed on Twitter at @Billinsidelook.