The Political Show in East Greenwich
Last night, the East Greenwich Town Council held a meeting at the high school to remedy the procedural issues that the state Superior Court had found around some of its recent management decisions. Elizabeth McNamara provides a summary of the meeting for East Greenwich News and puts the audience at “more than” 500 people.
Reportage of the experience of being there came while the meeting was underway from NBC 10 reporter Crystal Bui’s Twitter stream. One gets the impression that this might be Bui’s first contentious town meeting:
Town council members are talking about where they stand… before the public weighs in. Which makes me wonder, are their minds set on Gayle Corrigan, and does public testimony matter?? @NBC10 pic.twitter.com/fdZS10H5Gj
— Crystal Bui (@NBC10_Crystal) November 21, 2017
The short answer is, “no.” The council appointed Corrigan earlier this year and attempted to reappoint her at an aborted meeting last week. Taking public feedback is important, but at the end of the day, representative democracy isn’t about which side can put the loudest group of people in a room, which would obviously give advantage to a small minority that has large incentive to siphon resources from everybody else. Indeed, Bui gives indication that the crowd cheated in this regard:
No, people who live in town have a name tag… audience looks to be 50/50. That’s if they remembered to put one on; estimate from standing in the room. Theoretically red/green card show disagreement or agreement, except people are yelling anyways. So it’s just an added visual. https://t.co/nKBtcMrlE8
— Crystal Bui (@NBC10_Crystal) November 21, 2017
So let’s be generous and assume that 300 people in the room were East Greenwich residents and a majority opposed what the council was doing. Given the crowd’s behavior, how likely is it that supporters of the council would want to speak up, especially knowing that many (probably most) in the boisterous opposition had influence over their children through the schools or would be their first responders in an emergency?
Council President Sue Cienki has it right when she tells McNamara: “People that are happy, they’re not going to come here to complain. They’re not going to come here to make comments.” The next election will express the public’s will (and the special interests have an advantage even there), and by then, they’ll have had some time to observe the results.