Submitted by Brian Raabe
“Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game.” The phrase in sport means to focus one’s ire on the system of rules that led to a bad outcome (your team lost) instead of “hating on” opposing players.
In Greenwich, the First Selectman acts as Chief Executive and the RTM acts as the mouthpiece of the electorate, the power of the purse resides with the BET.
This week we have witnessed all manner of agreed upon spending priorities cut by the BET in their budget hearings.
Nathaniel Witherell – apparently the path to a one-star rating of elder care is acceptable. Tired of a spring and summer soundtrack of gas leaf blowers? Earplugs. Flood mitigation? Buy waders. Traffic lights? Just look both ways. New ice rink? Nyet.
Today we are likely to see the final act. A $4.0MM school budget cut.
Agreed upon priorities, vetted in the light of day, endorsed by the First Selectman, all enter the BET arena and are reduced, removed, and defunded.
A fiscal form of rendition where spending priorities are snatched off the street with the stroke of a pen, packed into the back of an unmarked van and never seen again.
When our own First Selectman, the elected Chief Executive, is forced to write a letter to the public stating he disagrees with the cuts, something is wrong.
You can “hate the player.” You can be angry with the BET as a personal matter, but it is the structure of governance we have adopted that enables their degrees of freedom. It is their game.
The Selectman structure of government has stood the centuries test of time. It is borne of the New England tradition of participative government via the RTM. I personally feel it is the bedrock of our democracy and as a proud New Englander I embrace it to my core.
But it is being run roughshod by a BET that can simply pseudo-legislate via checkbook. All debate that precedes it is theatre.
The perversion of the process demands a town our size consider a Mayor and Council form of government.
That is a heavy lift, but the annual budget process, one where the will of the people and that of the Selectman is being usurped annually on the fly suggests we are playing the wrong game.
A mayor and council construct and abolishing the BET should be considered.
Alternatively, one can vote for members of town government more aligned with their priorities in the fall.
Brian Raabe, Old Greenwich