Those citizens with a grammar school-level understanding of
representative democracy, may be surprised to learn the State
Legislature’s Office of Fiscal and Program Review (OFPR) recently
completed an experiment in direct democracy. The office, operated under
the auspices of the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee,
offered a virtual suggestion box allowing residents to make their own
recommendations about how to cut bureaucracy and provide services more
efficiently (or not at all).

By Sept. 14, when the suggestion box was closed, the office has
summarized the suggestions into roughly 130 bullet points, running the
gamut from the reasonable (“Eliminate State Nuclear Safety Advisor…
Maine has no nuclear facilities whatsoever, except for the low-level
waste site in Wiscasset”) to the likely controversial (“Implementation
of a 4-day school week for smaller districts”) to the seemingly silly
(“providing a notarized letter option for persons who successfully
complete a high school or general equivalency education…instead of
giving them a diploma”).

The OFPR staff is currently evaluating the suggestions and scoring them
according to their potential for savings. Their evaluation should be
published next week.

While we are all for saving money in state government and allowing the
people to have their voices heard, we can’t help but feel the
Legislature has abdicated its role in our democratic process. After
all, members of the Legislature are referred to as representatives for
a good reason – their duty is to represent the concerns and ideas of
the people. But the suggestion box replaces the role of the
representative as interface between the people and the machinery of
government.

There is no shortage of ideas on how to make the government run better.
One need only listen to a few minutes of talk radio, stick a finger
into the blogosphere or read an opinion piece by one of the many
special interest advocacy groups for prescriptions to cure Maine’s
economic woes.

Representatives across the state likely can’t drink their coffee in
peace without a constituent bending their ear about this or that.

The problem is those ideas rarely translate into actual policy. When
they are bad ideas, this is a good thing. But when it is a good idea
that is scuttled in the face of entrenched interests it is evidence of
legislators failing in their role as representatives once again.

The true measure of the suggestion box will not be how many good ideas are generated, but how many good ideas become laws.