Why Greenwich elections are ‘like Chicago politics’

Officially, Greenwich doesn’t ever grow all that much. Most residents when asked by far away friends how big their town is find themselves saying, “Oh, about sixty thousand people or so.” And since 1970, that answer would be pretty much on the nose. Of course it hasn’t been the same 60,000 souls living here all that time, even if it often feels like we see the same familiar names and faces who’ve become part of the Greenwich firmament. Just look at local home sales and construction projects and one thing becomes pretty clear. While the total number of residents may not fluctuate very much, there are always people moving in, and people moving out.

And many of those folks moving into town come from places not nearly as politically quirky as Greenwich. Most newbies come from New York or other large cities where city politics may be corrupt, venal, arrogant, or all three, but they’re also usually straightforward. You have a mayor who’s in charge and a representative body of some sort of councilmen who are elected to stand for their neighborhoods. Together, these elected and empowered executive and legislative branches hammer out the details of municipal services, projects, manpower and the budget.

So imagine what it must feel like for a recent Greenwich arrival to open up her new hometown newspaper and read on page one that our Board of Estimate and Taxation, an obscure collection of hand-picked, kindaelected party functionaries and policy wonks are really the ones who “in many respects run the town.” That can’t be right she thinks, we have a first selectman, which is like a mayor, and a Representative Town Meeting where the members are like my old councilmen. Right? Not really. Well, actually not at all.

Our RTM, famously the fifthlargest legislative body in the United States, has severely limited authority over town projects and spending. And the office of the first selectman alone simply does not carry the weight necessary to drive actual decisionmaking. Sure, the first selectman can be visionary, espousing grand ideas and plans for the town, but if the BET doesn’t want to build it, doesn’t want to pay for it, doesn’t see it as fitting into it’s narrow vision of how Greenwich should be doing business, well then that’s just too bad for your big idea.

So while we continue to pretend that Greenwich is some throwback cutsie-pie New England village instead of the major metro area it really is, filled with billionaires, Type-A parents, Fortune 500 companies, a thriving financial services industry and enough high-end shopping to keep Paris Hilton happy, we cede the ability to shape our hometown’s destiny to 12 bureaucrats who are unrecognizable and unaccountable to you and me. Because the kicker is this: you and I don’t elect these people. It looks like we do because their names appear on November ballots, but there are 12 names on the ballot and 12 spots on the board, both evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.

Now if this sounds a little like Chicago politics it’s because it is. On Nov. 2, as long as each of the BET “candidates” votes for themselves, they’re in. Those 12 board seats were predetermined at political party caucuses this past summer, so the only thing your vote counts for is which team gets the tie-breaking chairman’s vote. And for decades that power has rested with Republicans, who have shown no interest in catching up with 21st century fiscal realities. Is this a system that needs to be updated? Absolutely. The distribution of power, authority and governance in Greenwich between the BET, the first selectman and the RTM is way out of whack.

Unfortunately, structural change isn’t on the ballot next month, but chairmanship of the BET is. And it should not sit with the Republicans. The majority Republican plan has been to kick sensible municipal planning down the road while managing “stable and predictable” tax increases. Except all we have to show for that now is lousy infrastructure, bungled investments, and municipal projects held hostage to policies designed to coddle the rich. The future of Greenwich shouldn’t be in their hands, and won’t be if nobody votes for them.