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February 27, 2008 10:24 am
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GLOUCESTER DAILY TIMES (GLOUCESTER, Mass.)
GLOUCESTER DAILY TIMES (GLOUCESTER, Mass.)
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Small town mayor rebuffed in effort to talk to Congress
Middle class cities are imperiled by federal spending mandates, but the mayor of one of those cities says Washington won't listen and she can't get an audience with Congress to point out the problem.
By Richard Gaines
CNHI News Service
GLOUCESTER, Mass. — Mayor Carolyn Kirk says she won't be allowed to testify before Congress about what federal spending mandates are doing to her blue-collar fishing city and other middle-class communities across America.
The discouraging response to her request to be heard, delivered in a phone call Tuesday from U.S. Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., left Kirk flabbergasted and furious. She said she assumed a citizen has a right to speak to City Council and that a similar right to freely petition would apply to a mayor seeking to talk to Congress.
She said that "a lot of truth comes out" when citizens come to City Hall to inform the council and mayor of their hopes, wishes, desires and fears about municipal budget decisions and that democracy should apply "at the federal level, too."
As an alternative, Tierney invited Kirk to submit written testimony. And in a written response to questions from the Gloucester Daily Times, Tierney's press secretary, Catherine Ribeiro, said the chairman of the House Budget Committee, Rep. John Spratt. D-S.C., had decided against having any non-federal officials testify on the budget.
As the new mayor of a city in a long-term fiscal pinch from federal regulations that hobble much of its fishing fleet -- and federal rules requiring more than $100 million in infrastructure improvements, creating budget problems that forced the closing of fire stations and teacher layoffs - Kirk responded to Tierney in writing.
"As an elected official in my city of Gloucester, Massachusetts, when we put forward a budget, we hold public hearings," said Kirk, 46, a business consultant before she was elected mayor last November.
"With a recession setting in, rising employee health care costs, skyrocketing energy costs and gas prices - all amidst stagnant wages - there is little tolerance on the part of my constituents for increased (federal) taxes, fees or other regressive measures."
Gloucester, home port for the popular book and movie The Perfect Storm, is being "crushed under the weight of the infrastructure work required to comply with Federal environmental laws and fix aging water and sewer systems," said the mayor.
In recent weeks, as Tierney and U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., came by her office to congratulate her on her political success and pledge help, Kirk announced to both that she intended to go to Washington this spring to testify about the city's problems and how the federal budget might be shaped to help.
At the end of the meeting with Kerry, Kirk reported the senator agreed to arrange the visit and testimony. But she also said she was surprised by the reaction of Kerry's staff to her proposal.
"They said, 'Nobody ever asked before,'" Kirk told the Times.
After the meeting, Kerry agreed with Kirk that the relationship of the people and the federal government is "broken." Kerry added, "It's time for another revolution."
He was referring not to the American Revolution for independence, but to the grassroots revolution of the 1970s, which brought enormous federal appropriations for local needs. The movement launched Kerry's political career and that of many members of the state Congressional delegation, including Barney Frank, William Delahunt, Edward Markey and John Olver, from local, county or legislative offices.
In her first term on the School Committee two years ago, Kirk researched and published on yellow handbills - dubbed "lemon sheets" - evidence that the state formula for school aid was broken and discriminated against Gloucester and other older cities. On top of this were federal education spending mandates.
Kirk took the budgetary research to the Statehouse, where she and her allies dropped the fact-sheet handbills in the offices of every legislator. Meanwhile, back in Gloucester last year, elected officials began describing the city as "disenfranchised."
City Council President Bruce Tobey said he was not surprised by the refusal to allow the mayor to testify before Congress.
"Access is very limited and controlled," said Tobey, who is also the president of the Massachusetts Municipal Association and chairman of the Advisory Committee to the National League of Cities. "The way it works down there is if you want something done, you have to know the right staffer."
Like Kirk and local historian Joseph Garland, Tobey conceded he'd never considered whether the Constitution guaranteed a citizen the right to speak to Congress - though Garland said he'd never "heard of such a thing" as the rejection of a mayor's request to speak.
Historian Richard Rosenfeld said he did not believe a mayor had the right to address Congress. The right to petition is satisfied by the taking of written testimony, as Tierney proposed, said Rosenfeld.
Kirk, however, said she just assumed that the same right the city honored by allowing endless hours of citizen testimony at council and board meetings applied "all the way up."
In her letter to Tierney, Kirk described how the city gets citizen input.
"We put forward a budget, we hold public hearings," she wrote. "Last year, 700 residents appeared at our public hearing on the school budget. One after another, dozens of people addressed their elected representatives to express sadness, dismay and frustration with a budget that called for the closing of an elementary school."
Echoing a theme she developed in speaking to state officials last month, Kirk said people's sense of their being an American is "formed through the day-to-day living they do in the city or town that they live in."
"If I could leave you with any lasting impression at all," she wrote to Tierney, "it would be that as mayor, I am on the front lines of running a city with diminishing resources, and then have to make the hard choices to close fire stations, lay off staff or cut essential services ....
"Perhaps there will come a time when someone such as I will be given the opportunity to deliver a message directly to representatives in Washington ... No lobbyist. No special interest group. Just a direct report and reminder of what it is like to be going through these hard times in our country at the local level."
Richard Gaines, Gloucester (Mass.) Daily Times, rgaines@gloucestertimes.com
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