ome 20 years ago, Tom Finneran skied down Mount Attitash - stark naked but for his boots. He was a college student at Northeastern University at the time. He'd been sharing a house with friends. It was spring. There was plenty of beer. They decided to race.
mimc_bigad3
Then Finneran was a young man. Today he's speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, the most powerful man in the state. But, figuratively speaking, Finneran is mooning the mountain again. Yesterday his cheerful, brazen defiance resulted in the Legislature being hauled before the Supreme Judicial Court by a group of citizens for failing to implement the Clean Elections Law voters decreed in a ballot initiative in 1998.
Does the business community have an interest in the measure's fate? Not on the surface of it. Former Stride-Rite Corp. chairman Arnold Hiatt has been speaking out on its behalf, but he's pretty much it.
''I've never talked to a businessman who wasn't for it,'' he says, ''but I don't talk to executives of chemical companies, tobacco companies, utilities, and others who have an interest in the status quo.''
In other words, it seems to matter little to much of the business world whether a coalition of do-gooders can persuade the top court to force the Legislature to appropriate public campaign money for candidates who agree to abide by strict fund-raising rules. Look a little deeper, however, and you see that measure's fate may be a matter some importance. The legislative one-party system is like Finneran's downhill run - funny enough on its own terms, but otherwise an affront to common sense.
Today's problems stem at least from 1974, when enthusiasm for reform was aided by the backlash to the Watergate scandals. In Massachusetts, the League of Women Voters lined up behind a measure to reduce the House of Representatives to 160 members from 240. The hope was that a smaller body would mean higher quality, greater visibility, and more accountability. Its immediate effect, however, was to reduce turnover and put the Democrats on the path to absolute control.
Finneran was elected to the House in 1978 and received the speaker's gavel in 1996 - the first speaker never to have served in the old 240-member house. In the larger chamber, intraparty opposition had been a tradition. Under Finneran, it has become an impossibility. The Mattapan Democrat has used all his considerable powers to stifle dissent.
So two years ago, reform-minded citizens put the Clean Election Law on the ballot in hopes of increasing competition for legislative seats and curbing Finneran's power. The idea was to create an alternative way of running for office. Candidates could apply for modest campaign funding from a state fund rather than turning to lobbyists. The measure was overwhelmingly approved; it carried every legislative district in the state. The business community barely noticed - even though the measure could help resurrect the Republican Party in the Boston suburbs, presumably a development business desires.
Late last month, however, the Legislature passed a budget that failed to include the funds to implement the Clean Election Law. Stringency was the reason given; tax revenues are still deteriorating in the recession. Yet the Constitution requires that the Legislature either fund a successful ballot initiative, or repeal it by a margin of two-thirds. The justices who heard arguments yesterday seemed reluctant to tell the Legislature how much to spend - or even to spend at all. The court's best option may be to simply tell the Legislature to make up its mind. It could say no more elections until the constitutional responsibility is met. Public pressure would do the rest.
So great has been the triumph of money in the past 25 years that it is no longer intuitively obvious that enhanced political competition in Massachusetts might be good for business. A look around the world should suffice. Real democracy is almost always good for commerce. It is one-party rule that spells trouble.
David Warsh can be reached by e-mail at warsh@globe.com.
Dow:
