The Easy No Vs The Hard Yes

Even though the citizens of this country bear full responsibility for the governments they elect, there is a streak of apprehension that runs through our relationship with what we, the voters, have wrought. The early 20th Century cowboy comic/commentator Will Rogers put it this way: “The country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of the hammer.” The same can be said of our state legislatures, and town councils. It often turns out that the people who know how to get elected are not always the same ones who know how to solve our most intractable problems.

Between winces over the health care reform wreck in Washington, you may have noticed another crack-up in the offing as the State of Connecticut attempts to fill a $377 million budget gap, and towns and cities start assembling municipal budgets for 2010-2011. Three weeks ago, Governor M. Jodi Rell, in a display of political courage common only in those like Mrs Rell who have decided not to seek reelection, proposed a cut of $84 million in grants to towns and cities in the middle of the fiscal year. The plan met with immediate resistance from the Democratic opposition in the Legislature and the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities for its lack of specificity. So the governor convened a panel of lawmakers and six mayors and first selectmen to explore specifically how to come up with $84 million in budget savings.

The panel reported back last week, not with proposals for state budget savings, but with a list of ways the state could make more money available to towns and cities and ease pressure on local budgets. Some of the items on that list have had our support in the past, including a prohibition on unfunded mandates for municipalities, and they are areas that need to be addressed. Yet the call for solutions to the problem at hand — the burgeoning state deficit — went unanswered. In essence, the lawmakers and town officials told the governor, “We have no idea how to spend less money, which is precisely why we don’t want you to give less money to our towns and cities.”

The Politics of No are in ascendancy at every level of government. Some argue that when the baby does get hold of the hammer, “No!” is the appropriate response. Yet when there are real problems, like a broken health care system draining the resources of small businesses and ordinary citizens, or a straining system of nursing home care that has had no increase in state funding for three years, or local property tax increases that are fast eroding support for quality education, someone has to step forward and say “Yes, we can do something about this.”

It is easy to be angry and disgusted with the way things are going. It is easy to say “No” when a proposal calls for sacrifice, especially in the current larger economic context of loss and sacrifice. We wonder, however, where we will end up as a town, state, or nation if our watchword is invariably “No.” Digging one’s heels into a rut of refusal is essentially a conscious choice to do nothing about our problems. At some point we need to move beyond thinking about what we don’t want and start thinking about what we do want, moving beyond the easy No to entertain the possibility of the hard Yes. In the face of hard choices and sacrifice, we can earn for ourselves the right of refusal when we say, “No, but… here’s a better idea.”