Tom Keane

The Wrong Call

Like everyone, I'm infuriated by drivers who talk and text on their cellphones. But banning hand-helds isn't the answer.

It's hard to be a Libertarian with all of these knuckleheads around.

I'm not really a card-carrying member of the Libertarian club. I pay taxes; I even think they're a good idea. Still, I find myself instinctively bothered by this incessant nanny-state desire to pass laws to tell people how to behave. Then those instincts run smack dab into those idiotic drivers text messaging while behind the wheel. It makes you wonder: If they're that stupid, maybe they do need a law to tell them what to do. And while we're at it, let's ban hand-held cellphones as well. That's the proposal now before the Massachusetts Legislature.

One chilly Saturday last month, I spent a half-hour on a Copley Square street corner, watching traffic pass by. All told, I counted 468 cars; 42 drivers had phones to their ears. Those weren't the ones that scared me, however. I saw several drivers animatedly engaged in conversation with a passenger, turning their heads, gesticulating wildly. One woman was stretching both arms wide, as if to show the size of a fish she had caught. A man, hands off the wheel, was putting on sunglasses.

The phenomenon I observed is called "driver distraction." Cellphones are part of that, but how much is uncertain. A 2001 University of North Carolina study concluded cellphones were the distracting factor in crashes only 1.5 percent of the time. The National Conference of State Legislatures came to a similar conclusion. California, for example, found cellphones contributed to no more than 611 crashes out of 491,083 during a six-month period in 2002. On the other hand, a much-ballyhooed 2003 study from the University of Utah said cellphone users drove as badly as drunks, while a 2005 pilot study of 100 drivers in the Washington, D.C., area came to the startling conclusion that driver distraction caused almost 80 percent of all crashes (the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration believes it's more like 25 percent), with cellphones a major contributor. There's a big problem with these inflated estimates. If there were that many new "drunks" on the road, or if cellphones were a significant cause of driver distraction, one would expect to see that reflected in accident statistics. But crash rates nationwide, in fact, have been dropping even as cellphone use has increased, from 26.6 in 1997 for every 10 million miles traveled down to 19.8 in 2006.

Still, even if they don't cause a lot of crashes, cellphones and text messaging do appear to contribute at least to some, such as the horrific accident in December in which a boy was killed in Taunton by a text-messaging driver. So, again, why not a ban? Bans are needed, runs the argument, because people on their own don't know what to do. We look to the law to tell us what's right and wrong.

Really? Despite it being a crime, 40 percent of Americans 12 and older have tried marijuana, according to a 2003 survey. I'd bet that all of us, at one time or another, have exceeded the speed limit. Then there's New York's experience. It banned hand-helds in 2001. Yet, while use of the phones dropped a bit the following year, it then climbed back up to pre-ban levels, according to the NHTSA. In other words, just because we make something illegal, that doesn't mean we stop doing it. Activists counter that tougher laws are the cause of a decline in drunken driving, but, really, those laws more reflect a sea change in our culture. Where once being inebriated and behind the wheel was a joke (remember Dean Martin?), today it would garner few laughs.

The point is that the law is a clumsy and ineffective tool for trying to make us better people. Most of life - driving included - requires good judgment. A law can't provide you that. Moreover, cellphone bans have a feel-good, do-nothing quality to them. Researchers have concluded there is little difference in the distracting effects of handheld phones and hand-free phones, yet the Massachusetts legislation (and the laws of every state with a ban) would permit hands-free calling. And even with a ban, we'd still have drivers fiddling with their radios or eating a Big Mac while merging onto the highway. How do we deal with those? More laws? Enlightenment philosophers long ago argued that compelling people to be religious wouldn't save their souls. In the same way, I suspect, merely banning hand-helds and text messaging would do little to make even the most knuckleheaded of drivers more responsible.

Originally published in The Boston Globe Magazine, March 23, 2008.

Does Boston Really Need a Mayor?

More and more, the job of running a municipality seems better-suited to a professional manager.

Eighty-six percent of Boston voters didn't show up at the polls in November, a fact that infuriates me, until I begin to wonder if perhaps the no-shows have got it right. Maybe local politics really doesn't matter after all.

When Ray Flynn was elected mayor in 1983, 70 percent of the city's voters turned out. In a recent column for a community newspaper, he agonizes over the drop. Something must be to blame. Is it the media's fault? The fragmentation of our communities? Are we all so busy with our Second Life that we no longer have time for the first?

Or is it none of that? After all, we still seem engaged in statewide and national politics (the February presidential primary saw Boston's turnout almost triple). Could it simply be that the task of running a city or town these days is less political than it is managerial, less ideological than it is technical – and that voters have finally figured that out?

Imagine you're a local pol. You have no control over town revenues. The property tax is subject to the stringent limits imposed by 1980's Proposition 2 1/2, and state aid amounts are dictated by Beacon Hill. You're perpetually short of money, but state law prohibits you from coming up with new taxes of your own. The decisions you make are rarely political. Snow removal and crime fighting are hardly controversial; no one has ever successfully campaigned against either. The measures of success are innovation and efficiency. They have to be. With money short, your grim days are spent less on "What do I fund?" than on "Where do I cut?"

And the big, fun clash-of-values issues? Cities were once the battlegrounds of powerful ideological struggles. Now, those fights are at the State House or in Washington. Even rent control – a longtime local concern – is subject to (and banned) by state law.

At least, you think, I can get my friends jobs. Oops. Not true. In the Bay State, it's now largely illegal. Civil service rules mean that, aside from a few close staff, the only things you're handing out are invitations to your next fund-raiser.

These changes may help explain why so many Massachusetts towns – 305 out of 351, according to the Massachusetts Municipal Association – don't have elected mayors and rely on professional administrators instead. Even some of those with mayors (Lowell, Cambridge, and Worcester) have what are called "weak mayor" governments, where the mayor is mostly a figurehead and the real power lies with the city manager. And why not? There's a lot of research that suggests professional administrators do a better job than elected officials when it comes to delivering services effectively. For one, they actually go to school to learn their jobs, getting degrees such as a master's in public administration. They're hired under long-term contracts, and because they don't have to worry about elections, they're not constantly trying to placate interest groups. That means, for example, that they can negotiate with public employee unions without fearing their opposition come the next election.

I raise this with smart people who study this stuff, and they point out counterexamples. While the general trend is toward hiring career professionals, says Geoffrey Beckwith, executive director of the MMA, there are a number of municipalities that have opted for an elected mayor instead, including Braintree, Amesbury, and Greenfield. Wilbur Rich, a political science professor at Wellesley College, argues that sometimes municipalities need mayors. When populations are divided – newcomers versus old-timers, for instance – elected politicians can bridge the gap. And mayors with sufficient power can better deal with a political crisis or help promote the city to outsiders.

I'm unpersuaded. Granted, sometimes politicians can do things managers cannot. But as cities and towns find themselves, for good reasons and bad, with ever less power and discretion, local politics seems ever more irrelevant. A big city like Boston will, if only for tradition, probably never stop electing a mayor (although Menino – whom Rich calls a "good housekeeping mayor" – perhaps proves the general point that residents care more about efficiency than they do politics). I sympathize with Mayor Flynn's lament, yet think he's mistaken to believe the halcyon days he remembers will ever return. Local politics was once this region's favorite sport. No more.

Originally published in The Boston Globe Magazine, March 2, 2008.