 Good evening and welcome to the second edition of Byline, a new public affairs program of Amherst Media in cooperation with the Amherst League of Women Voters. We're meeting every Friday night and you'll see us at 8 p.m. on Friday evening and this broadcast tonight, it's January 11th and you'll see the same show rebroadcast on Monday evening, 30 minutes before Town Council, if Town Council were meeting. They're not going to be meeting next Monday, but that's okay. We're still going to be on January 4th, excuse me, 14th at 6 p.m. So if you missed it on Friday, you can see it on Monday. And if you still didn't get enough of it, you can also go to Amherst Media YouTube and watch it as many times as you like. So this show is newly organized for the purpose of helping us all understand and get to know our newly elected legislators better. And today we have with us one of our new Town Councilors from District 1, Kathy Shane. And a bunch of people did get to vote for Kathy. That's why she is here. But most of us didn't get to vote for Kathy because we didn't live in the district from which you were elected, Kathy. And so our purpose this evening is to help the community get to know you better because every vote that you cast is equal to every other vote as every other counselor. And therefore, although you are representing your district first and foremost, you're also serving and affecting the lives of all of us as you do your work on the council. So we want to get to know you better and give people who didn't have a chance to get to know you during the campaign season to get to know more about you. And so let's start with experience. And I read your CV, which is quite impressive. And you bring a lot to the council table because you've been a distinguished researcher, writer, and you've worked in many different settings and many different issues. Why don't you give us a little thumbnail of particularly the issue orientations that you've had that are part of what you bring to the table and focus on substance issues at this point as opposed to the skill sets. Sure. Thank you so much for doing this, Stan. It's a real service to the broader community. Happy to do it. Thank you. And I hope we'll be tapping into your links to the state legislature. I'm available at any time. You know, one of my, the experiences I bring in my focus and one of the reasons a lot of people didn't know me in town even though I've lived here 35 years as I focused in it with a passion on trying to reform the U.S. health care system. I used to say fixing the U.S. health care system whereas a good friend said this is a lifetime endeavor if we're talking about access, cost, and quality. And I worked initially with the Jimmy Carter administration dating me back a long time ago where we never got it through. And part of what I realized is we didn't have constituents pushing hard enough. As a young kid, every surgeon wanted to take me out for coffee or for a meal because I was going to write the bill. But I didn't hear from real people. And I worked a number of years with the labor union afterwards protecting wages, protecting benefits. I'm trained as an economist. So those skills are very useful when you have to look at numbers and come up with thinking through a better way that's going to bring sides together. And that worked well at the union level because management didn't always trust the union. But if you came in with a really good idea and it was going to save the hospital, people went for it especially if you had a soft voice and they could use your words. So I used that at the union level and then when national health insurance started moving again was quite instrumental at a foundation that I work for. Ideas, international comparisons, down to the local level looking a lot at Massachusetts. What can we learn from states that are doing a better job leading the pack? But where are they flawed? Where can we do better? So I do hope to bring that big picture on health care to the council. But I think we can't fix it at the Amherst level. We need to be worrying about the state legislature and national and the focus on how do we pay for things, bringing those skills and an ability to analyze to the council. So on the policy side, who gets what, when, how, why? But then there's the other side which is what can we afford to do? Absolutely. And how do we afford to do it? How does that experience play into sitting at the council today? It's a fabulous question because it was anyone who knows, and we all know something about the U.S. health care system because we experience it daily. And when we said we're going to do access, cost and quality, people said you can't do all three of those. And we said we have evidence that we can do more and spend less on health care. So I think one of the things we can do at the council level is look at are there opportunities to be smart about the way we orchestrate our spending? Where are revenues coming from? Are there opportunities to enhance our revenues? And think about the pieces not just this year which we have to do, but what does it look like five years from now and ten years from now and keeping our eyes out into the future? And doing that my experience both at the federal and often at the state level is that was the winning strategy. Because what you do right now might bring you your dividends next year or two years down the road. So don't think too short term while focusing a lot on getting us through this year in a way that we are all proud of. So every time you sit down and have a conversation you have to think about what's going to happen in the next six to thirty six months to ten years so that you're trying to make the best and right decision given that people need health care today. But we also need that system to be stronger and better three years from now and ten years from now as the population grows, as medical technology changes, etc. So is that the kind of direction that you were? That's absolutely. And you know when we worked on a commission for a number of years and I was the central person pulling us together with the policy ideas and modeling but we had for example the head of the partners health care system sitting at the table with us and we said if we're going to pay you in a different way that will slow down your revenues but not bankrupt you. Can you live with this? And he actually said very quietly I'm not going to say this publicly but yes we can. We'd have to reconfigure the way we do things but excellence could still be at the top of the line and we could instead of seeing health care like this in cost it could be like this. So when I was talking about going back to 1950. It's not possible. But again it couldn't go even like this on day one. It was a gradual. It's changed over time. It's changed over time. So you're sitting at the town council and you have this enormous background on health care policy. You also have enormous background on economic policy and how you think about a problem from an economic perspective not just from the health care delivery perspective. How do you use that? You're on the council. You're not in the executive branch and so staff have responsibility but every year you have to pass a budget and one of the biggest cost centers in our public budgets is health care. How do you as a counselor use your past experience and knowledge and the way you think about health care and framing health care policy as well as the economics of health care. How do you think you might be able to help without crossing the line from legislative to executive? Those are great questions. One of the challenges we have as a municipal government is most of our revenues come from property taxes. We don't have the ability to think big the way a state government or a national government can on income taxes, a source of revenue, sales tax, different sources of revenue. I'm trained as an economist. One of my focus series was always public finance and I actually got brought in at UMass negotiations at one point where the university said they were broke and they were going to do layoffs and furloughs and I said let me take a look and it turned out they weren't totally broke. There was a rainy day fund that was more than enough on a rainy day to do something. So I think one of the things with the town is looking at our flow. Where are there opportunities to enhance it? Again, this year we might not be able to but what can we do the next year? And I know the management of the town, which I think is excellent, is constantly looking for where's the grant money. But I think a tight liaison with our state legislatures, if we got any change in the way the school charter formula works, it's a huge benefit. Or even the foundation review commission funding, if that came through. For our listeners that was a three year long effort by a group of legislators with others to figure out what we need to do to our chapter 90 school funding formula and they discovered that there were several cost centers that were way beyond the amount that was allowed and considered as part of the chapter 90 formula. In total shorting our school systems about 1.4 billion dollars. So if that bill got passed, that would produce over 5, 7, 10 years a significant additional revenue tied to the very cost centers that we don't have enough money for, one of which is healthcare. So that brings it back to the subject of healthcare. Absolutely. When I decided to run, one of the first things I did because of my training and I actually like looking at numbers was I got the most recent years budget and then I looked at several years backwards over 10 years. And if you look at the amount of state money that was coming into Amherst, particularly for schools, it's dwindled as a share of the total budget. So when my kids went to school, they're 38 and 34 now, a lot more of our school budget was state money, partly for what you're talking about, that the state hasn't kept up with the cost. And in some cases it went down, but it's been steady. And it makes a huge difference on one more teacher fixing the ventilation system or affording healthcare, which keeps going up. It's not totally controllable. But on healthcare also, we've got legislators who have run on single payer on doing something about costs. I think there are a series of steps we could take. Massachusetts used to be a leader in thinking about what we pay across all our sectors, private sector, and we used to have rate controls. And if you brought what we pay as private, just a little bit closer to Medicare, it's huge savings for the library, for schools. So thinking that way, it's not tomorrow, but it's totally feasible. But as you pointed out, that can't be done at the local level, that said we all as voters and residents of the Commonwealth have a voice in that and can work with our local legislators who work on Beacon Hill and those in Washington to try to change those. Now you said something else that was very interesting to me. You referenced in maybe five minutes ago, you said, especially if you say it with a soft voice, you were describing a process skill, not a substantive skill. We've been discussing substantive skills around health care and economics and working with labor. But talk about your, what that comment, what you meant by that comment, because I sense embedded in that is a way of how you work and how you think people can work together and get more done. Absolutely. It is a life, it's a learned skill I think that I didn't have on day one, but because I was often in situations where there were two sides, or at least there was a perception of two sides, if I could really... And sometimes more. And sometimes many more. When you get to health care, there are many more. But if I can even... Five people in the room in seven opinions. Seven opinions, you know, if you got a commission together where it had the nurses, the surgeons, the doctors, the uninsured, state legislatures, you say, okay, is there a point of consensus here? So one of the things I learned to do was listen really closely and do a lot of homework. So I'd go back after hearing what everyone had to say and say, okay, let me think this through. And if I needed to model it through, you know, someone said, could we do this? And like what would that look like? And I could come back with a draft document where in the case of the municipality, I could find three places that had done something like... Or a hospital. Oh, the hospital in Wisconsin did something like the California Hospital wants to do. And I could write it up in a short, easy way to people understand and come in with a piece of paper. And if it was really adversarial labor management, just pass it around. And we'd start talking. And the best news was if at the end of the two hours, someone was saying, I have a great idea. And they were looking down at what I brought in, which I didn't always author. Right. And suddenly we were all coming together around that set of ideas working with a group officially as the central person. So for example, on the council listening to people I would try to write things up if it was a new idea with sentences someone had spoken. And they'd be reading. So they could hear their voice. Absolutely. And if I was working with the leaders of major institutions in healthcare, you wanted their voice to be somewhere in the document, particularly was coming out as a statement from all the people. But that ability to think through and analyze and not have to own it at the end. So that's what I meant about the soft voice. So listening carefully, synthesizing, incorporating other people's voices and ideas, finding the common ground upon which to build the solution. And then finding the right way to present that so that it doesn't have to be me, me, me. Absolutely. It's us or it's you. It's not me. Absolutely. So that sounds a little bit like it's not the same but the president of the council, Lynn Griezmer, was on last week's show and she talked about how she met with every single member of the council and really got to understand a whole lot more about them. And there's nothing wrong in the public sphere of having one-on-one meetings to educate yourself and to learn. But in that process she got to understand a lot of how they fought, what they were interested in, what their skill sets were, etc. You're applying the same principles but now focused on a specific problem. Absolutely. And often what you can do is you can find evidence for what you come to a strong opinion. So it's not that you're just sitting there as someone right on my slate. And you can find evidence to build that. And if you share that in a neutral way you might want to read this article. You might want to look at what so-and-so has done in this state or in this municipality. People go oh, that's a great idea. Thank you. And it's just sharing information and bringing the information in. The other thing, if we stood up you'll see I'm not very tall and I'm clearly a female. So one joke we used to have in a world of economists, we were often the minority if there were economists. One would say it's not going to be thoroughly said until he says it. But if you can say it soon enough he will say it because there's a recognition of each other we're colleagues and there's growing respect. So if I would come in with ideas after a while people got to know me and they trusted me. They trusted me that I would spin the conclusion but my facts would be accurate. So it was a very good skill to have on that combination. And you spoke in your couple of minutes at the opening meeting. You spoke about independence and people being able to be effective as they were elected for their constituents. And also working together on the council. Can you reflect a little bit on how you can contribute to that as an individual member of the council and how the divisions in town can be healed through how the town council works together and leads as a body. Individuals within the body and then the body as a whole. One of the things I learned campaigning actually had to go out and knock on every door to introduce myself. Hi I'm Kathy. I asked everyone I want to hear your concerns because I want to represent you. And that was the opening salvo and sometimes it was the first half hour of the conversation. So people we have an amazing community in Amherst and some of my friends who worked with me aren't in my district and they just wanted to get me on the council because they knew what I was going to do. So what I want to be able to do is stay in touch with that group. But the issues in precinct one and precinct three which are district one were often town-wide. They were very specific. Sometimes the intersection in North Amherst is a mess and we all know it. We've got a big development coming in with four or five thousand more car trips a day and like oh my gosh it's already awful. We need to do something. But also we're looking at the schools thinking about fire station you know other issues and worried about their taxes. So I think each of us on the council is going to have to stay tied to the people who elected us. But since the concerns are often shared concerns building consensus in the town and building unity together particularly if we could bring home schools would be an example. We have an opportunity to come back and ask for a grant again for the schools if we can bring a divided town back together again. And I think the council could work with the school committee to build consensus to build unity. So a few big ticket items that people see us working together as the council tackling issues people care about. Suddenly we'll have a council I'm hoping two years from now or three years will say they're doing their job. They're really representing us. They're focusing on things we deeply care about and we're not in a stalemate here we're moving forward. So it sounds like what you're saying is how you work together on what you work what you decide to work on together. The combination of the two will create an environment in which everybody can contribute be part of it and play their role as a council school committee citizens at large and through that process you'll act in ways rather than having a philosophical conversation about what it means to bring the town together. It will take specific projects and needs addressing certain needs and projects and how the people involved do it. And that's how you're viewing that. Absolutely. I decided to run for several reasons. One, we have a divided town going into this and I think I can help bring peak. I have the time because I retired from my 70 hour a week job where I didn't have the time but I had the time to focus and I think it's a real challenge to set up a new government. Certainly is. It's not just that we're, this is the way we do it, we're going to have to say how do we do it? How do we do it? And the way you do it sets precedent and sets what the expectations of the public will be about either no we do not want you to do it that way or you got it right and we want all of our future counsellors to do it that way. Absolutely. Even if it's not a written rule or a written procedure how you work together how you speak with each other, how you communicate, how you work with other people is the heart of the matter and you have to go beyond the rhetoric of we need to come back together. Absolutely. You have to do work to come back together. Absolutely. And I heard that a lot on knocking on doors. There were some people who were in the one side or other. Others were just saying can you move these issues and tell me how you would approach this on even development issues. One person said I am so tired of hearing people say what they don't want can we say what we do what we do want and can we have a vision of what we do want and I said there's no reason. Because we always want, we always don't want more than what we do want and so if you're focusing only on what we don't want how do I know where I'm supposed to put my time and effort. Absolutely. You find that problem as a legislator all the time and that's what you are now. A legislator. People say I don't like this but they don't have a constructive idea or response to what we should do. But it's okay first say what you don't like but now help me understand what you do want. And if you can find exciting you can find ideas that suddenly go yes this could work. Now speaking of ideas in the last couple of minutes again in your opening statement at the town council you referenced organizing a neighborhood association. Now you got two precincts that you represent in one district. What's your idea here you're on a planning committee for this. What's the idea of this neighborhood association. Why is it needed. Why as a town councilor whether you were a town councilor or not would you still be doing that. But now as a town councilor what do you see your role in that. Because that idea was not put on the table by anyone else that I've heard so far. But I know transparency and accountability and engaging your constituents is a major responsibility based on the way the charter has been structured. Absolutely. And so tell us your thinking about this neighborhood association and what you know. I'm part of a group and I was not even the idea person on this group. Another person it was her brain child but with town meeting going away we all thought that it was really important that there be a way that councilor stay connected to constituents. And we came up with neighborhood association and started having meetings around issues that people care about. So we focused on the intersection by the North Amur Slyver. We focused on getting a sidewalk down East Pleasant Street. And each drew in different neighbors so one neighborhood was more concerned about others. We've done hot luck. We've brought the councilors back to talk to people. And campaigning was really helpful in building this because I could say I promise I won't email you but if you would like to be part of a neighborhood association I can put your name on a list and you'll get an announcement of the next meeting. And then you can come or not as you choose. And you can choose. And we'll have agendas. We're going to have a newsletter. So the thinking is going forward. We will pick different kinds of issues that cut across forming for example. We have forms but so does the rest of Amur's. So what are the issues of formers? If schools start to have some choices that people can talk about when the budget starts moving. So we're building a platform of people that are raising their hands saying I want to be kept informed. I don't always know when my issue is coming up. And I would like to get involved before the decision is made. So I want to know so early. So it will be multi-issue organization. Absolutely. And there will be a process within the organization for identifying priorities that will but first people have to have a chance of saying what they would like the group to work on. Absolutely. And then they self-select whether they stay with the group or not based upon what gets selected. Yes. And what we're hoping over time that we'll have a newsletter in some way of people saying what's up and how do I get my you know if do you have anything for the March meeting and here are mine. That it's fine if this group of 30 people is not the same as the last impact that's even better because we pulled other people out. We have a lot of low income living in not great housing. So affordable housing will bring a different group out and so picking groups that the outreach is the issue we want to come to a meeting. So we're going to see over time how this evolves. It is not another one in town at this point so it could become a model and hopefully we will come back to this again on your next appearance on the show and we hope you'll be back three or four times during the year because we want to have an ongoing conversation and today was really about trying to get to know you a little bit better from the point of view given that so many of us actually didn't know you and didn't have a chance to meet you as a candidate and so thank you for joining us and thank you for joining us and we look forward to having the facility to do this in Amherst is rare. Not every town has it and it is an opportunity to speak more broadly to people that's I think an excellent opportunity. And they get better and better every day. Thank you all for joining us and we'll see you again next week.