ISSUE #30: Citizens Assemblies: Blaine County Should Use Them

Guest Contributor: Liz Corker

Editors Note:

With our 30th Issue, we have hit 635 subscribers and welcome our second guest author, Elizabeth Corker. Elizabeth has a long track record of contributing her time and talents to Blaine County. She makes an important recommendation on improving governance in our community.

This is timely. At last week’s Ketchum P&Z meeting, the community rose up in overwhelming opposition to KURAs plan for the Washington lot.

There were several excellent public comments.¹ Ketchum local Geoff Isles made the point that we have gotten into a situation where a few people in Ketchum have mannouvered to make big decisions that are out of step with community values. They don’t listen because they don’t have to.

This is the case with the Washington Lot development, where KURA and WRCHT plan to build it regardless of community oppostition. Given The Troika track record, even if the project doesn’t pass muster with P&Z, KURA will just appeal to the City Council and the The Troika will jam it through. So much for democracy in Ketchum!

Liz eloquently explains how we could address this conundrum with citizens’ assemblies.

Citizen Shift Underway Globally… Next Up: Bend, Oregon?

"If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost." ---- Aristotle

It’s no secret that average citizens feel excluded from local decision-making. They generally are. However, there are places where local governments are directly and intentionally giving voice to the locals through Citizens Assemblies. We, the People of Blaine County, should pay attention.

Deschutes County, Oregon, where Bend is located, has decided to use a Citizens’ Assembly to get direct input from residents on an issue of great local importance: youth homelessness. On August 1, 2024, at 6:00 pm at the Downtown Bend Library, a group of thirty willing citizens was randomly selected to participate in the first-ever Deschutes Citizens’ Assembly. A Citizens’ Assembly is a group of people who are randomly selected to meet over a period of time to study, deliberate, and issue recommendations about a pressing issue.

Citizens’ Assemblies are a systemic way to include a cross-section of the community in the political process. (The word “citizen” is used here generically to mean inhabitants of a particular place.) It’s like jury duty, except the jury is larger--usually a few dozen people, though national Citizens’ Assemblies typically have about 100 people or more. In addition to being chosen randomly, Citizens’ Assembly members are usually selected to represent the community in terms of gender, age, and sometimes other demographic factors.

Bend isn’t the only community that’s convening a Citizens’ Assembly. In the past decade alone, over 1,000 Citizens’ Assemblies have been held in Europe, Canada, and Australia. Most are local, though some are national. Ireland has been one of the world’s leaders. There, two different Citizens’ Assemblies of 99 randomly selected citizens paved the way a few years ago for the people in that (predominantly Catholic) country to legalize gay marriage and to legalize abortion under certain conditions.

Click here for the above video.

Britain may be next on the world stage: a recent opinion piece in The Guardian predicts that “At some point in Labour’s first 100 days… leadership will announce a major citizens’ assembly for the UK.”

What it looks like in Bend/Deschutes

From the Deschutes Citizens’ Assembly, Central Oregon Civic Action Project (COCAP) website:

As mentioned above, the issue chosen for the Deschutes Citizens’ Assembly is youth homelessness. Shockingly, over 1,800 people are homeless in that county, including almost 700 students. But the point isn’t that Bend is addressing the homelessness crisis this way, though that is significant. Bend is addressing the issue of local civic participation in this way: by convening a Citizens’ Assembly.

Importantly, local politicians are on board. Bend City Councilors and Deschutes County Commissioners voted to hold the Citizens Assembly.

In June, Deschutes Citizens’ Assembly organizers mailed 12,500 invitations to randomly chosen addresses in the county. Invitations were also given to 250 people experiencing homelessness. On August 1, thirty people were randomly selected to participate from the 120 people who responded to the invitation. The Deschutes Citizens’ Assembly will convene over 4 ½ days this fall. Participants will study the homelessness issue, ask questions, and deliberate in small, facilitated groups so all voices are heard. Then, they will collaborate on recommendations. Like jury service, participants will be paid $15 per hour for their time. Childcare and transportation will also be covered.

In Bend’s case, it remains to be seen how local politicians will handle the recommendations. Sometimes, politicians don’t recognize the value of Citizens’ Assemblies, so their recommendations can be ignored. However, the number of Citizens’ Assemblies continues to grow, as many politicians realize that Citizens’ Assemblies can be used to help them do their job by giving them a roadmap and real cross-sectional voter/citizen input. That’s when they start to become accepted.

Is Millcreek next in the US?

Even closer to home, the Mayor and City Council of Millcreek, Utah, are in the initial stages of planning a Citizens Assembly. They are using an AI chatbot to crowdsource their community for the issue of most significant importance to them. The chatbot only takes only a couple of minutes of residents’ time.

The Way Democracy Used to Be: Everyone Participates; Everyone is Included

If a Citizens’ Assembly seems radical and untested, it’s not. The random selection of citizens and deliberation is how representative democracy started in Ancient Athens. (Male) citizens were chosen by lot--formally known as “sortition” --to serve in teams to fill public offices and create laws. It was a revolving system of shared power, which was seen as the proud responsibility of every citizen. By design, it was a system based on inclusion (except for women and enslaved people!) and deliberation.

“We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.“

–Pericles, leader of Athens during the Golden Age, as quoted by Thucydides, a historian who attended the speech.

A kleroterion, a randomization device from Ancient Greece, was used to select citizens for policy and law-making bodies.

Here’s another indication of how far we’ve come from that collective, participatory, inclusive governance model. The word idiot comes from Ancient Greece. It meant "non-participant in public affairs” or “private person.” Civic participation was seen as a common good and one of the main strengths of Athens. That reputation still echoes today.

Vote… then what?

Right now, the operating model for local government is struggling. Asking people to show up every few years to vote in a binary way but having no meaningful way to include their voices beyond that is bad for regular citizens and public officials. Special interests and insiders fill the void. The effects can be seen starkly at all levels of US politics. Anger. Loss of social cohesion.

It starts with the fact that running for office itself is a gate-keeping process that excludes people without significant money and time, as well as people who don’t want to be singled out individually for public attacks. And yet, study after study shows that having people with a wide range of life experience and knowledge is vital to reaching sound decisions.

Participation is the key word. Despite the Declaration of Independence starting with “We the People,” there is no significant systemic attempt to include regular people in important public decision-making.

The insider-outsider dynamic is reinforced virtually everywhere in the policy-making process. The agenda is often planned behind closed doors by insiders. Policy options are limited by what has been discussed in non-public meetings.

Public comments and even petitions with thousands of signatures are routinely ignored. There is only so much information per issue that a small group of individual politicians can integrate. Citizen input is too unstructured and amorphous to make a real impact. Some would say that’s a feature, not a bug, of the system.

What if the system could handle citizen input in a structured, inclusive way that made it user-friendly for politicians?

Deliberation, Recommendation… then the handoff to politicians

One of the most essential components of good decision-making is deliberation. Without that, many good ideas don’t see the light of day. Problematic ideas are not challenged or revised. Robust, respectful, inclusive deliberation with a cross-section of the community is critical for sound decision-making. And yet, the current system discourages and precludes it.

Once information has been gathered, deliberation has occurred, and recommendations have been made, it’s up to politicians to take the ball handed off to them by ordinary citizens. Unfortunately, in places where Citizens’ Assemblies are unfamiliar, a fumble often occurs.  But practice makes…better. Such is the case in other parts of the world, where Citizen Assembly advocates are slowly but surely iterating to ensure that trust and buy-in are built with politicians so recommendations have a real impact.

Participation

Aside from improving decision-making, perhaps one of the most consistent themes of Citizens’ Assemblies is how they affect participants. See for yourself: here’s a video by someone involved in a Citizens’ Assembly held in 2022. Just the first couple of minutes gives the idea. Overwhelmingly, across the world, participants in Citizens’ Assemblies end up being some of their biggest cheerleaders.

What’s next?

Building civic muscle is hard when you’re out of shape.

Bend is moving forward. Millcreek may be right behind. I have heard of another well-known town in Colorado that’s on track to plan one (not Aspen).

Stay tuned!

Perry’s questions

Perry asked me some questions, which I will do my best to answer:

Q: How are Citizens’ Assemblies different than focus groups and surveys?

A: Deliberation is one of the critical elements of Citizens’ Assemblies that is lacking with surveys and focus groups. For example, the Framers of the Constitution engaged in classic deliberation about a fundamental policy question, “How shall we structure our government?” Surveys or focus groups could have never accomplished that crucial policymaking.

For more on the definition and importance of public deliberation, here’s a link from the University of Houston Center for Public Deliberation.

If a Citizens’ Assembly deliberates and makes recommendations that politicians do not treat seriously, it can risk being little more than a fancy focus group. Such was the fate of the first French Citizens Assembly in 2019. Macron promised to implement the Assembly’s recommendations but then reneged. However, that Citizens’ Assembly planted the seeds for other French Citizens’ Assemblies with more teeth, most notably the permanent Paris Citizens’ Assembly, which began last year.

Q: Are Citizens’ Assemblies legal in Idaho?

A: Citizens’ Assemblies are legal everywhere in the US because their recommendations are not binding on politicians.

The pattern in some other parts of the world is that as CAs become more well-known, elected officials see their value in being able to offload some of the heat that comes with complex, potentially divisive issues. Citizens Assemblies proponents increasingly find ways to hold politicians accountable for addressing recommendations. In Paris, that looks like a requirement that the Citizens’ Assembly put the CA recommendations in the form of a bill that the City Councilors must address. In Ireland, elected officials put some CA recommendations to referendum.

Q: What happens if you’re randomly chosen but don’t want to participate?

A: In Deschutes County, only people who answered the invitation, which was sent to random households, could be selected. Citizens’ Assemblies are not like jury duty in that way: they are not compulsory. If you accept the invitation, are chosen, and can’t attend, an alternative randomly selected person who generally fits your demographic description will fill your place.

1. Here’s what I said at the P&Z meeting:

Neil I respectfully disagree that P&Z only approves development applications.  This is the planning commission too.  This commission should spend more time on planning and less time on approving development.

Ask yourself—whose interests do you represent.  We hope it is ours.  The Ketchum opposition to this project is overwhelming.  1400 signatures and growing. Multiple KURA meetings with vocal public opposition.

The online comments in favor today have come from people who don’t work in Ketchum. They don’t nor live or pay taxes or vote in Ketchum.   They are not your constituents.  We are.

Using the city estimate of parking being worth at least $70k a unit, this is a destruction of public assets of over $7mm.  The fact that KURA says parking is too expensive to include in this project dictates we think very carefully before permanently destroying this much parking.  KURA will just be shoving the parking problem to someone else to deal with. That would be us. And you as our planning commission.

If you approve this building you will almost guarantee that you will be approving a parking structure in the future, at massive cost to your constituents.

If you approve this project you will likely be subjecting the city to litigation from the very local businesses that KURA says will benefit from this project.  This makes no sense.

The good news is that you don’t have to approve it.

You have an easy out.  On criteria #2 you can disallow this project. There are no four story building in the CC2 zone, so this building is clearly not in conformity with its surroundings.  Indeed, you would be breaking new ground and setting a new precedent if you approve this.  You will also be reinforcing the average rather than minimum setback on 4th stories.   

The better news is that we don’t need to buy into the false narrative that we have o choose between housing and parking. With proper city planning, We can have both, in their rightful places.  We have other city owned land that is more appropriate for this project.

In short, approving this design will forever condemn Ketchum to abandoning the overarching principles of its comprehensive plan regarding the character of the community and the preservation of its retail core.

There is no need to do this. Stop it now. stop it now. Thank you.