Letter: Let's Bury the Idea of Paying the Town Council

Letter to the editor: From James C. Johnston Jr.

Should Elected Officials in Franklin be Paid? Only if You Want Political Hacks and

the Best Government Money Can Buy

Dear Sir,

Franklin, Massachusetts has been blessed by great municipal leadership from both elected and appointed officials. The vast majority of our elected officials are unpaid as it should be. The quality of our elected officials is so good that many of them go unopposed for reelection, and that is both healthy and a proper political choice. Some elected officials have such important constitutional duties that they should be paid like Franklin’s Town Clerk. Paying the elected Town/City Clerk for discharging the serious, unique, and time consuming duties of that particular office which are very precisely and circumscribed in the Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts obviously makes a great deal of sense.

This particular municipal office is indeed a full-time job which even goes far beyond the routine 9 A.M.to 5P.M. traditional hours of work. The Town Clerk is not only the custodian and recorder of all Town/City Records, publisher of all of the Town’s/City’s Business for each year and records the actions of the Executive Branch of the Municipal Government in an annual town report, The Town/City Clerk also oversees all elections. All of these duties are carried out in addition to other duties which are delineated by statute. Should the City/Town Clerk, which is an elected position, be a paid position? The answer is obviously, “Yes,” and a well paid one at that.

I myself have served this Town/City as a member of dozens of committees including as the Chairman of the Finance Committee, Chairman of the Franklin-Federal Bicentennial Commission which involved thousands of hours of work and complex organization over almost four years, and for which I also wrote Odyssey in the Wilderness: the History of the History of the Town of Franklin. I was also Clerk of the First Charter Commission back in 1970 and 1971. I was also an Assistant Register of Voters, as well as a member of dozens of other building committees, commissions, and endless study groups. In addition to this I was elected to and served as chairman of: The Franklin Planning Board, the Franklin Board of Selectmen, Franklin Town Council, and The Franklin Board of Assessors. 

During that time, I was paid only for my first two years’ service on the Board of Selectmen. The Franklin Town Meeting voted to end fiscal compensation for that office, and the elected Board of Selectman continued to serve without compensation and to run for reelection.

I never considered myself put-upon by service to my community over the better part of three decades, nor did I or my fellow members feel the need to be paid for serving in municipal office. The people I served with were hard working and dedicated citizen-elected municipal officers who served this town in an unpaid capacity. When you look at the high quality of volunteers who now serve on the Town/City Council and School Committee, and other town boards, one cannot help but be impressed by the wonderful quality of service given by these citizen-office holders. I have differed with a few things promoted by various elected boards over the decades, but that is the nature of democracy, and as Sir Winston Churchill once remarked, “Democracy is the worst form of government in the world except for any other kind.”

Churchill was right. Democracy is best. The worst sort of government in the world is one run by professional political hacks! During the Nineteenth Century, municipal governments like New York evolved into criminal enterprises dominated by “City Bosses” like William Marcy Tweed better known as “Boss Tweed” backed up by the political organization known as Tammany Hall which was the corrupt political machine that ran New York City Politics for almost two centuries. Theodore Roosevelt made his political reputation by aggressively fighting Tammany Hall and its intrinsic corruption.

Making elective political offices paid offices in Franklin, Mass. will make those offices very attractive to people more motivated by desire for political gain for all the wrong reasons than for citizens motivated by a civic desire to serve. History has proven me right. Throw salaries of tens of thousands of dollars into the elective mix of municipal government, and you will get people more interested in milking the political cow than serving the best interests of our still smallish community.

Remember whatever salaries would be established now will grow by multiples like a geometric progression for what are now part-time positions filled by good citizens of good will. If we start paying city councilors and school committee people five, ten or fifteen thousand dollars a year for their service of a few hours a week, in twenty years, we will have city councilors earning fifty and more thousand dollars a year, and trust me, you will not have the kind of people in office of the dedicated, altruistic, and high caliber you have now.

You will have party politics backed by hacks seeking municipal appointments for pay for everything they are supposed to do. Every office in town will be up for grabs to the highest bidder. Family connections and political alliances will supersede in importance all other considerations for municipal employment. Political hacks more interested in compensation than service will dominate local government. Go on the internet and google “The Worst Municipal Governments in Massachusetts” and see what they have in common. Franklin is among the best in the nation by the way.

Now at the present time, we have good people serving in government-elective office who are well motivated citizens who are not motivated by personal gain. They serve because it is the right thing to do. The citizens who serve this municipality now in public office do so out of a sense of real civic duty. All we have to do is look at some cities like Worcester, where the institutionalism of a sort of municipal-drift of the “Old-Tweedy-Politics” is all too obvious, and you will find just what we do not want in Franklin.

Franklin need not become a place where monetary gain becomes a principal motive for service. We have good people who are uncontested for office at election time, largely because they are good people who have served this town very well. That is most obvious on the City/Town Council and School Committee and other offices which go uncontested from time to time. Where we are fortunate enough to have great competence reflected in people who serve us in elective offices, competitive contests are also a choice as well as not contesting for each and every office. When someone is serving well, why challenge them?

If we start introducing substantial stipends for those in elective civic office, we are asking for trouble where there is now no trouble. We do not need a very expensive civic structure where political hacks will make town politics a profession where their chief interest will become reelection for personal profit. Our municipal population is still way under 40,000 souls. Even according to Plato, in his great seminal work The Republic, we are at an ideal size for municipal self-governance. We also are most fortunate to have a most capable Town Administrator in Jamie Hellen who has been a quietly dynamic municipal leader who has brought a fantastic degree of professionalism to this city government in which I have been both an active participant and an interested close observer since 1966.

With my particular background I am well qualified to speak on the state of our town/city. I have written four histories of this Town of Franklin which has been my home for 81 years. I have seen this town grow from a little town of 6,200 people into the beautiful and well governed urbanized community where municipal government is wholesome, decent, and good. We do not need the sordid political strife that might evolve if every elected position can become a sinecure of wealth power and influence when just being in office becomes an end in itself.

We are far better off when service to the community is provided by well-intentioned volunteers not looking for financial gain. We need not establish a system of sordid politics for pay which will bring with it continuously bloated emoluments for elected officials who would never serve without ever-increasing compensation eventually amounting to tens of thousands of dollars. We don’t need to become a city where getting re-elected will become the chief job of the professional class of politicians which must eventually come to dominate Franklin City Politics. Trust me, I have been around for 81 years, and things have never been so good or run so well as they do now in Good Old Franklin.

We don’t need to pay people to render service to the community in elective office when good people are willing to serve. I am not interested in voting into office people who will only serve when paid. Their motives are not to be trusted in a small city like ours. 

Yours truly, 

James C. Johnston Jr.

May 19,2025