As any parent who ever checked a child’s homework can tell you, people work harder and better when they know someone is watching!

Many Massachusetts courts and agencies do a better job every day because the Governor’s Council is here to check and double-check–to ask the questions a citizen would ask if they had the time and the chance. Over the last 375 years, how many “so-so” appointments of clerks and judges weren’t made because the council was watching?

The Joyce plan to abolish this safeguard can’t be for cost savings: The Governor’s Council costs each Massachusetts resident less than five cents a year!

I don’t think Senator Joyce knows much about what the Governor’s Council does.

Just as a corporation’s shareholders elect a board of directors, our taxpayers elect the Governor’s Council to represent their interests. In state government, as in a corporation, every employee and every officer is supposed to follow the rules, to do the job right, to maximize the value of the enterprise. Given human frailty, that won’t happen every time–not in government, not in business. The council, the people’s board of directors, is in place to protect against mistake and misjudgment.

The Governor’s Council is one of the few bodies in state government that meet every week. In addition to the formal meetings, we hold hearings on judicial nominees, conduct interviews, review applications and supporting documentation, and respond to the many citizen inquiries, recommendations, etc. each member receives regularly.

While the council’s work may be “under the radar” of citizens busy with work, life, and family, it is of considerable importance. The Governor’s Council confirms approximately 70 clerk-magistrates and over 400 judges–all lifetime appointments. Bar association committees and the Judicial Nominating Commission work hard vetting judicial applicants on background, education, and experience. Governors seek advice before announcing nominees. But the awesome authority of service as a judge–from the District Court through our Supreme Judicial Court–requires that we ensure jurists have more than just book learning. As a councilor I solicit citizen input on nominees, speak to those who know them, and carefully examine all records and documents. I have always insisted that a judicial candidate demonstrate integrity, honesty, trial experience, and judicial temperament before receiving confirmation. I want judges who understand “tough love”–judges who will firmly apply the law and its penalties with carefully measured portions of human compassion.

The council’s duties extend to approving weekly state expenditures, certifying elections, appointments of notaries and justices of the peace, to confirming members of the state Parole Board (just recently we denied re-appointment to a member whose service didn’t measure up). When a citizen is injured on the job and appears before a Workers’ Compensation judge, or when a taxpayer appeals an unfair property tax value at the Appellate Tax Board, it is the Governor’s Council that ensures that the judge who decides these vitally important matters has both the credentials and the character to deliver impartial justice.

I work hard at my “part time” job as Governor’s Councilor. I take pride in having voted for some pardons where the circumstances were exceptional, just as I take pride in voting against some that didn’t deserve special treatment. I’ve had the chance to cast historic votes! I voted to free a man convicted by perjured testimony–at last he is back home with his wife and family. I voted to confirm Justice Margaret Marshall, the state’s first female chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, and to confirm Justice Roderick Ireland, that court’s first African-American member. Both are eminently qualified and outstanding jurists.

Sen. Joyce proposes to save less than five cents a year per citizen by dumping the Governor’s Council duties on an already overburdened Legislature. In the context of hundreds of proposals that reach the Legislature, the budget crisis and long-term planning for the Commonwealth, it’s hard to believe that the General Court has time to provide essential attention, review, and approval that would be due 50 times every year (that’s about how many lifetime clerk-magistrates and judicial appointments we act on annually).

Take Sen. Joyce as an example. Beyond floor work on the budget and other legislation he considers in session, this year he has filed over 200 measures.

While the Joyce measures run the gamut from simple constituent service (an extra liquor license for Milton, relaxing standards for police appointment preference) to major issues (expanded health care, computation of retirement credits) to the somewhat whimsical (to deal with the financial crisis he proposes putting paid ads on state documents, maybe you’ll see one that says, “Here’s your income tax form­Brush your teeth with Pepsodent” and, despite the financial crisis, Joyce wants the state to give the governor a mansion in Joyce’s district) to the somewhat confusing (he has bills to encourage affordable housing and sponsors another for a three-year moratorium on building affordable housing). All those details aside, it’s obvious the Legislature has its own work–it shouldn’t be further burdened. In the midst of deciding how best to preserve essential state services, it may not seem important to a senator from Milton who the clerk-magistrate in East Brookfield is. You can bet it’s important to a citizen with business in that court!

For the minimal cost, Massachusetts is well-served to have the Governor’s Council protecting the hard-won rights and liberties of citizens.

Christopher A. Iannella Jr. is the Governor’s Councilor for the 4th District.

Sen. Joyce responds: I want to thank CommonWealth for the opportunity to engage in a reasoned debate. I also want to be very clear that I have great respect for Councilor Iannella and that my bill is by no means a personal criticism of him or any of the individuals who serve on the council. Rather, I am only expressing a belief shared by many–from Gov. Curley to Gov. Dukakis–that the council is an outdated vestige of colonial times, whose few remaining responsibilities can be easily transferred to other branches of government.