Hélène Landemore presented on the concept of a citizens’ assembly: she told attendees they were guaranteed to learn, laugh, and make friends during the process of deliberating over policy. Brooke Evans traveled from Seymour to New Haven Saturday morning to speak up and learn about property t axes — which she fears can be “crippling” for senior citizens across the state. Evans, a retired special needs instructor, was one of 98 Connecticut residents who participated in the state’s first citizens’ assembly, which was held at Yale’s Linsly-Chittenden Hall on High Street. All of the participants on Saturday were selected by lottery to participate in the democratic initiative that is designed to encourage non-politicians to engage in policy-making. The project has been described as “jury duty” for politics, and comes with a $1,200 stipend over six weeks of programming, conditional on attendance. Although Evans is particularly passionate about this assembly’s topic — property taxes — she said she would have wanted to be involved in the assembly regardless of what was being discussed. She’s “lost friends” over recent elections, she said, and wants a more humane approach to politics, where “we can all just get together as people and discuss things as people.”  To prepare to have informed discussions on property taxes, members of the self-governed assembly will spend the next several weeks hearing from experts and deliberating on potential policies in groups. Eventually, they will draft recommendations for Connecticut lawmakers, representing their public-service-funding priorities.  Hélène Landemore — a political science professor at Yale and the author of Politics without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule — told attendees on Saturday that she sees citizens’ assemblies as a solution to “partisan gridlock,” where each member of the discussion has an equal political voice and can represent a “diversity of thinking.” She called the assembly a “human adventure.” Landemore designed and will oversee the event, which she organized along with state Comptroller Sean Scanlon, the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities (CCM), and other political scientists from Yale and the University of Connecticut. Citizens’ assemblies and similar events are being held across the United States, on topics from climate to gerrymandering.  She said it was “incredible” to be hosting Connecticut’s “most ambitious in-person” assembly, also backed by state representatives.  Joe DeLong, CCM’s CEO and executive director, said that other municipalities across the country had been incredulous he had supported starting a Connecticut citizens’ assembly. Other boards, he said, “wouldn’t want to take that risk” of involving citizens in policy discussions. “I have a fairly large board of municipally elected officials all across Connecticut who leaned in and said, ‘go for it.’” He asked, “Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? Engage our residents and hear from them and respond to the government that they want?” The crowd was mostly representative of state demographics: attendees reported political affiliations, 57.3 percent of them Democrat, 22.3 percent Republican, and 20.4 percent independent, as compared to 46.4 percent Democrat, 28.2 percent Republican, and 25.3 percent independent in Connecticut overall. Participants are 58.3 percent women and 41.7 percent men, 67.0 percent white, 12.6 percent Hispanic, and 11.7 percent Black, and mostly from suburban areas, according to data compiled by Joshua Kalla, who teaches political science and statistics data science at Yale University. The demographics of the assembly reflected that of the state overall, the data shows.  Dawris Gomez of Bridgeport said she was drawn to the assembly Saturday because of the “promise of action” it holds, and because it prioritizes the voices of those most affected by the policies discussed. While citizens’ assemblies take up an advisory role alongside politicians rather than replacing them, in an April opinion essay in the New York Times, Landemore wrote that she saw French and Irish assemblies succeed to “break political gridlock” on abortion, end-of-life issues, and climate policy.  Because the participants govern themselves, what comes out of the assembly is “largely up to them to decide,” Landemore said. “If they want to propose a complete, implausible redesign of the system, they can,” she said, “we put no limit on the outcome.” The motto of the assembly is “experts on tap, citizens on top,” she told the assembly. Kenya Rutland, who is the CEO of KJR Consulting and an assembly facilitator, told attendees what to expect from sessions with experts in the coming weeks: they’d learn how property taxes are assessed, alternative funding models in the Northeast and across the country, how taxes affect public education funding and non-education funding, and other technicalities of tax policy.  In presenting about the assembly process, however, Rutland noted that deliberations were as much about learning to listen — and disagree — as they were about the policies up for debate themselves. Rutland and other presenters told participants that the event was also about socializing, and that they would bond as a group over the course of the program. Landemore emphasized that the number of participants — around 100 — made for “energy” in the room, which she sees as important to having meaningful dialogue with others. Looking ahead to sessions about policy and future meetings with her group, which are strangers to her now, Evans said, “I’m excited to see what we come up with.” The post It’s Tax-Talk Time: State’s First “Citizens’ Assembly” Convenes appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less