Why Brookline's Heather Hamilton Is Running For County Commission

BROOKLINE, MA — Brookline's Select Board Vice Chair Heather Hamilton's name will be on the November Election Day ballot. She's not running for state office, but a little down ballot race that few people may know exists: County Commissioner. It's a role she didn't even know existed in Norfolk County until last year.

But now, after some research she's described as frustrating, she's decided to vie against an incumbent and a man who won the primary race for one of two open seats on the Norfolk County Commission.

Her race comes as more people are starting to become aware of down-ballot races.

Just Thursday, former President Barack Obama gave a call to arms for people to pay attention to such local races.

"This year, educate yourself on the candidates at every level on your ballot," he said. "They can make a profound impact on your community and our country."

If you've never heard of this county government role, you're in good company. In the late 1990s amid mismanagement, lawmakers eliminated eight of the 14 county governments, Norfolk County's commission office was among six left standing in the state.

Three commissioners are elected county-wide for four-year terms with only one permitted from any one city or town. Norfolk County is made up of 28 Massachusetts communities, from Brookline to Quincy to Dedham.

The commissions generally handle tasks that are considered too large for cities and towns and too small for state government. In Norfolk County the three commissioners oversee five primary programs, including maintenance of the county court buildings, operations of the Registry of Deeds, the Norfolk County Retirement System and Presidents Golf Course, in Quincy. They also act as a defacto school committee for the Norfolk County Agricultural High School.

Last year a friend told Hamilton off-hand that the county commission, since it was instituted in the late 1700s, had never elected a woman.

"I was shocked," said Hamilton. "I probably shouldn't have been, but I was."

After Hamilton did some digging, she found that a woman named Mary Collins from Quincy had actually been elected. But Collins only served for a single term in 1990, while her male counterparts often served for decades. The last two commissioners left only when they turned 90 years old, she found out.

While Hamilton, a self-described "politics nerd" was researching the role of this county government, she also discovered the commission didn't post minutes online or video of the meetings online, and records were not in one place. As she became more interested in what goes on at a county level, she found it hard to get that information.

The deeper she dug into the role, the more she wanted to run for office to help make it easier.

She made a call to the election commission and found that she could serve on the Select Board and the County Commission at the same time.

Hamilton said she's been calling into the commissioner meetings since July. She found out that they'd been holding phone meetings since the pandemic hit.

"I pointed out through my campaign literature that they were pretty out of touch, holding unrecorded conference calls since March," said Hamilton. "In August they started using zoom, now there's a YouTube channel."

She attributes that at least in part to her pushing. She's also critical about how much the commissioners make.

While Brookline select board members get a stipend of a couple thousand dollars a year for the hours of volunteer work, a county commissioner makes about $40,000 a year to attend one meeting a week that sometimes lasts 45 minutes.

Revenue comes from county taxes, and the budget they oversee is about $31 million. By way of comparison, this year Brookline's town budget pre-pandemic was $359 million.

And try as she may, Hamilton said she had to ask multiple times to get the commission to post the fiscal 2021 budget online.

"Set aside my indignation about under representation regarding women," she said. "But as a select board member who just went through one of the worst budgets that I have ever had to recommend to Town Meeting, when I see a layer of government that doesn't post their own fiscal documents online, it just pisses me off. I'm really am struggling to understand where our money is going."

The process motivated her to run.

If she's elected she said as the second woman to get a seat at that table, she has a few ideas for what she would like to accomplish.

"I would work to diversify the board geographically, understand where the money is going and whether this layer of government is truly the most efficient way to deliver services," she said. "Other counties have dissolved this body of government: Essex County, Middlesex County. I would start asking some pretty tough questions."

Hamilton qualified to run on the Independent ticket, saying she's fed up with polarizing party politics at a time when healthy debate is so essential to democracy.

Hamilton is set to debate Incumbent Joe Shae of Quincy and Richard Statey of Canton in a League of Women Voters forum Oct. 14.

Got a tip? Patch reporter Jenna Fisher can be reached at Jenna.Fisher@patch.com or by calling 617-942-0474. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram (@ReporterJenna). Have a press release you'd like posted on the Patch? Here's how to post a press release, a column, event or opinion piece.