What a difference a few days can make!

It has been clear to me for about a year that Speaker Thomas Finneran’s tenure was coming to an end. Recently, there have been press accounts of his quest for new professional opportunities and of the emerging struggle to find his successor. But, as recently as forty-eight hours ago, no one could have predicted when the Speaker was leaving or who would replace him.

Now, with stunning speed, it’s all over. Sal DiMasi (who represents the North End and neighboring sections of Boston) will be elected Speaker in a special session of the House a few days hence.

That election will mark a radical – and long-needed – departure from business as usual on Beacon Hill. Tom Finneran is one of the brightest, hard-working public servants I know or could ever hope to meet. If our forebears had intended us to have one-man rule, there could be no one more qualified than our soon-to-be former Speaker. Fortunately for us and for history, our Constitution prescribes a system of checks and balances, the division and sharing of power and responsibility. Those in positions of leadership in the legislature and in all of our democratic institutions serve best when they serve as first among equals.

As those who have followed my career know, I have long been disappointed and concerned that Tom Finneran’s leadership style was spelled d-o-m-i-n-a-t-i-o-n and was fundamentally corrosive of the House’s ability to function in a creative, democratic way. After an initial period of blaming the Speaker for the institution’s shortcomings, I came to see that the larger and deeper problem came not from the Speaker’s leadership style, but from my colleagues who allowed his power grab. He was merely filling a vacumn created by colleagues ceding power to him that they should have been exercising on their own. It made their jobs easier to do so, and Tom Finneran was only too happy to oblige them. But it didn’t work!

For some years, I have been working with – and sometimes on - colleagues to open the House to creativity and new approaches. In conversations and workshops I’ve organized, we’ve explored ways to be more productive, more democratic, and more engaged. These efforts are about to pay off. The coalition of colleagues that has been engaged in efforts to "reinvent" the House has an ally in – and helped elect – the new Speaker. I am very hopeful that many (if not most) of the items on our list of proposed reforms will be in place when the new legislature convenes in January 2005. I am optimistic about the era that is about to begin, and re-energized to do my part!

That does not mean we will suddenly find perfect ways to address the challenges before us. It should mean, however, that we have a fully functioning and engaged legislature, the forum for debate that our forebears intended.

Now that’s something we should all expect and demand. And it is also something we should celebrate.