Oct 28, 2026 · 31 min
Connecticut citizens confront the politics of tax reform
Politicians are afraid to fix taxes. So 100 citizens tried.
The experiment tests whether randomly selected residents can produce workable tax reforms when elected officials retain the power to accept, change, or ignore them.
- 1A representative citizens’ assembly develops ambitious answers to Connecticut’s property-tax problem after months of study and debate.
- 2Participants propose a millionaire tax, school-service consolidation, and interstate tolls to address fragmented government and local tax burdens.
- 3The assembly’s advisory status exposes the unresolved power struggle between deliberative democracy and conventional political institutions.
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The planned report release descends into a dispute over altered proposals and election timing, leaving participants proud of the work but angry at the process.
The brief
Connecticut’s property-tax system has resisted decades of political fixes, partly because fragmented schools and municipalities make reform costly and voters easy to alienate.
A lottery selects 100 residents to study the system, learn from experts, and deliberate across political and social differences rather than campaign for office.
Political scientist Hélène Landemore argues that randomly selected citizens can make better collective decisions than a political class shaped by ambition and power.
The assembly recommends a 1% tax on million-dollar earners, school-service consolidation, and interstate tolls intended to reduce car taxes.
Its final crisis comes when publication is disputed before an election, underscoring how an advisory body remains vulnerable to the officials it hoped to bypass.
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