The Government We Deserve
With the spirit of Thanksgiving upon us, I’d like to extend my thanks to all those who gave encouragement along the way and assisted me right up through the voting booth in my recent campaign for State Senate. The election is over, and now it is time to pay even MORE attention to what our elected officials are doing.
This Thursday night our county commissioners held their first public meeting since we all cast our votes on the performance of our government. Subtracting for four members of the media, approximately twelve county staff workers, one commissioner elect, and Sheriff Barnes, whose stature in the community should count for at least a person and a half, there were only about forty interested citizens in attendance for the beginning of this meeting. Certainly, there were more watching on TV from the comfort of their homes and I am hopeful this represented a large audience of concerned voters and taxpayers. Nonetheless, forty is a shamefully small number for a county with 430,000 residents.
Initiating formalities of the meeting completed, only three members of the public opted to avail themselves of the opportunity allowed them at the start of the meeting to address the commissioners on topics not related to the evening’s agenda. (Getting the speaking rules changed to include agenda items would be advantageous for citizen participation, but as I too have not been one to show up and learn all the intricacies of local county government, I will need further study on how this exclusionary policy came into being, and what it would take to change it.)
The current citizens’ time allowed for addressing our commissioner publicly is thirty minutes, with a maximum of three minutes per individual speaker. Only two of the three speakers used all of their three minutes. The first gentleman ran out his time promoting smoke out day and conducting a strange poll of the commissioners as to whether they would “not disagree” that second hand smoke needs to be eliminated from all public buildings in the county.
The second fellow, though polite, was a good example of why the board of commissioners probably tries to limit citizens’ time. I thought I was well versed on most government conspiracy theories, but this gentleman jumped around various posibilities regarding George Bush and the Gestapo taking over the country. While his disconnected speech played itself out, the board of commissioners stared off into space as if looking for the planet they thought this guy crash-landed from. The only quote I exactly remember from this attempt at educating the public on our nation’s dire situation was the man’s concluding remark quickly interjected as he was informed his time had run out, he exclaimed, “God Bless our Republic – Death to the New World Order!”
The man quietly walked back to his seat and the meeting continued apace as if no one had just accused our President of being a Nazi. I half thought about approaching this gentleman afterwards to give him a few pointers on his presentation skills. Maybe a good message could have been culled from his many concerns, some of them valid regarding the recent passage of the doublethink titled Patriot Act. I was not sure though how his points could be effectively laid out in a three minute speech to eleven county commissioners with various levels of capacity to understand or care about national legislation. Additionally, I had been advised that it is not a particularly good idea to associate with citizens who espouse such politically incorrect viewpoints as to the workings of our Federal Government. And, there was the possibility as well that Sheriff Barnes was taking notes to pass on to the Department of Homeland Security. I remained in my seat across the room.
The most entertaining part of the meeting finished, it ground on such that two hours later the forty original public onlookers had dwindled in half. The visiting Boy Scout troop had returned home early to prepare for a good nights sleep I imagine. Of the twenty or so citizens left, I am confident that all of them were over age sixty except myself. Another thirty minutes later, at about 9:00 pm, a confusing discussion and vote on whether to allow an appeal by a land owner to extend Jim Neese road as an unpaved Private Lane essentially wiped out the remainder of our free citizenry in the audience; only myself, one older couple and a guard in the back of the room were left to back up the stares of the county staff, John Hammer and a compatriot member of the media.
This was the scene as the most important part of the meeting finally arrived; a vote by our 11 county representatives on whether to raise our taxes by adopting “a resolution to levy a third one-half cent Local Government Sales and Use tax.” I wonder if we have been so conditioned by our media and schools that no one bothered to show up to challenge this vote by at least sitting in the audience in silent disgust. Is it that we all assumed this was a done deal not worth our time? To be honest, even I myself thought about all the other things I should be doing besides being at this meeting. Still.
Our commissioners did try to make a good show of it though by feigning some debate on the issue. Commissioner Rakestraw from my district showed off her depth of skill in protecting the public trust, and her command of our county budget, by posing the question, "If we have already passed a balanced budget, why do we need this additional money? When it was explained to her that the budget she helped pass was only balanced by stealing from other one-time sources her shocked response was, "Was that what we did? Whoa!” (Note: Commissioner Rakestraw’s seat is up for re-election in 2004. Mark that down.)
Commissioner Arnold did his best to show that he really was perhaps paying attention and taking cues from Mr. Bush’s Gestapo critic. Mr. Arnold went into a long Republican stump speech on how our irresponsible Democratic controlled state assembly had conspired in forcing the counties of our state to raise this sales tax. He did not go on to blame The New World Order, but instead he tried to enlighten us on how our American economy is “The light of the World” and this increase in sales tax is going to put that light out.
The debate concluded and chairman Barber called an immediate ten-minute recess before the vote. This afforded me the good fortune to meet chairman Barber while we stood astride our urinals next to each other in the men's room. It was definitely one of those good old boys moments that women are anatomically excluded from. Here, Mr. Barber was able to speak candidly and confided in me that, “If you see a recess like that, you know they are counting votes.” I appreciated him sharing that insiders tip and asked him if comments were going to still be allowed at the end of the meeting. He said yes. We went on to share a jovial chuckle about his favorite weekly the Rhino needing a few more good writers then quickly zipped up, splashed water on our hands and returned to our seats.
Apparently, they had the votes they wanted and an official tally was called for public display. Our little cadre of three citizen stalwarts and the aforementioned media and county staff represented the only group in the Old County Courthouse that our 11 commissioners had to look in the eye as they calmly hiked our taxes in an 8-3 vote. I was struck by the realization that had there been perhaps only 20 or 30 citizens sitting in disgust holding “no new taxes” signs, our county commissioners may not have had the willpower to vote this tax increase in on this night. We made it a no-brainer for them though. As it was, the three nays got to pretend they were resisting the growth of our government, knowing that by a comfortable margin the county was going to pass itself another $11 million dollars a year worth of our money; What could have been though if we had only decided to show up.
Our money in hand there was only one other agenda item – Adopt a resolution to support changing the Share the Road signs to include motorcycles. This was offered by Commissioner Arnold. Apparently, he did not draw any connection to the tax and spend mentality of the Democratic controlled State Assembly he had just got done castigating and his own personal desire to have county workers spend time and money to put up catchy public service announcements on our roadsides. Times are hard indeed. His resolution passed and the meeting drew to a close.
There was no one in the room to use the 30 minutes of speaking time allowed for public comment at the end of the meeting. I was not dressed professionally or prepared to speak, but the tax increase I had just witnessed demanded some comment. I took the podium and started to mumble something about options besides passing this tax increase tonight. Chairman Barber interrupted me briefly to note that I was breaking etiquette by discussing an agenda item, but “since we had met earlier,” he offered to allow me to continue. I gave a quick wrap to my racing thoughts, which were duly noted as procedurally incorrect and closed my own disjointed tirade within two minutes of starting.
