News
Sports
ENLARGE
In order to get our elected officials to remember who the “We” in “We The People” are, we may have to rearrange their furniture and confiscate their toys.
I don't know when exactly it happens, but not long after getting elected, our various representatives start to use terms like “we” when discussing the people we elected them to keep an eye on.
We don't send our representatives to Washington to make friends or party. We send them there to watch our money and to make sure our employees (and yes … if you work for the government you are our employee) are doing their jobs (once it has been determined that those jobs are worth the money it's costing us).
But as soon as they take office, many of those elected officials start to sound just like the people they are supposed to be watching.
If you want to see how that might happen, go to a meeting of the Nevada County Board of Supervisors sometime over at what some call the “Rude Center,” which was actually named after a former county supervisor and first-rate gentleman named Eric Rood.
The five county supervisors sit in high-backed leather chairs elevated at the front of the chambers, looking down on the citizens they are supposed to be serving. If you want to speak to them you must approach a podium that sits just below the chairman. If you look up at the right time of day you can actually see nose hairs. It's kind of like the Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, Scarecrow and Dorothy standing before the Wizard of Oz.
“Who stands before the all-knowing and all-powerful Oz?”
“Well,” says the shaking and quivering taxpayer. “I was just wondering why you decided to spend a trillion dollars on a roundabout when a $200 stop sign would have served the same purpose.”
“Do you presume to criticize the great Oz, you ungrateful creatures? Consider yourselves lucky I am giving you an audience tomorrow instead of 20 years from now!”
The poor taxpayer scurries back to her seat while the five elected officials snicker, roll their eyes and cough in agreement.
I don't know who designed those chambers, but they got it all wrong.
The five elected officials ought to be sitting in the front row of the audience and the county department heads ought to be sitting in a row facing the audience, at floor level (with the CEO in the middle). Our elected representatives, then, should be asking questions (provided by their constituents) of those department heads.
For example:
“I am Supervisor Jeff Ackerman and one of my constituents would like to ask the planning department chief why it costs $5,000 in permits to build a $1,000 deck?”
Or...
“I am Supervisor Jeff Ackerman (I'm starting to like the sound of that) and one of my constituents would like to ask the CEO why the library is closed Saturday, while he recommended spending $150,000 on a tourism website?”
The first thing they do to a newly elected supervisor or city council member is send him to a two-day seminar designed to suck every ounce of passion from his brain. Those seminars are generally held in depressing places like Bakersfield, or Fresno. The first morning is spent with the newly elected official firmly attached to a morphine drip while various retired county and city executives teach him to speak “governmentese,” which consists of 7,296 acronyms ranging from EIR to RFP to BFD.
The afternoon sessions include workshops on:
Doublespeak 101 - How to talk a lot without saying anything.
Why Secret Meetings Are More Fun Than Open Ones - People really only need to know what we want them to.
How To Sidestep A Quorum And Other Tricks Of The Trade - Our experts will show you how to get beyond the math.
You, Too, Can Double Dip - Let us show you how elected office can lead to a better retirement benefits.
How To Keep Staff Happy - Voters come and go, but staff lasts a lifetime.
How To Work The Media Like A Farm Mule - You don't need reporters until it's time for re-election.
The second day is spent reviewing furniture catalogs and benefit packages.
If you are an elected representative who is already collecting a government pension — and we have a few of them here — there is a special presentation (called Two Checks Are better Than One) hosted by several cruise line companies.
What we are seeing is a growing class of “Government Elite.” In a country of 360 million or so citizens we have an estimated 22 million government employees, or one for every 16 citizens. And there are now more government jobs (2.4 million) than manufacturing jobs in California, which might help explain why the once Golden State has turned to tin.
The folks we are electing to turn that mess around are staggering around drunk from their own power and in need of a serving of Humble Pie. Until then, maybe it's time they took a seat on a metal folding chair planted right in the middle of “We The People.”
Jeff Ackerman is the editor/publisher of The Union. Contact him at (530) 477-4299, jackerman@theunion.com, or 464 Sutton Way, Grass Valley 95945.
I don't know when exactly it happens, but not long after getting elected, our various representatives start to use terms like “we” when discussing the people we elected them to keep an eye on.
We don't send our representatives to Washington to make friends or party. We send them there to watch our money and to make sure our employees (and yes … if you work for the government you are our employee) are doing their jobs (once it has been determined that those jobs are worth the money it's costing us).
But as soon as they take office, many of those elected officials start to sound just like the people they are supposed to be watching.
If you want to see how that might happen, go to a meeting of the Nevada County Board of Supervisors sometime over at what some call the “Rude Center,” which was actually named after a former county supervisor and first-rate gentleman named Eric Rood.
The five county supervisors sit in high-backed leather chairs elevated at the front of the chambers, looking down on the citizens they are supposed to be serving. If you want to speak to them you must approach a podium that sits just below the chairman. If you look up at the right time of day you can actually see nose hairs. It's kind of like the Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, Scarecrow and Dorothy standing before the Wizard of Oz.
“Who stands before the all-knowing and all-powerful Oz?”
“Well,” says the shaking and quivering taxpayer. “I was just wondering why you decided to spend a trillion dollars on a roundabout when a $200 stop sign would have served the same purpose.”
“Do you presume to criticize the great Oz, you ungrateful creatures? Consider yourselves lucky I am giving you an audience tomorrow instead of 20 years from now!”
The poor taxpayer scurries back to her seat while the five elected officials snicker, roll their eyes and cough in agreement.
I don't know who designed those chambers, but they got it all wrong.
The five elected officials ought to be sitting in the front row of the audience and the county department heads ought to be sitting in a row facing the audience, at floor level (with the CEO in the middle). Our elected representatives, then, should be asking questions (provided by their constituents) of those department heads.
For example:
“I am Supervisor Jeff Ackerman and one of my constituents would like to ask the planning department chief why it costs $5,000 in permits to build a $1,000 deck?”
Or...
“I am Supervisor Jeff Ackerman (I'm starting to like the sound of that) and one of my constituents would like to ask the CEO why the library is closed Saturday, while he recommended spending $150,000 on a tourism website?”
The first thing they do to a newly elected supervisor or city council member is send him to a two-day seminar designed to suck every ounce of passion from his brain. Those seminars are generally held in depressing places like Bakersfield, or Fresno. The first morning is spent with the newly elected official firmly attached to a morphine drip while various retired county and city executives teach him to speak “governmentese,” which consists of 7,296 acronyms ranging from EIR to RFP to BFD.
The afternoon sessions include workshops on:
Doublespeak 101 - How to talk a lot without saying anything.
Why Secret Meetings Are More Fun Than Open Ones - People really only need to know what we want them to.
How To Sidestep A Quorum And Other Tricks Of The Trade - Our experts will show you how to get beyond the math.
You, Too, Can Double Dip - Let us show you how elected office can lead to a better retirement benefits.
How To Keep Staff Happy - Voters come and go, but staff lasts a lifetime.
How To Work The Media Like A Farm Mule - You don't need reporters until it's time for re-election.
The second day is spent reviewing furniture catalogs and benefit packages.
If you are an elected representative who is already collecting a government pension — and we have a few of them here — there is a special presentation (called Two Checks Are better Than One) hosted by several cruise line companies.
What we are seeing is a growing class of “Government Elite.” In a country of 360 million or so citizens we have an estimated 22 million government employees, or one for every 16 citizens. And there are now more government jobs (2.4 million) than manufacturing jobs in California, which might help explain why the once Golden State has turned to tin.
The folks we are electing to turn that mess around are staggering around drunk from their own power and in need of a serving of Humble Pie. Until then, maybe it's time they took a seat on a metal folding chair planted right in the middle of “We The People.”
Jeff Ackerman is the editor/publisher of The Union. Contact him at (530) 477-4299, jackerman@theunion.com, or 464 Sutton Way, Grass Valley 95945.
