Eliminate County Elective Positions
Salt Lake County would have better government if most of the separately-elected county officials were appointed by the mayor. I’ve written about this in the past, and the Salt Lake Tribune recently wrote an insightful editorial on the same topic.
It doesn’t make sense for offices like recorder, surveyor, assessor, auditor, treasurer, or county clerk to be elected. These are professional offices providing specialized services and they would integrate much better into the rest of county government, with more efficiency and a lot less fiefdom building, if they were simply appointed by the mayor. Arguments could be made that sheriff and district attorney should be appointed as well, but keeping them separately elected would also be OK.
It’s not like we need these separate elected positions to provide a check and balance on the elected mayor. County government has a legislative branch of elected council members, plus the judiciary, to play that role.
In state government, which is much larger than the county, only four positions are separately elected: governor/lieutenant governor, attorney general, treasurer and auditor (and I would argue that the treasurer and auditor really ought to be appointed by the governor).
At the federal level, under a constitution considered to be a model for the world, only the president/vice president team is elected to run the entire executive branch. All other top offices, many with enormous power, are appointed by the president.
Having a bunch of separately elected officials in the county executive branch diffuses power so officials can blame each other for problems and indulge in all manner of infighting. It would be far better to hold one office-holder (the mayor) accountable for the executive entire branch. We’d know who to blame or praise. The offices would be professional rather than political, and management would improve.
Blog Watch
Rep. Craig Frank says Utah should get a 4th congressional seat, but not at the expense of giving D.C. full House voting rights (see also here)... Jesse Harris says of the upcoming 2007 Legislature: "This last legislative session saw a massive failure to pass meaningful transportation spending leaving Salt Lake and Utah Counties in the unenviable position of having to raise taxes during a surplus to pay for transportation needs. If the Legislature doesn't get it in gear, St. George might have to follow suit to cover its own burgeoning population. I'm hoping that the Legislature will do more than just prioritize the tax increases. It had better commit significant funds towards corridor preservation and accelerated construction. They'd also better look at ways to reduce demand such as tax credits for telecommuting and encouraging people to live near where they work. Los Angeles tried the arms race of building capacity faster than demand and lost that one big time."
Wise Words
“It’s time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, ‘We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.’ This idea that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power, is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”
—Ronald Reagan (Source: The Federalist Patriot)
National Politics
In his "Budget Battles" NationalJournal.com column, Stan Collender opines on why the Republicans and the Bush administration didn't get much credit for the economy during the election.
Regional Politics
Fresh Off the Farm
The New York Times publishes an interesting profile of Montana Sen.-elect “big Jon Tester — who is just under 300 pounds in his boots — (and) will most likely be the only person in the world’s most exclusive club who knows how to butcher a cow or grease a combine. … For all the talk about the new Democrats swept into office on Tuesday, the senator-elect from Montana truly is your grandfather’s Democrat — a pro-gun, anti-big-business prairie pragmatist whose life is defined by the treeless patch of hard Montana dirt that has been in the family since 1916.” |
