Let's Talk Local Government

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

What I assume will be a welcome break from "the norm".

Recently, I received fliers in the mail for our local government elections. Being that I've only visited a polling place 3 times in my life after turning 18, I don't recall ever having the opportunity to vote for any specific propositions or resolutions. This year, our county has a proposition on the ballot for re-districting. The plan is to reduce our county legislators from 21 to 17. The flier says that if it passes, the result will:

✱ Reduce the size of the Legislature by 20%
✱ Create districts that have common interests and require similar representation
✱ Save the taxpayers nearly $1 million over ten years

Our city has a population of slightly over 16,000 people and the county is (in my boyfriend's words) "a sad mix of dying industry and depressed family agriculture". So I'm wondering specifically what (if any) benefits this would have for our area or what problems it might cause.

Has anyone had any experience here with re-districting in your counties? What is your area known for (business, agriculture, etc.)? Has re-districting caused any problems? Any advice I can get would be great. Our newspaper has been printing editorials for both sides, but I'd love to get opinions from other people in different areas of the country to see what it's done for them.

(Serious answers only, PLEASE. I don't need this topic stirred-up with unnecessary drama and B.S. Thanks!)

Comments

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

From your description, I'd say it means less representation for your county. That's not likely to bring you many benefits.

But since my only experience with redistricting came from Tom Delay, I would be particularly grumpy about gerrymandering.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

Has anyone had any experience here with redistricting in your counties?

I think it happened in our area before I started paying attention to politics. It wound up involving some rezoning that turned agricultural land into commercial land.

This was agricultural land that was a last holdout in a residential and industrial area. The rezoning caused the taxes on the land to go so high that the family that owned it had to sell because they couldn't afford the real estate taxes.

This is just an anecdote, but it's something you might want to look into or inquire about.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

Redistricting is a form of masturbation that politicians do every time the census comes out. It is always rigged to favor incumbents and there is little you can do about it because they will make deals amongst themselves. So partake of your drug of choice and just accept it.

[ghoststrider.livejournal.com]

This, unfortunately.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

What exactly does reducing the legislature by 20% do for you? How does it save money?

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

What exactly does reducing the legislature by 20% do for you? How does it save money?

It creates smaller government, which is the panacea for everything. But seriously, it probably cuts some salaries, support teams and infrastructure. This is a huge deal at the local level.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Its not reducing any services, how does it create smaller government? You still need the same number of people to support it, they just have less independent heads which means more chain of command infrastructure.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

Its not reducing any services

Remember, we're talking about local government. Less coffee and less people to make it.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

http://www.ehow.com/about_5390068_local-government-do.html

neener neener!

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

neener neener!

We're talking about county board layoffs, not elimination.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

I know that. What's the inference?

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

What's the inference?

They may very well be consolidating or reducing services such as fewer and larger fire and police districts, etc.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Fewer and larger districts doesn't reduce services on its own unless they actually reduce police and fire coverage, which they can without eliminating districts. You just have a more hierarchical bureaucratic structure.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Pretty much this. I'm not seeing the correlation between fewer representatives and reduced services. Do all the services in the districts they used to represent just up and disappear like it's a game?

POOF ALL PUBLIC SERVICES GONE, NOW THE REST THAT ABSORB THE DISTRICT HAVE TO COVER FOR THEM.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

20% cut saving 1,000,000 across 10 years is $200,000 a year. With a legislative slimdown of 4 that means each one between salary, benefits, and support was about $50,000 a year. That sounds fairly accurate.

What services do you have different by having 4 fewer people on the board?

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Like I said, the issue is you now have a larger hierarchy to run it.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

17 from 21 = 4
That 4 less reps and all their secretaries, fewer office spaces, fewer photocopiers, less paperwork.
It's reducing the size of the government, as in the governing body government.
It's not reducing the size of public services, and rest of the bureaucracy.
Just the government that governs.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

You don't have less requirement for the services though, and the support staff to run them.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

BTW, through this community I've noticed Americans tend to call everything government. Here in Canada, government refers to the ruling party. Parliament refers to the entire of the elected officials, both ruling as government and in opposition. The rest are public services. DoT is a public service. Military is public service. Etc.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Yes, everyone who works directly for the government is part of the government, whether elected or not. We do not change governments, we change the elected officials who are in charge of the government. Calling only the ruling party the government is just silly. ;)

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

Governments govern. I don't see how some middle management accounting secretary is governing anything.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

They are part of the process that creates the actual regulations and administers them, thus they are governing.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

THIS IS HOW BIG GOVERNMENT STARTS!!!1!!!2


:P

[mylaptopisevil.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if having less people be involved in the process to determine if something is good or bad is a positive for government.

It isn't minimizing the scale and scope of government, it's just giving that same scale and scope to a smaller number of people, which essentially allows their individual power in relation to the government to grow.

Now, that might not be a negative thing, because maybe [random numbers here] having two people speaking on behalf of 1,500 each is just as good if not more effective than.three people speak on behalf of 1,000 each.

But those two people do now have more power, as opposed to when there were three of them.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

But at least you have citizens of the opposing party divided up in to irrelevant groups in other districts!

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Eh, it's county government. In my limited experience with it, county government probably made sense in the day when it was a 3 week ride on a mule to get to Albany.

Today? I can't think of many functions of county government in most states that are incapable of being performed either by the state or municipalities.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

We still have county sheriffs here. Never got the logic in this day and age.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Some states are too large to handle all of the area that is outside municipal jurisdictions easily. I don't see a problem with the concept of counties as applied in a federal system.

[nano-muse.livejournal.com]

It's more about management than governance, i.e. a buffer between municipalities and states. My homestate of California has more than 480 cities (88 of which are in Los Angeles county, where I live). It's easier on processing to have the state manage counties and have the counties manage cities, rather than have the state directly manage so many cities.

At least that's how it works in much bigger and much more populated states like CA, it might not be the same for smaller states, or ones with smaller populations (which are most, I believe - the population of LA county alone exceeds over 40 individual states, so I can see how counties have less function in other states).

[thies.livejournal.com]

If you live where I live it's apparently to disenfranchise the ni..... african americans which is why a federal judge has to sign off on it. This might not be the case where you are.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

You also apparently a verb.

[thies.livejournal.com]

elaborate or fuck off

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

In west Philadelphia
born and raised
on the playground my momma said
most of my days
chilling out, maxing
and relaxing all cool
and all shooting some b-ball
outside of school
when a couple of guys
they were up to no good
started making trouble in our neighborhood
i got in one little fight and my mom got scared
she said your moving
in with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air

[prog-expat.livejournal.com]

In the U.S. redistricting = gerrymandering, plain and simple. The second point on the flier ("Create districts that have common interests and require similar representation") is a dog whistle for gerrymandering. But, as has been mentioned above, gerrymandering is the automatic consequence of the census regardless of how many seats there are.

County Government

[russj.livejournal.com]

Wow! I've never lived where there are more than 5 county commissioners.

That said, back in Boulder County, Colorado, the commissioners were elected 'at large', even though they supposedly represented a geographical district.
In other words, every voter voted for every commissioner.

This was a bad scheme, because it meant that the majority dominated, and chose all of the commissioners. There was no effective local or minority representation at all.

While redistricting is always done by those currently in power, the best way to do it is to give natural geographic areas (cities, neighborhoods, etc.) their own district. Of course each district should have approximately equal numbers of electors.

Gerrymandering is where you split up an area to dilute its representation. I give an example of Longmont, where I used to live, which was split four ways to prevent it from getting representation in the State House:

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

My experience (which is quite good) is that reducing the number of local government representatives does the following:

a) increases costs, because councillors tend to put a great deal of voluntary hours for little or no pay.

b) reduces services, as the more expensive professional services are less aware of the requirements of locals.

c) increases power of big power incumbents and reduces the opportunity for independents to participate.

Over time I have become convinced that the best method is very much like what Thomas Jefferson ended up recommending - more local government and more local government representatives; his preferred level was one representative per one hundred households.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

I don't think there will be much of a difference between 17 or 21 legislators unless they are going to organize themselves differently. If you could get under 10, things might change, but a group of 17 is as difficult to get moving as a group of 21.

As far as redistricting, there has been a trend, not large enough, but still a trend, to take politics out of redistricting. Washington State, where I used to live, handed this over to a somewhat non-political group. It's not perfect but it's way better than letting the legislators do it themselves. If the second item means that there will be a panel that is put in charge of redistricting, and there is an effort to make them bi-partisan or non-political, then this will have a huge benefit.

[nevermind6794.livejournal.com]

I think some states mandate that redistricting be done with software that automatically accounts for ethnicity, population, reasonable geographic regions, etc. Can't get much less partisan with that.

[nevermind6794.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Saving nearly $1 million over ten years will come from reducing the number of county legislators, but presumably the work they were doing will be allocated to someone else. There might be further loss of efficiency that leads to economic losses of more than $1 million.

I think the question to focus on is whether that initiative actually makes your local government more efficient - or to torture a metaphor, are they just throwing deck chairs off the Titanic?