The Academy of Local Politics

Sometimes I run across local government items that are just plain wacky. No other way to describe them.

Son of a gun, here is another one…

RACINE — Two aldermen want to offer free land and lower taxes to city, county and school employees, to attract them to the city.

Under their proposed program, City of Racine, Racine County and Racine Unified School District employees could receive a free deed to certain city-owned land if they promise to build a new home and live there for five years. The employees would also pay lower property taxes for their first five years.

So, in addition to the public employee benefit package they receive, they would be offered free land and lower taxes?

Wacky?

Or not?

What did we do before the Internet? 

No really, what did we do before the Internet? 

I am speaking specifically about local government attempting to keep citizens informed.

Now, practically every unit of government has a website and if they don’t they should.

But, how good are those websites? Do they have the information on the websites that the public wants and needs?

Sunshine Online to the rescue! 

The My Government Website project evaluates the information governments post on their websites at the statewide, county, city and school districtlevel. We evaluate websites based on Sunshine Review’s transparency checklist, which checks for basic information such as meeting minutes, budgets, audits, and how to contact elected officials.

This project was recently completed evaluations for all 3,140 counties in the U.S.. Below are the 10 states with most transparent county governments; Arizona ranks highest at 65 percent. The scores reveal that all our communities need more transparency.

This website rates every county in the country as to how informational their website is for their citizens.

Look your county up. See how they are doing.

Happy reading!

I wish I had said it. But, I didn’t.

Chris Rovzar said it.

… sometimes it’s just nice to remember that other places also repeatedly and willfully choose to be governed by clowns.

Who was Chris talking about? 

The choices are many and varied.

Give up?

Marion Barry.

Sometimes you just have to take matters into your own hands.

You can’t rely on anyone else to help you.

After a tax increase of 2,153%, that’s right over a 2000% increase on roll your own cigarette tobacco …

Don Carey took matters into his own hands.

Carey, 49, decided in April, when federal taxes on tobacco skyrocketed, to grow his own.

”I thought it was an April Fools’ joke,” he said of the tax increase that sent taxes on roll-your-own tobacco up 2,153 percent.

There is something ”fundamentally wrong about picking on the smokers all the time,” said Carey, whose experiment with growing tobacco comes as President Barack Obama last week signed the strongest anti-smoking bill in history. The measure gives the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco for the first time.

Carey went on the Internet and found places where he could purchase tobacco seeds.

Within about a week, he had received 40 types of seeds and his life as a tobacco farmer was planted.

Cary admits he has much to learn, but you have to admire his attitude.

Be it the Feds, the State or your Local Government … when the time comes to rise up against the establishment I want someone like Don Carey on my side.

How about you?

Orrin Woodward and myself think alike.

Leaders make a habit of under-promising and over-delivering. The goal is not to satisfy, but amaze your customers.

As a Mayor I under-promised all the time. If a project was scheduled to be complete next week I said two weeks. I especially under-promised when I had little control over when/how something would happen.

And yes, the customers (citizens/taxpayers) were always amazed when there was an over-delivery on my promise.

After all,  how often does any politician over-deliver!

Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it – William Penn

I have come across this quote many times over the years. Recently I had it thrown in my face again.

Many quotes I can really relate to and learn from. Then there are quotes like this that are just dribble.

First of all there is never any time when everyone is for or against anything. Politics, religion, I don’t care what you are talking about there is never any issue when there is unanimous consensus. When this was last thrown at me there wasn’t near consensus on the issue. It was directed at my side of the issue by the other side.

Then, if everyone is on the same wavelength, who decides they are wrong? Or right? Or whatever? Or, is this some suppose to be some kind of spiritual thing which nobody agrees on either?

The lesson is if you are going to be using a quote when trying to make a point, make sure it does that.

Can we agree on that, even though if we do we could be wrong?

Yesterday I took my own advice.

On page 12 of Moving Mountains and Molehills Local Politics 101 I encourage the use of  “Thank You.”

Last week my Mayor was instrumental in killing a project which I opposed. He deserved a Thank You.

It is easy to bitch about elected officials when they are doing something we don’t agree with. In order to make those bitches more effective we need to spread “Thank You” around when appropriate.

It’s the little things that count sometimes.

I was in Tipton, Iowa over the weekend visiting In-Laws.

Being the local government expert in family, I was asked how much I thought Mayor Kepford made a year. Knowing who was doing the asking I replied, “I don’t know, but it isn’t enough.”

The issue arose because of some planned street work that was about to start in front of their house. Of course, nothing was being done to their satisfaction and it was all the stupid, overpaid Mayor’s fault.

I still don’t know how much Mayor Kepford makes. But, I will stand by my answer.

That kind of abuse goes with the job but nobody should have to take the abuse for peanuts.

Political enemies. They are everywhere. When you are deeply involved in politics you develop political enemies. Some enemies you like personally even though you disagree with them politically. Some people even marry them.

Then there are the enemies that you really don’t like. Just the sight of them gets the competitive juices flowing.

In this regard politics is much like sports. When you are heavily invested in the fortunes of a sports team there are rivals and then there are RIVALS.

When someone like Senator Arlen Spector defected from the Republicans to the Democrats that was nothing. Did you lose any sleep over it or rejoice with glee? I didn’t think so. Life went on undisturbed.

But,  the possiblity of Brett Favre becoming a Viking?

Order your shirt here.

OK, so he wasn’t hiking the Appalachian Trail.

And, he wasn’t writing.

And, he didn’t need to be alone to clear his head.

It turns out to be just another “Scumbag and Tramp” story.

Oh well … Next.