The Case for Focusing Power in the Local Government

Why Local Government is Relevant

In my 25 years of political involvement, I have always been amazed at how quickly citizens overemphasize the weight of their national leaders and governments and their handling of intranational and international events; while totally missing how much their local government impacts their daily lives, for better and for worse.

While national political policies on immigration, spending, taxation, subsidies, and military engagements will impact our lives, it's almost always in indirect ways. The whims of national government trickle down to ordinary citizens in complex, often misunderstood ways. However, the local government will impact everyone's lives an very direct, concrete ways that are immediately noticeable and felt in very personal ways.

When a city's streets aren't safe, it's not because of anything happening in the national capital of a country. It's often because city governments have catered to the demands of certain unions and political interests, squandered their tax revenue, overtaxed businesses to the point of leaving, cut funding to police, and stopped enforcing certain unpopular laws out of sympathy for the criminal instead of the victim.

When a city survives an economic downturn, it's because they made themselves competitive to attract businesses to their area and made it easier for existing small businesses to survive less than ideal economic conditions. Knowing the good times won't last for ever, they plan for the downturns with sound financial planning and making critical investments in infrastructure when they can rather than waiting until the last possible moment. They create trusts when they receive unexpected surpluses and avoid touching the principle at all costs. They expect their police forces to enforce the laws that keep their communities safe and give them the resources they need to make sure they can do exactly that.

If you live in a sanctuary city and your mayor is forced to prioritize housing immigrants who came to your country illegally rather than the native homeless population, your specific problem more the fault of the leaders in the sanctuary city's municipal government who made your city a sanctuary than the leaders in the nation's capital who fail to enforce the national border laws.

Personal Story

When I was a Town Councilman in Burns Harbor, IN; we paved every single street in the entire town; which we knew our fellow citizens in the town desperately needed. Although mostly funded through federal and state grants, it was our town's Clerk Treasurer diligence in searching for grants and the planning of the town council and street commission that resulted in such a wild success for the effort in a town that desperately needed it. While the comparison may not be entirely fair due to the generational problems present, the roads (and buildings) of Gary, Indiana located just a few miles away looked as though they had been cratered by heavy and indiscriminate bombardments of Russian artillery.

The Problem

It is a tragedy for our democratic republic that so many more people know the name of their President than they do their local Town Councilmen, Alderman, and County Commissioners. This is especially true because there is little reason for them not to know these local leaders personally.

• The President represents 335,000,000 people.
• A US Representative represents 761,169 people.
• The County Commissioners in Jasper County, IN represents 33,000 people.
• A County Councilman in Jasper County represents about 8,250 people.
• A Town Councilman in DeMotte, IN represents about 850 people.

The Advantage of Local Government in Democratically Elected Governments

So, not only are the decisions made by local government more relevant to your everyday life; but the more local the level of government is, the more likely it is they'll hear your concern and take it seriously. Just as importantly, the more local the level of government, the less money there will be from special interests (if any at all) causing the elected official to ignore you.

Ever since the Apportionment Act of 1911, the US House of Representatives has been static at 435 members (except for that time we admitted Alaska and Hawaii into the Union). Ever since, Washington, D.C. has become increasingly out of touch with the needs and desires of ordinary Americans as each Representative and Senator finds the population of their Congressional district growing each and every year as the national population grows. The fact is that the more people an elected official must represent, the less time he or she has for the concerns of the individual residents in their district. While I do think we should radically increase the number of Representatives in the House of Representatives; the fact is that our local government will always be more in tune with the needs, desires, and opinions of the citizens than their federal government.

With this in mind, in the interest of reclaiming power of the citizens of every country around the world, but especially the United States of America, the people should always pressure their federal and state representatives to surrender power to their county and municipal governments. Meanwhile, the people should also encourage their municipal and county leaders to fight any temptation to surrender their power to state and federal governments.

Horrifying Tends in Governance

In 2009, I wrote a detailed blog post about my opposition to an unelected Regional Transit Authority (RTA) following the failure of a Regional Development Authority; neither was or would be accountable directly to the people; yet they would be able to create policy and spend tax dollars. To this day, I believe the municipal and county governments chose to surrender their power to an unelected body because the coordination involved was just too much of a headache for them to deal with. With the federal government and some state governments encroaching on the powers of municipal and county governments, the last thing any local government entity should be doing is giving away its ability to govern to an unelected board. It might make the lives of the elected officials easier, but it is an absolutel disservice to the people and democracy as a whole.

The other, more alarming trend is happening across the world. Countries are increasingly surrendering more and more of their sovereignty to international governments like the European Union, trade blocs, or even foreign countries like Communist China in exchange for economic services and access to borderline predatory loans. This surrender of power and often indebtedness to foreign countries is like surrendering parts of a nation's independence in exchange for economic convenience. While there are undoubtedly benefits to be had from many of these relationship, it comes at the cost of the principle of democracy.

Government is much less likely to ever become tyrannical if the bulk of governmental power remains close to the people at the local level.

Human Rights: The Exception to the Rule

While our constitution provides some exceptions to this rule; such as a national military, interstate commerce, and others; there is one other general category that the federal government should take the lead on. That is the protection of basic human rights and liberties. For example, the Right to Life absolutely should be a constitutionally guaranteed right. Likewise, the federal government should have banned slavery and segregation long before it actually happened. When states and local governments try to violate basic human rights by dividing us into classes (born and unborn, white and colored, rich and poor) and deciding certain classes are superior to others; the federal government should step in.