Building a government that works for the people.

 I believe that the government should exist to serve the people and use its power for the public good to improve our quality of life. Right now, the structure of our economy is upside down. Money only flows in one direction, upwards. The people pay for EVERYTHING. If we want to hold corporations accountable with regulations and fines, those costs get passed to the consumer, if we want to provide better public services to the people, those costs get passed down to the taxpayers. The net flow of money in our society is always upwards with no effective mechanism to return money back to the bottom to repeat the cycle and keep the economy moving. If a farmer used his tractor to lift a bunch of implements off the ground and unhooked without lowering them, the tractor would quickly run out of hydraulic oil. Our economy works the same way. Under this system, new ideas, no matter how good, can be stopped in their tracks by the perpetual question, “who’s gonna pay for it?” All of our officials from the county level down are very limited in what they can do to effect transformative societal change by this upside down system that pits survival-focused voters against their own long-term best interests.

What is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right. Democracy’s biggest weakness is its vulnerability to politics. In order to lead, our leaders must first win elections. Unfortunately, the most pragmatic way to win is usually promising to prioritize short-term comfort over long-term sustainability. We will never be able to give the public the government they deserve at the local level until the country’s entire government is fundamentally restructured all the way up to the top. The only thing we can do in the meantime is pledge to do the best we can with what we have for the people of Oneida County.

The people who make up our local governments, from mayors and supervisors, to firefighters and EMS, the board members, the judges, and the clerks... they are essentially volunteers who choose to do it, not for money, but out of a sense of responsibility to their fellow citizens and a desire to see things done right. Most of the positions do pay a little, a couple hundred or couple thousand dollars per year, but it’s nowhere near a full time salary, and if you add up all the hours these people spend trying to do the job right, it might not even be minimum wage.

In a way, this can be seen as a good thing because it means the people serving are more interested in the responsibilities of the job itself rather than the money, but this system of amateur governments does bring some challenges. The first one is time. For towns with less than 3,000 people, the costs of staffing a full-time government are hard to justify. Office hours are limited and most of the administrative work gets done in the elected officials’ free time. Most of them need a full-time job to pay their bills. It can be very challenging to work 40 hours a week, spend time with family, and still give your public office the full attention it deserves.

Another big challenge is the lack of experience. Most people interested in politics will naturally start by seeking a position at the local level, but this means that many local officials are still learning as they go and might make some mistakes in the process. State law sets training requirements for various positions in the government, and there is a good bit of support and resources from organizations like the Association of Towns, the Tug Hill Commission, the NYS Department of State, and others, but most of this training is done on volunteered time that takes people away from their paying job. The lack of time and experience inherent to a government of volunteers can result in lost opportunities for the residents when deadlines or requirements for special programs get missed. Well intentioned resolutions can leave inexperienced town governments open to litigation due to legal or administrative mistakes.

The other major challenge for small town governments, especially in rural areas is funding. The two main causes of this challenge are lack of income and the higher cost per resident to provide required services. If we developed all of our farm and forest land into high value property, America would starve, but there is only so much tax revenue that can be squeezed out of our farmers, so in small towns the overhead costs of public services are spread across fewer people.