Local government responding to will of the people

Published 1:30 am Friday, October 28, 2022

A couple of great examples of government being responsive to its constituents occurred in Bainbridge Island recently.

The latest was from the BI School District.

Complaints came in about the longtime neglect of the baseball and softball fields at Bainbridge High School. After just a few weeks, the district agreed to fix up the fields. Community support was one of the major reasons for the school board stepping up and getting the job done.

Another recent example came from the BI City Council.

It had denied a spot on the Race Equity Advisory Committee to a candidate because of a possible conflict of interest. But the council ended up putting Olivia Hall on the panel. Again, public involvement was a major reason. The council decided it was more important to put a qualified candidate on the committee than to be a stickler for a potential procedural error.

Both of those instances are good government. Government is there to support the will of the people, not to sit in its ivory tower and decide what’s good for us.

However, local government still has its issues. One local leader wanted us to print an opinion piece in the newspaper — but would not allow any editing. Government telling us what to do has never sat well with us. We edit everything that goes into the paper. Our space is valuable — our advertisers pay good money for it. So we cut stories for length. We cut repeated information and wordiness, for example. We also edit for AP style in an effort to be consistent.

Because it’s our business, we get to decide the rules. While customer service is important, most businesses probably feel that way. Because the local leader would not follow our rules, we did not run the piece. A competing media organization did, so we guess it has no problem with government control of media information.

The public doesn’t always know what’s best for it, however. The public can be fickle and group-think can change with the tides. Therefore, sometimes it’s good for government to go slowly to make sure good results happen.

Some examples nationwide include defund police and #metoo. Many governments were slow to act on those movements, realizing they came more from emotion than well-thought-out ideas.

The real goal of defunding police was for officers to get more training, and to have law enforcement work more with social services to help people rather than punish them. Defunding police meant money should be spent on those other things. Agencies that actually did defund police, leading to officers being laid off, now are adding them back on after seeing increases in crime. But most are also continuing efforts on what defunding police really was about.

The #metoo movement, while popular with the masses, never did have much support in government. That is because the movement is in direct opposition to our justice system. With #metoo, there was a tendency to convict someone just because accusations were made, not necessarily based on evidence. People weren’t given their day in court. They were not assumed to be innocent until proven guilty. Still, there have been some positive changes nationwide as a result of the #metoo movement.

All in all, at least at the local level, government for the most part seems to be working.