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Legislatures
-- state or local -- should meet less often So it is that we hear such suggestions as converting it to a unicameral body or reducing it to a part-time legislature or both. A little background before we apply similar thoughts to local government: Two conflicting structures for our new government were debated by our Founding Fathers when they were developing our constitution. One faction, led by Benjamin Franklin, wanted a unicameral legislature and a council, rather than an individual, for the executive branch of government. The opposing faction, with John Adams as a leading exponent, wanted a bicameral legislature and a unitary executive.
Now think about a typical city council or city commission. It is a unicameral legislature. And a strong mayor or a city manager serves as the unitary executive. And most of them meet part-time. Even so, such bodies tend to involve themselves in committee work, to address trivia, to give us more government than we want or need. Some suspect that televising or web casting legislative meetings has led to longer but less productive meetings as the politicians posture for the camera. Making our state legislature part-time would be a great first step toward giving us the desirable goal of less government. -- FJV: April 2007 Abusing
eminent domain Counterattacks to that tactic came in the form of regulations which identify blight as "a property posing a danger to health or public safety," not one whose mere appearance the city might consider unsightly. States like California, Arizona, and Idaho also include requirements that the state "compensate citizens for regulations that devalue property."
Now and then, a Royal Oak property owner has contended that the city has forced him into unnecessary expense by arbitrarily designating a property blighted when there was no danger to health or public safety. Just one more governmental mindset for taxpayers -- and those in government -- to guard against.
Better government through community
conversations? "I'm a Democrat, but I have to say we need more positive thinking political leaders like Brooks Patterson."
A glass of wine
mentioned in a serious forum re Michigan's need for creating "a
shared public agenda for a new About 15 women and 5 men, most of them in the education community, spent a couple of hours in a community conversation arranged by "Michigan's Defining Moment" (MDM), a multi-year project set up by the Ann Arbor-based Center for Michigan, whose literature describes the group as a "think-and-do" tank. This Royal Oak session was held at Oakland Schools Technical campus on Delemere, still known popularly as SEOVEC. Each participant pressed buttons on a control which anonymously registered their votes, and the 20 attendees chose K-12 education from among a dozen or more suggested topics as what they wanted to explore. The majority were in favor of finding some new way to support education; they no longer want to depend on the ups and downs to which the current taxing structure exposes schools. A minority of three countered that education must first be reformed structurally, by reducing the number of school districts throughout the state, for example. One woman voiced concern that union control over teachers and districts may be an obstacle. All of the discussion was civil -- more than civil, it was friendly -- as the group also touched on such matters as composting, mass transit, health care, segregation, term limits, partisanship.
Established a couple
of years ago, MDM published an interim report
in May 2008 which One finds it difficult to understand why the community conversations continue, except perhaps simply to increase the body count, for nothing discussed in the Royal Oak session will add any new thinking to the existing tabulations. Even if the political intention behind the project is to generate more citizen involvement during the 2010 election, partisan or not, there certainly is enough information gathered about what the electorate is thinking. [See] Wouldn't it be more effective, this far along, to conduct workshops about such practical matters as how to get the attention of officials, how to generate letters the editor will publish, how to offer testimony/comment at meetings of city, county, and state bodies, about the value of raising issues within our service clubs and church groups, how to get involved in an issue-related campaign? -- April 2009
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Better government through conversations "Blight" designation can violate proper power of eminent domain |
Michigan"? Not out of place at all. That remark and the comment by
the self-described Democrat were made during a discussion about how
difficult it is to change local mindsets when attempting to develop or implement
goals for the region, for the state.
lays out in broad terms its mission and goals.
Nancy Short, Outreach Coordinator for the parent group, gets an
"A" for facilitating the Royal Oak conversation through sometimes touchy
dialogue and making sure everyone who wanted to speak, did. Short
mentioned that as many at 10,000 people have so far participated in
these community conversations. The 2008 report tabulates the range
of topics brought up and the frequency of mentions. So we learn that
45% want to eliminate term limits, and 63% want to increase
entrepreneurialism, and the like.