Sometimes I am overwhelmingly humbled at that commitment - especially over the last few years as I know the kinds of challenges and head-aches they're facing in their "day jobs." Along with all of the other things these jobs entail, they've had to grapple with the budget squeeze they've been faced with over the last decade or so. Funding of both City and County activities is a mix between property taxes and state funds. During the Pawlenty administration and now with the deal Gov. Dayton was forced to accept with the Republican legislature, those funds from the state have faced massive cuts. Their only alternative for revenues is the incredibly regressive property tax, which is often too high a burden to place on local residents. And so the cuts have long ago passed flesh and are hitting bone.
I don't know what politics looks like in your area, but that's what is happening where I live. And these two people are fighting the good fight every day - against tremendous odds - with all of the integrity I can imagine.
Just this week I had a pretty extensive meeting with the Board Member who is also a County Commissioner to do some planning since he has recently become Chair of our Board. We talked politics for a few minutes at the beginning and I was struck once again by how much he resembles President Obama in style. But Jim's background couldn't be more different than the President's. He was a union glazier working for our local public schools when a convicted felon con man ran for the position that represents his district on the County Board. Since no one else in his community was stepping up to the plate, he finally decided that he needed to take some leadership. After having been a volunteer coach at his local park and recreation center for his entire adult life, he rallied all of the young people he'd coached - as well as their parents - to work on his campaign and won the election.
The area Jim represents is hard-core union Democratic mixed with a growing population of families of color who are refugees from either major urban areas in this country or Southeast Asia and Africa. He is a man who has no financial reason to be beholden to any special interests and so faces every decision he makes solely from his own best thinking and integrity.
He was telling me the other day that people sometimes laugh because he has been known to take positions that are to the right of the conservative members on the Board who tend to be elected from Republican-leaning suburbs as well as to the left of the most liberal members...it all depends on what he sees as the merits. But you could hear the frustration and sadness in his voice when he talked about how this can mean going against the very people he counts as friends.
In the end, Jim voiced his agreement with what I wrote about the other day - that the best way to promote a liberal agenda is for folks like him to make a commitment to good government. He sees first hand how spending money based on ideology alone has hurt the liberal cause to which we are all committed. And what is needed to correct that is for elected officials to ensure that we not just spend money - but that we spend it wisely. Sometimes that means pulling funds from things we ideologically support, but that aren't wise or effective investments at the time. That's when his friends get mad at him.
I thought of that conversation for a couple of reasons when I read the news about President Obama's rejection of the new EPA rule on smog emissions. First of all, what jumped out at me was the concern about placing new financial burdens for enforcement on state and local governments.
The president rejected a proposed rule from the Environmental Protection Agency that would have significantly reduced emissions of smog-causing chemicals, saying that it would impose too severe a burden on industry and local governments at a time of economic distress.
As I said above, Jim and his colleagues are already in the position where they're cutting services to the bone. I know because we've recently been notified that we will loose about 1/3 of our funding for serving the most high risk group of children and families in the county. Its not because we're not being effective...its because the $ just isn't there. The last thing in the world they need is more mandated spending on things that aren't absolutely necessary.
Secondly, I'm not well enough versed in the science involved to speak to the new rule. I can see that it has certainly pissed off President Obama's friends in the environmental community. But perhaps businesses and local politicians had a good point about the wisdom of doing this now.
The E.P.A., following the recommendation of its scientific advisers, had proposed lowering the so-called ozone standard of 75 parts per billion, set at the end of the Bush administration, to a stricter standard of 60 to 70 parts per billion. The change would have thrown hundreds of American counties out of compliance with the Clean Air Act and required a major enforcement effort by state and local officials, as well as new emissions controls at industries across the country.
The administration will try to follow the more lenient Bush administration standard set in 2008 until a scheduled reconsideration of acceptable pollution limits in 2013.
Taken into consideration was also the the fact that the time and money spent to address and enforce these rules would only be challenged again in 2 years when new limits are introduced.
That's a tough call to make and will surely cost the President a lot with his friends on the left. But its the kind of thing I'm sure Jim understands.
The change would have thrown hundreds of American counties out of compliance with the Clean Air Act and required a major enforcement effort by state and local officials, as well as new emissions controls at industries across the country.
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You blow my mind. That's exactly the part that jumped out at me when I read the article.
I expect that either way this was decided there would be lawsuits that would last past the 2013 review anyway.