There is a story regarding what happened by in 1964-65 to go from a Board of Supervisors to a County legislature. There are some familiar players or 'usual suspects' involved too. Back then it was seen as not a "strong enough" or autocratic enough form of government for the brave new socialist order that was emerging in Johnson's new society. The Supervisors were too fiscally conservative and did not want to activate or utilize the power that the county could potentially have wielded (and certainly does today.) That was seen as a huge fault with a certain group of people who believe that by forming a centralized and powerful autonomous level of government that would be able to spend money and be more activist, rather than the board of supervisors (who were more or less the same level of government as the towns in a different format)- there would be a social benefit. So the League of Women Voters undertook the drive and won over the politicians, and they instituted a new charter and guess who WROTE that charter- you guessed it. The socialist LWV! Way back in 1965!
The county government was designed to function then, as it does now, of an autonomous group that can basically give the lower level of government the middle finger. They concentrate all the power into one person- the Chair of the legislature, and the chair gets to select a county manager who is basically only accountable to that chair, and no one else. That is why we have what we have today. Former mgr McEvoy was very powerful and most of the legislators just deferred to him, but when Farley was chair, they clashed bc Farley wanted to assume his powers buy McEvoy didn't want to let him, McEvoy had been there longer than most of the legislators and he basically held all the keys. Currently we have a mgr who is beholden to Savage and Savage alone, whether she wants to be or not. Savage holds all the power.
So until you can change the charter, I would say "good luck." Once government is handed more power by the people willingly (interestinly this is exactly how the Nazis did it n 1933) they NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER give it up. In case you didn't get that: they NEVER give it up, they only take MORE POWER from lower levels and from the people. So when you hear me talk about the LWV as Fascist, there is more to their fascism than they way they strong arm, rip cameras from peoples' hands, censor speech and run debates in Rotterdam. They created the system we live under, this localized dictatorship, by their very own statist philosophy and intervention in local affairs 45 years ago. |
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