Coos Media Center has the latest May 24, 2011, BOC budget work session and board meeting available online.

The commission has established two ill defined “exploratory” committees, one to presumably evaluate how the county departments operate and another to explore whether the county should restructure administratively. (At least that is what it sounds like, because they are so far very poorly defined). The committees may then call upon paid consultants to… well, do something to the tune of $75,000 or more. It was rightly argued from the audience that the commissioners are paid to do the very thing for which they want to hire outside consultants.

Messerle and Parry both emphasized that “we only have one shot at this”. The “this” is ill defined but appears to be a movement toward converting the county to some form of home rule that may or may not include five commissioners and a paid executive. More likely, it is a move toward privatizing as many public services as possible. (Read how privatizing school buses worked out in Yoncalla).

Messerle and Parry regard the formation of committees as a way of including the public in the process. One of the best ways to involve the public in local government is to hold public hearings. Rather than appointing a select group of citizens to a committee hold a series of public hearings on these matters and let the public really weigh in.

Messerle appears to be just casting out to the universe and offers no more specifics about county problems beyond “revenue is flat, cost of service is rising” and claims to have no clear path to solutions. “I have no idea what this will look like, I believe the discussion and the development of the process will shake that out. Frankly I don’t think I should, nobody should because we have to be open minded about this… my sense is the discussion will lead us to the answers”.

So we have two self professed “business guys” casting bromides to the wind about how to run a government. (Main, the only one with government experience, was not in attendance during the budget work session). Parry declares the county is run on a 1950s model but doesn’t offer any examples. Messerle makes a point of listing the differences between business and government, like government “only provides services” and has “no sales force to deal with”. (Thanks to Shawn Jennings for pointing out that government is not, in fact, a business).

Many thanks should be offered to budget panel member Don Peabody for calling out the lack of goals and specifics proffered by Messerle. “That’s a horrible attitude to take”, Peabody tells Messerle. “We are going to go spend $75,000 and we have no stated goals? We have no plan for how that money the county is going to spend is going to lead us to any goal. I’ve been on the street a long time and I’ve got to tell you that these type of consultant studies are a) not very successful and b) are a public relations nightmare especially in public (inaudible)… I will not support that”. (Yeah! Somebody should appoint Peabody to the feasibility study addicted Port commission).

Unfortunately, Peabody was but one vote and money has now been allocated to fund an idea gathering fishing trip that should be done through a series of public hearings held during the evening when more of the public are able to attend. The road advisory committee appears to be empowered with some decision making capabilities and there was talk of doing the same for some of these new committees. Governance by committees of non elected appointees is just another form of privatization.

Again, I repeat that government requires an entirely different decision making calculus than running a business.