By Ronnie Herne, Coquille
Who can you trust? The three county commissioners — one in his first elected term, the other two brand new, not elected but appointed, inexperienced but ambitious — have a big surprise for you. These three are going to radically alter your Coos County government. Your only part is to sit down, shut up, and like it. Well — I don’t.
What they’re planning is called “Home Rule”. It’s in the ORSs and there are optional variations but it’ll pretty much look like this.
The county will be divvied up into 5 or 6 districts (which they might call “zones”), with the district lines being decided by the commissioners. You get to vote for a county commissioner from your zone only. The other 4 or 5, elected in their own districts, don’t need to talk to you. (Think Arnie Roblan.)
Next they’ll select and install a highly paid county manager (just like the city managers) who will be unelected by us, unaccountable to us, who will make all the financial — and possibly other — decisions for Coos County. This reduces the commissioners to an advisory capacity. (Think city councils.)
You already know that voters cannot fire city or county managers. And if such a manager is let go, a golden parachute follows (paid for by us, the voters who never selected or elected the manager in the first place). And that’s not all, either.
Then these three commissioners are cleverly planning to announce that certain currently duly elected positions — assessor, surveyor, treasurer, maybe sheriff, maybe county clerk — should be “hired” by the commissioners instead of elected by us. That means “appointed” by them. That means “controlled” by them: a salaried employee instead of an elected representative.
That means your voice doesn’t count anymore. You have no voice at the table.
All three commissioners are up for election in 2012. The primary is less than 9 months away. You know what to do.
This is the true Architect for your future county government. These locals are only following orders.
Here’s a few highlights.
Americans for Tax Reform
Norquist is best known for founding Americans for Tax Reform in 1985, which he did at the request of President Ronald Reagan.
Norquist’s national strategy includes recruiting politicians at the state and local levels. Norquist has helped to set up regular meetings for conservatives in many states. These meetings are modeled after his Wednesday meetings in Washington, with the goal of creating a nationwide network of conservative activists that he can call upon to support conservative causes, such as tax cuts and deregulation. There are now meetings in 48 states.
he held the positions of Economist and Chief Speechwriter at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce from 1983 to 1984.
Norquist favors dramatically reducing the size of the government. He has been noted for his widely quoted quip: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.
Norquist traveled to several war zones across the world to help support anti-Soviet guerrilla armies in the second half of the 1980s. He worked with a support network for Col. Oliver North’s efforts with the Nicaraguan Contras and other insurgencies, in addition to promoting U.S. support for groups including Mozambique’s RENAMO and Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA in Angola and helping to organize anti-Soviet forces in Laos.
Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform were mentioned in Senate testimony relating to the lobbying scandal for which Abramoff pled guilty in 2006. Norquist has denied that he did anything wrong. Records released by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee allege that ATR served as a “conduit” for funds that flowed from Abramoff’s clients to surreptitiously finance grass-roots lobbying campaigns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist
So it falls under Home Rule. I’ve been chewing on this for some time, I knew something was going on, but couldn’t figure out what exactly it was. All of us have to educate ourselves about all of this. The Three Musketeers are well on their way to “something”, glad to have input, thanks.