to home rule or not to home rule
Recently the Forest Park Review has run two columns on home rule: David Goetz and Bill Dwyer.
Anybody want to argue for or against?
Anybody want to argue for or against?
posted by Carl Nyberg at
5:39 PM
1 Comments:
In a land of supposed equality and justice, what is home rule? The state empowers local governments providing a set of rules that may be imposed. Home rule allows special places to impose special rules?
In Forest Park's case, much is made about our commissioner form of government and lack of home rule powers, but these are not the root of our difficulties. Voter apathy, lack of community involvement, a concerted effort to make the limited involvement the does occur to be trite and meaningless. (i.e. attending a concert in the grove, the 4th of July, St. Patty's Day parade are taken as being involved.)
Small town politics is big business and we, "the herd", have been conditioned to largely ignore the manuevering and shenanigans of "small time" politicians.
Lack of home rule has not prevented local government from enlarging its bite of the apple. Empowering them further to meddle in our quiet enjoyment when the trend is toward an elitist, small-minded entrenchment of powers, does not appeal to my better judgement.
If the process were more open, honest and informative, I would be more inclined to support home rule, but even then it would be a devil's bargain.
By
Anonymous, at 3:17 PM, September 22, 2005
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