There are two incontrovertible facts about government. The first is that the public face of government, our elected political leaders, have vast areas of incompetence. There is just no realistic way for them to be, or become, competent in the wide range of technicaly or legaly challenging issues that they face every day. In fact, the one thing that they absolutely must have as their primary competence is getting elected, because without that they are not in a position to do anything.
Arising from this first truth is the fact that nothing happens in the arena of politics or government without the intervention of some advocacy group, be it professional lobbiests or just a group of people who care enough about some issue to educate themselves and then to take a public stand. Needing only a single area of competence, they are generally much more adept than our political leaders are in understanding the scientific, technical or legal ramifications of that one issue than our legislators will ever be.
The otherside of this is that elected officials come to rely too heavily on the opinion of the organizations that they are supposed to monitor and direct. City Councils rely on the City Staff, School Boards rely on the Superintendants and their staffs. The Staff's, in turn often rely on professional consultants who make their business in advising goverment in specific narrow areas of specialization.
This morning, I found the WWW site of the Regional Council of Rural Counties, an organization that acts as a spokesperson for rural countier in our government, state or federal. California's 30 rural counties comprise 46% of the area of California but have only 6% of the population. This latter fact says that they have little power in Sacramento, which is controlled by legislators elected by mainly urban constituencies.
You can find a list of their issues and priorities on their WWW site as a PDF document.
Posted by Wes at September 19, 2005 10:46 AM