Blue Collar Muse

There are any number of excellent politicians who do their job, represent their people and fight to keep citizens alive, free and in charge of their own lives.

Unfortunately,  they seem to be in the minority.  While politicians must be elected by voters, they often balk at being responsible to them.  Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the response by politicians to citizen efforts to force them to be responsible when asking politely doesn’t work.

Take Sullivan County’s commissioners for example.  Since state Sunshine laws make the contents of “meetings” public, the commissioners want to change the definition of what a “meeting” is.  Well, except for John McKarney.  Out of 24 commissioners, his was the only vote to oppose the change.  Thanks, John!

What is it about having citizens informed about all aspects of their representative government that politicians don’t like?  What on earth could be so sensitive and delicate that it cannot be known by those in whose name it is being done?  If citizens must live with the consequences of the decisions of lawmakers, even if those decisions were undertaken in a small “meeting”, why should the contents of that”meeting” not be publicly available?  And when will voters insist on Transparency by voting in elected officials who commit to it and then demanding it from them?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 8:45 am and is filed under Blogroll, Breaking News, Greater Transparency, Individual Responsibility, Leadership, More Liberty, Tennesee Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.