Unelected, Unaccountable Governance

Last week, Pergelator opined:

I’ve been hearing about the clown show in Washington D. C. since forever and I’m thinking maybe we need a different arrangement. Instead of having Congress decide everything, maybe we should hire a manager to actually run the country, the way some city councils hire a manager to run their city. That way the clowns in Congress could concentrate on what’s important to them (which is performing on stage for the public) and the manager could worry about actually running the country. The important part is that Congress would no longer have the power to levy taxes, award contracts or borrow money.

The way the Federal government was supposed to work was that we had a manager type: The Executive, aka the President, who was nominally accountable to the people, executing laws passed by the legislative branch, the Congress. However, it has evolved so that unelected administrators in the Executive branch get to make regulations and enforce them–and they’re barely accountable to the people if the people don’t watch closely the announcements of proposed regulations and raise an outcry when some of the more expansive are introduced.

At the more local level, especially in smaller towns but also smaller cities, where the mayor is part time and the city/county legislatures more parter time, they introduced the City Managers, the chief unelected bureaucrat who ends up serving under various mayors and councils. Who become a power onto themselves, unfortunately.

Here in Missouri, several city managers have recently been ousted by elected officials:

On the flip side, we have a police force threatening resignation when an elected mayor planned to appoint a new police chief: Pierce City, Mo. could have a ‘mass exodus’ of police officers:

”He attempted to relieve the chief of his duties and appoint someone that was not only not qualified, but her moral compass is so messed up that it’s unreal,” Hutson said.

The news story gives no real context to it, and the Springfield media has not followed up to explain who the proposed chief was or what the actual positions this person holds are. This actually follows another local town whose police force resigned en masse last year: Kimberling City Police Department chief, all of his officers announce resignations.

There’s a lot of distrust at all levels of government these days, it seems. And adding unelected authorities to the mix is unlikely to improve trust between citizens and government or even between government entities themselves.

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