County Government Should Represent You, No one Else

A few weeks ago, reality came home.  I realized that the enemies against whom our president has battled relentlessly since taking office have a presence right here in our beloved county of Forsyth.  There is an agenda pushed here, and for that matter in every county in Georgia and every state in our great country.  That agenda is written into a host of US federal regulations and has been adopted into our state laws.  Its effects silently creep into our daily lives while we routinely take care of personal business, raise families and do those things we deem important.

As we drive home from work to sit down with the family for a meal, there is a noose of control slowly tightening around our necks.  And just know that many of those who operate to cinch it do so unwittingly.  It’s just the system.  Once elected to office, the members of our county commission, for example, along with planners in county government, become actors in that system of control, a system they may even perceive, but likely do not fully understand and certainly do not control. 

Along with the citizens who elect them, all members would like to believe that our local commission, and the population they represent, are sovereign over the workings of governmental purposes in our county.  But they aren’t.  The system is in charge, has its own imparted purposes, and the planners are trained and commissioners operate within those purposes.  The system limits them as to their decisions.  It places curbs on both sides of issues that naturally come before them.  Just like the curbs on a road tend to channel rainwater toward a limited choice of destinations, the curbs in this system operate to channel board decisions ever-closer toward achieving the goals of the system.  And the road with the kinds of curbs I’m talking about eventually take Forsyth County to a very bad place.

Obviously, none of our elected officials intend to take Forsyth to a bad place.  They intend to take it to an increasingly better place.  But as the idiom rings true repeatedly, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.  Eventually, unless our county commission, and unless our state legislators come to understand the system they became a part of when they took their oaths of service, and unless they can successfully overturn that system, over time the system will win and Forsyth County will become what the system requires, just another congested urban area, one packed to the gills with high density housing, one in constant need for infrastructure improvements, all of which vicariously increases demand for accumulating municipal debt.  And now we see before us another school bond referendum, which when passed will place the citizens of Forsyth over $1 billion in the hole, with no plan, not even an alternative to ever pay it off, only one to regularly increase it as times and circumstances require.  That means that children entering K-12 today will eventually be saddled with the debt to pay for their own primary education. 

So just know this: your county commission is there for one purpose, and it is not for the system.  Because you are a member of the public, its members represent you and your fellow citizens only.  Their charge is to advocate and decide for your purposes, not those of developers, not regional commissions, not the Georgia Department of Community Affairs.  You have a life full of obligations, a family, a set of unavoidable factors, unique to you, which inhibit you from being able to represent yourself in local municipal affairs.  That is why in a republican form of government we elect individuals to act on our behalves.  And protecting and promoting the public’s interests, as the public can successfully inform the board of commissioners, is their only purpose.  That is what a republic is, a system in which the public, no one else, is represented in a government designed to do their will.

Understand also: those who run for office do so willingly and without reservation. We can be thankful that they would do so, as we are thankful for all things in life.  But in the final analysis those people you elect to local office have one job.  In a republican government, guaranteed under the US Constitution, the elected board is to represent the will of the people, judged against the rights of lesser interests, and operate to satisfy the public as best God gives them the ability.  The rules they establish and enforce are to one purpose as well, to provide for your interests, as a member of the public, as you would provide for yourself given the opportunity.

And so, when as a tax-paying citizen of Forsyth County, you have a matter that comes before the elected board of commissioners, your claim should justifiably prevail against all lesser claims. When you have a matter before the Forsyth Board of Commissioners, demand that they represent your interests and decide on your behalf rather than the behalves of lesser interests that include business purposes of developers, governmental purposes of regional commissions or even the State of Georgia.  The rights of a property owner are sacred and reckoned in our Constitution’s preamble. They are guaranteed under the 6^th Amendment.  And according to the Constitution, the protection of your property rights is a fundamental purpose for government to exist. 

Next week, I will detail the system our federal, state, regional and local governments have adopted, the purposes of which I describe above.