Proposal Not Well Received

Last week the Kernan-Shepard Commission released its report on the state of local government and proposed several reforms to streamline the functions and activities local government. One of the proposals that the Commission made was that the current county commissioner body be changed from a 3 member executive board to a single member executive branch. While some of the Commission’s proposals need to be very carefully investigated in order to make sure we don’t lose the accountability factor in local government, the Commissioner change appears to be one of the better proposals that they offered.

Predictably, some are not excited about the idea of erasing two of the three county executive spots. LaPorte County Commissioner Bill Hagar (D) had some particularly interesting views on subject of a single county executive. In an article in the LaPorte Herald Argus, Hagar was quoted as saying:

“You put one person in charge, you could have a dictatorship,” the longtime commissioner said. “Whoever you put in would be solely a one-party system.”

Dictatorship, one-party system? Two thoughts about that. Thought Number One is that it is odd that some should express concern over a one-party system if we move to a single executive when the LaPorte County Board of Commissioners is made up of three Democrats. Thought Number Two is that it’s hard to conceive of a single executive making up a dictatorship. Under the Commission’s proposal, all legislative functions would be vested in the County Council, so you would still end up having a legislative check on the executive branch of county government.

We do need to be careful, however, that we don’t reform local government to the point of reducing accountability. Having a single county official appoint such individuals as assessors, sheriffs, and other formerly elected positions would provide another layer of red-tape and finger-pointing that the Kernan-Shepard Commission was supposed to look for ways to eliminate.

As Rep. Tom Dermody said in the same Herald-Argus interview:

“We can’t lose the customer service to Hoosiers,” State Rep. Tom Dermody, R-La Porte, told The Herald-Argus last week. “With that said, we have to ask the question of how would you improve the cost to taxpayers?”