Elected Officials Ignoring Voters and Calling Them Names. Why?
Arrogance, distain, and disconnected seem to be the new norm.
We are having BIG problems with city/township council members, county commissioners, and legislators moving counter to the wishes of the citizens.
Deuel County was having issues with Applied Digital working behind the scenes to construct a data center that the citizens did not want. It took legislative action to override decisions county officials made that were out of line with the citizens’ wishes. More recently, this small county had to resort to a referendum to keep a natural gas power plant off productive farmland. Codington County is having issues keeping a battery storage facility out of a farming area. Mitchell is overwhelmed by what appears to be significant TIF (tax increment financing) grift. Rapid City had to use a referendum to stop a $125 million TIF subsidy for a low-wage amusement park. Then there was the grandaddy of them all, the statewide CO2 pipeline fight where shell companies from all over the country were trying to take farm land by eminent domain and citizens had to resort to a referendum to stop the madness.
Sometimes the disconnect is so great, that elected officials seem completely tone deaf. In one case, a legislator and his wife started a private and public name calling campaign after constituents asked for help when the representative voted in favor of a grossly overpriced prison building that did nothing to solve the recidivism problem (it’s much worse now) and started bragging about the harmful decision on Facebook. No one is sure why the representative and his wife were so insensitive, but the posts were very unnecessary. Interestingly, the representative’s solution was to call in “reinforcements” to get the citizens to “shut up”. A personal apology and some effort to make a correction would have gone a long way toward diffusing the situation. Why that wasn’t an option to the elected official is still perplexing to many people.
Then there is the reality vs. the supposed reality. Not surprisingly, voter sentiment appears quite different from the rhetoric put forth by the elected officials, their financiers, and the teams of public employees that run our governments. In Sioux Falls things reached an all new level recently when Mayor TenHaken started calling people who questioned his dictates C.A.V.E. men. It is not only degrading, but most people think it is a bit crazy to call people who have worked in Silicon Valley and attended high profile universities names.
After all this irrational behavior from Deuel County to Sioux Falls and Rapid City to Mitchell, one wonders what is really going on with our elected officials and what it will take to get decisions aligned with the wishes of the citizens.
Here’s a Sioux Falls story (republished with the permission of Sioux Falls Buzz) that does a good job of summarizing the disconnect.
“In April and May I had the honor of talking with thousands of people in our City (Democrats, Independents, and Republicans). Here are some of the key concerns:
Data centers - This is a hot topic. A lot of people are angry about a lack of transparency and what appears to them to be a pay to play scheme (having Kristi Noem’s son-in-law involved in negotiations and approvals). There is great worry about impacts to health, property values, living costs, and government control. In addition, people are on edge because no disclosures on the data center type or occupant were required before a zoning change was made by the City.
TIFs (tax increment financing districts) - People don’t understand how they really work, but people “know” they aren’t as advertised. Otherwise, they argue, taxes would go down and instead the City is always saying they need more money. A number of voters suggested the confusion about how TIFs really work is intentional. People also are concerned, because TIFs do little, if anything, to support small businesses. In some cases, it looks like the City is using TIFs to create competition and take companies out of business.
Low Wage “Economic Development” (i.e. wage suppression) - It is obvious to almost everyone that this is a disaster. People aren’t opposed to immigrants, but they are opposed to companies bringing people to Sioux Falls and paying them such low wages that they and their family members are in poverty and the citizen taxpayers have to pay for their food, housing, and medical care (and specialized public schooling). In addition, people are quick to tell you it isn’t okay to lower wages for people who live here and put them into poverty.
Low income housing - There were many good conversations on this topic. Almost everyone believes there is something wrong with wages. When you talk about low wage economic development and how it is used to suppress wages, people become angry.
High density housing downtown - Not one person mentioned wanting high density housing there. Several people talked about using tax money for downtown projects at the expense of everyone else.
Senior Citizens - This group is worried about lack of police support especially for traffic issues, public safety (including issues with electric scooters), and cost. They don’t want the City spending so much that taxes go up all the time. And they don’t want to have to move out of their homes because they can’t afford to live there. Not one person mentioned high density housing downtown.
Crime - People are very concerned about the crime situation. They expect the city government to get it addressed. Blaming it on the state isn’t working. Spending a pile of money on public safety and having an F crime rating is making people stressed.
It’s interesting that most of the candidates for mayor and city council seem afraid to talk about these issues. Does it have something to do with their financial backers? Are their backers making money on TIFs, data centers, low wage economic development, or cycling people in an out of prisons? Something related?
One has to wonder what is going to happen in the runoff elections. Will the people who make it into office be free to think for themselves?
What’s your guess?”
The last two questions are salient. Is anyone really representing us?
It worked for Lee Schoenbeck for a lot of years. In the election cycles that he polled too poorly to win, he'd just "retire" and sit out a cycle or two until people had forgotten what a douchebag he was -- and then he'd run again.
Over the last hundred years, or more, our elected leaders have become more concerned about fulfilling what their financial backers want than what their constituents want. Sadly, it has become almost impossible to win an election without spending an amount of money surpassing most countries annual GDP. Personally, I think that there should be a realistic cap on campaign spending, but, like term limits, it will never happen. Why would lawmakers vote for such things? There's no incentive for them to do that. While our country is rooted in democracy, it isn't a Democracy. It is a Constitutional Republic. We vote for people to represent us, and our vote is supposed to be their most important concern, not just before being elected, but after being elected too. That second part is becoming less true. A very wise person once said, "It's easy to tell people what you're going to do, but it's much more important to tell those same people what you've done.". Let me ask you, which of those two things are more true for the people, or person, you last voted for?