Director’s Notes

COLUMN DIRECTOR’S NOTES

YVONNE TAYLOR

As hard as it may be to believe, we are only one year away from another election. While most of us don’t want to face the endless advertising and nasty Facebook posts from people who don’t agree, it IS time to start looking around at how races are shaping up, who is contemplating a run for offi ce, and to start supporting the good folks who want to be elected to work for the betterment of our state.

In recent years, we seem to hear more from people we’ve termed WMDs – Weapons of Mass Distraction. It is a term that applies to those in public life who lob their verbal or written grenades, then duck back and let those who are truly leaders deal with the mess they’ve made.

You are probably thinking of your own local human WMD right now.

The human Weapons of Mass Distraction take a popular position (for example, telling citizens they are overtaxed) but take no responsibility for the fallout: citizens who expect to receive services, but see no connection with the taxes paid.

Somehow, these human WMDs have turned government into the only place where people think there actually IS a free lunch. We aren’t supposed to pay property taxes, we should only pay sales taxes on things we don’t need, prices are artifi cially infl ated because some government somewhere is lining its pockets.

At the same time, we expect ever-cleaner water; better roads; an excellent education for our kids; safe, police-patrolled communities; fast response from our fi re and ambulance departments; convenient air travel; environmentally safe emissions from everything; nice parks; government-assisted economic development efforts; care for the poor; assistance with health care costs; job training; housing assistance; and on and on…

Being a leader is a tough job. We are lucky there are some with the gift of leadership, with the commitment and stamina to try and face down the human WMDs. But the true leaders are, if not outnumbered, certainly outshouted.

When the human WMDs can irresponsibly say anything they think is popular, they get re-elected. When the true leaders have to clean up the mess, and tell us things that are true, but that we don’t necessarily like to hear, it is very hard to get re-elected. Term limits have amplifi ed this in our legislature. The true leaders are not given enough time to develop their skills and knowledge base. Meanwhile, the human WMDs don’t need skills or knowledge to spout the kind of popular nonsense that gets them re-elected.

Now is the time to start looking for true leaders to represent us in our governments. Another group of good legislators is going to fall victim to term limits. We need to look for new candidates with the guts to tell us the truth (hint: these people often have a background in municipal government)!

And once we get a good candidate, we all need to help him or her by calling out the human WMDs who say the popular thing, but can’t back it up with any facts. If reasonable people all shout together, we might just drown out the human WMDs.

Think – if truth in advertising principles were applied to a candidate’s speech, would the candidate be in violation?

When it comes to the upcoming campaigns, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Yvonne Taylor Executive Director yvonne@sdmunicipalleague.org