An Open Letter To the Commissioner-Elect

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
Published in the Powell Butte View, November 2002

At 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 6, polls will close in Crook County, and someone will become the county commissioner-elect. It was just two years ago that I was in this position, but I have learned much in those two years, and I thought I would take a few moments to share some of those lessons with my new colleague:

Be careful what you wish for: Every judge and commissioner comes into office with the idea that he or she is going to change things for the better. He or she is going to right all the wrongs of the previous administration as he perceives them, often in a couple of months. To a limited degree, you can make change as a county commissioner. There is always opportunity to do things better in government. Nearly 200 people work for you performing 23 separate functions. You are trying to monitor the expenditure of nearly $40 million. You serve 20,000 constituents scattered across nearly 3000 square miles, each of whom has some particular expectation or requirement. In an organization of this size and complexity, some things slip through the cracks, and if you look hard enough, you will find little irritants and problems and situations that can be made better for employees, taxpayers and constituents alike. Just keep in mind that the government apparatus has limited capacity to deal with issues. The number of issues demanding your attention far exceeds your ability to give adequate attention to them all, especially considering that you have to work for a living, respond to your constituents and meet the ordinary demands of a spouse, parent, child and friend. In addition, the government apparatus must carry out its day-to-day functions serving people and performing its mandated functions, and it cannot drop everything else to address your specific interest. Finally, bear in mind that every time you want to make a change, there are hours of unseen effort put in by other people involved in preparing to present the new way of doing things and communicating and explaining it to staff and external customers—hours which will necessarily be taken away from other work. So when you set out to implement your change agenda—which is certainly your responsibility—be careful to pace yourself and to consider fully each time you propose a change whether this change will make a significant enough difference to the people of Crook County to warrant the effort and energy it will take away from other areas of county concern.

Consistency IS a virtue: Somewhere in our careers, many of us encountered the axiom “Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.” In professional development seminars, we are urged to “Think outside the box,” which can be another way of saying the same thing. On the surface this sounds like a great idea. Doing things the way they have always been done seems like a sure-fire way to ensure the continuation of stodgy, unresponsive government more committed to its processes than to the people it is supposed to serve. But the truth is, this is government, not business. Business’ job is to build the better mousetrap and make the world a better place for its clients. Government’s job is to do the same thing for everyone. A government doesn’t have the luxury of serving just the constituents it likes. It must serve everyone. When it works well, government provides a forum where all ideas and points of view, including unpopular ones, receive due consideration and where everyone, no matter how rich or poor, powerful or weak, exciting or dull, receives the same treatment. Elected officials are naturally pulled in the direction of using the government to help the people who put you in office or who share your views—in fact some of them will demand you do so, some more boldly than others. Doing so will inevitably get you in trouble. Everyone is served best by a government which consistently applies the rules to all people the same way all the time. Any business or land owner can tell you that the greatest challenge to his or her ability to succeed is not the nature of regulation, but the ability to anticipate the future. One can plan around even the most stringent rules, if there is fair warning of what the rules are, a certainty that they apply to everyone and plenty of advance warning that they are going to change. To the degree that you can honor peoples’ need for consistency on the part of government, Mr. Commissioner, you will help make a better, more responsive government.

You can’t pick and choose your laws: On January 2, you will put your hand in the air and take an oath to uphold and support the laws and constitutions of the State of Oregon and the United States of America. When you do so, you will be committing yourself to follow all the laws—not just the ones you like. This may seem like an obvious point, but you are going to find that a lot of people are going to ask you over the course of your career in government to simply look the other way when certain local, state and federal laws get in the way of their particular private interests. In the name of efficiency and saving a few pennies or in the name of supporting “local business,” you will be pressured to ignore laws related to fair competition. Those pressuring you will not remember that the laws are designed to ensure that every business that pays taxes has equal opportunity to receive a portion of those taxes back again and that about two-thirds of the dollars you are charged with expending were received not from taxpayers of Crook County, but from taxpayers in the rest of the state and nation. In furtherance of “economic development” and “job creation,” you will be asked to overlook land use laws, building codes and health and safety regulations. Those asking you will be concerned about furthering their own fortunes, not ensuring the welfare of their neighbors, customers and employees. Just remember that if you give in to them, when you are later asked why you didn’t take steps to preserve farmland or open space or why you allowed views to be destroyed or why unsafe buildings or situations were permitted on your watch, the people that asked you to do them this favor will not be standing up in support of you—in fact, they may well be the people in the forefront of the crowd hurling the stones.

It’s all about tomorrow: I suppose the most important lesson that a county judge or commissioner has to learn is to accept that majority rules and unless you completely abdicate your judgment, you’re not always going to be in the majority. Disagreement among elected officials is healthy and should be encouraged. We are all elected, sometimes through the support of different constituencies, to bring our unique points of view to the table. We will not always agree with each other, and sometimes we will have to agree to disagree, reflecting in our split vote a split within our community. But at the close of each Court meeting, we must bear in mind that the next meeting is just a week or so away. It will bring new opportunities to collaborate or to disagree, and in the end no one is served if grudges are nursed or resentment is harbored from meeting to meeting. Politics is always about tomorrow, not yesterday. You will best serve yourself by always voting your true conscience and furthering an environment of mutual respect and looking constantly for the opportunity to build bridges to fellow commissioners which can be crossed together when the next battle comes along.

Serving your county is a wonderful opportunity. I wish you the very best in the next four years.

Sincerely,


Scott R. Cooper
Crook County Judge