Beaufort County Commissioners: We Are a Republic! | Eastern North Carolina Now

Commissioners Promote the Obvious: Local Government is You

    Tip O’Neal, former Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States Congress from the ultra liberal state of Massachusetts, would often remark at critical junctures, “All government is local.” Ultra conservative Beaufort County Commissioner Hood Richardson echoed that same belief in an agenda response, at the commissioners’ September 16, 2009 General Meeting, to a written request from Beaufort County citizen Mary Alsentzer, which requested that Beaufort County fundamentally change their process of governing.

    In Summary, Mary Alsentzer had presented at the August, 2009 Beaufort County Board of County Commissioners’ General Meeting a communiqué admonishing the commissioners, and the county manager for not comporting themselves in a professional manner and running a meeting, which often were contentious.

    Citizen Alsentzer thought it would be a better, more productive meeting if the county manager would limit the board’s discussion to issues that only affected the county, and that commissioners should adhere more to a county manager controlled meeting, especially if the county commissioner chairman was unable to keep order at the meetings.

    Flash forward to that September, 2009 General Meeting, when Commissioner Richardson put the one month previous Alsentzer admonishment on the commissioners’ agenda for a honest discussion of its merits, and to state for the record his views on Citizen Alsentzer’s request. Some my have considered that this discussion would have digressed into a Hood Richardson “grandstanding rant,“ but what actually transpired was an over 20 minute discussion (no debate) between the commissioners, where each commissioner, irrespective of their political persuasions, gave their opinion of what they believe their role is as a Beaufort County Commissioner.

    In this regard, Mary Alsentzer’s opus provided two remarkable purposes: She provided a fertile platform, whereby the commissioners, en masse, could school some of the public, at large, that do no understand the republican form of government that we all enjoy, and she did bring the commissioners together, on this issue, in a manner that only the Beaufort County Board of Education can do. Unlike, the local board of education, who has chronically made abhorrent decisions, and then sues the county commissioners / the Beaufort County taxpayers to compensate for their ineptitude, Citizen Alsentzer’s maxim struck at the heart of an issue that has interested me since I became a commissioner back in 1994. How do we, as a society, educate our population to understand how government works, and how they can make better decisions as participants, and to the extent that they elect people to represent them?

    I have developed many potent ideas over the years, but I will not engage in that discussion at this time. I will, however use the balance of this article to allow for a number of the commissioners’ comments that, at least on some level, demonstrates that they actually get it. In conclusion, I pray that a greater number of our citizenry will get it, and take their government more seriously, by becoming more involved on some level.

    Hood Richardson began, “Ms. Alzentzer felt that we should limit our speech on the county commission, and we should allow other people to make decisions for us: Among those are the chairman, who should decide what is government, what is county government, and what is discussed before the public. The manager should decide what we discuss, and it sounded almost like royalty, and we overthrew royalty about 300 years ago. And we overthrew royalty in this country, and did that because we did not one person telling us what to do. We decided that we should all be part of government and that we should all participate in a our government, and to that end formed a government that we have a Republican Democracy, which means we elect representatives to make decisions for us.”

    Commissioner Richardson giving a civics lesson to Beaufort County, and in particular, Mary Alsentzer.

    Commissioner Richardson continued, “Stan Deatherage very well put it when he said ‘county commissioners are on the front line of government,’ We are really the broadest base form of government. We can take up about any issue we want. If you understand the constitution in its original intent, you would know that the Federal government was designed to be the most limited form of government, and that was the case until about 50 years ago, when liberals bowed to their special interest, and broadened federal government to better control all of our lives.”

To be continued.