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Lots of government, little progress

A recent article in the OBSERVER got me thinking about how government at the state and federal levels has become so intrusive in our lives. The article told how it had taken the town of Pomfret four months to get the necessary permits to cut the mass of weeds filling the center of the roundabout at Routes 20 and 60. Think of it, these were just weeds. Nothing was going to be constructed nor was the circle going to be made into a square or anything else.

Prior to the building of the roundabout the state Department of Transportation never told anyone about needing permits to cut weeds but apparently when the town found out they complied and filed applications for the necessary permits. Then it took the DOT four months to issue those permits.

I can see this scenario being played out in Albany during those four months. First the applications lands on the desk of a bureaucrat who has the job of aging weed cutting applications one month.

They stamp it with a received date and exactly one month later it goes to the bureaucrat in charge of aging the application for the second month and so on down the line to the fourth bureaucrat who at the end of four months stamps the applications “approved” and finally issues the permits and thinks to himself, “there is nothing like a well-aged application.”

A friend of mine experienced another example of bureaucracy run amuck. For 10 years he worked in customer service for a large and very intrusive and meddlesome federal agency where he and others manned telephones making account adjustments. These customer service representatives depended on a computer system installed during the John F. Kennedy administration and as one would expect the system was prone to crashing. However, because senior management bonuses were partly based on the number of calls answered, during these crashes “customers” were kept waiting on the phones for long periods only to be told when the call was answered that they could not be helped at that time and to call back. Apparently, few “customers” took it well.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s recent decision to ignore a Supreme Court ruling overturning a portion of New York’s gun law requiring a reason for requesting a concealed carry permit, so well explained by James Lisa in Monday’s OBSERVER, is another example of government over reach. Here we have a women surrounded by her State Police body guards signing legislation placing ridiculous restrictions on the right of law-abiding citizens to protect themselves. This shows not only her ignorance of the situation but also her dismissive attitude toward the citizens of New York.

Another problem with government is that despite the intent by our founding fathers that elected officials would serve for only a limited time as a civic duty and then return to their normal lives for many in both state and federal legislatures these positions have become careers. Many get to the capital with the best of intentions pledging to represent those who elected them but in the heady air of a state or federal capitol they find they are important people who are courted by special interest groups who assist them in writing bills and contribute to their campaign funds. Sometimes those who elected them get lost in the shuffle.

How do we make our representatives more responsive to our needs and less responsive to special interests? I hate to say it but because humans are so human when it comes to retaining power, term limits may be the only effective way. This might help to break the close relationship between legislators and special interests and the distortions those relationship make on legislation.

Next governmental bureaucrats must be responsive to the needs of the citizens they serve and less responsive to the needs of the bureaucracy. This accountability exists in the private sector and it must also exist in government.

Over the years I have come to believe that the best government is the government that governs the least and allows citizens to go about their lives without unnecessary intrusions by government.

Keep in mind that in ideal world governments are created to protect their citizens’ rights and their persons, to regulate our borders and to represent us in foreign lands.

Beyond those reasons for a government, we should be very wary of government intrusions and attempts to acquire more power.

Thomas Kirkpatrick Sr. is a Silver Creek resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com

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