Published in the Oct. 24 Leader newspaper.
Hot diggity damn! The esteemed Jefferson County Council has once again raised the county’s profile, edging it closer to a nomination for the Yahoo Hall of Fame.
It did this last week when it turned down a $22,000 grant from the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission to run traffic checkpoints in the county. Sheriff Oliver “Glenn” Boyer had applied for the grant but the County Council had to sign off on it after the commission agreed to the award.
The council, by a 6-to-1 vote, told the state to keep its money.
Or rather, your money.
All tax-paying Missourians, including thousands in Jefferson County, contributed to that relatively small sum. Twenty-two grand will never make or break any county, or any department within a county. That’s not the point.
But there are many points to be made.
The six Republican council members who voted to reject that grant took it upon themselves to not bring back into this county some of the tax dollars its residents had paid for state government. Send it to Buchanan County, they said. Send it wherever you want. We don’t care – we don’t want it here.
They did this, they said, because their constituents had complained about the checkpoints. A couple of the council members said they could have gone along if the grant had paid only for DWI checks. But they didn’t like it that deputies also check for unused seat-belt use, lack of child car seats and other violations.
These Tea Party-flavored, Constitution-thumping members of the council are worried about Fourth Amendment unlawful search issues. These are people who are suspicious of government, even though they are part of the government.
They don’t seem to understand that the council’s job is to legislate and appropriate, not to micromanage departments run by duly elected officials.
The people of Jefferson County have elected Glenn Boyer six times to be their sheriff. After more than 20 years in office, he ought to know by now how to run the office.
But the council, whose senior-most members have been there less than three years and none of whom have law enforcement experience, knows better.
They are making a philosophical statement with this vote. A better way to do that, if they want to control the Sheriff’s Office, would be for one of them to run for sheriff.
If they did, they might become aware, for example, that Jefferson County leads Missouri in at least two deadly categories.
To start with, in a country where 85 percent of drivers wear seat belts, for example, only 79 percent wear them in Missouri.
Within Missouri, Jefferson County leads in the number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities, Boyer said, and the number of traffic fatalities among drivers and passengers not wearing seat belts.
No matter where the statistics are gathered, young drivers are more likely to not use seat belts than older drivers.
Boyer said the most recent traffic checkpoints were designed to address this. They were scheduled early in the day near schools. This was done, he said, in the name of safety and to uphold Missouri's seat-belt law. Seems reasonable.
Republicans used to run as law-and-order candidates, But these County Council Republicans seem to embrace the fear-mongering image of brown-shirted thugs from the Sheriff's Office threatening the "libbities" of non-seatbelt-wearing patriots.
The County Council's decision to get into the law enforcement policy business switches the council from a legislative body to a philosophy experiment.
In the name of making a point, here’s what this one vote did.
â– Refused a return of money paid by Jefferson County taxpayers.
â– Overrode the policy of an independently elected official.
â– Ignored a problem (seat-belt non-use) that flaunts state law and leads to higher levels of injury and death.
â– Makes the county look really stupid.
While it’s a lot of fun to fantasize about being a Founder and how cool it would be to wear three-cornered hats, carry muskets and overthrow tyrants, the reality is we live under a modern multi-jurisdictional government that has evolved over two centuries. It’s worked pretty well most of that time.
Though it’s commendable to spend your time standing for election to be part of that structure, it’s also important to respect it. A county is part of a state which is part of a nation. There are lines of authority and jurisdiction.
Being a county council member does not make you sheriff or county clerk or dogcatcher. To put it in a school setting, that would be like the Philosophy Department trying to impose its will on the math, science and English departments.
Stay in your own room already.
The new anti-government government people seem to believe that philosophy rules everything. If they step on another officeholder’s toes, or spurn a return of constituent tax dollars, well, that’s the price of doing business to justify their made-up revolution.
As much as they want it to be, this ain’t 1776. There is no King George. There are no Redcoats.
There are, unfortunately, plenty of knuckleheads who wish there were. More unfortunately, some of them get elected.
