Plagiarism

Call the RIAA, or the MPAA or the BSA! My intellectual property has been stolen.

In an earlier post (you may have to search through my vast archives to locate it), I had some suggestions for streamlining county government in Michigan. While my ideas have gotten very little interest here in Michigan, only two months after my proposals, the Governor of Indiana established a commission to study the structure of local government in that state. On Dec. 11, the commission released its report. Among its recommendations are the elimination of township government and appointment of county row offices, both my ideas!

If I am forced to be honest, I must admit that those proposals are not new ideas. In fact, many observers of government at the county level have wondered why individuals responsible for carrying out policy rather than making it are elected. The reason why these ideas have gotten more of a hearing in Indiana is because of the degree of confusion in the way counties are governed there. In Michigan counties which lack a county exec, the Board of Commissioners holds both executive and legislative authority. In Indiana, there are two bodies, the Board of Commissioners (mostly executive but not entirely) and the County Council (mostly legislative). Furthermore, while in Michigan people are residents of cities or townships but not both, in Indiana township government is universal. Therefore, the Local Gov Reform Commission's proposals include transferring the duties of townships to the county, replacing the three-member Board of Commissioners with a single County Executive with the authority to appoint officers such as county treasurers, sheriffs etc. (prosecutors would be excluded) and strengthening the County Council by granting it the residual legislative powers of the Commissioners. Of course, not all the proposals are good ideas but instead of going over them one by one I'll just suggest that you read the report, or at least read this summary.

Due to politics, most of these proposals will go nowhere in Indiana. Hopefully, discussing them will make change more likely in other times and places

PS Lest I be misunderstood, I oppose all three organizations mentioned in the opening sentence of this post.

PPS Since this is supposedly a blog about the Korean Peninsula, congrats to the new Prez (he wouldn't have been my pick, but the last guy was and look how well that turned out). Also a warm, fake, 새해복 많이 받으세요 to my myriads of readers. If you don't know why it's fake, you probably don't know what it means anyway.