Local Yokel Politics

When you’re a new person in a new place you have to accept that some things will be different. If you have moved to a rural area you need to be prepared for a certain lack of sophistication at times. In such circumstances it’s a good idea to keep your comments muted and avoid being too critical. No one wants to hear a recent transplant spouting off how things were so much better in the place where he or she came from. In Florida that sort of attitude on the part of newcomers from the north gave rise to bumper stickers suggesting that if they thought things were so much better up north they should go back there.

So I will begin this post by diplomatically saying that there are many things about the Fannin County government that are good. It’s very efficient at things like maintaining roads, cutting roadside grass beside the roads, and clearing fallen trees from roads. In fact, you have to say that it’s got this road thing down. Furthermore, based on the fact that I have no complaints, it’s obviously good at many other things that local governments do. To its great credit, it has a very low tax rate, particularly by Florida standards, and it has not raised taxes in many years. (Of course, another way to look at that is maybe the taxes were too high to begin with.)

But in other respects, the Fannin County government is amateur hour or, as the title of this post suggests, local yokel politics. There is, unfortunately, much that is hidebound, backward, insular and unsophisticated about the government of this county.

For instance, the county has a website but, unlike virtually every other website in the world, it does not have a “contact us” button to enable you to send emails to county officials. Nowhere on the website are there any email addresses for county officials. I didn’t even know the county commissioners and county clerk had email addresses until I picked up their cards at the county government center.

The website does have a phone directory page so at least the county has embraced some communication technology above the level of smoke signals, semaphore and the telegraph. Let’s see, the telephone was invented in the 1870s so that only puts the county 140 years behind the times.

What is amazing to me about the lack of an email contact feature on the county’s website is that every book I ever read on creating a website emphasizes the importance of having a “contact us” feature as part of the website. It’s generally covered no later than Chapter 2. Why be on the internet unless you intend to use the internet to facilitate communication? It’s kind of like having a business brochure that doesn’t list your phone number.

Not that listing the commissioners’ email addresses would be much help. I tried to email the commission chairman four times over the last four weeks and each time my email has returned with the following error message: "Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable." Now you would think that after four weeks the chairman would realize that he was not getting any emails and get the problem addressed. You might say, “Well, maybe he doesn’t use email.” However, if that’s the case, why does his card list an email address at fannincountyga.org?

While this example may seem petty to you, I think it is emblematic of the fact that Fannin County has one foot on the 21st Century and the other foot somewhere in the 1950s.

The latest head turner from the county commission has to do with the public comment portion of county meetings. This is the portion of the meeting where citizens can make comments to the commission. I told you last year that the commission chairman had promulgated a rule that forbids “political comments” by citizens. I can’t begin to describe to you what a blatantly unconstitutional restriction of free speech that is. Numerous U.S. Supreme Court cases have emphatically held that government may regulate the time, place and manner of speech, but not the content of that speech. Hell, even a fifth grade civics student should know that. But not, apparently, our commission chairman or the county attorney because the rule still exists.

It gets worse. At the last meeting the chairman prohibited public comment on a range of topics including any comments critical of the local newspapers. Unbelievable.

Look, I love living here, and I recognize that I need to adjust to the fact that they do some things differently here. But this latest demonstration of local yokel politics makes me think that I’m living in some two-bit banana republic.

Is it enough to stir me to take some action? I haven’t decided yet. On the one hand I thought my battles were behind me. The great flywheel of righteous indignation that drove me once has slowed. On the other hand, I don’t know if I can just sit around without at the very least throwing in a snide comment or two.

You know what’s really ironic? Just last week the commission chairman’s picture was in the papers showing him signing a proclamation declaring it to be Constitution Week. It’s too bad he never took the time to read the damn thing.