October 2022

We all love government transparency, at least theoretically. I don’t know of anyone who objects to the Freedom of Information Act, though in practice information can be difficult to obtain; whether it’s from oversight or direct design is sometimes hard to say. On some level transparency is about trust. In practice, transparency only becomes an issue when people don’t like what they see, or when they are not getting any answers at all. Then, the process comes into question. The exploding participation in Two Harbors City Council meetings in the past year is a prime example. A few years ago, Mr. Belcastro (then Two Harbors High School principal) and I began a Parent Advisory group. We thought parents wanted, and had a right to know, what was going on in the school. I wanted to be in conversation with the decision-makers at the school, and I assumed other parents did too. Turns out, not really. It was difficult to convince any parents to invest an hour a month to participate. Most parents, I concluded, are perfectly happy to let the school manage things and are okay with the information they receive. Sometimes, trust is about people. But not always. I have observed a disconnect since becoming better acquainted with elected officials. I’ve noticed that people are not always as untrustworthy as they appear. Sometimes a dysfunctional system can instigate distrust. Yes, someone is behind the system who puts more or less resources into it. So, trust in people is not irrelevant. We need leaders who support transparency and office staff who dedicate time and resources to making it a reality. But it’s not the full story. It is worth asking how much of our distrust in people could be lessened with a better system. According to the website (icma.org), the city of Marion, Iowa, under the leadership of the city clerk, increased its transparency not by electing more trustworthy people but by focusing on three areas of its system. This was not easy, but it wasn’t complic

It is a time of magical thinking. A time of believing in magic. A time where magic will happen to bad ideas, really bad ideas, and turn them into enchanting and mysteriously wonderful ideas that benefit the people who believe in them. Yes, the party formerly known as the Republicans, purveyors of voodoo economic, social and environmental ideas for many decades, are now rolling out a new method of fleecing the uninformed. Just believe in magic. Yes, believe with us and help us get elected and we’ll perform magic and make everything wonderful even as your wages stagnate, your health care is dismantled, public education is forgotten and we screw the environment for generations to come.