The Price of Local Control
An editorial debate on whether Kennewick should adopt a township organizational structure to handle road funding.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
While we can readily appreciate the motives which have prompted the grangers of Finley to place the question of township organization before the voters of this county at the coming election, we cannot bring ourselves to favor the plan. We realize that the people of Finley feel that during the last six years they have not received their share of the district road money. If township organization is adopted all existing rural voting precincts and road districts are automatically abolished and the county must be subdivided by the county commissioners into towns. This would mean that in addition to the three county commissioners, the county assessor, and the county treasurer, we would have 75 township overseers, 25 township assessors, 25 township treasurers, 25 township justices of peace, 25 constables, 25 poundmasters, 25 town clerks, 25 new taxing bodies, 25 sets of books to keep, 25 records to keep, 225 town officers to be paid, and 725 different ideas as to how roads should be built. We believe the remedy for the present evils is not in township organization but in electing capable county commissioners.
“It is an invariable rule that the smaller the political unit the hotter the politics.”
The tension between local control (Finley's desire for autonomy) and centralized county governance remains a core issue in regional politics. The editor’s warning against the 'nuisance' of bureaucratic bloat at the local level captures a classic dilemma of civic organization.
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