Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Perhaps the worst form of government is by committee. The problem is that councils and board appointments have vague accountability, especially if they're tenured. Also, often there's some kind of commission that must vote on an action, or worse, a group with legislative authority but no ability to decide anything, like Freeholders. It's unclear where responsibility lies behind the semi-anonymous faces; even elected committee members are only a little more identifiable and responsibility still cannot be determined by regular people, certainly not your average non-partisan voter. Compounding this is some unelected and unknown City Manager who does whatever they want and no one is the wiser nor can do anything about.

This plays out at the local level as mayor vs. city councils, both against the City Manager; school superintendent vs. school boards; advisory panels, civic project boards, and interstate committees. Their power is absolute but so diffuse that overcoming momentum is virtually impossible, and after all the deliberations, commissions are little more than a rubber stamp for decisions already made by behind-the-scene elites. Often this is intentional subterfuge, and how legacy bureaucracies get such power; manifesting in the “Deep State.”