For citizens of Prince George’s County, Maryland who take an interest in the complex governmental interactions of and relationships of county government to the park & planning commission, today was the date of decision as to whether Mr. Byrd will be confirmed as Chair of Prince George’s County’s Maryland National Capitol Park and Planning Commission. Having been nominated by the County Executive as is his prerogative under current law, the county’s Council summarily voted the nomination down.
The vote is supposed to be about the qualifications of the nominee. Instead the vote was on the idea that the current executive being term limited should not actually be doing any governing. The county with this decision is remanded to a do not make any decision or make any moves form of government. Somehow because of term limits at some point in the second term a county executive should stop exercising his authority and sit back and let campaigns and their partisans direct the course of government. The idea is that we should make no decisions until the election and that government should be frozen is beyond strange and is the direct result of term limits: what we have in this county is government in pieces and by factions frozen in the status quo. And the next County Executive will face the same problem, and will encounter the same inability to govern in his or her second term.
In Prince George’s County, politics are the dynamic interaction between me and my special interest and you and your special interest, without any attempt to interact with each other. This of course is why we mostly fail to get anything done; we cannot talk to each other and see a common goal. And it reinforces my early posts about how not to win an election in this county. For if you have a detailed comprehensive plan and try to bring everyone together, the embedded special interests of personalities and parochial interests will unite to prevent any support. We are a county about personalities, and any campaign run on ideas is doomed. We never get to the point of discussing the merits or qualifications.
Instead of running the government, our political elite will be focused on running November’s elections. The word has gone out that there is to be no change, no difference, and no movement in government for the next six months. And the up-coming elections will be not about issues and the lack of government capabilities this last year (due to term limits in part) but rather about who can aggregate the greatest collection of personalities and local non-county wide interests.
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