Act Locally

Nelda Wells Spears got the Democratic Party nod for her campaign and will go head to head with Republican Don Zimmerman. Nelda Wells Spears...I've heard that name before, I thought. Was she running for the House? The Senate?

Then, I remembered. I talked to her when I needed to get my car registration switched over from Nebraska to Texas. She worked in a cubicle at the Travis County Tax Assessor's office, over on Airport Blvd., over on the east side of the street. You know, just south of 2222. She was pretty nice, took care of me pretty well. I guess she is the Tax Assessor and Marty Toohey of the Austin American Statesman wrote a little article about her. Good on her!

Karen Huber won the Democrat race for Travis County Commissioner and will face off with Republican incumbant Gerald Daugherty in November, according to Statesman staff writer Katie Humphrey. I might have seen their plastic campaign signs up on a couple of lawns. Who knows. I can't think of a reason why I'd remember them.

Rhonda Hurley is winning in the race for a judge seat in the 98th judicial district, Scott Ozmun for the 353rd district, Jim Coronado for the 427th and Carlos H. Barrera for a seat at County Court-at-Law No. 8. We vote for judges? I thought they were appointed by, uh...the president?

If this stuff confuses me - and it does! - just imagine how uninterested an average population, that thinks that Abraham Lincoln was our first president, is. I mean, Tax Assessor-Collector - isn't that an official of Ancient Rome? County Commissioner, the police answer to them don't they? Isn't it abbreviated "the Commish?" And how many judges do we have anyway? Who cares if we vote for one of them - it's not like it's the Supreme Court.

That is how a lot of people feel about all those little County/Municipal and even State elected officials - who cares? They don't really have that much power - it seems much more important for us to to keep up with who is winning the presidential and congressional elections.

Voting for the president and the national legislature, more than we give it credit, is a more abstract action that will have as much effect on citizens on countries abroad as it does its citizens. Most of the our federal monies go to military operations and administration of that self-same federal government. We vote for these people because of how they will regulate taxes, how they will support the environment, how they will handle crime, how they will change the election process. Did you know that a lot of the method of execution of our polls and elections are handled by Ms. Nelda Wells Spears, who works in a little cubicle in a squat khaki building with bad parking on Airport Blvd? The County Commissioner is the most important legal body in between aggressive developers and permission to cut down forested parks for new subdivisions? Not to mention that anybody who has stood before a judge can tell you how much power those little municipal justices have over our society's tactics against crime and its expressive stance on civil rights. Hardly any of the little county trials that land someone in prison or in rehabilitation will ever come close to a Supreme Court docket.

Think globally, act locally is advice with many applications and ironically, one of its most obvious is most often overlooked. While the federal government deserves our attention and participation, the most powerful way for us to govern ourselves is to be active in the municipal governments, the folks who most directly affect our everyday life and who are most likely to listen to us when we have something to say. I mean, heck, they're just right down the road.