“We are going to fight like crazy to get that trooper position back.”
– State Sen. Dennis Egan, in a front-page story in the Chilkat Valley News, Jan. 19, 2017
Did Dennis Egan really fight like crazy to restore the Haines state trooper position eliminated in December 2016 by a trooper bureaucrat?
Maybe, maybe not. But a better question is: Did the Haines Borough Assembly hold Egan to that statement? And if not, why not?
And when Gov. Bill Walker visited Haines last fall, did borough leaders ask him about restoring the trooper position? Or did we tell him we wanted the trooper office restored and ask him what he was going to do about it?
These questions are about more than nuance. They’re about how we fight like cats and dogs amongst ourselves in this town, but when one of our elected representatives come to town, we’re more likely to act like lap dogs than watchdogs. We tend to fawn on them, giving them celebrity treatment and asking them so politely if they could possibly see to funding this or that.
It’s an approach that’s more respectful than effective.
President Franklin Roosevelt once famously said to a group of his supporters pushing a liberal reform: “You’ve convinced me. Now make me do it.”
At the Haines Borough, we never make anyone with a title do anything. We need to change that. Politics in our country is governed by systems. An electoral system decides who we choose to represent us. There’s another system. Let’s call it the “pressure system.” That’s what makes elected leaders do what we want them to do. It’s pretty simple, really.
We apply pressure, through letters, through phone-calls, through use of the media, until our leaders move in the direction we want them to move. Politicians promise all kinds of things. (I know. I’m one of them.) But we often don’t move until we’re forced to. Even with a Democratic U.S. Senate and House of Representatives during his first two years in office, President Obama was unable to make much progress on reform legislation, due to pressure on powerful Congressmen by lobbyists and business interests.
This is how pressure works on the local level. Back in fall of 2016, as a newly elected assemblyman I sought a special meeting to call for a boroughwide vote on the harbor expansion design. Supporters of the existing design packed the meeting, making impassioned arguments against a public advisory vote on the harbor design.
When Mayor Jan Hill broke an assembly 3-3 tied vote, they won. The pressure they put on the assembly worked.
As an assembly candidate, a plank in my platform was to increase borough support for recreation. My assembly colleague Heather Lende and I have been successful in opening the swimming pool on Sunday and making the pool free to youths, but more could be done. A friend who works at a downtown business knows there’s more the borough could do, and she reminds me of that every time I walk in her door.
“I voted for you because you were going to give us more recreation,” she says. “What have you done for recreation?” My friend understands the pressure system.
The pressure system works because elected leaders need votes to stay in office, even our most powerful leaders need them.
Also, high-ranking elected leaders just happen to be our public servants. They work for us. Their generous pay and health benefit packages come from money that you and I provide. It’s time we start treating our state and federal elected leaders that way, instead of as visiting foreign dignitaries.
Alaska’s one Congressman, Don Young, comes to town tomorrow, Friday, Aug. 3. He plans to stop at the American Legion burger feed. That’s likely your best chance to speak with him.
Ask Rep. Young what happened to the middle class in our country. Or what’s he doing to stop our nation’s scourge of gun violence. Or why it is that about one of every four children in our country live in poverty, and that number hasn’t changed since the 1960s. Young has been in office since 1973. A lot of bad things have happened to our country during his watch.
Don’t be timid. Don’t attempt to kiss his ring. Don is a public servant, not a master. He has an impressive title and a fancy office and piles of campaign cash from powerful interests. But he still works for you, and not the other way around. Apply some pressure.