BY JAMES WERNICKE
Los Alamos
Los Alamos County Council will hold a work session Tuesday evening, August 18 at the White Rock Fire Station. If you care about how citizens participate in County government, this is a good meeting to attend.
Council wants voters this November to amend the County Charter in two ways affecting boards and commissions. One proposal would allow members to serve three consecutive terms instead of two. Another would eliminate the requirement for political-party balance on most boards, retaining it only for Planning and Zoning, the Board of Public Utilities, and the Personnel Board. The County’s stated reasoning is that term limits can deprive boards of experienced members, while party-balance requirements can make vacancies harder to fill or prevent appointment of the applicant Council considers most qualified.
But is Council diagnosing the right problem?
I have served on the Parks and Recreation Board and Personnel Board, participated in the Inclusivity Working Group, and closely followed the work of several other County boards and commissions. From that experience, I do not believe Los Alamos suffers from a shortage of intelligent, qualified, civic-minded residents, but a shortage of residents who believe participating in County government is worth their time.
Boards and commissions demand hours of reading, meetings and discussion. Members receive lengthy staff presentations, navigate rigid procedures, debate recommendations, and develop work plans while often exercising little influence over the decisions they supposedly advise. If citizens conclude that this process is inefficient or ineffective, declining participation should not surprise us.
Yet instead of asking why people are reluctant to serve, Council proposes making it easier to keep the same people longer and removing a Charter restriction that forces appointments to include some partisan diversity.
Term limits create openings for new residents, new experiences and new ideas. They also force government to continually recruit citizens into public service instead of relying indefinitely on the same cohort.
Party balance restrains the appointing authority. Whatever party controls Council today—or twenty years from now—cannot simply populate every advisory body with people from its own political coalition. Removing that protection may make appointments more convenient for government, but it also removes a mechanism intended to broaden representation.
Before amending our Charter, Council should provide some basic evidence.
How many board seats have actually remained vacant because of party balance? How many qualified applicants have actually been rejected because of it? How many vacancies have resulted from term limits rather than simply a lack of applicants? How many recommendations from advisory boards are adopted, substantially modified, or ignored by Council and staff?
Has the County ever seriously asked former board members why they stopped serving?
A Charter is not an administrative handbook designed to make it easier for staff to manage board members. On the contrary, it establishes restraints on government power and rules intended to outlast the people currently holding it.
If participation is declining because citizens feel their time and recommendations do not matter, extending terms and eliminating diversity requirements will not restore public engagement. It may instead allow government to function with an increasingly small group of participants while the rest of the community becomes further detached from it.
Tuesday’s work session happens to include presentations from two boards. The County’s published schedule lists the Personnel Board and Lodgers’ Tax Advisory Board for the August 18 Council work session.
Come watch for yourself.
Ask what authority these boards actually have. Ask whether their members believe their recommendations influence County decisions. Ask whether vacancies really result from Charter restrictions. Ask what the County has done to make citizen participation meaningful rather than merely procedural.
If Los Alamos has a problem recruiting citizens to serve on public boards, perhaps we should improve the experience of serving before rewriting the Charter to bypass the inconvenience of public participation.