BY JAMES WERNICKE
Los Alamos

We’re constantly told that voting matters. If we’re dissatisfied with our government, we should elect different people. Politicians come and go while the same problems persist. Taxes increase, public services decline, and nobody seems accountable for the results.

So what’s going wrong?

When the County left swimmers with nowhere to swim this fall, I brought Council a practical proposal to use East Park Pool with existing County lifeguards so swimmers wouldn’t have to drive to Santa Fe to swim. The proposal deserved serious consideration, but Council accepted excuses from the County instead of demanding a solution.

If our elected representatives cannot challenge staff over something so straightforward, how can we trust them to oversee hundreds of millions in public spending?

Some Council candidates also seem willing to accept the existing system’s deficiencies rather than question them. When asked what they’ll do about rising utility rates, I don’t expect a magical promise to lower every bill, but I do expect them to demonstrate they can examine alternatives.

If Los Alamos exists to support an extraordinary federal mission, and that location requires extraordinarily costly infrastructure, perhaps we should prioritize using our extraordinary lab-related GRT revenue for that infrastructure rather than extraordinary executive compensation, surveillance technologies, and outside consultants. If our Charter or state law prevents this, candidates should be able to explain why or how we should fix it. Are any candidates even willing to consider whether a transparent infrastructure subsidy would be more equitable than recovering fixed costs through utility rates that disproportionately burden the most vulnerable households and businesses?

When the County increased the GRT rate this summer, they cited declining taxable revenues, but state reports show they have increased. Will candidates acknowledge the burden GRT places on local businesses and consumers? Will they demand the County reconcile its forecasts with receipts and explain why the tax increase is still necessary?

The County also cited its municipal broadband network in justifying the tax increase, even though it previously assured us that it would require no new taxes. How did we get from one claim to the other?

In 2010, REDINet received federal funding to build a regional, open-access fiber network to enable local ISPs to connect 19,200 households and 1,300 businesses. Why didn’t that investment translate into more broadband access for Los Alamos households and businesses and what accountability mechanisms will ensure that these new investments deliver?

These examples highlight the difference between accounting for every public dollar spent and being accountable for spending it well.

So what good is voting if we aren’t offered candidates with character, competence, and accountability?

Will candidates put the public interest ahead of political convenience and institutional loyalty? Can they evaluate evidence, understand tradeoffs, and recognize when something isn’t working? Will they accept responsibility for results and take corrective action rather than making excuses or shifting blame?

We should be looking for these qualities in candidates, not party affiliation.

The two major parties exert enormous influence over which candidates receive resources and visibility in elections. When loyalty and political convenience are prioritized over character and competence, the choices we’re given offer little prospect of change.

Still, voting matters, even when the choices are frustrating. It allows us to express our dissatisfaction with the political system and the candidates it produces, but democracy becomes more meaningful when citizens can do more than periodically change the people in charge.

We don’t need to agree on every policy to agree that government should be competent, transparent, and accountable, and those values do not belong to any one political party.

Simply electing different people won’t achieve better results. Institutions must reward good decisions, expose poor ones, and ensure that elected representatives answer to the people rather than becoming defenders of the status quo.