Questions Linn County voters should ask about supervisors

I have been told the Linn County Board of Supervisors has been talking about adding two more colleagues. Supervisors say the biggest issue with having only three board members is they can’t talk about policies outside of supervisor meetings without violating Iowa’s open meeting law. What is Iowa open meeting law?

Chapters 21 and 22 of the Iowa Code attempt to ensure that Iowa government at all levels is as transparent and accountable to the public as possible. The goal of the law is to guarantee, through open meetings of governmental bodies, that the basis and rationale for government decisions, as well as those decisions themselves, are easily accessible to the people.

What do the supervisors want? To sit behind closed doors, have their discussions and then come to meetings with their decisions made without open discussion?

In reading some of the stories in The Gazette, supervisors talk as if they cannot handle the workload. Let’s take a look at the people Linn County elected to the Board of Supervisors.

Did the people of Linn County elect the right people for the job or is the job that tough?

Is the job full-time or part-time? Are the people elected working full time or do they have another job? Are the people elected qualified for the job? What are the qualifications for the job?

Are the supervisors showing up for work every day, and doing a day’s work for a day’s pay? How do you find out?

Maybe it would be a good idea to find out some of the answers to these questions before the people of Linn County add more supervisors.

Then there is the question of representation.

Iowa Code 331.206 sets out how supervisor districts can be created:

1. One of the following supervisor district representation plans shall be used for the election of supervisors:

a. Plan one.

Election at large without district residence requirements for the members.

b. Plan two.

Election at large but with equal-population district residence requirements for members.

c. Plan three.

Election from single-member equal-population district, in which the electors of each district shall elect one member who must reside in that district.

Does it matter how many supervisors you have for representation or is it more important on how the supervisors are elected for representation?

Plan one means you can vote for all the supervisors in the county and the supervisors can live in any part of the county. They all live Cedar Rapids or all live Prairieburg.

Plan two means you can vote for all the supervisors in the county, with equal population in each district and supervisors living in the district they represent.

Plan three means you have equal population in each district, supervisors must live in their district and the voter can only vote for the supervisor that lives in his district.

Should the voters of Linn County choose a different form of representation?

Should an elected official choose the trip of a lifetime or county business.

If a person is planing for time off for a trip and knows they are facing a budget deadline on the most important responsibility county supervisors have, do you think they could have made a better plan?

What would have been a better option?

Could they vote on the issue before the trip?

Could they vote on the issue after the trip?

Would it be fair to say that anyone who has flown knows how delays and other problems can ruin the best made plans.

At this time you might be wondering who is writing this article. I am one of the many people who signed the petitions and helped get the signatures for a ballot measure shrinking the board from five to three members. I hope in writing this article maybe it will help the people of Linn County to get some answers to these questions.

Some people cuss at the government, some cheat the government and a lot of people don’t think that their vote counts. Stop and think about what the government is and how it came about.

A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community.

So when we cuss at the government or cheat the government are we not cussing and cheating ourselves and our neighbors? And if your vote didn’t count, why do politicians spend millions of dollars to get it? Every vote counts, it’s the one that wasn’t cast that didn’t count. In order for a government to work you need people to come together, work together and treat each other with respect even when they don’t agree.

It’s my hope that the Linn County voters can get the answers to the questions, so they have all the information they need to elect the right person for the job. I also hope they read and study the three representation plans so they select the plan that will give them the best representation. Could it be it that the plan you select, not the number of people, would give the best representation?

Kevin Kula led the effort in 2016 to approve a ballot measure shrinking the Linn County Board of Supervisors from five to three members. He lives in Rogers, Ark.