Remember when the Milwaukee school board was considered so dysfunctional because of its continual battles and bickering? Today, Milwaukee’s school board is pretty united and a paragon of civility. The direction of board is unlikely to change in the April election, and it is a safe bet Michael Bonds will be chosen as board president if he wants it.
The state legislators, who criticized the Milwaukee school board less than a year ago, who pushed for mayoral control of the school system, find themselves in an elected body far more dysfunctional than the school board ever was. Since I have been on the school board, I don’t ever remember us voting members to be in contempt of the board. No one shouts “Shame” to other board members (although I admit I wanted to once or twice.).
I’m not trying to trash other units of government or to blindly defend our school board. After all, it is only a matter of time before the school board faces another round of crisis and conflict. Rather I wish to point out that such conflicts are inherent in any democratic system.
History keeps repeating itself. It wasn’t that long ago that Milwaukee County faced a pension scandal. Citizens for Responsible Government, a forerunner of the Tea Party movement, ran petition drives to force several county supervisors out of office. And to a great degree, they were successful.
But some of the new supervisors elevated to office were simply awful, the public figured that out, and many of those supervisors were replaced in the following election. If recall elections take place this time around for state senators, I hope that much more effort is put into finding qualified candidates to replace these elected officials.
Business leaders often look to elected bodies and are perplexed. They can’t understand the inability of elected officials to get along and make decisions. But they forget that, in the board rooms of corporations under stress, those meetings must get a little heated. No hot words in the boardrooms of the three major auto companies when they were about to tank? The major difference is that the public’s business is done in public. Private companies do their business behind closed doors in private.
The most efficient form of government is probably a benevolent and wise dictator. Unfortunately, history shows that there aren’t many of them around. Instead we have to rely on democracy – and that is always inherently messy.
