Politics & Other Mistakes: County lines

First up is Alex Rodriguez. The disgraced New York Yankee is expensive, unproductive and obnoxious. If there were three of him, he’d be a county commission. Except with bigger muscles and smaller testicles.

Next comes Bob of the Bob’s Discount Furniture TV spots. Shuck, jive and bad hair. In most counties, that’s a quorum. And Bob has a cartoon version of himself, something all commissioners should consider. It would add gravitas.

Sarah Palin is our third nominee, because she frequently achieves a county-like incoherence. Such as with this 2010 gem: “I don’t know if I should Buenos Aires or bonjour, or … this is such a melting pot. This is beautiful. I love the diversity. Yeah. There were a whole bunch of guys named Tony in the photo line, I know that.” That reads like the introduction to a county budget. Except, it makes more sense.

Other worthy candidates include Kim Kardashian, Brian Williams, ISIS, Kanye West, Daniel Tosh and the president of France, whoever that might be. Except for Bob and ISIS, all are better looking than the majority of county commissioners, while displaying many of the qualities we’ve come to associate with county government, such as lack of talent, discretion and smarts.

In other words, they’re just who we’d want in charge of our jails. Or occupying them.

County government is the appendix of the body politic. It may once have had a purpose, but now we notice it only when it’s malfunctioning, which is with distressing frequency. Like the organ it resembles (icky, smelly), it should be removed before it causes a crisis.

For a perfect example of what’s wrong with our counties, consider the jail system – although the word “system” implies a level of organization these iron hotels haven’t achieved since former Gov. John Baldacci decided to consolidate them seven years ago.

In the abstract, combining the jails was a decent idea. Back when the lockups were the exclusive domain of the counties, they were inefficient fiefdoms controlled by commissioners and sheriffs more concerned with how much money they could squeeze out of them than with law enforcement or public safety. County A’s jail could be overflowing with prisoners. County B’s could have loads of empty beds. All too often, neither was willing to cooperate to solve their complementary problems.

Baldacci tried resolving these impasses by his favorite method: half measures. Rather than taking away the power of the county bosses and giving oversight of the jails to the state Department of Corrections, he decided the best way to deal with these conflicts was to have no one in charge. He created the State Board of Corrections, which had kinda, sorta financial authority over the hoosegows, but he left day-to-day operations in the hands of the county boobs.

Surprisingly, this awkward hybrid appeared at first to be working. The semi-unified jail network saved taxpayers a few dollars for a couple of years by putting prisoners wherever there were empty beds. But the commissioners and sheriffs no longer benefited from the extra cash their jails had generated housing out-of-county guests. And the corrections board also wanted the windfall the counties got for housing federal prisoners, who paid a premium for vacationing in Maine.

Another problem: The amount counties were required to pay for their jails was capped, with the state responsible for making up the difference. But the difference kept growing, and the state wasn’t making it up. The corrections board had no authority to order the counties to cut costs. And the counties had no ability to squeeze more money out of the state.

Current Gov. Paul LePage hasn’t helped the situation by refusing to appoint members to the board, but he has agreed to give the jails enough extra dough to get through the fiscal year that ends in June. By that time, he wants the Legislature to have drafted a new setup for administering the jails, one that gives both fiscal responsibility and operational oversight to the same entity. LePage says he doesn’t care if that’s the counties or the state. Most legislators, under pressure from local politicos, are leaning toward returning to the old system of county control.

Too bad. Taking the jails away from the counties would have been a fine step toward eliminating counties altogether. Follow up by turning probate registries and courts over to the judiciary, deeds offices to the secretary of state and sheriffs’ departments to the state police. For most of us, that would mean a reduction in municipal property taxes of 5 to 10 percent.

Instead, county government will revert to its former trajectory. Which bears a striking resemblance to that of a drug-addled pop star of dubious talent speeding down the public ways at night with the lights out while drinking booze and wearing sunglasses.

Welcome to Justin Bieber County.

Un-countifying comments may be emailed to aldiamon@herniahill.net.