Fremont County is large, diverse, and filled with opinions, or “talk in the 10.” “Talk in the 10” is an opportunity for you, our readers, to articulate and share your thoughts about what is happening in the community with the community. Letters may have been edited for clarity and length, but generally have been published exactly as received. The views expressed in the following are solely those of the author. Send your letters to our editors by emailing opi[email protected]
Dear Editor,
Have you ever sent a message to any of your elected officials, council members, or State legislators and received a reply? If you have, count yourself fortunate. I have sent several emails to our WY State legislators and the only one I have ever received a reply from is Senator Salazar. Nothing from the others, not even a canned reply saying they had received an email. Sad to say the same holds true for my local council members. The only person who has ever taken the time to reply is Mayor Gard, not even a reply from the council members from my own ward.
Try it sometime. I had my brother in upstate NY try it as an experiment and he has never received a reply. He’s given up.
What this tells me is that our elected officials have become too comfortable in their positions. They’ve been in office a long time, everyone knows them, so getting someone with a fresh perspective on things in office is hard. I’m sure a lot of young folks with good ideas and plenty of ambition think it’s a waste of their time to try and run against someone who has been in office a long time. I urge those folks, if they are interested in helping their community, to run for office. It’s not a waste of time. We have people getting re-elected just because theirs is the only name on the ballot.
This is another reason we need a Convention of States, to get things done that our elected officials in Congress won’t do for us. Things like a Balanced Budget Amendment and Term Limits. If you don’t know what a Convention of States (COS) is or how it works, I urge you to read up on it and ask our Wyoming legislators to vote to support it. One of the big things a COS does is level the playing field between the states with big populations, like NY and CA, and states like WY. Every state in a COS gets one vote, no matter how many people live in the state.
But even our own State of Wyoming hasn’t voted to support a COS. Now ask yourself why, it’s because once again our own legislators are too comfortable in their positions? People will say Term Limits are bad because they force a good legislator out of office after his term is up. I say Term Limits not only allow us to put another good person in office, but forces a bad one out.
It may be too late this year, the primaries are over and elections are just around the corner, but if you’re interested in doing something for your community, have some fresh ideas and don’t like the way things are currently being done, now is the time to get started.
Let me leave you with a quote from John Stuart Mill, “All it takes for evil to triumph, if for good men to do nothing.”
Martin Cannan