In Dan Walters column today, about county sheriff’s races, he makes some good observations about county governments in general; and in the continuing failure of ours to properly care for the Parkway, we see some historical roots to the problem.
Here is an excerpt.
Dan Walters: Retirement, scandal spark hot contests for county sheriff
By Dan Walters -- Bee Columnist Published 12:01 am PDT Monday, June 5, 2006
A strong argument could be made for the abolition of counties as an anachronistic and irrelevant form of government and their replacement by multipurpose regional governments and/or expanded cities.
The governance structure of California counties was fixed in the 19th century -- five-member boards of supervisors regardless of population, except for the city and county of San Francisco, plus separately elected department heads. And no county boundary has been changed since 1907.
It's unlikely that counties will be changing anytime soon, and perhaps never. So for now we're stuck with them in their current form and that, among other things, means that Californians will be electing or re-electing 57 sheriffs (all except San Francisco's).
That sheriffs are elected politicians, rather than professional law enforcement officers answerable to broader authority, is as anachronistic as counties themselves. Inevitably, it means that their official duties of operating police patrols, running county jails and supplying bailiffs to courts are intertwined with becoming political players.
