I went to bed angry last night. I made the mistake of reading journalstar.com before I hit the sack. It was there that I first heard about the
City Council's shameful actions. It wasn't their vote -- saying no to the proposed concealed carry ban -- but the method that ticks me off. Long story short, they told Lincolnites to buzz off. They don't need any input from us lowly citizens.
Let's be clear here, there is one justification for their actions. If the Council was so convinced that next week's public input process on the proposal would be a waste of time, if they were 100% certain that their vote would be nay, and that any public discussion would be worthless, the members would have an argument for shutting down public input. But it would be a weak argument.
The City Council's action yesterday was shameful. It sent a powerful message: the Council knows what's best for Lincoln, and they don't need to bother hearing the whinings of the proletariat. It's a message City leaders have sent before, and it's one Lincolnites need to stop putting up with. Such a message represents a reversal in the understanding of who works for whom in this town. It is a power grab.
I don't care about the vote itself. Concealed carry is mostly a symbolic gesture. Permitting it or banning it is more about saying something about the Second Amendment than it is about achieving anything practical. That's not what angers me.
What angers me is that the City Council dropped a big turd on the democratic
process. Process matters, moreso at the local level than anywhere else. If a citizenry cannot participate in local lawmaking, how can they be expected to feel like they have a voice at any level? How can they have any sense of efficacy at all?
The public input phase in local lawmaking is mostly done out of routine, not because it actually changes lawmakers' minds. So skipping next week's public input probably won't make a bit of a difference in the final outcome. But that isn't the point. The point is that allowing Lincolnites to speak publically would have made them feel good, about themselves and about their cause. And about participating in democracy at the local level. The cost to the City Council of letting the public speak? A couple hours of boredom. The cost to the City Council of cutting off public discussion before it could begin? An immeasurable loss of trust, not only in the Council, but in local government generally.
Remember last year's City Council election that supposedly shook things up? Wrong. It's the same old City Council, making the same elementary mistakes.