HAVE for the Have-Nots

I have never trusted the power of three. Whether a ménage à trios or a triumvirate, someone is always on top, eventually. The one major exception would be judicial tribunals which are tightly constrained by law and precedent; the very antithesis of a three-headed county commission.

Excluding judicial tribunals and the Trinity, no three-headed executive has ever worked. Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus? Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus? The Committee of Public Safety in Revolutionary France? Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin? In each case, the leadership fell out, to the grave detriment of those governed. Three is a corrosive number, historically, politically, and psychologically, not to mention being the sociological third person in a social group.

I support expansion of the commission from three to five because the substantive change takes the positions away from partisan party politics and relocates them into non-partisan districts. We, the electorate, get lost under a three-headed regime, especially one elected on an at-large basis.

How often have you sat in Commission hearings when only two are present and have wondered whether the process is really as fair as the procedures imply? How often have you observed the appearance of favoritism from what appears to be a core of influence at work? The plausible deniability that supports the current structure does not lend credit to our county. This would not necessarily change with a five-person commission; however the non-partisan nature of the position and local districts would impose an added ingredient, an ingredient that would add a local flavor to how we are governed at the county level.

Richard van Pelt