Most local government officials are nuts

Actually, I am exaggerating a bit. It is likely that it isn’t most, since in general local government officials in smaller towns are not nuts, but the larger the municipality, the more likely it is that the elected official is a loon with an ideological axe to grind.

Your small-town mayor? Chances are most people know him or her, and if they screw up they will get booted. But as the cities get bigger the more likely it is that the person is elected through the efforts of activists and unions, and the more likely they are to be ideologically motivated nincompoops.

I have arrived at this through a complex formula of: 1) actually paying a bit of attention to the news; 2) having some modest amount of experience with actually dealing with local elected officials and the activists; and 3) watching every numbskull plan these guys have turned to crap.

All anybody needs is 1), plus having a memory that persists for a decade. Every single plan that local elected officials lay out to create their urban utopias turns into a boondoggle. Every single one. These guys spend billions and produce failure, again and again. Partly because spending the billions was the entire point, not accomplishing the stated goal, and partly because their theories of how the world works are pure bunkum.

Add to that the fact that activist groups now own local politicians, and you get pure insanity. Minneapolis has 13 City Councilmen, and recently we had 2 transgender activists elected to the council. What are the odds?

They were there not because they could govern, but because they were transgender. That was their sole qualification–just as that New Hampshire State Legislator arrested for child porn got elected twice despite being a total loon with a long criminal record. Appeal to the right activist group and you get elected. Throw in a commitment to bikes, trains, and hating police and you are a sure winner.

Here in my city of Minneapolis, the City Council hates cars, as is usual with Left-wing activists. So they have come up with a brilliant idea: close streets, advertise the benefits of transit, and encourage people to bike and take scooters around town.

In seven years, Minneapolis transportation planners want 60% of trips in the city taken on public transit, or made by biking, walking or rolling. https://t.co/lhEaDb7PnF

— Star Tribune (@StarTribune) June 24, 2023

This is, of course, insane.

Truly, mind-bendingly insane. Not that they noticed, but the public transit system is awful, unsafe, and utterly incapable of getting most people from home to their jobs or to a grocery store in any reasonable period of time. It snows months out of the year, and temperatures can plunge to 10-20 below zero pretty regularly in the winter. In many neighborhoods, you are taking your life into your hands walking.

And all this is supposed to be reversed in less than 7 years. And one of the ways they will make it happen is simply closing streets. Another way this is supposed to happen is with a really, truly, and completely effective advertising campaign.

In seven years, Minneapolis transportation planners want 60% of trips in the city taken on public transit, or made by biking, walking or rolling.

The effort to achieve that ambitious goal, which is laid out in the city’s Transportation Action Plan, began this month as the city partnered with marketing agency Vision Flourish to kick off the mode-shift campaign called “As You Go Minneapolis.”

“We want to shift people’s behavior and thinking about how to move about the city,” said Amy Barnstorff, a transportation planner in the city’s Public Works Department.

This summer and into the fall, residents and commuters will see social media ads, wraps on transit vehicles and at bus shelters and promotions at Open Streets — events in which the city turns streets into car-free zones.

Those ads will highlight the benefits city leaders say come with ditching the car.

“When you ride the bus, you are free to type, swipe and scroll,” one of the ads promoting time savings reads. “Take the bus and get things done while getting around.”

Crime on our transit system has been rising–serious crimes on Metro Transit conveyances have almost doubled in just a year–and our wildly expensive light rail system is primarily for drug dealers and users these days.

None of these facts matter a damn to our local government officials. They just love the idea of walkable cities, young hipsters on scooters, and bicyclists braving snow piles in 20-below weather. Who cares if you can shop for your family or get from your home to a job in less than 2 hours, and on the schedule the government sets for you?

Another ad promotes health benefits that come with walking or biking.

“Get Fit as you Go,” it reads. “Explore the city as get around the healthy way.”

Only about a third of trips in Minneapolis are taken on active or alternative transportation, such as buses, scooters and bicycles, according to the latest data from the city.

“We have a lot of work to do to reach our goal,” Barnstorff said. “It is a priority for the city.”

I used to joke that elected officials were playing Sim City, experimenting on citizens to their heart’s content. Now it doesn’t even qualify as a joke.

The COVID pandemic put these impulses, which were bad enough before, into overdrive. Elected officials discovered that they could impose almost any insanity on their citizens and they would comply. So they did, and we do. Or we become angry victims who are stuck because our property values have begun declining.

People who can are moving, of course, but the fact is that most people aren’t very mobile.

In the old days, machine politics meant a lot of graft, but generally, city services worked. The new crop of local leaders has been installed not by some business cabal, but by political activists who get a flow of money from the government as grants, and who in turn mobilize their constituents to canvas and vote for the idiots. A relatively sane Mayor or councilperson is a rarity.

Hence the urban doom loop, which one would never have expected in cities like Portland or Minneapolis.

It’s sad, but if you have dealt with local government at the level of a mid-sized to a major city, it is unsurprising. It has been a while since sanity reigned.