A woman cried while talking to me recently. Not because of an election. Not because her side lost and someone else’s side won. She cried because she felt unheard.

As she talked, it became clear that she wasn’t upset about a single vote or a single policy. What she was describing was something deeper. She felt like her voice no longer mattered. Like decisions had already been made before the public ever walked into the room. Like participating in local government had become a strange ritual where we line up, speak into a microphone for three minutes, and then watch the train continue down the tracks exactly where it was already headed.

The uncomfortable truth is that many of us know exactly what that feels like. Over the last year, I’ve spent more time paying attention to local government than I ever intended, and one question keeps coming back to me: Who exactly do our elected officials think they work for?