Who Do They Think They Work For?

I was walking with my buddy and we ran into a mutual friend. We sparked up the usual conversation and then she began to cry

Not just because of an election. Not because of a candidate or that her side lost and someone else’s side won.

It was because she felt invisible. 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 much deeper. It was what I feared would happen. She felt like her voice no longer mattered. Like the 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 part is that many of us know exactly what that feels like.

Over the last year, I have spent more time paying attention to local government than I ever intended. Some people golf. Some people fish. I now apparently developed the questionable hobby of reading agenda packets, then writing it down so I can make sense of it… and watching Board of Supervisors meetings. Then write it all down so I can make sense of it.

It starts innocently enough… We tune in because we care about a road project, a fire station, a budget issue, a proposal that affects our neighborhood or maybe someone voted no to denounce hate crime in our county. Then suddenly we’re three hours deep into a meeting on a Tuesday afternoon wondering how a discussion about public safety somehow turned into an argument about religious beliefs and somebody’s brother is now deciding the fate of the entire LGBTQ community. I mean… What?

The obvious answer is us. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work. The title “Supervisor” isn’t supposed to be a promotion above the public. It’s  a reminder that the public is the boss. The job exists because the people exist. Not the other way around.

Yet somewhere along the way in our county, politics has developed a strange habit. Disagreement is increasingly treated as disloyalty. Asking questions is interpreted as an attack. Criticism becomes something to defeat rather than something to consider. That should worry us because a healthy democracy depends on informed citizens. The moment people become afraid to ask questions, afraid to challenge assumptions, or afraid to speak openly, government becomes easier to manage and harder to hold accountable. That’s why paying attention matters in the first place.

An informed community is difficult to manipulate. The more that we know, the harder it becomes for anyone to shape our opinions with half truths, selective facts, or carefully crafted narratives. I have seen them all. But when many of us don’t know the basics, when we haven’t taken the time to understand the issues for ourselves, it becomes remarkably easy for someone else to do the thinking for us.

History is full of people who gained power not by educating the public, quite the opposite,  by keeping us in the dark and confused. Ignorance has always been fertile ground for manipulation. If we only hear one side of a story, if we’re given only the facts that support a particular conclusion, we’re not being informed. We’re being managed. We’re being manipulated.

That’s why asking questions matters.

That’s why I explain the agenda and the meetings. Maybe I’ll get into the budget. We need to listen to people we agree with AND people we don’t. Challenge assumptions. Be willing to change your mind when the facts change. None of us should want someone else deciding what we believe or how we should feel.

One of our greatest responsibilities is thinking for ourselves.

So the strongest communities aren’t the ones where everyone agrees. They’re the ones where people are informed enough to disagree intelligently.

Part of that requires humility. Having an opinion doesn’t make us right. It simply means we have an opinion. The fact that we believe something strongly doesn’t automatically make it true, and the fact that someone disagrees with us doesn’t automatically make them wrong.

Too often we confuse conviction with fact. We start believing that because we know how we would solve a problem, that must be how the problem should be solved. But communities are complicated. Budgets, public safety, social issues are complicated. Most involve tradeoffs, competing priorities, and information that isn’t always visible from the outside. That’s why listening matters. That’s why good questions matter.

That’s why facts matter.

The goal isn’t to win every argument. The goal is to get closer to the truth. And sometimes that means discovering that we were right. Or it means discovering we weren’t. The healthiest communities are filled with people confident enough to have opinions and humble enough to reconsider them when presented with new information. Unfortunately, that isn’t always what we’re seeing today.

What have I been witnessing?

A resident raises a concern and is immediately assigned to a political tribe. Someone asks a difficult question and suddenly motives become more important than answers. Social media fills us with accusations, assumptions, and character assessments from people who couldn’t possibly know what they’re talking about but seem remarkably confident anyway.

The internet has essentially become a town square where everyone is carrying a megaphone and half the crowd is convinced the other half is plotting the downfall of civilization. The problem is that this behavior doesn’t always stop at the edge of social media.

And unfortunately, our elected officials seem to join the shouting. That should concern all of us.

Because if we wouldn’t tolerate that behavior from a department head, an employee, a business owner, a coworker, teacher… then why would we tolerate it from a person we entrust with representing our entire community?

At some point we all begin asking the same question: Who exactly do these people think they work for?

Public service isn’t supposed to be about winning arguments. It’s supposed to be about serving the people. All people. Not just the people who voted for us. Not just the people who agree with us. Not just the people who show up at the same fundraisers, belong to the same organizations, or hold the same views. All of us.

The people who support them and the people who criticize them. The people who write letters praising their decisions and the people who question them. The people who make life easy and the people who make life uncomfortable. Especially those people.

Because representation only means something when it extends beyond our own comfort zone. That becomes particularly important when discussing minority communities. That principle becomes most important when government is dealing with people who may not belong to the majority or who simply see the world differently than those currently holding office.

June is Pride Month. Whether an elected official personally celebrates Pride Month isn’t really the point. The point is that every resident should know their government sees them, represents them, and respects their place in our community. The same principle applies to every minority group, every religious group, every political group, and every resident who occasionally finds themselves standing outside the majority.

Government isn’t supposed to decide which voices count. Government is supposed to listen. When people begin to believe that some voices matter more than others, the damage extends far beyond any single issue or community.

Once people start believing some voices matter more than others (know that people do), trust begins to evaporate. And trust is a lot like hot running water. Most of the time we don’t think about it. But the moment it runs out, it becomes the only thing we can think about.

Without trust, people stop showing up. They stop attending meetings. They stop volunteering. They stop applying for boards and committees. They stop being involved in service. They stop speaking up because they become convinced the outcome has already been decided.

Eventually they stop believing local government belongs to them at all. And once that happens, rebuilding trust becomes incredibly difficult. That’s a really dangerous road for any community. And in Tuolumne County, where we already struggle with challenges ranging from public safety to infrastructure, the last thing we can afford is a government that people no longer trust.

What’s ironic is that most of us want many of the same things. Which makes the whole thing even more frustrating.

Because despite all the noise, most of us are trying to accomplish the same things. Safe neighborhoods, healthy forests, thriving businesses, good schools, reliable emergency services, and opportunities for future generations. We argue endlessly about how to get there, but we’re usually trying to reach the same destination.

The real divide isn’t disagreement. The divide begins when we stop respecting the people we disagree with. It begins when criticism is treated as hostility. When questions are treated as threats. When public officials forget that public service is not about managing supporters but representing communities.

None of us should expect perfection from our elected leaders. Some are human beings. They’re going to make mistakes. They’re going to cast votes we disagree with. They’re going to have bad days and occasionally say things they wish they could take back.

But we should expect humility and professionalism. We should expect accountability. And we should expect the people who hold public office to remember a very simple truth… The chair belongs to the office. The office belongs to the people. And the people are all of us.

The moment they forget that, government stops feeling like representation and starts feeling like ownership.

That’s a distinction worth paying attention to, no matter who we voted for.