I just spent several days speaking on behalf of cities in Washington.  I now understand what gridlock means. I met with many representatives and their staffs some of whom I had not visited before. My colleagues from the Florida League of Cities and I speak about issues such as the continuation of the interest deduction for municipal bonds, changes in the National Flood Insurance Program and the claw back provisions in FEMA de-obligation. A bit inside baseball for most people but each of these issues have a direct effect on your pocketbook.

I was surprised to learn that many of our federal representatives do not think tax reform or much else will be passed this session. While both the White House and Congress are in Republican hands, there is not a unified vision that is shared.  Everyone is open to making a deal if the basis of the deal requires no compromise on anyone’s part. The losers will not be those in Washington but the American people.

We are seeing the same inability in Tallahassee. There, we have the Speaker of the House and the Governor, both Republicans, trading insults instead of doing the business of Floridians. Your ability to lead and accomplish something is directly tied to your willingness to work with those with whom you may not agree. There are principles that should not be compromised, but that does not mean that anyone who disagrees with you is your enemy.

This problem is worse as government is more and more removed from the people. In the past 80 years, power has migrated to Tallahassee and Washington. They have taken bigger and bigger shares of our tax dollars while increasing taxes in general. So because those centers of power are so removed from the voters, the voters become less and less relevant. Special interests, lobbyists, and campaign contributors are important for the continuation of federal and state leaders in power.

Is the world more complicated that it was in 1789? Absolutely it is! But fundamentally the founders’ ideas for our country were correct. Washington is trying to do too many things that our governmental institutions were never meant to accomplish. The state governments hate when Washington dictates policies and saddles them with unfunded mandates. On the local level, we have both the Feds and Tallahassee dictating to us. They believe they know more about our needs than we do.  This is ludicrous. Governmental power needs to be exercised as close to the citizens as possible rather than the way we now are governed.

If we expect to have good government then allow the people to decide what should be done. The federal government should only do those things which the constitution expressly allows.  The state needs to stop mandating and assuming that what a legislator in the capital believes is all that matters. Someone from Tampa should not tell the citizens of Stuart how to govern their city.

What does it matter to the legislature whether our municipal election is in March, July or November? Why should they care whether we charge a fee of $5 or $500 per business in our communities? Our citizens will tell us what to charge through their input and at the voting booth. Washington and Tallahassee should stop taxing us so much in the first place only to have the funds be re-distributed after they take their large slice. We wouldn’t need a supposed tax cut if those in faraway capitals didn’t take our money in the first place.

Power is a corrupting force. As a politician goes up the food chain, he is more and more removed from citizen input. A legislator or congressman, governor or president no longer has that tug on his/her sleeve of their neighbor in Publix. Their world is made up of lobbyists, corporate lawyers and union officials. They only speak to other elites. Their grasp on the everyday plight of their constituents is a distant memory.

If you truly want America to be a country that our founders envisioned, our president, governor or congress person won’t get us there. The power we have bestowed upon them is much too much for any one person to exercise responsibly. America is a nation of villages, hamlets and towns. The more that we can govern on that level, the better all of us will be.