Speak Up, Jackson County - What Are We Looking For?

We’ve got an important decision coming up in Jackson County, and I’ve been thinking about it a little differently. Forget the names for a minute. Forget who you know, who your family knows, what party somebody belongs to or whose sign is in somebody’s yard.

What are we actually looking for?

If we were hiring somebody to run a business we owned, I think we’d ask some pretty simple questions. Have you managed people before? Have you worked with a budget? What have you been responsible for? When something went wrong, how did you handle it? We probably wouldn’t hire somebody just because we knew them or their family. We’d want to know if they could do the job.

I don’t see why choosing somebody to help run our county should be much different.

Experience matters, but I think we have to look past the number of years. Somebody can have 20 or 30 years of experience, but what happened during those years? What did they manage? What got better? What did they learn when something didn’t go right? Just saying somebody has experience doesn’t tell the whole story.

Then you have change. We hear that word every election. I’m not against change at all. Sometimes we need it. But tell me what you want to change. What will it cost? Where is the money coming from? And just as important, what is working now that you would leave alone?

If somebody is already doing the job, we have something else to look at. We don’t have to go only by what they say they’ll do. We can watch. What’s getting done? What isn’t? How are problems handled? Are questions answered? That doesn’t mean everything that goes wrong belongs to the person sitting there today. Some problems have been around a long time. But it does give us something to go by.

Something else matters to me just as much as experience. How do you deal with people?

It’s easy to work with somebody who agrees with you. What happens when they don’t? Can you listen without getting mad? Can somebody question you without becoming your enemy? Can you admit when another person has a better idea? Can you disagree today and still sit down together tomorrow and get something done?

That matters because whoever gets the job isn’t going to run this county by themselves. They’ll have to work with magistrates, employees, other elected officials, Frankfort, businesses, organizations and regular folks like us. Everybody in that group isn’t going to agree.

I don’t expect anybody running for office to know everything. I’d probably trust somebody more for saying, “I don’t know, but I’ll find out,” than trying to give an answer they don’t know.

Maybe before we decide who we want, we ought to decide what we expect.

Don’t just look at a name. Don’t just look at a party. Don’t vote for somebody because you’ve known them forever, and don’t vote against somebody just because you haven’t.

Listen to them. Ask questions. Look at what they’ve done before and what they’re doing now. Look at what they say they want to do next.

Then make up your own mind.

That’s really what elections are supposed to be about.

Until next week, God bless, and remember: If we want better, we have to do better. Speak up, stay involved, and never stop caring about Jackson County.