420 Warrior
Well-Known Member
Recalls are in style in Shasta County this season - as faddish as Oregon Ducks T-shirts and speculation about when Mt. Shasta might open for skiing.
But you know, for fear of minimizing the importance of college football and snowboarding weekends, our democracy is serious business. It deserves more than flavor-of-the-month treatment.
Yet that seems to be what's driving recall notices served by medical-marijuana activists against Redding City Councilors Rick Bosetti, Patrick Jones and Francie Sullivan and Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko - and reportedly in the works against county Supervisors Les Baugh and David Kehoe.
Hey, it seems to be working in Shasta Lake against Dolores Lucero, where a recall drive qualified for the ballot late last year. Why not use this handy tool more often?
Well here's the deal. The voters choose their representatives - hopefully folks with brains and judgment who share their constituents' basic values - and hand them the job of weighing the competing interests that add up to the public good, then making their best call.
Are they always right? Most certainly not. But aggrieved citizens have ways to challenge what they think are bad decisions - in particular the courts and the referendum, both of which medical-marijuana activists are pursuing to reverse recent votes by the Redding and Shasta County that they think are too restrictive.
The judges and the voters' signatures will speak, respectively, for the law and the public will on this issue.
But the recall - another weapon in the people's arsenal to fight back when our institutions go astray - is directed not just at a particular decision, but at a person.
It can make sense when an official's conduct in office is so egregious, so contrary to the public good, that there's no resort but for the voters to cop to a mistake and try again.
After nearly two years' of Lucero's abuse and disruption, Shasta Lake's citizens found they'd had enough. But David Kehoe? Tom Bosenko? Both have enough community respect that they ran unopposed in their most recent elections.
All the supposed recall targets but Sullivan ran on their records in 2010 and were re-elected. Nothing they've done since suggests they've misused their offices, abused the public's trust, or otherwise given the voters reason to seek a do-over.
They just cast votes some dedicated activists don't like - or in Bosenko's case, just supported the county's plan.
It's a free country. Everyone has a right to gather signatures. And there's nothing wrong with protesting when citizens think their representatives have gone astray.
But in our view - and, we'll bet, that of the vast majority of city and county residents - nothing these officials have done is even close to recall territory.
News Hawk - 420 Warrior 420 MAGAZINE
Source: Record Searchlight (Redding, CA)
Contact: letters@redding.com
Copyright: 2012 Record Searchlight
Website: Redding Record Searchlight
But you know, for fear of minimizing the importance of college football and snowboarding weekends, our democracy is serious business. It deserves more than flavor-of-the-month treatment.
Yet that seems to be what's driving recall notices served by medical-marijuana activists against Redding City Councilors Rick Bosetti, Patrick Jones and Francie Sullivan and Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko - and reportedly in the works against county Supervisors Les Baugh and David Kehoe.
Hey, it seems to be working in Shasta Lake against Dolores Lucero, where a recall drive qualified for the ballot late last year. Why not use this handy tool more often?
Well here's the deal. The voters choose their representatives - hopefully folks with brains and judgment who share their constituents' basic values - and hand them the job of weighing the competing interests that add up to the public good, then making their best call.
Are they always right? Most certainly not. But aggrieved citizens have ways to challenge what they think are bad decisions - in particular the courts and the referendum, both of which medical-marijuana activists are pursuing to reverse recent votes by the Redding and Shasta County that they think are too restrictive.
The judges and the voters' signatures will speak, respectively, for the law and the public will on this issue.
But the recall - another weapon in the people's arsenal to fight back when our institutions go astray - is directed not just at a particular decision, but at a person.
It can make sense when an official's conduct in office is so egregious, so contrary to the public good, that there's no resort but for the voters to cop to a mistake and try again.
After nearly two years' of Lucero's abuse and disruption, Shasta Lake's citizens found they'd had enough. But David Kehoe? Tom Bosenko? Both have enough community respect that they ran unopposed in their most recent elections.
All the supposed recall targets but Sullivan ran on their records in 2010 and were re-elected. Nothing they've done since suggests they've misused their offices, abused the public's trust, or otherwise given the voters reason to seek a do-over.
They just cast votes some dedicated activists don't like - or in Bosenko's case, just supported the county's plan.
It's a free country. Everyone has a right to gather signatures. And there's nothing wrong with protesting when citizens think their representatives have gone astray.
But in our view - and, we'll bet, that of the vast majority of city and county residents - nothing these officials have done is even close to recall territory.
News Hawk - 420 Warrior 420 MAGAZINE
Source: Record Searchlight (Redding, CA)
Contact: letters@redding.com
Copyright: 2012 Record Searchlight
Website: Redding Record Searchlight
