The Mid-Region Council of Governments... a quasi governmental agency made up of indirectly elected officials. The members are actually elected officials from regional governments like the City of Albuquerque, The Village of Los Ranchos, Bernalillo County, etc.
MRCOG was the brain child of the New Mexico Legislature and its "intent" was to create a body where regional governmental agencies could meet and create a coordinated policy for things like transportation.
The concept sounds good, but in practice MRCOG and other quasi governmental agencies simply serve to provide cover for elected officials. In fact, it's not unusual for the appointed members representing to send alternates rather than attend themselves even when they're deciding to spend $350 MILLION in "stimulus" money.
A week ago, we talked about the "common sense" that broke out over at MRCOG when the body's Metropolitan Transportation Board (MTB) decided that fixing the I-25/Paseo Del Norte interchange was important enough to make it a priority for Obama's borrowed money (read it here).
The post started a bit of a brouhaha in the comment section about which governments sent representatives and which of their elected officials felt that spending $350 MILLION wasn't worth their time.
We got our Eyes on a copy of the MTB Action Summary from the June 25th meeting. We found that indeed the three members from the Bernalillo County Commission (Commissioners Armijo, De La Cruz, and Wiener) were not present and didn't feel that $350 MILLION was worth sending even an alternate.
The City of Albuquerque was well represented with Councilors Cadigan, O'Malley (Chair), and Benton attending personally. Councilor Sanchez sent Tom Menicucci, and Councilor Harris sent his policy analyst Isaac Padilla.
We won't bore you with the rest of the guest list but suffice it to say that even with the alternates they just barely had a quorum (read the action report here).
Attendance is just one of the problems. MRCOG is just one branch of a bureaucratic canopy that gives cover to the politicians below. They decide how to spend hundreds of MILLIONS of taxpayer dollars in virtual darkness with little or no public comment and with little public scrutiny except for a press release, a post on their website, and a short story in the Journal - all talking about the wonderful job MRCOG is doing spending our money.
Another little issue is one of representation. Sure the members of MRCOG are elected officials, but not every taxpayer has one of their representatives on the committees that are making decisions that cost each of us and in this case... our children.
Last we checked we fought a war about taxation without representation. Of course, that was 233 years ago since that time governments and politicians have gotten a whole lot more creative when it comes to taxing us and hiding their involvement.
Unfortunately, there are far too many cogs in this governmental wheel - all of them working together to reduce the accountability of our elected officials.
------ Another Thought -----
Our contention is that these quasi governmental agencies largely fly "under the radar" and receive little public scrutiny. One indication of just how little the public pays attention to cogs like MRCOG is that in the two meetings that we have action summaries for, there wasn't a single member of the public who made a single statement... not even Geraldine Amato.
Ms. Amato - the Queen of Public Comment - spends most of her time at city hall extolling the dangers of "international banking conspiracies" to the City Council and their County Commission counterparts. If you've ever attended a meeting of either body, you know who she is.
The fact that not even Ms. Amato speaks out at MRCOG meetings shows just how hidden the body's activities are. Of course, now that we've pointed it out meetings at MRCOG may be getting considerably longer.
3 comments:
Why are you giving the Commissioners a pass? If a Commissioner cannot make it to an MRCOG meeting, the others can be an alternate. They never attend MRCOG meetings. The County is the only governing body that casts less than half of all votes they have the power to cast.
The County is a joke. They cannot even do half of the work that is currently required of them. The City Council does three times more work than County Commission and Commissioners are paid three times as much as a City Councilor.
Why would Commissioners ask voters to quit when they are not able to meet the requirements of an easier job?
As for Amato, she only attends meetings that are on tv. If the MRCOG was televised, she would be there yapping about our overloads.
Ditto the TV comment. You NEVER see the public comment nutjobs at meetings that aren't televised.
LOL, for sure!! "banks are cartels....." whatever....
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