ALL the talk about the municipal councils gave rise to a new desire to “reduce to size of government.” There is a consensus among many citizens that the Legislature is toooo big and that government services are being duplicated. Common sense tells me that the reduction in government is needed at the state-level (Legislature, delegations and agencies) because many services conducted by the state government can and some are being done at the local level by the mayor’s office and councils. The delegations are also unnecessary when we have municipal councils, just another “political divide.” Surely local government will contribute more if we delete all the redundant services of the state government and allow the local governments to manage these services — so they can fix the real problem, OUR ECONOMY! After all, the whole idea is to make our government more efficient and that doesn’t mean we have to throw away part of the government’s structure.
I discovered an excellent example of the need for reduction in the Legislature when I recently made an appeal to the representatives of Kagman for help with track equipment and clearing a field so we could put a coral track down for our track team to practice on. The amazing thing about it was there are eight representatives for Kagman in the lower house alone. They even have our “single” communities divided up for political power consumption. Common sense should tell everyone it doesn’t take eight people in the lower house to represent all of Kagman (six reps from Precinct 1 and two reps from Precinct 4). I’m not complaining about the reps but the common sense question that everyone should ask is — who do you hold accountable for Kagman when there are eight representatives in the house? Cities on the mainland with over a half million citizens have a better apportionment structure for representation accountability, so why can’t we do this given our small size?
Asserting the deletion of local government by accusing the mayor and municipal councils of being “useless and figure heads” when they were never empowered is a “politically poor” excuse for their demise that shouldn’t pass the common sense test, especially when we know the mayors will become the “local dictator” should we abolish the municipal councils. We must avoid creating the conditions for mayors to become dictators over their municipalities as each executive at all levels of government must be checked by a law making body. The representation of the Kagman community is surely a phenomenon that needs to be corrected for better accountability or we (the people) will continue to be victims of a poor governance system that holds no particular representative accountable at the state level. Not only do we need to reduce the redundant state government services we need to reduce the number of representatives and we also need to do some reapportionment for representation — BAD! One people, one direction for reducing government and reapportionment.

AMBROSE M. BENNETT
Kagman, Saipan