County Over Country: Keeping an Eye on our Representatives

Please note: the word "representatives" must always be said with air quotes.

Surveillance makes people squirm, especially politicians. During the off-season, we will play that game, too.

We are setting up our “County Over Country” watch-dog initiative. From the smallest, most rural KY towns to the largest counties, these guys and gals need to be monitored. And they need to see our smiling faces while we watch.

There’s clearly back room dealing, hand holding and {ahem} favors at the state level. How else could they have ignored us so blatantly en masse??? There’s just as much if not MORE at the local level where, historically, NO ONE is watching.

THIS is now where our presence and influence can be most immediately felt. MAFA-KY needs your help!

The basic plan:

1. Go to public meetings & watch.

2. Specifically interested in LOCAL town, city & county meetings: City Council, County Fiscal Court, Board of Education.

3. This it not about confrontation. It’s about quiet surveillance, perhaps a note taken now and then. The meetings are certain to be long and boring, usually with nothing to report except for the occasional blockbuster announcement (usually something They tried to slip past us). This is 100% about watching.

The how

Thinking 3-12 people for a surveillance team, each team will manage their schedules/watchers. One county or several counties could work together. Ideally you have enough watchers to switch off meetings. This way:

• no one is attending every meeting and slowly losing their sanity;

• it provides fresh eyes & different perspectives on each meeting;

• new faces at every meeting shows them there are a lot more of us then there are of them;

• and we are not going away.

Bonus Benefit: take your older kids to the meetings so they can see exactly how it works!

To Begin

To launch this project, we are starting with Fayette County. We need the dates of 3 monthly meetings: the Lexington/Fayette City Council, the Fayette County Board of Education, and the Fayette County Judge Executive’s Office/Fiscal Court.

I searched for Bath county meetings and, even in my rural area, found enough info online to call and verify meetings dates/times (fyi, at least half of the online calendars were wrong so don’t depend on those). The entire action took less than 30 minutes including phone calls.

We have a volunteer gathering the info to coordinate the Fayette County surveillance team. Can you gather this info in your county? Hit reply and let us know!