Trego's Mountain Ear

It’s a bit of a challenge to have perfect laissez-faire capitalism in a county where three quarters of the land is owned by the government.  My grandmother spoke of a time when cabins on private land were burned – she believed – by Forest Service employees.  I don’t know whether she was correct – but early Trego had its fair share of Wobblies (International Workers of the World), and, after the 1917 Strike that shut down the woods, making sure that there weren’t places to live may have made sense.  If I had to join a union, I’d prefer the Wobblies  (https://www.iww.org/ ).

Still, we have a great example of a planned economy in Lincoln County.  Under laissez-fair capitalism, the market makes the decisions about how things are done.  In a planned economy, politicians and government employees make the decisions.  In Lincoln County, the green boxes and landfill problems we are encountering have been produced as part of a planned economy.  The politicians have been our county commissioners, and the government employees involved work for the county health department.

Generally speaking, across the world, planned economies have failed.  Red Foxx may have described it best when he took on the role of Mao Tse Tung and said something like: “Comrades, I have good news and bad news.  First the bad news.  Our Great Leap Forward has stumbled.  Our Five-Year Plan has fizzled.  In two more months there will be nothing left to eat but horse manure.  Now for the good news: there isn’t enough of it to go around.”

In 1854, Dr. John Snow took the pump handle off the Broad Street well pump, stopped a cholera epidemic, and provided the first justification for powerful public health departments (you can get more details from UCLA’s public health department at John Snow and the Broad Street Pump: On the Trail of an Epidemic .  We’ve had a similar situation in South Libby Flats in the sixties, where shallow wells and septic tanks spread disease. 

Consequently, we’ve been blessed with health department employees that tend to regard the public as their enemy and greet every opportunity to increase their department’s power with open arms.  After all, they knew that they were the best and the brightest. 

The green box and landfill situation pretty much demonstrates that their training neglected economics.  A contracted garbage truck shows up at Trego, empties the green boxes, then hauls the garbage 90 miles to a landfill near Libby.  It wasn’t a problem when the health department folks developed this plan – Lincoln County was rich with PILT (payment in lieu of taxes) funds from timber harvests, and the small tax increase they needed was affordable.  This sort of problem inevitably occurs when the smartest kids in the room aren’t. 

To be fair, the Hoop didn’t make the decision to have one large landfill in Libby and to task garbage trucks with the never ending road trip.   To be fair, it was a predecessor that ignored the fact that Lincoln County would be giving a monopoly with legal protections against competitors.  To be fair, it was the County Commissioners who trusted the health department and voted their recommendations into the harsh reality we face today. 

Still, to be fair, it was at the end of 2018 when the commissioners passed Ordinance 2018-05 “AN ORDINANCE TO CONTROL COMMUNITY DECAY WITHIN LINCOLN COUNTY AND ESTABLISH PROCEDURES FOR ITS ENFORCEMENT”.  As near as I can tell, it was written by the Hoop’s health department with enforcement planned by the same folks that wrote the law.  Our sheriff’s department requires POST certification – but it looks like the health department folks are so much smarter that they can enforce laws without any such training. 

“Administrators make work for each other so that they can multiply the number of their subordinates and enhance their prestige.” ~ C. Northcote Parkinson

Unfortunately, the folks who pay the price for failures in Lincoln County’s planned economy are the taxpayers.  Our county commissioners tend to be voted out after a single term – and the folks in the health department tend to continue until retirement or death removes them.  That can be a lot of mistakes for the taxpayer to cover.

The landfill and transportation decisions that led to our 3 day per week garbage pickup came from the health department.  Their planning seems to be no better than Red Foxx’ joke about Chairman Mao.  We can vote out our elected officials – but the health department employees will still be there when the new commissioners come on board.  And they will still be coming up with more plans.