In today’s edition of “Outside the Beltway,” where we semi-regularly post state and local stories of either conservatism at its best, or liberalism at its worst, we find conservatism at its best.
Dennis Lennox recently ran and was elected as the Cheboygan, Michigan, Drain Commissioner. His platform? Eliminating the job altogether. See, it turns out that Michigan law mandates that counties, such as Cheboygan, that have over 12,000 people must have a drain commissioner. The problem? Cheboygan doesn’t have any drains to regulate. So Dennis Lennox, realizing the absurdity of this situation, ran for the position so he could fire himself. He has chronicled his path towards smart government reform on his blog firedennis.com.
Dennis recently got halfway towards his stated goal. The Cheboygan Board of Commissioners voted in February to abolish the office. Now Commissioner Lennox is lobbying the Michigan legislature to amend the state law to only include counties with over 35,000 residents in the mandate, and would empower smaller counties to make the decision for themselves. As the Jackson City Patriot put it: “For all of this, Lennox gets our praise for displaying common sense. No wonder he is about to get booted from political office.” We concur.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuBAHkfWV5Y&feature=related[/youtube]
