LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: Municipal roles...

One of the things that’s become apparent as my team and I have covered certain civic issues over the past few months is that there is a lack of understanding in the communities of Grant and Adams counties about which municipalities — cities, school districts, counties and so forth — do in the big scheme of thing.  

Most everything in the Columbia Basin relies on a variety of partnerships with cities working with counties on infrastructure projects; school districts working with county staff to monitor their budgets; or port districts working with chambers of commerce and the local economic development group to maintain business opportunities for communities. Generally, one of the partners takes the lead, usually because legal requirements make that lead entity bear the repercussions of failure.  

Over the next couple of months, my team will be working on some explainer stories that we hope will help clarify how some of these things work. With important issues like homelessness, library services and property taxes all in the mix, it’s important that we go back to basics — for ourselves as much as for our readers — from time to time. A newspaper’s basic responsibility is to inform readers. Much of the time, that includes setting up a consistent vocabulary for the conversations at hand.  

Each municipality has its own role in our daily lives. Each has a cost that is covered through taxes. Each has regulatory requirements from both Olympia and Washington, D.C. that it has to meet.   

A city, for instance, has some specific responsibilities. Those are laid out in the city’s charter, but also outlined in Washington and federal law. For the most part, the city is supposed to take care of law enforcement, infrastructure such as roads and water management within city limits and several other responsibilities.  

As residents, it’s easy to assume the city handles the economy as part of its major responsibilities. While city government does what it can, that’s not one of the main responsibilities for your city council and city staff. It can regulate certain things, such as the building code, to ensure a clean, safe place for businesses to thrive, and it can consider tax breaks to attract businesses on a case-by-case basis. But it’s not the lead entity for that. It’s one of the partners. In Washington, the lead role is often the port, the local economic development organization or the local chamber of commerce. It depends on what the specific action being considered is.  

Understanding who does what in each situation is important so that residents can know who to not only hold accountable, but also who to give kudos to when they’re earned them. 

Much of the time, we also have situations wherein a local district shoulders the blame for decisions made in Olympia or D.C. A good example are the requirements placed on law enforcement that wouldn’t allow them to make certain arrests during the pandemic and for some time afterward. The authority of the sheriff or police chief isn’t absolute, with legislation at the state and national levels regulating how they enforce the law, and in some cases, if they can enforce certain laws at all.  

Sometimes the requirements are murky. Local law enforcement working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for instance, isn’t as clear-cut as most of us think it should be. If it were, there wouldn’t be court cases nationwide trying to determine how it all should work and what the limits are. Local ordinances, state law and federal law all weigh in on the issue. The debate of states’ rights is in there and, frankly, we’ve been working on that issue in excess of two centuries now.  

The paper isn’t going to be able to clear up every bit of confusion on what municipality does what and who has which authority. What we commit to doing, though, is making sure you have the pieces of the puzzle that help you ask the right questions and have a civil, educated discussion about the issues of the day. Our country was founded on the notion of such conversations, and it’s the duty of journalists to facilitate such. 

As always, thank you for your readership and the opportunity to serve the Columbia Basin community. 

R. Hans “Rob” Miller
Managing Editor
Columbia Basin Herald
Basin Business Journal