Local government touches our daily lives far more frequently and far more substantially than many citizens realize and perhaps more than any other level of government. We depend on local government to keep our neighborhoods safe, to educate our children, to operate our library systems, to coordinate our elections and to provide a seemingly endless list of other services.

However, it often seems that our largest local government agency, Pierce County, is also among the most invisible and the most closed off to its constituents.

This could be because much of the policy areas charged to the county generally don't tend to be flashy or tend to spawn the sorts of civic debates that local municipalities and schools districts tend to.

Or it could be because each resident of Pierce County is only represented by one County Councilmember. (Every Tacoman - conversely - is the constituent of four city councilmembers and five school board directors.)

However, this could also be due to the fact that the Pierce County Council seems to often insulate its policy making process from the public. For evidence of this consider when the County Council - comprised of the only full-time, non-executive elected officials in all of Pierce County - meets for their public meetings: 3 p.m. on Tuesday afternoons. 

A time where the majority of working people in Pierce County cannot participate in a public meeting without taking a few hours off of work or using a sick day. It doesn't take a political scientist to realize that afternoon meetings (as opposed to evenings) result in far less citizens attending and participating. Similarly, it doesn't take an economist to know that low-income and working class citizens often hold jobs that are especially difficult to take time off from without being penalized.

That's why Councilmember Connie Ladenburg recently made a motion to change the County Council's public meeting times from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesdays. Voting on her motion has been delayed and it's unclear how the "yes" and "no" voters currently shake out. Hopefully Ladenburg's motion kick-starts not only a move to evening County Council meetings, but also to a more communal culture at our county-level government.