The buck ran a red light through the Butte community

Frontiersman editorial board

It can be unbearably frustrating to be involved in government, whether you're paying your taxes or serving as an elected official and making policy decisions. What may be most frustrating is that it's often a case of good intentions gone awry.

People hoping to change their communities, to see that the needs of their neighbors and community members are met, take the leap, run for public office and win because they swear to work toward those goals. Then the understanding sets in that the path of government is cripplingly slow, filled with easy exits from difficult problems and, appropriately, steered by people with such broad viewpoints as to make agreement on important issues difficult at best. Laws that could have changed a community or at least got them on the way to change, are transmuted into a gray, ineffective mush that helps few, but gives the politician a banner to wave at reelection time. Or -- and sometimes for the best of arguments -- the attempts at change simply fail.

Such was the case at last week's Mat-Su Borough Assembly meeting, in which assembly members turned down a plan to use lapsing funds to give the Butte community a satellite Alaska State Trooper office. It wouldn't be fair, they said. Each community would want a satellite office and they'd be forced to refuse additional trooper coverage for some, due to lack of adequate funds to go around. Besides, they said, every community has crime problems. And the borough doesn't have police powers -- paying for additional trooper coverage could be construed as paying for a borough police officer to cover one area of the borough. Besides, why should the borough be paying for police coverage that is supposed to be provided by the state? Why isn't the state stepping up to the plate and doing its job instead of passing the buck to local communities? Using borough money to provide that stop-gap coverage would only show them they don't have to fulfill their duties after all.

While those arguments may be valid, they do nothing for the Butte community, who deal on a weekly basis with erratic, illegal behavior, much of which takes place on borough land. Bullet holes pock the sides of homes, families playing in their yard are forced to duck for cover to avoid stray bullets and fire service area volunteers were recently unable to search the area for a missing teen, due to excessive unsafe shooting.

Yes, the state bears the responsibility for public safety in Alaska. But as a landowner, the borough shares responsibility for unsafe action taking place on its land. While the assembly takes a stand to show the state it won't bend, the Butte community is forced to continue ducking for cover. By claiming they're not responsible, but swearing to study the matter, the assembly just passed the buck one level further -- to those who have the least power and the fewest options.