In the March 1, 2018, issue of the Eugene Weekly, Eugene resident David Ivan Piccioni writes in a letter:
Would you willingly submit to an assessor or auditor regarding all of your proceedings if you were in any kind of public office? You’d have to be quite confident in your character to reply in the affirmative.
It would surely ease your discomfort if you yourself were the one who got to pick who this auditor was. Wouldn’t it? This way, under-the-table arrangements, backstabbing, non-cooperation and other unethical and even illegal business could proceed unimpeded.
Would it be in line with America’s values to, say, appoint a president? Political elections distance us from totalitarian systems such as monarchies, dictatorships and the overthrow of democratically elected governments. Appointments are much more in line with them. Having those who think they are better than the rest make the decisions for all of us as a group seems an earlier stage in human evolution.
The group that wants to have Eugene citizens vote to pick an auditor got about 13,000 signatures. City officials and managers want to be those who appoint their own auditors; that is why they’ve lately been mobilizing towards this with a whopping 80 signatures collected online.
What they want is obvious: Who wouldn’t like to be one’s own police or at least be able to appoint those who police you? This seems obvious from the standpoint of those being watched; but why would citizens, ordinary members of the public, share this desire?
We should all work together and collaborate for a complete and perfect Eugene.