While I’m taking some holiday time off, we have a good group of guest columnists to fill in the blanks. Some are still on the job, some are retired. They come from different agencies, and different places.

Today’s contributor is involved with non-partisan politics in a D.C.-area jurisdiction, where he and his colleagues put aside personal requirements to get the job done. That’s a example the members of Congress could learn to follow.

He writes:

When Mike asked me to write a guest column piece, I asked him if he had any specific topics in mind. Mike told me to go for whatever was on my mind, so here goes.

As federal employees, we work subject to the laws and bills that our elected officials on Capitol Hill pass. Of course. the goal of those laws and bills are to provide the basis of services that each resident of our great nation should expect while providing for the common defense of our way of life. While we don’t expect a perfect product, a product that may require tweaking over time, the expectation is not what we have experienced over the recent past — hamstrung through inaction.

As many of you know, in addition to spending the past 40 years in the IRS, I am involved in non-partisan politics in my city of 25,000 located just outside the Washington, D.C., Beltway. After spending 17 years as an appointed official on the City Planning Commission, I have spent the last 18 years as an elected councilperson. The current City Council includes in addition to me, a retired D.C. Court employee, a self-employed attorney, a Maryland state government employee, and an employee of the Prince Georges County hospital system. In our city, the City Council is the legislative arm of government, developing and passing all manner of laws and funding bills — much the same that Congress is expected to do. However, by our charter, the City Council must enact an annual city budget to pass to our mayor by the end of each June to fund the city operations for the next fiscal year that begins July 1 following. The same time constraints exist for the city multi-year Capital Improvement Program. During the budget cycle, each of the five councilpersons must engage continuously with the other four council members and often the Mayor and his staff to timely meet those deadlines. While there has been “spirited discussion” on various issues over the years, the council and mayor’s office has approached each issue with an open mind, putting personal requirements aside to do what is best for those that put us in office, each and every city resident, and our employees.

While I know that the issues facing those on Capitol Hill are more complicated than those issues that we deal with in our city, the basic requirements to put aside personal requirements, engage the other decision makers and arrive at a decision that is best for all of our nation do not change. We live in the greatest nation of the world. We work together in each of our offices to get the job done; our expectation of those that we send to Capitol Hill is that they will do the same.

Happy holidays and a productive New Year for all!

— Michael R. Leszcz

NEARLY USELESS FACTOID:

Compiled by Michael O’Connell

The only apple that is native to North America is the crabapple.

Source: University of Illinois Extension

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