Indigents Have Been Left Out in Vasquez’s Leaner County

Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez (“Lean Times Demand More Efficient Leadership,” March 27) unintentionally identifies the essence of what ails political governance throughout Orange County, namely that governance has come to mean doing the county’s “business” like a business.

The attitude that government is run best when run like a business is widely shared by elected officials throughout the county. And yet, doing government as one does business is a far cry from the central principles of a democratic republic.

Vasquez identified “efficiency,” “privatization” and “sound business practices” as the imputed goals of county government. Missing from the supervisor’s “vision” for the county in the 1990s are the goals of democratic governance.

What ails Orange County and many of its municipalities is not leaner times, but a participatory life constrained and debilitated by the self-aggrandizing ambitions of elected officials. “Sound business practices” are no remedy for elected officials distrustful and suspicious of public participation in all aspects of local and county governance. “Business as usual” afflicts the county. Its remedy is not more governance like business, but significantly less of it!

Democratic governance is not a business. Business is about hierarchy, authority, the pursuit of self-interest, concern for the bottom line and the imperative to show a profit. Historically, business has been about the few (corporate directors) making important decisions for the many (consumers).

The entire ethos of business is antithetical to the ambitions of democratic republicanism which is about inclusion, empowerment and participation. Democracy’s “bottom line” is the transformation of individual self-interest into the public good. Government as business obliterates this possibility.

MARK P. PETRACCA, Ph.D., Irvine