Dark Places in Local Government
Jordan Hedberg, editor and publisher of the Wet Mountain Tribune in Westcliffe, just to our south in Custer County, raises questions and cites examples that seem eerily familiar to the Park County Board of County Commissioners.
Local boards are often run or dominated by people with the same mindset. Having multiple peops on a board of government is supposed to bring out different perpectives, and the board members are supposed to debate the question at hand rigorously. But that rarely happens. …Instead, boards spend most of their time coming to a ‘consensus’ and mindlessly pursuing the agreed-upon uniformity of thought; this is also known as groupthink. …This type of groupthink on local boards means that bad ideas tend to get the full momentum without any thinking taking place. It takes a person with a robust backbone to fight back.
