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You can't make a conclusion about the thousands of municipal governments based on your experience with one. I don't know if I'd single them out as particularly

by adrusi 10y ago

You can't make a conclusion about the thousands of municipal governments based on your experience with one. I don't know if I'd single them out as particularly corrupt, but they are very frequently at least one of understaffed, underfunded, incompetant, defunct or corrupt. Whether the municipal governments fail to protect the interests of their constituents because the officials are in bed with some infrastructure corporation or because they're weak enough to get bullied by the corporation isn't really important to this discussion.

pc86 10y ago
Of course it's important. Governments representing a few thousand or even few hundred people are by definition going to be very weak. For the most part any government below the state level is going to be at least three of "understaffed, underfunded, incompetent, [and/or] defunct." When the pool of people you have to draw from is 1,500 (a small fraction of that being those with the time or inclination to run for office) it's unlikely you're going to pull 7-9 people together who have a passion for local governance and are actually good at it. I've lived in several areas of my state and have worked with local and county government extensively, and the statement to which I was responding ("City councils' are probably the most corrupt governing bodies today.") is simply not true. State legislatures are the most corrupt by an impressively wide margin because they're in the sweet spot of plenty of power to cause real damage and not enough real press coverage outside of the political horse race.