By David Crossley

This is the election cycle when we Houstonians vote for members of Congress, Harris County officials, and … Who else? Lots of judges, right?

Some of you will step into the voting booth, start looking at the ballot, and think, Oh, yeah, I’ve heard that name before, nothing negative pops to mind, vote for him (usually, him.) This is one reason incumbents stay in office as long as they do, and why governance never really rises to heights people can feel good about.

Feeling good about government makes people go out and vote every chance they get, which could explain why so few people vote. There are big emotional arguments for wanting everyone to exercise their civic responsibility and privilege, but there are also pretty good arguments for not wanting a lot of people to vote whose basic attitude is “Who cares?”

For me, the bottom line in any election is the environment, and by that I mean the place in which we live, which begins exactly where I am and sort of spreads out in all directions. If the environment is not healthy and safe and supportive, particularly nearby, then life generally doesn’t work, so economic development strategies or pothole plans don’t mean very much.

This just seems obvious, selfish, and sensible to me, but I know for some others the core value at voting time is to be sure to vote against somebody who won’t support legislation to make it illegal to criticize cucumbers, or whatever.

So I always try to understand something about the views a candidate expresses or demonstrates about that most fundamental human survival resource. After decades of thinking like that, I’ve noticed that candidates who have some understanding of how the universe actually works and how to work within it also tend to have understanding of a lot of other issues I care about.

I think this may be because any understanding of the universe requires noticing that everything is connected, that systems are extremely complex, that chaos is always at work, that nothing is as simple as it looks, that the laws of physics and nature actually can be seen at play in the interactions of people, and so on. The smart growth movement caught my attention because it was so clearly derived from understanding systems and connectivity. For example, it is a smart growth core observation that division of labor has produced separate bureaucracies that spend money on subjects such as low-income housing that is built on cheap land at some distance from urban services, jobs, schools, transportation, day care, health care, shopping, and all the rest of the needs of daily life, and then another set of bureaucracies has to think about how to get services to those people, and then a lot of nonprofit organizations have to clean up the mess, often using government grants. This, of course, costs the taxpayer and citizen far more than just building reasonable and safe housing inside cities, towns, and neighborhoods where all this stuff is available or can be supported.

This is pretty big-time public policy talk, but it’s a very rare elected official who tries to see all that and act accordingly. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a bunch of those people running the City? And the County?
Which leads us finally to the point, which is how important Harris County elections are and how little attention people in the City pay to them. I remember a Houston City Council member saying to me that Harris County’s basic long-term strategy is to bankrupt the City. As a citizen of Houston, this seems like a bad idea to me.

The County’s plan for the freeway system is a good indicator of this, and if you want to see more, go to the Harris County web site and find the regional plan for toll roads. You will see that nearly every freeway in the region is slated to get a toll road, including one that goes north-south through Memorial Park. One effect of all these toll roads – and roads like the Grand Parkway, which is planned by other Counties in league with Harris County – is to move the region’s tax base outside the Houston City Limits.

So I am clear, as a citizen of the City, that No is the right vote when it comes to Harris County. With any luck, there will be something on the ballot like: “Harris County, Yes or No.” Please be sure to vote No. Unless there’s a ballot issue that says “Do away with Harris County altogether,” and then you should vote Yes.

David Crossley is President of the Gulf Coast Institute, which leads the Livable Houston Initiative. For more information, go to www.livablehouston.org