Late for a boring (but crucial) lesson

     Today's meeting of the county commissioners droned on forever, but it was all the stuff of governance. From my vantage point, I get to read the faces in the audience, and it's educational -- almost as informative as, say, a report from the budget director or guidance from the director of planning on the consequences of federal and state mandates on water resource management.
     When you start to talk about water and sewers, the first to fall asleep -- or begin reading email texts -- are the reporters. But they have short attention spans anyway. They like drama.
     I recall an exchange I had with a veteran city editor at the old Baltimore News American when I challenged his decision to remove from the home delivery editions a sewerage assessment story from a Harford County bureau story I had assigned.
    "It's a sh** story!" he roared, defending his destruction of hard work and diligent reporting. "Nobody wants to read a sh** story!"
     I replied that people who just got a big hike in county assessments didn't think it was such a dull story, but he prevailed. He was, of course, the city editor, and I was just a lowly county editor. I did point out that the newspaper would not survive if all it sent to Harford (or Howard or Carroll) County readers were cops and robbers stories in downtown Baltimore, but that was laughed off, too.
     The biggest story under discussion Thursday was the status of a plan for compliance with federal and state clean water rules. At one point, I stopped the report and asked the very capable staffer to put it in terms that the average citizen would relate to. What happens to the couple, or small builder, who has been planning a house in the future? How will these rules affect businesses, who need to comply with runoff when they put in parking lots? What will farmers have to change?
     We no longer live in a world where the biggest environmental decision was to make sure the cows drank downstream and the people drank upstream. In today's crowded, chaotic and increasingly polluted world, everybody is downsteam from somebody's cows.
     And the local elected officials have little say in the remedies. They are obliged to comply, even when the plan is not yet fully formed.
     I found myself wishing that a few of the candidates in the upcoming election were on hand for a primer on what complexities they face. Their rhetoric in the primary campaigns would suggest it's all so easy. I was thinking that they have not yet heard the question, so how could they have the answers.
     Whan the teachable moments were all finished, just before we adjourned, one of the successful candidates came in, looking very earnest in his suit and tie and his portfolio under his arm, and took a seat in the front row.
     Late again, clueless, and so emblematic of the qualities of aspiring leadership.