Sarah Eckhardt was a misdemeanor prosecutor

I can not say nice enough tings about county commissioner Sarah Eckhardt. There is not glory in the County Commissioner’s court. Each commissioner represents more than 100,000 people. The county government represents all the unincorporated areas, but has almost no authority. They cannot zone. They cannot impose buffer regulations on land fills. Basically they cannot infringe on any property rights. Sarah says that this makes the county government nimble and forces them to work with other government structures. As she puts it “We can’t ram it through. We have to ask.” This statement seems to be typical of Sarah’s conversation with us: cute, highly informative, and accidentally risqué. At one point Sarah told us that she had been a misdemeanor prosecutor, and I could have sworn she said misdemeanor prostitutor.
Before Sarah came we were having a spirited conversation about drugs, gangs, and creative solutions. By spirited conversation I mean that I proposed a ludicrous solution (lets just legalize drugs….all of them) which was shot down by the rest of academy. Pretty much a typical morning at the Campaign Academy..
Turns out our morning was a pretty good warm-up for our lunch. At the end of our talk Sarah presented a common problem that the Commissioner’s court faces: the Travis county health district chose a spot in a low crime neighborhood for a publicly funded rehab center…without consulting the neighborhood. Now, the neighborhood is up in arms insisting that the clinic will lower neighborhood property values and increase the crime rate. Sarah argues the directing non-violent offenders away from jail and into treatment will improve our community. Once again the court will have to navigate the intersection of property rights and the society’s welfare.
When Matt Dowd came to the academy(Acad for short) he told us that he didn’t believe that fundamental change could be implemented on the national level. It needs to begin on the local level. Dowd, always the hippie, pointed out that Jesus and Buddha changed the world without ever traveling beyond a 30 mile radius. At least I think that’s what he said. Anyway, I think Sarah Eckhardt is an example of a person who is at least trying to start change at the local level.