BELLINGHAM, WA (MyBellinghamNow.com) – Simple fact: we need and deserve both. In recent months, it has become apparent that we may have less of each than we should.

Some readers may not see any difference between those two words. However, for those of us who engage in the political world on a nuanced basis, these are distinct yet interconnected aspects of our form of government. My simplified definitions are:

Governance: The process by which rules are created.

Government: The structure that implements the rules.

Certainly, there are times when the Venn diagram overlaps, but in most situations, the separation is apparent. Certain elected bodies in our region have a bad habit of introducing “11th hour” pieces of legislation on the agenda. Recently, this happened again at the County Council meeting closest to the 4th of July. The day before the meeting, three incredibly robust and important topics were added to the agenda.

In my opinion, introducing items the day before a meeting is not good governance. It does not build trust with the public and other stakeholders.

Each of the three topics added could warrant a separate editorial. The first was a conversation about repealing the Healthy Children’s Fund, which was approved by the vote of the people two years ago. (Full disclosure: I was one of three names in the Voter’s Guide endorsing the initiative). This situation highlights bad governance—initiatives tend to be a less satisfactory form of policy. We have seen this repeatedly, especially when new structures are being proposed. With the current initiative, we have an initiative trying to repeal a previous initiative. Messy? Yes. Allowed? Maybe.

Bad government is reflected in that “maybe.” The authors of the current ballot initiative should not have to guess whether their process is correct. Similarly, a home builder shouldn’t have to guess whether a proposal will pass building codes, but not the fire code. Our government should be working for the stakeholders, and it often seems it is not.

An assumed issue with the current initiative is that it was supposed to be, or should have been, a referendum altering a previous initiative. This should have been caught by one or many government staff members engaging with the team. We need our government to work effectively, and good information, along with a bit of customer service, would go a long way in creating that good government. All of this falls back on our elected officials through good governance.

As a chamber of commerce, I often consider the notion of a “sane center.” This perspective encourages a great consensus and hopefully works to include the most people in solutions. Our members sit along the entire spectrum of political preference. It is my hope that our elected officials can begin to govern more from that sane center perspective and get to outcomes with most people being satisfied most of the time.