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Senator Kurita wants to make a change

Rosalind KuritaAround the end of March/begining of April, our representative in the state senate, Rosalind Kurita, placed a survey in the Leaf Chronicle and said she wanted to hear from her constituents. One of the items in the survey was changing the state’s constitution to allow the constitutional officers to be elected in a public general election. Tennessee state constitutional officers are Secretary of State Riley Darnell, State Treasurer Dale Sims, and Comptroller John Morgan. I have not meet many people who know who they are, much less if they desrve to continue in their constitutional capacity. The constitution states that it is the legislature’s job to determine if these people are doing there job adequately; I mean they are in the best posistion to know right?

She correctly states that Tennessee is one of the few states that still has the state legislature elect these officers. Kurita has sponosored a bill every year for as far back as I can remember wanting us to decide who the best person for these jobs should be, and the bill has never gotten out of committeee. This year Kurita got the bill out of committee.

Each year when I hear that she is proposing to have us elect these constitutional officers, I write her, friends, family, and the local paper expressing why I think this is bad idea. This year is no different, see my letter below:

Senator Kurita,

I would like to comment on your persistent attempts to change the way Tennessee elects its Constitutional officers. In past years, I have had letters published in the Leaf Chronicle against this idea and have not talked to anyone that thinks this is a good idea.

Tennessee’s constitution was designed so that the legislature would elect the constitutional officers, contrary to the clip they are playing on NPR this morning where you state they are “selected” by the legislature. The legislature is in the unique position of working with these officers on a daily basis. The legislature is designed by the state constitution to be the authority to determine if they should remain in or leave over these position

Having Tennesseans vote on whether the constitutional officers are doing a good job is assuming that Tennesseans know if they are doing a good job. With extremely low voter turn out in all elections, especially local elections for not well known positions, this idea would not seem to be prudent and definitely would not ensure that the best person for the job is selected because our knowledge base to elect them much smaller than the legislatures.

Turning the trusted positions into popularity contests hurts Tennesseans in a number of ways. First, it means that the officers (which work year ’round) would have to take time away from performing their duties and run a campaign. Secondly, Tennesseans could lose long term institutional knowledge that we have come to rely on. Can you imagine if William Snodgrass would have been defeated by lesser qualified candidate? The state government and Tennesseans would lose an immense amount of institutional knowledge that over the years proved very important over the decades Mr. Snodgrass served us.

Please take on your constitutional duties as assigned by our fore fathers and continue to internally ‘elect’ (not select) these officers for the good of all Tennesseans that rely on you and the legislature to make good sound decisions for us based on your unique, elected position.

As far as the other items in the survey, I am pro taxing cigarettes (as a former smoker) with the proceeds earmarked for our underfunded education system. By the way I am also for the state taking on the funding responsibility and relieving our local school boards of that problem. I think if we are to provide free community college tuition to students, we should first fully fund all college under the current formula.

And lastly I do not agree with the state stepping in on illegal immigration. I feel that immigration bills at the state, over 40 have been introduced, will in the long run, as in other states be found to be unconstitutional and/or flat out unenforceable.

Thank you for your years of service to me and all Tennesseans. If you having a email mailing list, that informs yopur constituents of your votes, activity and town hall meetings, I would very much appreciate being added to it.

Sincerely

Blayne

The real letter had my address and contact info. That was the letter I sent April 4, 2007. I sent it to numerous people, most responded that they had not heard of this idea of having the general public vote on these officers and were VERY INTERESTED in hearing Sen. Kurita’s response, which I would have gladly forwarded. Today is April 13th, just over a week since I sent that letter. No response as of yet. So I sent another letter. See below:

Senator Kurita,

I am disappointed that you have not responded to my response to your survey.

I, and others, looked forward to hearing your response, letting everyone know why you think this would be a good idea. We should all first understand the responsibility that we would bare if we elected these officers and since you want to bestow that responsibility to us, logic would follow you should also educate us to those responsibilities.

Sincerely

Blayne

I just want to voice my opinion. She votes on my behalf, and yours. I would expect at leats some sort of response within a week, especially since she ran an ad in the paper asking for my input. I doubt if the response to an ad in the Leaf Chronicle has produced such an overwelming response that not even a staffer can respond.

I also included a link to this forum and this article. and requested that she respond to ALL OF US via this public forum.  If I personally ever receive a response, that Senator Kurita does not post here, I will post it. However, I think it would be great if she posted her response, and by doing so inform us of what she is doing and why, instead of leaving that up to a spotty part time blogger like me.

Blayne Clements
Blayne Clements
I am a 30 something graduate from Austin Peay State University, where I graduated in 1997 with two majors (Accounting and Finance). I am a very happily married man, with one beautiful daughter. I enjoy a professional life of public service and a personal life of travel, reading, music, and always trying to learn from others.
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1 COMMENT

  1. After not hearing from Sen. Kurita on this for now over a month I took my concern to the Letter to the Editor of the Leaf Chronicle. It was published in the May 21st paper. Here is my letter as sent to the paper:

    Dear Editor:
    Recently state Senator Rosalind Kurita, ran a survey in paper and asked for responses. One survey item was changing the state?s constitution to allow the constitutional officers to be elected by a general election. The state constitution states that it is the legislature?s duties to elect these officers.
    Tennessee is one of the few states where the legislature elects these officers and Sen. Kurita annually sponsors a bill trying to change this, and every year I write Sen. Kurita, friends, family, and the local paper expressing why this is bad idea. I have several reasons for my view. Two reasons of my reasons are, 1 – the legislature is in a unique position to know if the officers are doing their job well, not the general public; and 2 – unlike the legislature, the officer?s jobs are full time, and running an election campaign means time away from their job serving Tennesseans.
    I responded to her survey on April 4 via email and copied numerous family and friends to encourage awareness. I had hoped to open a dialogue of ideas. Sen. Kurita did not respond. So on April 13, I send a second letter via email stating if the voters were to be responsible for voting on these officers, she should be willing to educate the voters on that responsibility, especially since she is initiating the change. I also posted the second letter along with the first letter to http://www.clarksvilleonline.com and asked her to utilize that website as a forum to communicate her view to the community. Again, no response. Remember, this all started with her wanting to know what WE thought about this issue.
    Since she did not respond to me personally, and she did not respond to the community via the website, maybe she will choose to respond via a letter to the editor and educate her constituents on her views.

    Here’s a link to the letter,m which they edited to omit a reference to this website:
    http://www.theleafchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070521/OPINION03/705210309/1014/OPINION

    Still no word…….

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