Two for the show, County leaders shine

Michael Hightower pushes through automatic doors. They just don’t open fast enough for him. Hightower, a Fulton County, Ga., commissioner and president of the National Association of Counties, doesn’t believe in waiting for things to happen.

I spent a week with Hightower one day recently. We started at the monthly Fulton County department heads meeting, drove 20 miles to a community facility for the elderly, drove back into town for a meeting with Jerry Griffin, executive director of Georgia’s county commissioners association; ate lunch (Hightower picks at his food and spends most of the time doodling political stuff on the paper place mat), drove 20 miles back to the south end of the county to admire a brand new recreational facility, then headed farther south still for the annual firefighters’ memorial service, then on to pick up Hightower’s daughter from school, then on to City Hall for a meeting with the mayor, at which point I said, “Nobody elected me to doodly. I’m outta here.”

According to Bob Fuller, a lieutenant with the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department and a good friend of Hightower’s, it was a blessing that I picked that particular day, since Hightower wasn’t as busy as he usually is.

Hightower, a black urban Democrat, and Marion County, Ore., Commissioner Randy Franke, a white, small-town Republican and our County Leader of the Year, are two good reasons why the federal government is finding that, whether about welfare reform or unfunded mandates, counties can no longer be dismissed out of hand or even taken lightly. These guys work hard, and they do it in relative obscurity. (Think about it. Most, okay, many – okay, three or four people – can name their congresspeople, their state reps and their mayors. How many have a clue as to the identity of their county commissioners?)

People don’t write songs that go “Cook County, Cook County, that toddlin’ place. . .” And Frank Sinatra wouldn’t be caught dead singing, “It’s up to you, The Bronx, The Bronx.”

Hightower and Franke are not going to change that. You won’t see 72-point headlines when they pull something off. But welfare reform, potential changes in Medicare and Medicaid and the general political climate have made counties more important right now than they ever have been.

So, while Hightower and Franke – and their cohorts – may not make People magazine, they will make a difference. And that looks much better on a resume.