Op-ed: Deep thoughts on a tractor in Trout Creek
Jim Elliot | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 10 years, 3 months AGO
As I was working on one of my old tractors (it’s a Farmall 806 for the curious) I began cussing the engineers who designed it, as I have many times in the past. Why, oh why would anyone put a bolt in an almost, but not quite, inaccessible place? How do they expect people to work on this thing without becoming homicidal? Remember the cars of the 1970s that had to have the engine partially removed from the vehicle to change the sparkplugs? I know that they are well intentioned people who only want to design a machine that works well, but couldn’t they have adult supervision from a mechanic who actually has to work on them?
I have also heard contractors voice similar complaints about architects. In fact, it seems that there is often no collaboration between the designers of something and the people who will be working on it. Same with the people who design forms and the people who have to fill them out. I often thought that the process should be reversed; the people who were supposed to fill the form out should design it, and the people who were supposed to design it should have to fill it out, although I have to say that there has been a marked improvement in that area.
It also, I began to realize, is similar to a legislator writing laws; they know what they want to do, they know how they want it to work, but when it is finally signed into law, will it do what they thought it would do? In Montana, state legislators are not professionals. It’s a citizen legislature and there is no aptitude test other than being able to get elected. Being a legislator is one of the few important positions that does not require any ability test or prior experience as a prerequisite to getting the job. Another one is being a parent.
Years ago there was a very important bill to fix the Workers Compensation system. It went through the legislative process and was signed into law by the Governor. Shortly after it became law, it was discovered that it contained a forty million dollar error. In a futile attempt to prevent that from happening, the Governor’s aide hurried down to the Secretary of State’s office to get the bill back. On being told that it was now law, and couldn’t be returned, he asked if he couldn’t just use some “white out” on it. No to that as well, and the Legislature had to meet in a Special Session to fix it.
A lawyer once complained to me, “Those guys in Helena don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t understand the law.”
So, just to gig him a little, I said, “It’s not their job to understand the law, it’s their job to write it. It’s up to you lawyers to figure it out.”
Well, this topic is getting a long way from working on a tractor, so I think I’ll get back to something else that offers a challenge. I know I can get to that bolt on the Farmall somehow, but why they put it there is beyond me.
Jim Elliott is a former state senator
ARTICLES BY JIM ELLIOT
Keeping the government out of Montanan's private lives a non-partisan issue
Recently the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) granted Montana an extension of time to conform to the “REAL ID” law passed by Congress in 2005. In a nutshell the REAL ID law demanded that state driver license and identification cards conform to federal requirements concerning information and data sharing as laid out by DHS. Only state issued identification documents that met DHS standards would be valid for entrance to Federal Buildings, applying for Social Security, doing business with federally licensed banks, and by Transportation Security Administration officers for boarding aircraft. In short, it created a de facto national identification card with a national data bank of private information on American citizens.
Op-ed: Deep thoughts on a tractor in Trout Creek
As I was working on one of my old tractors (it’s a Farmall 806 for the curious) I began cussing the engineers who designed it, as I have many times in the past. Why, oh why would anyone put a bolt in an almost, but not quite, inaccessible place? How do they expect people to work on this thing without becoming homicidal? Remember the cars of the 1970s that had to have the engine partially removed from the vehicle to change the sparkplugs? I know that they are well intentioned people who only want to design a machine that works well, but couldn’t they have adult supervision from a mechanic who actually has to work on them?
Flapjack flops, democracy suffers
Well, the bill that would have designated the “whole wheat huckleberry pancake” as Montana’s official flapjack has flopped. The idea for the bill arose from students at Franklin Elementary in Missoula who wanted to participate in the legislative process. They are not the first, and will not be the last, to request legislation that really doesn’t seem to fit the lofty nature of making law. Since I live in Trout Creek, the officially designated “Huckleberry Capital of Montana” – you can look it up — I was kind of partial to the little critter. Not everyone was though, and thought the Legislature had more important, pressing issues to attend to. Well, it does, but these little silly bills serve their own purpose; there is now an elementary school class that has a better working knowledge of how laws are made than do 90 percent of Montana voters. (And 80 percent of legislators according to a wise guy in Helena whose name will not be made public for his own safety.)