If “politics” is primarily concerned with getting elected, “governance” involves performance afterwards. To a large extent, getting elected has become an end unto itself in modern day America. Governance is largely ceded to unelected bureaucracies. Nevertheless, the urge to lambaste “politicians” for bureaucratic inefficiencies serves the same release valve function as screaming a curse word. When the local property tax system is a Swiss cheese amalgam of arbitrary assessments and exemptions superimposed on an anachronistic public financing system, the beleaguered property owner’s default mechanism is to blame “the politicians.”

If you have ever tried to resolve an issue involving your income taxes, your Social Security, your Medicare, your Medicaid, your driver’s license or your veteran’s benefits you have most likely not spoken with an elected representative. Canandaigua’s public schools were compelled to abandon the “Braves” name by the NYS Education Department, an Albany-based circle of laptop betters that never campaigned for a Canandaiguan’s vote. If the duly “elected” members of the local board of education objected to this bureaucratic overreach, the outrage went unnoticed.

The world (if not the universe) should know that I became an Inquiring Taxpayer about a dozen years ago upon learning that Canandaigua City Council had no authority over certain sizable property tax breaks involving city taxes on properties serviced by the city. That authority resides with the Ontario County Industrial Development Agency, none of whose administrators or board are elected to those positions.

My first incredulous question to the then-mayor and City Council member who explained the........

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