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Show Your Man In Washington By U.S. Senator Orrirt G. Hatch FOR AN ACCOUNTABLE BUREAUCRACY KSL Television in Salt Lake City recently broadcast an editorial entitled, en-titled, "Citizen Involvement," Involve-ment," in which the helplessness and frustration frustra-tion of dealing with the federal bureaucracy were emphasized. That editorial pointed out that "there are over 15 million federal, state, and local government employees. Fewer than 100 thousand of them are elected -- one out of every 150. "These unelected government employees are the people that our Utah citizens must often deal with in order to achieve success in almost every walk 6f life. These bureaucrats are regulating some segment of nearly everything we do; and, because they are out of the reach of the "ballot box," they often act very independently. They seem to think of the people in the country, on the farms, in the factories, in the cities, and elsewhere as intellectually inferior and uninterested in anything they do. Because of this arrogance, many of our citizens are embarrassed embar-rassed and are frequently treated without respect when they ask for help in understanding the systems which their tax dollars finance if a caller is lucky enough to reach the right agency or to receive a response to his letter. In many cases a citizen's complaint or request is routed and re-routed until it dies from lack of attention. As a result of this large, slow-moving bureaucracy, the offices of elected officials in Washington have assumed the responsibility of not only representing the people in the legislative debates on the floors of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, but also acting as liaison between the taxpayers and their government. Constituent Constit-uent departments in the offices of the elected officials of-ficials are staffed by people who learn to deal with the bureaucrats and to apply the pressure of elective office. Recently Senator Orrin G. Hatch moved his department of constituent services from Washington, D.C. to Utah in order to better erve the Utahns who are encountering such difficulties and frustrations. frustra-tions. In addition, to better bet-ter serve the people of Utah, Senator Hatch now has a toll-free telephone service which is available 24 hours every day. These steps enable all Utahns who have concerns or complaints com-plaints to talk to a staff that is trained and experienced ex-perienced in dealing with the bureaucratic system. It is a sad commentary, commen-tary, as KSL pointed out, that "we can't exercise a marketplace choice. . .we don't have that option with government." The result is the necessity of specialists to help us deal with the problem until, at some time in the future, this great bureaucracy is forced to be truly accountable account-able to the people who pay the salaries. Senator Hatch's toll-free toll-free number is 1-800-662-4300 from anywhere in Utah. |