Citizens shouldn’t have to attend every meeting, decode legal jargon, or grow a law degree just to understand what their county is doing. That’s why agendas, votes, and minutes exist. Or are supposed to.
Commissioners Court is not a courtroom. The judge does not rule by decree, and disagreement is not contempt. When meetings start feeling like trials, rules changing midstream, public questions treated as interruptions, credentials waved like a badge, that’s not efficiency. That’s control.
Transparency doesn’t mean telling people after the fact why they’re wrong. It means explaining decisions clearly, in the meeting where they’re made, with the same rules applied to everyone. Anything else is theater.
There is another issue that deserves attention, because it strikes at the heart of representative government. When elected officials question the intelligence, education level, or motives of commissioners or citizens, without evidence, they are not just insulting individuals. They are undermining the voters who put those people in office.
Commissioners do not speak for themselves alone. They are the voices of the people who elected them. Dismissing those voices as uninformed, ignorant, or malicious does not elevate governance. It devalues representation itself.
And let’s talk about tone. When rural residents, seniors, veterans, or ag-exempt landowners are reduced to math problems and framed as unfair burdens, that’s not fiscal responsibility. That’s contempt dressed up as logic.
Roads, courthouses, decorum fights, none of these are isolated. They all point to the same issue: when process gets flexible, power gets personal.
You don’t fix that by telling people to sit down, be quiet, or trust harder. You fix it by following the rules in the open, documenting decisions, and remembering who the county actually works for.
Sam Rayburn once said that any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.
Local government isn’t tested by how loudly authority brays. It’s tested by how carefully process is followed, how patiently dissent is heard, and how clearly the record is kept for people who weren’t in the room.
If we want to honor Rayburn’s legacy, especially in the week of his birthday, the answer isn’t bigger personalities or tighter control.
Build the barn.
