Working In Local Government Is Like Living in a Reality Show
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My alarm goes off at 6:30 a.m. and I start to get ready for my day. I turn on the news while starting up a cup of coffee. Hey, it’s that reporter I met at a ribbon cutting last week. She’s talking about the proposed sales tax increase. I tilt my head as she speaks in her signature news anchor voice that is nothing like her real voice… I think she might be misrepresenting the purpose of the initiative.
I shrug it off and open Facebook on my phone. The first thing I see is a photo of Mike from work with a headline saying he won’t be running for re-election this year. The comments are 50% kind congratulations, and 50% of the nastiest comments I’ve ever read about a person. Two posts down, I see Spencer from work has announced his campaign. The comments are equally split. 126,000 people live here, but I’ve gotten good at recognizing the names in these comment sections.
When I’m done with all that, I open my city’s YouTube page to catch up on the most recent council and committee meetings podcast-style in 2x speed while I throw on my city branded sweatshirt to wear into the office on a particularly light day. When I finally make it in, I try to tell my colleagues the most interesting things I learned, but they already know because they watched the meetings live. It’s okay though, we’re all excited to discuss each side of the philosophical basis of every council decision that was made this week.
Yes, I Work in Local Government.
It has never been my intention to write about my job on Substack. I throw all of my professional writings on LinkedIn with little regard for their quality, but Substack is a more sacred place where I reflect on my personal life and challenge myself to grow in my writing and creativity. But I don’t really see this as a professional piece or a piece about my job, this is a piece to understand how my world has become sensationalized and how it affects me on a human level.
To briefly explain my background for context, I am a local government staffer currently focused in the areas of economics, development, and finance. I’m just starting out in my career, but I’m on the city management track and hoping to climb the ladder and be entrusted with that responsibility one day. If I was in any other line of work, I’d still make a point to be involved with local issues because I have a strong interest and passion in philosophically understanding how societies form and function. I also love the drama when issues get heated and both sides have a full arsenal of logical arguments, but the deciding factor is just… vibes. It is truly my hobby, my passion, and my job.
Is This My Identity Now?
One of the main reasons I chose to pursue opportunities outside of accounting after getting my bachelor’s degree was the expectation that your first few years as a staffer would be characterized by 80-hour work weeks and endless studying for the CPA exam. I dreamed of work-life balance, a life where I can have a thriving friend group, a healthy relationship, fulfilling hobbies, and the capacity to take care of myself and my space.
Because of my large-scale involvement in my local government, my life now moves in government seasons instead of the regular ones. Similar how the Catholic Church’s schedule is dictated by the liturgical calendar, I am bound to my city’s public meeting calendar. We have council the first three Tuesdays of the month, then a period of rest. I read my scripture daily when I check the headlines of the local news outlets. I commune with my congregation each time a community issue becomes particularly heated. We dawn our red robes during budget season.
If these are the seasons defining my life, it sounds like I might be in a work-life crisis. What’s interesting, though, is that I feel like my life has everything a balanced life should have. My friends, my hobbies, my boyfriend, my house. What more could I want? I’m torn on how to interpret this feeling… is this proof that I’m following my passion? Maybe this feeling is the rainbow I saw before that tornado hit my apartment last year.
I’m navigating this feeling with an abundance of caution, but I stop to smell the roses every time I laugh out loud at a local’s low quality commentary video or my boyfriend tells me he wants to watch a potentially controversial council presentation live with me.
How Did I Get to This Point?
With a baseline affinity to initiatives like anti-work and anti-capitalism, how did I become such an enthusiastic and dedicated local gov employee and participant? Here is my best guess at the ingredients:
Genuine Interest in the Field
Point blank, period. I like local government, I like my community, and I have a network of friends from grad school who are equally as involved. A dinner with my grad school girls has the same visceral feeling as a middle school sleepover where we watched one direction videos all night. What could possibly be more exciting than shared interests and intellectual, philosophical, and practical conversations about cities and policies? Even when I’m with normal people who aren’t nerds, I strive to have the passion and the tact to drop in relevant local information in a way that is accessible and exciting for anyone to hear.
Public Nature of American Government.
Luckily, the United States Government (currently) supports free speech and free press. Local outlets don’t have a ton to report on these days, so it is the perfect avenue to find excellent editorial on the good, the bad, and the ugly of your city’s operations. When you have the added bonus of being an eye on the inside, you can start to pick up on tricks of the media, catching some of the more subtle biases in each of the publications. For example, some sources never have anything good to say in regard to tax increases, even if the increase is to directly fund programs like saving puppies or providing entrepreneurship training to survivors of human trafficking, things that would otherwise be perceived as ‘good’. This recognition of patterns can literally rewire your brain and the way you consume news and media both locally and globally.
Additionally, the gossip potential for the messy people is off the charts. In my state, we have an open records act that requires that any government generated documents, with a few exceptions, be released to the public upon request. With that in mind, our IT and HR departments don’t have much of an incentive to lock down sensitive files in our computer systems. That being said, if an employee finds themselves curious about ongoing initiatives, meetings, or programs, it is a pretty simple process to find anything you need out in the open.
On top of all that, what other profession allows you to watch your most beloved, or most despised colleagues on TV like it’s a Netflix political thriller? When I watch council live at home, I feel more like a stan with encyclopedic knowledge of my problematic favs than a resident or colleague. If you’re not able to disconnect fully, you always have the option to stream next day or listen to an audio reader dictate the minutes like a podcast while you’re on the clock.
My Specific Community
Trying not to doxx myself, but my specific community has all the makings of a good plot right now. We’ve got scandal, leadership crisis, money problems, campaigns beginning to run, and an endearing cast of recurring public commenters who feel very strongly about several issues.
My town is uniquely situated in a red state, has an extremely diverse population, and a strong history of liberal-coded social justice initiatives. While the local government is nonpartisan, the culture of the community includes strong stances across the full political spectrum. Community engagement and public comment are the backbone of democracy, and the local level will always be the most effective and empowering forum for participation. Because of this, you’ll always be surprised, and you’ll always be challenged with a new idea.
The State of the World Right Now
I’m sorry, but who among us isn’t looking to escape into content these days? The world’s outlook feels bleak, especially in the US. But at the same time, there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism. How are we supposed to win here?
Consider this food for thought: stanning your local government pushes all of the little dopamine buttons other content does, and it isn’t as inherently evil as gorging ourselves with mukbangs and influencer hauls.
Public commenters are my influencers, and I love to see them throw hands in the comments section of a tweet or Facebook post. There’s nothing like the pure exhilaration of seeing your mayor address the scandal that’s been blowing up in the press. Imagine being one of the first people to find out your city is getting a Whataburger. Stanning local government allows you to have all of this insider information about your town, while still going through the motions of scrolling, watching, and consuming. Maybe some city has a hot mayor I can make a fan cam of.
My last argument for stanning local gov is that, in my opinion, local government is the last holdout of trust in US government. These are impacts you can see, and conversatinos with people you can meet or see in the grocery store. It also, depending on the city, is legally nonpartisan meaning that that pesky political divide is going to be less prevalent, and the big meaty federal or state level issues like the 2nd amendment or healthcare access will never be discussed. I know a lot of people are turned off to government because of those conversations, but local government can be a safe haven.
I Can’t Be Like This Forever, But You Can!
As a local government employee, this is not sustainable for me. While I move up in my career and start gaining more responsibility, I will inevitably become one of the people who gets evil hate comments from residents or gets humiliated at the one presentation I showed up unprepared for. It’s perfectly normal that my idea of work-life balance will evolve with my role. When that day comes, it won’t be healthy for me to continue consuming local government core the way I do now, but my hope is that you, my readers, will carry on in my absence.
Government, especially local government, is nothing without an informed and involved community. Whether your motivation is a brainrot content detox, to support a specific policy, or just to find something to do, I urge everyone to join into the reality show that is your local community and the surrounding media coverage. Maybe you’ll find your new passion, or maybe you’ll just find where the new Cava is going to go. Either way, you have nothing to lose by participating.