Here's to Dangerously Stupid Ideas

At Tuesday’s meeting, Manatee County Commissioner James Satcher tried to rush through an ordinance that would allow employees of Manatee County the option of carrying a concealed weapon while on the job. The boneheaded proposal is the latest attempt by the first-term commissioner to inject culture war national issues into county commission meetings at the expense of much more pertinent business.

The item was only added to the agenda Friday afternoon, breaking an agreement of the board not to add voting items so close to a meeting because it denies commissioners and the public the opportunity to become aware of and fully absorb the issue and its associated materials. Apparently, Satcher feels that the unspecified threats unarmed employees of the county face are so great that anything short of a lightning-fast resolution could see one of them needlessly perish.

Of course, the commissioner brought forth no evidence that such a threat exists or that employees are clamoring to strap up before clocking in because, like just about everything Satcher brings before the board, it had little or nothing to do with the actual issues facing county residents. Like his hamfisted attempt at a local abortion ordinance, which emails show he was pushed to pursue by an out-of-state huckster who specializes in such drama, it was just one more effort to use his platform as a commissioner to draw attention to himself as a culture warrior.

Satcher, who unsuccessfully mounted bids for county commission and even the U.S. Congress before being elected in 2020, never misses an opportunity to inarticulately wax on the perils of "Democrats," "the left-wing," "leftists" and other boogiemen from the dais of a local government board, nor has he proven himself adverse to puckering up and planting a nice soft one on the bottom of any right-wing state or national politician with a recognizable name. When it comes to Satcher’s hero, Florida Governor Ron Desantis, it has become increasingly difficult to determine where the governor’s derriere ends and the commissioner’s nose begins.

When it comes to actual matters of local concern, however, ie. the business of the board, it would be generous to call Satcher’s comprehension of public policy rudimentary and probably more accurate to call it Baugh-esque. But rather than get better at the job he was actually elected to do, the commissioner seems more than content to try and build some sort of fledgling profile that might make him attractive for bigger things, and in a party that has sent the likes of alleged sex offenderMatt Gaetzand confirmed weirdoMadison Cawthornto the hallowed halls of Congress, I guess he can be forgiven such delusions of grandeur.

Manatee County government might need a lot of things, but it does not need any of its more than two thousand employees who choose to carry a firearm to have the ability to do so. While my experience with county employees has suggested that the vast majorityare competent professionals with good judgment, any pool that large (especially in Manatee County) is bound to include more than a bunch for whom a deadly weapon at work is the last thing they or we need, and we’ve published more than a few stories that speak to that being the case.

Do we really need to imagine what might happen if all of the employees who interact with the public from code enforcement to bus drivers might have a concealed weapon on their person? As Commissioner Reggie Bellamy (the only commissioner to vote against moving the item forward) pointed out at Tuesday’s meeting, Employee shoots citizen, Employee shoots coworker, County employees in a shootout. This is what’s known in policymaking as a solution in search of a problem.

This sort of buffoonery has, unfortunately, become much too common on both sides of the aisle in a political landscape that has continued to become more about scoring culture war points that will help grifter politicians climb the ladder and get their snouts into deeper troughs than crafting meaningful and effective solutions to the litany of real and important issues their constituents face. The subtext of Tuesday’s lunacy was that it would also make for good campaign fodder, should anyone go against GUNS!, which is why the six votes in favor of the item came from the board's six Republicans.

That was most apparent when Jason Bearden, who seems to be running for the District 6 seat in this summer’s Republican primary on little more than a boilerplate far-right national platform adapted to a local race, gave three minutes of barely coherent public comment that made Satcher’s earlier drivel sound downright eloquent in comparison. But hey, he likes freedom and guns and babies and the constitution–and barks all of it in some sort of weird cadence that seems to exist exclusively to remind us that he’s also a veteran, woot woot.

If I sound a little flavored, it is because the article schedule this week forced me to actually watch and report on the whole thing, which was, hands down, one of the most intellectually vacant wastes of taxpayer resources I’ve seen in my decade-plus at this publication. Something that should have taken 10 minutes instead took hours, so that each person could have five turns making sure they had said everything they possibly could about absolutely nothing. By the time it was over, I wanted to stick a fork in my eye.

But that is the state of Manatee County government, or at least it is the state of its leaders these days, folks, and until it takes more than a bagful of developer money and silly campaign pieces about hot buttoned national issues to win a race, the suits will continue to get emptier and the proceedings more farcical.

As for Satcher, in the nearly year and a half that he’s been a commissioner, he has demonstrated, above all else, that he’s not a serious policymaker or even someone to be taken seriously. He’s a grandstander who seems capable of two major functions: blathering meaningless pontifications about god, guns, and babies; and pouting like a chubby child who’s been told no more cookies whenever he doesn’t get his way. Hopefully, the voters of District 1 can do better in 2024. Serious times call for serious people, and this commissioner has not met the bar.

Dennis "Mitch" Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and the host of ourweekly podcast. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County governmentsince 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Clickherefor his bio. His 2016 short story collection, Casting Shadows, was recently reissued and is availablehere.