Accountability Starts With Showing Up

I’m gonna say this upfront so nobody gets it twisted: I need to start showing up to Northeast meetings more often. Because if you think the Lower Valley knows how to throw down at a community meeting, the Northeast said “hold my local-establishment hot beverage.”

Those meetings? Not boring. Not polite. Not your little rubber-stamp, nod-your-head, clap-on-command situation. Nah. They’re loud, messy, passionate… and honestly, exactly what democracy is supposed to look like when people actually care.

And from what I heard, last night did not disappoint.

So here’s the scene: Northeast Democrats meeting, decent turnout, and there’s a hot Justice of the Peace runoff race brewing. Naturally, candidates get invited to speak. Pretty standard. Pretty fair.

Except - of course - someone had a problem.

Because Judge Brian Haggerty didn’t show up.

Now let me translate that real quick: he was invited… and chose not to go.

That’s it. That’s the whole story.

Nobody blocked him at the door. Nobody “silenced” him. Nobody canceled him. The man has been showing up to meetings on the Eastside, which isn’t even his turf, but somehow couldn’t make it to his own backyard?

Come on, man.

You don’t get to skip the meeting and then have your supporters act shocked that you weren’t heard. That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.

Meanwhile, his opponent Christie Saiz actually showed up. She took the mic. And she didn’t waste time playing nice either. She went straight at him over his case backlog.

And that’s where things got interesting.

Because someone in the crowd, probably thinking they were doing Haggerty a favor, asked for a breakdown of the cases. You know, trying to get technical. Civil? Criminal? Truancy?

Nah.

Miss me with that.

The breakdown doesn’t matter.

Not when the number being thrown around is over 20,000 cases.

Twenty. Thousand.

At that point, we’re not arguing about categories. We’re talking about a system that is clearly jammed up. We’re talking about people waiting… and waiting… and waiting for their day in court.

Justice delayed isn’t just some cute phrase you learned in civics. It’s real life. It’s people’s tickets, disputes, obligations, consequences, hanging over their heads.

And here’s the part that really doesn’t sit right: this is the same judge who brags about being at the court all the time. Talks about how hard the staff works. Even mentions them working through lunch.

Cool.

So then explain the backlog.

Because you can’t have it both ways. You can’t be the hardest-working guy in the room and also be sitting on a mountain of unresolved cases like it’s no big deal.

At some point, the math stops mathing.

And when it doesn’t, people start asking questions. Loud ones. In packed rooms. At meetings you decided not to attend.

Look, when you’ve got 20,000 cases stacked up, the only thing that matters is urgency for the people stuck in that system. But when we’re talking about performance? Efficiency? Accountability?

It doesn’t matter what kind of cases they are.

A backlog that big is a problem. Period.

And the Northeast? They’re not the type to just sit there quietly and pretend it’s not.

Good.

Because if more communities showed up like that, asked hard questions like that, and refused to accept weak answers… a lot more people in power would have some serious ‘splaining to do.