Immigration in the U.S. has become one of the most emotionally charged issues of our time, due to precious little factual data informing it, regardless of whether you are sympathetic to illegal immigration or opposed to it.

Tony Knobbe is fast proving to be a questionable choice for Chair of the Scott County Board of Supervisors. As a former banker (an executive for Wells Fargo in Davenport), is it any surprise that he appears to be institutionally incapable of comprehending that transparency is the best practice for a publicly elected board?

The standard operating procedure for minutes of the meetings is to only provide the public with the most stripped-down version of what happened. In Scott County, this means all that is recorded is the time the meeting started and ended, who made or seconded a motion, and how each supervisor voted on said motion. No inclusion of who was a guest speaker from the private sector or other governments, or which staff member spoke on which agenda item, or what any of the discussion around an agenda item consisted of.

In our Constitutional Republic, the citizenry still has the power and political tools to create whatever change we truly desire as a Republic. Alarmingly, however, we have lowered the bar for our participation so far that 'We the People”'s role in governance is almost obsolete. Coalescing now, to right our country's ship, is unachievable if we don't first acknowledge systematic displacement due to our willing abdication of our civic roles.