BMOCMLL to Fight Bounty County Commission BMOCMLL says planning department must remain to protect "the children" SMUCKWAP NEWSSERVICE, SANDPOINT, ID In a daring, unheard of in this century--wild even for the wild west--move, two newly elected Bounty county commissioners disbanded the Bureau to Make Our Cities More Like Lensk (BMOCMLL), the county’s building, zoning and planning department. BMOCMLL, as a county bureaucracy, was named after the city in the former Soviet Union, Lensk, in honor of the communist state-controlled building regulations enforced there before the fall. The daring duo of Bounty County Commissioners Larry B. Goodfolk and Bud Manyman promised in their campaign to diminish government at the county level, specifically government departments that intrude the most into peoples’ lives. Their plucky first step was to dispel the BMOCMLL and to declare all building codes null and void. In a public meeting in Sandpoint, BMOCMLL Spokesperson Mr. Zibig W. Alletski, writhed in dull-gray fury: "How dare those commissioners attempt to intrude upon our Bureau’s sacred duty of proclaiming that every single step in every single stair in every single building must be a regulation 6.15578191625 inches high? What about codes determining the shape, size, and characteristic of every window in every building, not to mention every electrical outlet, every inch of drywall, every block of cement, every square foot of space? "Who is to provide the millions of building codes we believe are absolutely necessary for the safety of our population, not to mention provide us members of the Bureau with a hearty living? And what about the children?" Alletski had no comment when asked how well modern building codes fared in the recent "Ice Storm ’96." Nearly all of the buildings built prior to the adoption of county building codes, including schools built in the 1930s, weathered the storm undamaged while buildings, including schools built in the 1990s, fell down. However, when questioned on this topic repeatedly by this Smuckwap News reporter, Alletski turned redder and redder and redder, perhaps an indication of where his loyalties and political inclinations lie. Spokesman for the True American Center Which Seems to Be Idaho These Days, Mr. Notso R. Adical, competed for the mike at the public meeting with Alletski. "Notably," said Adical, "in America it has somehow become a revolutionary concept to hog-tie a bureaucrat. These bureaucrats have become the unofficial legislators and overseers of our lives. Don’t know about you folks, but it’s starting to bore me to tears," Adical stated to a round of applause from the citizens at the meeting. Adical continued, "In the latter part of the 20th century, it has come to be seen as a radical, right-wing sort of concept that a regular, intelligent, normal citizen doesn’t need government of any level, federal, state, local, county, village, not to mention his mother-in-law and his wife, for pete’s sake, telling him how to take every little baby step, how to build every little stair, and how to lay every little brick." Citizens of Bounty county seem to agree with Adical. In letters to the Bureau, to the commissioners and to our beloved free press, citizens have opined they don’t happen to think millions of building codes have done them much good. One letter from Post Falls resident Herb A. Lot stated, "my wife and I have seen pictures of Lensk and man, it is one ugly town! We would like to have our cities show some American individuality, spunk, and color, not the gray, boring, have-to-wait-in-a- line-for-ten-hours-just-to-buy-toilet-paper atmosphere of Lensk! We’re glad the Bureau has been disbanded and it’s about time, too!" Alletski, a former member of Washington, D.C.’s exclusive Federal Commission of Expanding the Bureaucracy to Meet the Needs of the Expanding Bureaucracy, vowed he would fight the new commissioners’ decision to disband the county building code providers. "We will battle this decree tooth and nail," shouted the small, gray, determined little man. Jasmine Wantwit, another member of the Bureau, tearfully proclaimed, "Unregulated construction is a potential hazard to every person living in Bounty county, especially the small, tiny, children. Why, the children might get hurt! This is and has been our major concern all along, of course. We also wanted to make our cities more like Lensk, because Lensk runs pretty well, and besides the bureaucracy used to have it pretty good over there, just as we do here. But our main goal was to protect innocent children." It looks like the grand battle of the century is heating up in Bounty county. Every other American county is now poised on its county seat, on the edge of its county chair, watching and waiting to see what happens next. Will the bureau members fight their disbandment as only bureaucrats can? Will the fearless duo manage to subdue the gray eminences of Lenskhood? Stay tuned for further developments. The Bureau to Make Our Cities More Like Lensk, Patricia Neill, ©1997