NDNU Local Government Blog

This week, this month, this entire calendar year has been incredibly difficult for the enormous tent that makes up the Asian and Asian-American community. Recent news has rightfully put Anti-Asian hate crimes into the center of national conversation on race and ethnicity. As overwhelming statistics point to a sharp raise in Anti Asian hate crimes.  For the leader of my Community partner, this issue is central to his life, and service of his community. My community Partner is the Office of Supervisor Otto Lee of Santa Clara County-District 3. Supervisor Lee is the first Chinese-American to serve as a Supervisor in the County’s proud history. Before becoming Supervisor, “Otto” was the mayor of Sunnyvale, a city councilman, a planning commissioner, and a commander in the United States Navy, but before all that Otto was a 15-year-old immigrant from Hong Kong. Thus, with the rise of Anti-Asian and anti-Asian immigrant violence, some of which has been proclaimed as “patriotic” or na...

 The outline of CST emailed to other students was no longer available on the NDNU student email service, so I based my response on my knowledge of CST from NDNU classes, and the Hallmarks. In addressing the smaller of the two outlines, the hallmarks-a creation of CST themselves, are a bit shorter. The first connection being hallmark 2 that connects the mission of the County and the Office of Supervisor Lee to honor the human dignity of every constituent who calls us needing help. That means doing what we can, so they are enabled to rise above their current challenges or concerns. We educate for and act on behalf of justice and peace in the world. This is central to local governments' mission, as acting on behalf of the needy is one of the driving missions of county services. Furthermore preserving the peace in the county is up to the elected leaders to direct our police, and other community leaders. We commit ourselves to community service. As Said in the previous hallmark- t...

  Week 3 * Describe the Project or Activity – what will you be doing? -Assisting with a variety of projects in the office, but mainly for the sake of this class I will be assisting and tracking community outreach projects, and cases. That is that while working in the District 3 office, we get many calls from our constituents across the county, not just from within “D3” that means having the understanding of the county-state- and elements of the federal system in order to send our constituents to where they need to be. This in my mind is the perfect place to track interagency conflict and collaboration while still being able to make a direct impact on individuals lives.  * Describe your Schedule at the Partner Organization – when will you do the work? -The schedule of work is still being negotiated as we speak, as they are just joining the county system (Supervisor Lee was sworn in less than half a year ago.) That means for a lowly staffer like me has to wait his turn to of...

Week 2     Read and reflect on Chapter 2, Federalism & the States. How do state and local governments differ from the Federal government? Why do we have them? What kinds of authority is left to the states v the Federal government? Why do both the state and Federal levels of government sometimes fall short? Write a blog entry answering these questions. The State and local governments do differ from the Federal government in terms of scope in regards to decision making, along with the relatively small region and number of people affected by the decisions. Also differing is the fact that the federal government (in theory) can make laws that should affect every single local jurisdiction. Though as the book says, that is at times very hard to do.  We have local governments because as the book said often “the [level of] government closest to the problem is the best equipped to help” which is not the case 100% of the time, but does tend to be the rule for garbage, educat...

 My community partner is actually the County of Santa Clara itself, in the office of Supervisor Otto Lee. There I will be tasked with being a communications staffer, and also will have a small legislative portfolio. Given that the County did not arise from a local need per say- but was part of the movement of local governments to increase their power. Santa Clara County has been lucky in that it is the Capitol and Heart of Silicon Valley, hosting many of the worlds most influential and prominent companies. All of that personal wealth has created a county government that is one of the better of in the state, and nation. However just because of the massive successes to be found within Santa Clara County does not mean there is not a tremendous amount of need.  To quote the California Budget Centers  Inequality and Economic Security in Silicon Valley Report . "Silicon Valley’s current economic expansion has been 'top heavy,' with much of the recent income growth going to very...

 This Week I began my mad dash back to join the class, which meant cracking through chapter one for reflection. Having a background in local politics means I am familiar with many of the concepts found in the first chapter. However the one I thought was the most thought provoking to focus on was the Interjurisdictional conflict and collaboration that has to occur everyday.  A very good example of the conflict that can occur is between The City of San Jose and the County of Santa Clara over Sanctuary laws. Here is  the link  to the San Jose Inside story about the specific case, the city was using as justification for their stance.  The Mayor of San Jose Sam Liccardo and the city's former Police Chief Eddie Garcia were demanding Santa Clara County change its sanctuary city policy for the second a little just over a year after it was uncovered that a suspect involved with a fatal stabbing at Grace Baptist Church was in fact undocumented. The current county policy b...