By Shane Eaton, 28-Year Public Servant, Former County Commissioner and Commission Chairman
There is a version of government leadership that gets things done fast. It happens in side conversations before the meeting starts. It happens over phone calls that never make it into the minutes. It happens when someone with the right last name or the right donor list calls someone with the right title, and a problem that should have taken a public vote takes a private handshake instead.
I have spent 28 years in government. Twelve of those years, I served as a county commissioner. Three of them, I served as Chairman of the Commission. I have sat in the room where those backdoor deals get proposed. And I want to say something that might not be popular in every circle of power: I never needed the back door. The front door works. It's just slower, and it demands more from you.
The Myth That Integrity Is Inefficient
Here is what some people in leadership tell us at every level of government—local, state, and federal: that doing things the right way is too slow to be practical. That the public process is a formality to be managed around, not a discipline to be honored. That real leaders know how to “get things done,” wink included.
I am here to tell you that is a myth built by people who have never had to look their community in the eye the next morning.
Local government is closer to people than any other layer of government will ever be. When government decisions go wrong, the fallout eventually lands on a county commissioner's desk, at a town hall, or in a grocery store parking lot where a constituent stops you to ask why their road still isn't fixed or why their water bill tripled. You cannot backdoor your way out of that conversation. You must have done the work, in the open, where people could see it.
Working Together Doesn't Mean Working in Secret
There is a real and important idea buried under the corruption everyone rightly criticizes: government at every level genuinely does need to work together. Local governments cannot solve infrastructure, housing, water rights, or public safety problems in isolation from state and federal partners. That much is true, and pretending otherwise is its own kind of failure—the leader who refuses to coordinate out of stubbornness is no better than the one who coordinates in the shadows.
The distinction that matters is not whether governments work together. It's how.
Coordination and collusion are not the same thing, even though they can look similar from a distance. Coordination happens in daylight—in hearings, in published agendas, in votes that are recorded and can be questioned. Collusion happens in the dark, structured specifically so it cannot be questioned. One builds trust that compounds over years. The other borrows trust it can never repay.
What Twelve Years Taught Me
Three years as Chairman taught me the difference between having authority and having credibility. Authority lets you call the vote. Credibility determines whether people believe the vote meant anything.
I learned that the deals struck honestly, in public sessions, with all the disagreement and friction that comes with it, were the ones that held. Not because everyone agreed with the outcome, but because everyone had a fair shot at being heard, and everyone could see exactly how the decision was made. Nobody could credibly say later that the process had been rigged, because there was nothing hidden to find.
The deals struck in back rooms, by contrast, always seemed to cost more than they saved. A favor granted quietly always comes due, and it rarely comes due on your terms.
A Challenge to Every Person Who Leads
If you hold any position of authority—in a county commission, a city council, a boardroom, a household—ask yourself a harder question than “Did I get the result I wanted?” Ask: “Could I explain exactly how I got this result to the people it affects, in full, without flinching?”
If the honest answer is no, you already know something in the process wasn't right, no matter how good the outcome looks on paper.
Real leadership, especially in government, is not the ability to maneuver around obstacles unseen. It is the willingness to move through them in front of everyone, absorb the friction that comes with transparency, and still land on a decision you can defend a decade later. That is harder than working a back channel. It is also the only version of leadership that leaves something behind worth trusting.
Twenty-eight years taught me that the front door is heavier to push open. It is also the only door that doesn't lock behind you.
