“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.”
Thomas Jefferson
“Government ought to be as much open to improvement as anything which appertains to man..”
Thomas Paine
“An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.”
James Madison
Yakima County Home Rule Charter 