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The front page of the Dec. 27, 1923, Weekly Wymorean featured a poem lamenting the end of horse-drawn transportation.

“O, horse, you are a wonderful thing; no button to push, no horn to honk; you start yourself, no clutch to slip, no spark to miss, no gears to strip,” the poem began. “No gas bills climbing up each day, stealing the joy of life away.”

https://lithub.com/in-search-of-the-rarest-book-in-american-literature-edgar-allan-poes-tamerlane/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR2Wn_sNs17sCgJ2s-9sVyPyzBnG2cc0H0CiQt1bmBaagfaZHPY6UVmtidQ_aem_LGUJo2MM9k2IxjuF5dOIPw

In Search of the Rarest Book in American Literature: Edgar Allan Poe’s Tamerlane
Bradford Morrow on the Bibliophile’s Holy Grail, Otherwise Known as the “Black Tulip”

My first personal encounter with the rarest book in American literature was memorable, even moving, for many reasons, but its physical appearance wasn’t one of them. If ever a book ought not to be judged by its cover, Edgar Allan Poe’s debut collection, Tamerlane and Other Poems, is that book. Known as the Black Tulip, only twelve copies appear to have survived since its publication in July 1827. That one of the last two in private hands is coming to auction this month, not quite two centuries later, marks an historic bibliophilic event.
Both Poe and the novice printer Calvin F.W. Thomas were just eighteen when the poet handed over his manuscript, presumably at Thomas’s shop at 70 Washington Street in Boston, and paid him to make it into a book. The result was forty pages of unevenly printed verse bound in drab tan wrappers the shade of a faded tea stain. Tamerlane’s front cover features a potpourri of discordant typefaces within an ornamental frame that resembles a geometric queue of conifers—a heavy-handed period design I have grown to adore. It’s clear that Thomas, as a workaday job printer whose usual commissions were show bills, apothecary labels, calling cards, and the like, had his shop stocked with a mishmash of typefaces to fit any taste. On this occasion, he seems to have drawn liberally from his inventory.
While there’s no evidence to suggest the printer realized its significance before his death in 1876, his modest hand-sewn pamphlet marked the beginning of one of the most revolutionary, incandescent, and influential careers of any writer in his, or any, century. It is speculated that Calvin Thomas’s family were acquainted with Poe’s birth parents, Eliza and David, in Boston, and that the teenaged Poe knew of him that way. But Calvin’s business was included in the Boston Directory, so it’s every bit as likely he hired him through this listing.
The young poet, who’d left Richmond, Virginia, after dropping out of university when his foster father, John Allan, gave him insufficient funds to continue (Edgar had racked up gambling debts in a reckless attempt to make up the difference), may not have shared his identity with Thomas when the printer produced his “little volume” with its “many faults.” Indeed, Poe’s name is nowhere to be found in Tamerlane. Its authorial attribution is simply “By a Bostonian.” Its Preface, at once boastful and self-defensive and very Poean, is unsigned.

Albumen print of “Stella” portrait of Poe (1876) from 1849 daguerreotype original. Courtesy of the author.
Inconspicuous, fragile, published sans fanfare, ignored by reviewers, its sales poor, had Tamerlane been Edgar Allan Poe’s only publication, a one-off chapbook of melancholy romantic verse, it would now be a mere bibliographical curiosity. A fugitive document of interest to some scholar of early Lord Byron imitators or a specialist—are there any?—of Boston job printers of the period.
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Instead—because its author went on to invent the modern detective story (think “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter”), revolutionize the Gothic genre with tales like “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” pen triumphs of supernatural horror like “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and write the classic macabre poem “The Raven,” which many of us tried to memorize as kids—Tamerlane, for its now-insignificant deficiencies as a poem and a pamphlet, is of towering importance to Poe specialists and aficionados alike.
The Holy Grail of book collecting, Tamerlane is one of those books that—like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in the original boards, which sold at Christie’s in 2021 for $1.17 million, or Shakespeare’s first folio, priced at $7.5 million and sold last year by the London-based rare book firm Peter Harrington on its 400th anniversary—causes a stir among rare book enthusiasts whether or not they have any hope, or desire, of acquiring it. (Not to mention the Bay Psalm Book or even the Eliot Algonquin Bible, other ultra-rare early American printed books, though religious texts, not literary.) Whenever a first edition of Tamerlane comes under the hammer—a rare event in itself—its past legacy and future home become the topic of discussion among booksellers, archivists, collectors, and Poe scholars around the world.
Originally produced in an edition estimated at forty or fifty copies, Tamerlane was from its inception a rarity. The Morgan Library doesn’t own a copy. Nor does the Library of Congress. The copy once held by the University of Virginia, Poe’s not-quite alma mater, was stolen in 1973 from the McGregor Room vault in Alderman Library. If it is never recovered, an unfortunate possibility, the number of known copies drops to eleven. At least one prominent Poe expert I know speculates it may have been destroyed to hide the evidence. After all, it would be wildly risky to try to sell the copy. Where in the world would a fence safely offer it? Besides, the theft, a presumed inside job, happened long enough ago that it’s not inconceivable the thief is dead. Wherever it is out there in illicit limbo, one hopes that whoever has it will earn their gothic angel’s wings by restoring it to the Alderman. Poe himself, while not given to happy endings, might have conceived an imaginative way for it to return, like Lady Rowena in his early tale “Ligeia,” from the dead.
My own first experience with Tamerlane came when I was invited by Susan Jaffe Tane, the most renowned of contemporary Poe collectors—no close second—to examine her copy along with some of her other treasures. These include important copies of all his books along with many original manuscripts, autograph letters, oil and daguerreotype portraits, a lock of his hair, even the tiny gold engagement ring Poe had given to Sarah Elmira Royster in 1849. At the time, back in 2018, I was researching my novel The Forger’s Daughter, which centers on a complex scheme to counterfeit a thirteenth Tamerlane. Despite the unsavory conspiracy in my narrative, in which an authentic copy is stolen and replaced with a sophisticated fake—recent thefts of Pushkin first editions from libraries across Europe that were replaced by persuasive forgeries are a vivid case of life imitating art—Tane was interested in helping me.

Susan Tane with her Tamerlane. Courtesy of the author.
Diminutive in stature, prodigious in energy, with alert blue-green eyes and the faintest hint of the Long Island accent of her youth, Susan Tane is a prototypical force of nature. After meeting me at the door of her Upper East Side apartment, she poured me coffee and promptly sat me down to ask how she could help with my project. (Her dining room, by the way, doubles as a library for an extensive Mark Twain collection; she collects Whitman and Melville in depth as well.) Even before showing me what I came to see, she began giving me copies of Tamerlane–relevant printouts and articles, and methodically dialed me in to her vast network of Poe scholars who could help with this or that recherché query. Sitting at the computer in her kitchen, she emailed letters of introduction to Jeffrey A. Savoye of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, to Chris Semtner at the Poe Museum in Richmond, and, among others, to Richard Kopley, a preeminent Poe authority whose biography, Edgar Allan Poe: A Life, comes out with the University of Virginia Press in February. That accomplished, she led me into her Poe room to meet the Black Tulip.
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Just five Tamerlanes are complete with their original wrappers and Tane’s is one of them. It’s safe to say that hers is easily the most recognizable, with a prominent ring stain on its front wrapper, the result of somebody having used it as a coaster for their wet glass (of whiskey, I like to imagine). This inadvertent bit of vandalism is now hard to imagine. But Tamerlane wasn’t widely known beyond Poe specialists until the writer Vincent Starrett published an article in a 1925 issue of the Saturday Evening Post. “Have You a Tamerlane in Your Attic?” instantly raised the public’s awareness of the book’s significance, rarity, and value. Starrett’s column is credited with precipitating the discovery of some five previously unknown copies.
Could our thirsty vandal have made their mark, so to say, before “Attic” came out? Or maybe never read it? Either way, Tane’s copy was discovered in 1988 in a bin of old farming pamphlets at an antique shop in Hampton, New Hampshire, when a vigilant collector bought it for $15 and resold the book, which then made its circuitous way through Sotheby’s, where she acquired it in 1991. An online search today for “Poe Tamerlane” will bring up the distinctive Tane copy on multiple sites.
Before I returned home that day, overwhelmed by what I’d seen, she showed me the original manuscript of “The Spirits of the Dead,” written a year after Tamerlane was printed, and the earliest known autograph poem by Poe in private hands. She also shared with me the block-letter manuscript of Poe’s early tale “Epimanes” (1833), with its integral cover letter to the editors of New England Magazine, where the author hoped it would be accepted for publication. (Despite its dire postscript, “P.S. I am poor,” those hopes were in vain.) Finally, she brought out her copy of Poems (1831) which, like Tamerlane, is beyond rare, with as few as twenty copies known to exist.
Its infamous backstory reveals that West Point cadet Poe collected subscription money from over a hundred fellow officers-in-training to finance its publication. However, his experience at the military academy went about as well as at UVA, and Poe—who deliberately set about to get himself courtmartialled—was tried for gross disobedience, found guilty, and departed the Hudson River bastion in disgrace. When Poems came out, under the imprint of Elam Bliss, his schoolmate investors derided it as “a damn cheat,” ridiculing it as unentertaining, even complaining that the volume’s margins and spacing were too big. Not as famous but nearly as uncommon to market as Tamerlane, Tane’s copy of Poems represents the earliest known inscribed Poe title in any collection, public or private.
Not long after my visit with Susan Tane, I arranged to meet with Carolyn Vega of the Berg Collection in New York Public Library, where two more of the twelve copies reside. Berg’s curator since 2018, Vega had already carefully set out their Tamerlanes in her inner office for me to inspect, along with a number of Poe autograph manuscripts. One copy bears the early signature of a Susan Saunders on its tan cover; the other, lacking its wrappers, had surfaced in Maine back in 1938 before being acquired by NYPL. Another rich couple of hours ensued, also unforgettable. As The Forger’s Daughter involves in-the-weeds details about Tamerlane’s printing and hand-stitched binding, which was more easily examined absent its wrappers, comparing them side by side was invaluable to me.
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The Swantko Tamerlane in Sotheby’s auction.
Carolyn Vega is one of those librarians who truly loves her books, knows their intricate histories in depth. When I noticed that the type seemed broken and displaced in the text of one copy but not the other, I joked with her about the possibility of there being an issue point that would indicate a primary and second state of Tamerlane. (“Issue points” are among the gnarlier elements of necessary bibliographic identification, and are determined by a change in the text or some other physical attribute of a first edition that shows it came off the press earlier or later in the production process. A first issue, or first state, of any rare book is usually the more desirable and, as such, examples where broken type is one of their issue points include Huckleberry Finn, Treasure Island, The Red Badge of Courage, even Leaves of Grass.)
That Calvin Thomas might have failed to lock the type properly when printing Tamerlane, thus unwittingly producing an earlier—unbroken type—and later—broken, skewed type—state of Poe’s pamphlet was, well, nuts. Vega and I had a good nerdy laugh, knowing it was a quasi-serious possibility.
My notebook soon filled with more information and anecdotes about Poe’s book than I could ever use in The Forger’s Daughter, but I wasn’t quite done with my research. Though my plans went awry to visit the Free Library of Philadelphia, repository of the only other East Coast Tamerlane—OCD aside, how many did I really need to hold in my hands to make a spiritual connection?—their copy would play an important role in my novel anyway. My narrative had hit a problematic timeline snag that seemed insurmountable since Daughter was a stand-alone sequel to my earlier book, The Forgers, in which birth dates and chronologies were fixed.
As it happened, my protagonist Will needed to have seen a copy of Tamerlane when he was a boy. Caitlin Goodman, then-curator of the Rare Book Department at the Free Library—may God bless tenacious librarians everywhere!—went back through years of exhibits to discover that, yes, their copy had in fact been part of an exhibition in the early 1970s, acquired through a bequest from the collector Richard Gimbel, of Gimbel’s department store fame. When fictional Will’s father, himself a serious book collector, escorted his son on the very trip I couldn’t make at the time, he stood before the vitrine and said to the eleven-year-old, “Now there’s a book I’ll never possess, Will. That is a true unicorn. Never forget you saw this.”
I recently finished combing through the copy edit of my forthcoming novel, The Forger’s Requiem, the final volume of the Forgers Trilogy. My study of Tamerlane—as a novelist anyway—had, I believed, come to an end. Requiem focuses primarily on a Mary Shelley forgery, though the fictional thirteenth Tamerlane of my earlier book—the one that motivated these visits with Susan Tane and the others—was scripted to come to auction in an unnamed New York venue. In The Forger’s Daughter I had it “break all previous records, making it the most valuable book in American literature, the Third Imperial Fabregé egg of American letters. Its plain-Jane Mona Lisa.” As I wrote the auction scene in Requiem, imagining the event as it might play out, I sensed it would be the only chance I’d ever have to experience an electrified room where Poe’s Tamerlane would go to the highest bidder.

Then came the announcement a couple months ago that Sotheby’s would in actual fact be offering the second of the two privately held copies as part of the Library of Dr. Rodney P. Swantko sale on June 26.
For obvious, if ineffable, reasons, I had to see it. Arrangements were made for me to have a private showing of the rarity in a conference room above 72nd and York—walking distance, as it happened, from where I had examined my first copy. Sotheby’s publicist Derek Parsons met me in the auction house’s vast lobby and escorted me upstairs. Hosted by specialists Ella Hall and Dr. Kalika Sands, I soon understood that they were as possessed as I am of what writer Nicholas Basbanes terms “a gentle madness,” a deep-felt, bibliomaniacal, obsessive love of books.
Even before we sat together at a grand conference table, I noticed how dwarfed by the setting Tamerlane was, still hidden inside its dark-red morocco pull-off case. Insignificant-looking, physically negligible. Though of course it was the reason all of us were there. As Sands removed it from its vintage Rivière & Son enclosure and passed it over to me, I commented that old-fashioned slipcases like this often held real treasures; that for a book to merit such fancy housing in an earlier era meant it’d been rare for a long time.

Notches on title page of Swantko copy.
Deemed by Sotheby’s as “the most poignant rarity in American literature,” the Swantko copy has a rich history, having once been in the legendary collections of H. Bradley Martin and William E. Self. A woman named Martha Ann Flint, who signed the upper wrapper verso, was among its earliest owners. (In a recent email, Jeffrey Savoye ventures it might’ve been acquired from Calvin Thomas by her father, Elijah Flint [1798–1882] and passed along to Martha, noting dates that support such a theory.) Preserving its original wrappers, the copy is variously stained and worn away here and there along its spine, and is what’s known as an “unsophisticated” example—one that’s been spared the well-intended, if sometimes disastrous, ministrations of a restorer and thus is close to its original condition. It is the only extant copy to have been deliberately notched, with V-shaped cut-outs on the outer and bottom edges.
Though we may never know for sure, some speculate that Calvin Thomas did this, as the Sotheby’s cataloguer writes, “very possibly in order to mark the book as not to be returned.” Different experts have different opinions in the matter. Savoye agrees that “while it is possible that the V was made by idle handling, I think the notion of it marking a remainder is more likely.” Tom Lecky, owner of Riverrun Books and former head of Christie’s New York Books and Manuscripts department, which handled the auctions of the Self collection, including Tamerlane in 2009, doubts that theory. “I think it’s an aberrant one-off and some early owner must have marked it that way,” he told me. Whatever this “marking” actually means, it is just more proof that each of the dozen survivors has its own mysterious and sometimes unknowable history.
Some books become our friends. The writings inside them, as well as the tangible volumes themselves. If we read them literally out of their covers, write our thoughts in their margins, underline or smiley-face favorite passages, or even criticize the author (I own Angela Carter’s college copy of John Donne’s selected poems, in which she’s written “This is lousy, this last line”), they’re a dynamic presence in our lives. And whether they’re on our own shelves or another’s, all books are part of our shared legacy. Even juvenile work like Tamerlane contains lines, ideas, imagery that hint at Poe’s future writings, such as this passage from section XV of the title poem:
The sound of revelry by night�Comes o’er me, with the mingled voice�Of many with a breast as light,�As if ’twere not the dying hour�Of one, in whom they did rejoice—�As in a leader, haply—Power�Its venom secretly imparts;�Nothing have I with human hearts.
I like to believe the copy of Tamerlane that was stolen from the Alderman Library will one day resurface. I hope that a genuine thirteenth survivor will eventually materialize.
Maybe the upcoming 200th anniversary of Tamerlane’s publication, in 2027, will generate the discovery of a hitherto unknown sibling of the dozen recorded copies. Or perhaps a find will be prompted by this historic upcoming sale at Sotheby’s.
Contrary to reason, unimaginably rare books do sometimes appear at market in quick succession. To wit, another copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, uncut in the original pink boards, one of only three sets to appear at auction since 1985, is coming up at Heritage Auctions, part of the William A. Strutz Library, the day after Tamerlane is to be sold. Why not a previously undiscovered Black Tulip? If one magically surfaces, I won’t be the only Poe aficionado who will celebrate the find and make every effort to see it, perhaps even hold it carefully in my hands. Very carefully and with a feeling akin to awe that such an ephemeral bit of literary culture managed to survive in a world where books—even amateur productions like Tamerlane—are as endangered as ever, no matter how anonymous, obscure, or immortal its author may be.
Bradford Morrow is the author of ten novels including Trinity Fields, The Prague Sonata, the trilogy The Forgers, The Forger’s Daughter, and forthcoming, The Forger’s Requiem, as well as a collection of stories, The Uninnocent. He is the editor of Conjunctions.

In Search of the Rarest Book in American Literature: Edgar Allan Poe’s Tamerlane My first personal encounter with the rarest book in American literature was memorable, even moving, for many reasons, but its physical appearance wasn’t one of them. If ever a book ought not to be …

https://www.msnbc.com/know-your-value/out-of-office/american-democracy-look-hands-teenage-girls-rcna159027

What would American democracy look like in the hands of teenage girls?
The new documentary, “Girls State,” follows 500 young female leaders in hopes of finding out.

June 26, 2024, 11:19 AM EDT
Teenage girls take a selfie
In 2020, filmmakers Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine took a deep dive into the world of Gen Z politics with their critically acclaimed documentary “Boys State,” which followed 1,000 teenage boys who gather at a week-long summer camp in Texas to form a mock government.

Ahead of a critical presidential election, Moss and McBaine are back with a timely followup called “Girls State,” which was released recently on Apple TV+. The new documentary follows 500 Missouri teenage girls, from wildly different backgrounds, as they gather for a week-long immersion program, where they build a government from the ground up, campaign for office and form a Supreme Court to weigh in on the most divisive issues of the day, including abortion, gun violence and climate change.

Moss said adults can learn a lot from giving teenage girls the mic.

“Perhaps we can learn a lot but not only listening more to this generation but watching them model a politics of civility, something our adult politicians seem to have a hard time doing,” he said.

Know Your Value recently chatted with Moss and McBaine about their documentary, what they learned about female leadership, how young voters will shape the upcoming presidential election and more.

Below is the conversation, which has been edited for brevity and clarity:

Tell us why you decided to do a follow up to “Boys State”? And why did you pick Missouri?

Jesse Moss: We always knew we would make “Girls State.” It was never a matter of why, just a matter of when, where and how. “Boys State,” an inspiring and terrifying meditation on electoral politics and what it means to win at all costs, had satisfied our curiosity about how young people were taking in the political behaviors of the “Adult State.” We did not want to make the same film starring girls. We were curious, would girls do government differently?

Missouri Girls State offered a new dynamic. During the week, citizens build a third branch of government, the judicial branch. Citizens would not only be competing for governor, they would also compete to be a justice on the Supreme Court and decide one momentous case at the end of the week.

Directors and producers Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss behind-the-scenes of "Girls State," now streaming on Apple TV+.
Directors and producers Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss behind-the-scenes of "Girls State," now streaming on Apple TV+.Apple TV+
We were also drawn to the magnitude and vibrancy of the large Missouri Girls State organization and the political and cultural diversity of the state. With “blue” cities and “red” suburbs and rural communities, Missouri is home to both conservative Senator Josh Hawley (author of the recent book, “Manhood: the Masculine Virtues America Needs”) and liberal ‘squad’ member Rep. Cori Bush. In some ways, this mid-western state is emblematic of the country as a whole, of its problems and its strengths.

The film follows the high school girls through a week-long immersive experiment to build a government from the ground up. What do you think the biggest takeaways were about female leadership?

Amanda McBaine: Representation matters in a representational democracy. The new dynamic to the girls program that we did not explore in the boys program was representation. How had girls internalized the inequity of female representation in government?

As one of the counselors says in the opening meeting “We have a lot in common. We have never seen a female president. What do we do? We step up!” In an all-female space, there was no shortage of stepping up. It was noteworthy that hundreds of girls competed for the position of Supreme Court justice whereas fewer competed for governor. We can only think that has to do with what they see modeled in the real world: a court with four female justices.

At the time of the filming, the leaked US Supreme Court document suggested that the constitutional right to an abortion was about to be overruled. How did this affect the dynamic and storyline?

Amanda McBaine: Shortly after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case in Dec 2021, we began our casting process, where we met on Zoom with hundreds of high school juniors headed to the Girls State program that summer. They had a lot to say!

In a state like Missouri, where in 2019 the 72 percent male state legislature passed a trigger law banning all abortion unless a medical emergency, the stakes for a potential federal ban were very high. It felt very special to speak with a group of young women who would be most directly affected by this law but who had had the least say about its making, and to whom very few had asked—how do you feel? The conversation was not so much about the moral rights and wrongs of the issue as much as the legal conversation about body autonomy. This was notable to us in such a red state. There was truly an eagerness to talk about it.

Emily Worthmore and additional "Girls State" participants in "Girls State," now streaming on Apple TV+.
Emily Worthmore and additional "Girls State" participants in "Girls State," now streaming on Apple TV+.Apple TV+
Then, just weeks before the girls convened that early June for the Girls State session, the leaked opinion that the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade became public. Understandably, this cast a pall over the ceremonies. But it made gathering together to process even more necessary. At the end of the week the Missouri Girls State Supreme Court heard an abortion case about privacy that had worked its way through the lower courts—Amelia vs. The State of Missouri. And for one brief moment the conversation was being had by only young women.

What were the main differences in leadership styles you saw when you were filming “Girls State” versus “Boys State”?

Jesse Moss: The main difference we could see is that the dynamic at Boys State became much more tribal much more quickly. It is impossible to say whether the reason for this is gender related or program related. Missouri Girls State operates more slowly at first, with inspirational speeches and ice breakers. They do not break into their two parties until days into the session.

There were other striking differences. The [girls] were also much harder on themselves. Perfectionism seemed to be a real challenge. They genuinely wished each other well. The seven Supreme Court justices—all who had won a rigorous three stage competition to get the seats—held hands in a circle before going onstage to hear their final case.

That said, there were so many similarities to the boys of Boys State. These young people seemed to desire community and dialogue. They value listening. They value each other as human beings. Perhaps because they haven’t yet had to check a box on a ballot, they don’t see two rigid sides of a political divide. Their politics are more a la carte. We might argue that the bigger divide is not young men and women but what makes young people lead differently than adults in the Adult State.

Based on your experience directing “Girls State,” how do you think young voters will approach the 2024 election? What issues matter most?

Amanda McBaine” We do not have a crystal ball, but we felt very optimistic but the level of engagement of the Gen Z generation. They are a large and diverse group. They are not naive or apathetic about the existential threats they face. Based on how resilient most of the kids are that we feature in both films, we have hope. Some of them are already working in government. Most of them are already engaged in activism. They all see the value in voting. This is the power of play-acting democracy before engaging in the “real thing”. You understand the value of participation. As one of the counselor’s at Boys State says “democracy is not a spectator sport.”

What would American democracy look like in the hands of teenage girls? The new documentary, “Girls State,” follows 500 young female leaders in hopes of finding out.

https://www.npr.org/2024/06/22/nx-s1-5016281/wild-thang-pekingese-winner-2024-world-ugliest-dog-contest

Super fluffy 8-year-old Pekingese Wild Thang wins 2024 World's Ugliest Dog contest This is the first victory for the canine, a five-time competitor in the annual event, held in the northern California city of Petaluma.

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https://www.centralmaine.com/2024/06/11/somerset-county-commissioner-maines-county-government-is-a-quiet-workhorse/

Somerset County commissioner: Maine’s county government is a quiet workhorse
County government is a cost-effective and efficient form of government, a county official writes.

Robert Sezak4:00 AM
County government is the quiet workhorse of local and regional government as established by law. County government is Maine’s oldest form of government, predating statehood and even the writing of the Declaration of Independence.

But according to Douglas Rooks, county government might seem inefficient or weak (“Sheriff ‘impeachment’ underlines need for change,” May 30). It is neither.

County government has proven itself effective in coordinating and providing valuable services in the areas of law enforcement, emergency management, and agricultural education and activities. The county is also home to the Registry of Probate and the Registry of Deeds, providing crucial roles to family needs and county heritage that extend beyond county lines. The documents and records of these departments give us a record of the lives of our ancestors and the conditions of their times. Good documentation aids in determining legal status: court orders, marriage licenses, deeds, and the minutes of the county commission are just a few examples of the importance of documents that create relationships, establish rights or liabilities, and authorize certain actions thus giving us insights into the lives of our ancestors. These are clearly well-defined responsibilities.

For many people Rooks’ column lifted a curtain that hides the inner workings of county government. Unfortunately he has provided more confusion than light. County government is the quiet engine in a system of government that works efficiently and close to the people on a strict close-to-the-bone budget.

In Somerset County the budget is first formulated and developed by the department heads, considered line by line by the commissioners and sent to the county budget committee, which is made up of municipal officials, for final drafting, then it is sent before the public for their consideration. Whereafter, with budget committee acceptance, the budget is returned to the county commissioners for approval. The county commissioners have the power of the purse strings whereby the commission approves the spending of the monies allocated.

County sheriffs are elected officers of the county. The election of sheriffs is among the strongest form of democracy where the people directly elect their law enforcement officer. That said, being sheriff is not a simple matter of gaining the most votes. In order for the the sheriff to be the head of the departments of law enforcement and corrections by law there are minimum qualifications to be met in order to be elected or appointed as sheriff including swearing to or affirming the Law Enforcement Code of Ethics. The sheriff is an elected professional and the chief county law enforcement officer. State law requires that the county commissioners “shall regularly review the sheriff’s operations and shall ensure that the law enforcement functions required under the budget are being adequately performed. The county commissioners may not give orders directly to any deputies or other subordinates of the sheriff, either publicly or privately.” The county commissioners have oversight and are the makers of county policy that applies to all departments of the county.

Rooks states, “The county sheriff offices are regional police forces,” yet calls them “inadequate.” If they are inadequate it is not for lack of qualification or professionalism but for the lack of available personnel or funding which comes mostly from the property tax payers.

Rooks also states that “Counties are completely dependent on local property taxes.” That dependence on the property tax makes for tight budgets but does not make the county structure “rickety.” Municipalities and public schools receive revenue sharing from the state that counties do not but municipalities and public schools are still reliant on property tax.

The state on the other hand has the sales tax and the income tax as major sources of revenue making counties the Cinderella of governments. The functions of the county are not easily transferred to the state. County government is a cost-effective and efficient form of government. The greatest pressure on the county is the cost of the jails. This is not a case of mismanagement but a lack of proper funding by the state. County taxpayers should not have to pay for costs associated with housing state prisoners, yet the state consistently fails to pay its fair share.

A better way to enhance county government while providing relief to property taxpayers is for the state to provide revenue sharing that reduces the impact of property taxes on all property taxpayers.

Somerset County commissioner: Maine’s county government is a quiet workhorse County government is a cost-effective and efficient form of government, a county official writes.