We are government.

• Author: Hellard, Vic, Jr.

A former Kentucky legislator and staffer offers a plea to reject cynicism and the notion that government is somehow alien and separate from the people.

I was fortunate that my tenure [with a state legislature] began at a historic moment and continued through historic times. The historic moment was the arrival of the legislative independence movement. The Kentucky General Assembly asserted its proper prerogatives as a co-equal branch of government after decades of heavy-handed executive branch domination during which the legislature was little more than a rubber stamp for the governor.

This commonwealth is better for legislative independence. Such progress as we've made in recent years - from a streamlined court system in the 1970s to becoming a national model for education reform and health insurance reform in the '90s - can be credited in large measure to the work of a forceful legislature.

In assessing that work, I'll turn to Lincoln, Kentucky's greatest son. Asked to define government, Lincoln said: "Government is people coming together collectively to do that which they could not do as well, or at all, individually."

That's what the General Assembly in my time of service became: People coming together, elected representatives of every stripe, from every corner of the commonwealth, to do those things they couldn't do alone, for the greater good of all.

But there are questions in this season of our history that challenge Lincoln's assumption. They are political and philosophical questions that beg the definition of what a legislature is and ought to be.

Should we have a social contract in Kentucky, with government a legitimate mediator and consensus builder, expressing but not dictating the public will? Or should the government simply abdicate - admit it's a bad thing, and play the least role possible?

Should Kentucky forge ahead on the course its newly independent legislature has established - a course of progressive, national leadership in education, health and long-term planning, with government vibrantly and properly expressing the people's collective will and their finest aspirations? Or do we agree with the negative proposition that government is the problem and government should get out of the way?

These seem to be the central political questions of our time. And no assessment of the legislature, no vision for its future, can be expressed without disposing of the last alternative.

We are told that government is the enemy. We hear...