The excitement of the election is long over, and the pomp of the inauguration ceremonies has faded.
Now Harford County's elected officials are obliged to get down to deal with what government is all about.
To a large extent, government is about taking care of problems that can't be left to private industry because there is no profit motive, even as there is a general public expectation that those problems need to be addressed.
Dealing with garbage is a prime example, and it's an issue the new administration of Harford County Executive Barry Glassman will need to tackle sooner rather than later.
For many years, the county has been able to rely on private industry for collecting garbage, as well as items separated for recycling in more recent years. The county's part of the bargain has been providing a place where the garbage could be disposed of. Most of it has been burned at a waste-to-energy plant in Joppa and the energy (in the form of steam) sold to the Army at Aberdeen Proving Ground. The ash, and some of the garbage, ends up being buried at the county's Scarboro Landfill.
It was a great arrangement while it lasted, but it won't be lasting much longer. The Joppa incinerator is on track to be shut down next year and the Scarboro Landfill is nearly full. The county now has a waste disposal arrangement with Baltimore County, which will receive Harford's trash at a transfer station in White Marsh and then dispose of it.
This puts something of a pinch in the county's arrangement with private waste haulers. Whereas the private haulers dropping loads at the Joppa facility or Scarboro could be weighed and monitored by Harford County in the past, that task will soon fall to Baltimore County.
The previous administration had proposed devising a sort of county partnership with the various trash haulers doing business in the county, which may have dealt with the issue of keeping track of Harford garbage that ends up in Baltimore County. Glassman's administration has backed away from that proposal, instead choosing to look "for ways to improve efficiency and cut costs," according to administration spokeswoman Cindy Mumby.
There is a practical matter involved of the kind that will have an effect on costs, that being the cost that end up being assessed against Harford County relative to the amount of trash county haulers report dropping off in Baltimore County.
Whether such things develop into issues remains to be seen, but the situation needs to be monitored and the county government is responsible for doing that monitoring. It's fine to express the generalities of the campaign trail that efficiencies will be sought and costs will be cut. It's quite another thing to keep track of how much garbage people in Harford County are being billed for disposing of in Baltimore County's facilities and whether any related charges match.
The government of Harford County has taken on the responsibility of providing disposal arrangements for its garbage, even as it has allowed the private sector to be responsible for collection and hauling. To leave the bulk of the operation's management in the hands of the private haulers, even as the county retains a level of responsibility thanks to its agreement with Baltimore County, would be a mistake.