The Journal has put forth an editorial that it's probably had on the shelf for some time while it waited for a slow news day:

According to a Journal Sentinel analysis published earlier this year, two-thirds of local elections this spring in Ozaukee, Milwaukee, Racine, Washington and Waukesha counties went uncontested. Milwaukee County did better than its neighbors: 70% of all races in the other four counties went uncontested, and the figure reached a whopping 87% in Ozaukee County.
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That's a shame. Local governments make most of the decisions that affect the daily lives of citizens. Crime, fire protection, garbage collection, street and highway maintenance, public transit, water quality, the quality of education and a host of other matters are all decided by town supervisors, village trustees, aldermen, county supervisors and school board members.
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Maybe what's needed here is an effort like the one under way in Madison, where the business community, the media and the Democratic Party are working to get more people engaged in politics and government.

I read this and thought... what utter crap.  First of all I enjoyed greatly the part about where the editors of the newspaper lamented about how the "media" needed to put forth a greater effort... yet made it sound like they weren't part of the media.  We need an "grand effort" put forth by a "group of people" all working "in concert".  How about you just do it.  Just make the decision to do it, and go.  If people care about what happens locally... who knows... maybe your circulation might actually start climbing instead of shrinking.  Others will follow your lead.  No need for massive campaigns (no doubt subsidized by tax dollars).  Just do it.  You are the editors after all.  Have you no say in what actually goes into your own paper?

The Journal Sentinel isn't the New York Times.  Yet how much of that news paper concentrates on national and international news when more and more people go to the Internet for information about what's happening outside Milwaukee?  What is the Journal capable of reporting on really well?  (I'll let you pause for a quiet moment of laughter here as you consider whether the Journal Sentinel is capable of doing anything really well.)  How about what's going on right here?  The Times isn't going to cover Milwaukee unless something huge happens here.

The real fallacy though is that all politics is local.  The vast majority of the things mentioned in the editorial that local government provide aren't political issues.  They're administrative ones.  Nobody really fights over how garbage gets collected.  You put your trash can out every week and it gets picked up.  I don't see Republicans and Democrats fighting too much in their platform over exactly how that should be done.  Same goes for issues like water quality, street and highway maintenance, etc.  We may talk about the cost... but that's about it.  As long as it gets done, that's all that really matters.

What's important to realize... and is something that the Journal ought to know... is that more and more political activities which used to be in the local domain aren't anymore.  Education is controlled less and less by local governments as federal initiatives like "No Child Left Behind" take hold and steal away power.  Even fighting crime is less of a local issue as more and more federal dollars (and federal requirements) are imposed on cities.  Hell... even Mayor Barrett was recently heard begging the federal government to do more not less.

From drug policy, to education, to welfare, to gambling, to abortion, to policing, and scores of other issues that affect our daily lives... most of the decision making is done in Washington.  Fewer yet is done in Madison.  All that's left to the cities is to decide which day you should put your garbage out.  So... who wants to volunteer to run for garbage man?