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When the pope needs advice, he summons the College of Cardinals. When the state of Iowa asks for opinions, it gets a busload of people in Clarinda Cardinals sweat shirts.

Last week at the Statehouse, legislators held a public hearing on Senate File 2088, a bill designed to reorganize state government.

Anyone could have shown up, but the citizens of Clarinda actually did. You could have thrown a writ of certiorari across the old Supreme Court room and hit someone who was not from that town, but you would have needed Drew Brees-caliber accuracy.

For two hours, speaker after speaker used the allotted three minutes to talk about why closing the mental health facility in Page County would be a huge mistake. The state’s original plan was to close the facility at Mount Pleasant, but everybody there objected. A trend may be developing.

Once in a while, a speaker would step to the lectern and talk about the need to retain local control of preschool education, but it was like watching a TV timeout. Then, back to the Cardinals game.

The Clarindans handled it like athletes on a road trip, too. They boarded the team bus of semipro baseball’s Clarinda A’s, KMA radio from nearby Shenandoah helped out, and several of the visitors sported a “Save Clarinda MHI” button that looked like a homecoming souvenir.

It was a fine organizational effort by a town of 6,000 – and a graphic example of the difficulty of reorganizing the government of Iowa, with 3 million opinion-havers spread across 56,000 square miles.

However, it wasn’t what I hoped for when I battled my way into the crowded room. I was hoping people would show up to question a lot of the ideas for reinventing state government, just to see what they might say. No other gathering has the dramatic potential of a public comment session, not since they did away with witch-dunking.

For example, the bill would allow state government departments to convert contractor positions into full-time equivalent jobs. There must be somebody who wants to stand up and ask why we would add positions while at the same time we’re paying employees to leave.

Also, the bill would add a chief information officer and a 10-member technology advisory council, which kind of seems like the opposite of cutting government. Does that upset anyone, or is “technology” the magic word now? (It used to be “please.”)

One provision calls for changing the overall supervisor-to-employee ratio from 1-to-14 in the coming fiscal year to 1-to-20 in fiscal 2016. Why should we spend six years getting there? I’ve hidden under my desk while companies made bigger ratio changes in half an hour.

The Department of Corrections board has been required to meet 12 times a year, but now it’s suggested that quarterly confabs should be enough. We may end up spending more to fix prison problems that don’t get addressed quickly enough, but we’ll save on coffee.

The bill says “peace officer candidates” will be required to pay one-third of the cost of attending a recognized training school. Although, technically speaking, “the department may pay for all or a portion of the candidate’s share of the costs.” It’s not clear how much we’ll save with that kind of loopholing. This is an example of carefully crafting legislation so we won’t have to give money to people we just don’t like.

The Department of Revenue gets to add five examiners. Many might oppose that, but few want to draw the department’s attention.

Or what about this? “On or before July 1, 2010, the Department of Public Health shall no longer operate any advisory committee on swimming pools.”

OK, I wasn’t really expecting to hear an impassioned plea about that one. But it would have been a nice change of pace from all of that serious Clarinda talk.