Local leaders are typically incompetent. However,they can still impose taxes which leads to tax and spend the populace into poverty.
In ILL-ANNOY, we are the poster children for representative irrelevance. There are TWO people to tell everyone how to vote: Governor Rauner dictates the R vote or will withhold campaign finance, and Madigan controls all D votes or will withhold campaign finance. Get out of line and committee assignments change or your pet legislation is tanked. ILL-ANNOY is subject to rigged district mapping which is used as a brickbat against Rs and may be used in the same manner to get preferred Ds power bases.
They did that when they ratified the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution.
Most, if not all, public schools have been teaching the opposite for decades. Almost nobody knows what the proper role of the Sheriff is.
The schools teach that Washington has all the power and rightfully so. Implicit in this is they also ignore and/or trivialize the Constitution.
Only if we the people let this happen...and at our own peril.
State and Local officials became Constitutionally irrelevant with the adoption of the 17th Amendment.