Secretaries as governance capacity

Administrative assistants and parish secretaries are low‑visibility nodes that translate rules into outcomes: they navigate personnel, vendor, and permitting networks and thereby preserve institutional throughput. Eliminating those roles for headline 'efficiency' often increases transaction costs, slows services, and concentrates visible power in fewer, harder‑to‑challenge actors. — Recognizing and protecting this informal governance layer matters for public administration, nonprofit resilience, and corporate performance because it directly affects service delivery, trust in institutions, and who is actually accountable.