In his inaugural speech as the nation ’s first African-American leader, President Barack Obama stood in front of a sea of tens of thousands and said this. “What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them – that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.”
It’s a powerful statement, but President Obama’s definition of a working government – “whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified” – is debatable. Government is complex and its functions are no longer simple. There are as many ideas for what government should be doing as there are people in it. Is the purpose of a government to protect its people? To provide for its people? To work on behalf of its people? Is it all of the above?
It’s difficult to find time to think about the big picture in between fixing roads, overseeing a system of law and order, organizing elections and providing social services to residents. But local government is about to be hard-hit by an evolving society, one in financial distress and an unemployed workforce, and it’s about time to ask how the national landscape may affect not just the neighbors down the road, but the role of local government itself. What is it that people need, want and expect their government to do.
Just as significant: How is it that government can continue meeting the needs of the people?
The question is looming larger and larger. Local governments will not be immune to the effects of recession. As more and more property owners are forced from their homes due to foreclosures and job losses, property tax collection will decrease. The impact won’t be felt right away, but experts predict that what laid off workers feel now will hit government budgets hard in 2010 and 2011. Bev Cigler, a professor of public policy and administration and Pennsylvania State University who studies the changing role of county government, had some suggestions when she traveled to Dallas for a Texas Association of Counties’ Leadership Class meeting in January.
In times of great need, Cigler said, local governments must work diligently to build capacity, the same way students build professional capacity by attending college or businesses build financial capacity by investing in new products and ideas.
“The simple way of saying this is that when you build your capacity, you are trying to build your abilities to do whatever you want to do,” she said. “It’s generally to anticipate change, to make great decisions, develop programs to implement those decisions, to know how to manage your resources and to evaluate what you did.”
To build economic capacity successfully, businesses must study their consumers carefully, and design products that consumers will want and need continuously. To build managerial capacity, managers must understand what their employees want and need in order to stay loyal and productive while still balancing the profit needs of the company. For counties to build capacity, Cigler said, officials must decide what their residents will want and need in the future, and figure out the most efficient methods of supplying those services.
In order to do that, governments must build capacity in different sectors. They must have managerial capacity, technical capacity, financial capacity, political capacity. A county that has the brains to build a software data sharing system, but lacks the financial brawn or the political will to invest in such as system, cannot build the system. It’s as the old saying goes: a local government is only as strong as its weakest link.
“If you lack capacity, then you have a crisis of government,” Cigler said. “You have a lot of things to juggle and balance.”
What’s more, local government officials don’t really have the ease of making their own decisions. In the higher levels of government, counties and cities are often treated just another special interest, rather than an equal partner. There are federal regulations to comply with, state mandates to meet, economic limitations to consider and voter demands to achieve.
To Cigler, these influences are parts of various macrotrends impacting county government. They must be studied and understood for local officials to truly present strategic solutions to future problems that will be faced not just in another state, but locally, in each neighborhood and community.
The trends include an overall aging population. How does that impact counties? It’ll mean more property tax freezes, more health care concerns and needs, and fewer people in the work force. “There will be more pressure on the system, which will cost money,” Cigler said. The problem will most likely be more pronounced in rural areas, since younger generations have left parents behind in favor of opportunities in more urban metropolitan areas, and seniors show no such migration away from their long-time homes. As a result, rural areas will have a large percentage of senior citizen residents, but a smaller work force to meet their needs.
Another macrotrend is the ever-increasing diversity of the American people, a fact highlighted in Texas as much as anywhere else.
Texans, Cigler said, speak 250 different languages, so perhaps local government has a communication challenge. And cultural diversity isn’t the only diversity: there’s also a greater generational diversity, as people live longer and stay in the workplace longer. That’s a managerial challenge for both the private and public sectors, since workers and residents from different generations often clash in values and priorities.
Cigler’s macrotrends affecting counties didn’t stop there. Government, she said, is changing. Problems are becoming more complex while the microscope that illuminates the workings of government is becoming more convenient. There’s an increased demand for services and a greater activism and awareness due to technology – Cigler pointed out that “citizens can have the exact same information that you have at the same time, so it changes the whole nature of the relationship” – but government officials must also combat information overload. There’s financial uncertainty and a rising public panic as citizens begin worrying about themselves and the future of their families without a stable job.
“We’ve moved from a time when everyone has redefined their wants to call them needs and redefined their needs to call them rights,” she said.
It’s the difficult job of government, Cigler said, to find a solution and to adapt to those macrotrends and challenges. One way for local governments to build capacity, she said, is to experiment — encourage and make use of pilot program and grant opportunities. States and the federal government are often wary of experimenting with new “If you lack capacity, then you have a crisis of government. You have a lot of things to juggle and balance.”
or the political will to invest in such as system, cannot build the system. It’s as the old saying goes: a local government is only as strong as its weakest link.
“If you lack capacity, then you have a crisis of government,” Cigler said. “You have a lot of things to juggle and balance.”
What’s more, local government officials don’t really have the ease of making their own decisions. In the higher levels of government, counties and cities are often treated just another special interest, rather than an equal partner. There are federal regulations to comply with, state mandates to meet, economic limitations to consider and voter demands to achieve.
To Cigler, these influences are parts of various macrotrends impacting county government. They must be studied and understood for local officials to truly present strategic solutions to future problems that will be faced not just in another state, but locally, in each neighborhood and community.
The trends include an overall aging population. How does that impact counties? It’ll mean more property tax freezes, more health care concerns and needs, and fewer people in the work force. “There will be more pressure on the system, which will cost money,” Cigler programs or innovations, since failures at those levels will always be very large, but the farther you travel down the system, the less risk is incurred. “One county or a couple municipalities can try something, and if it fails, it is not that big of a disaster,” she said.
Adaptation is difficult not impossible. Communities and companies have struggled and adapted before, as state, local and federal agencies have had their mandates grow. But it takes creative thinking, political will and continuous dedication.
“It’s a fight for idea commerce,” Cigler said, citing her home state as an example, as the decline of steel during the 1970s left Pittsburgh in bad shape and the city was forced to cluster their economic development around a different sector. City leaders targeted organ transplants. Once upon a time, ensuring economic development wasn’t the role of governments; now, attracting business and industry is a priority in both of the major political parties, and the federal government has passed stimulus legislation to spur the national economy under both Republican and Democratic leadership.
Still, Cigler said, the role of local government is continuously evolving. County government is expected to not just provide public services to residents, but is also seen as a convener and facilitator between area municipalities, as once-small towns become cities with multiple schooling districts. Some states are embracing regional county-lead solutions — Texas in particular has been at the forefront of using its regional councils of government to lead the way in disaster preparedness and management and transportation system planning — while others still compete to bring money and dollars home.
Another challenge is not deciding just which services government should deliver to residents, but which level of government is best suited to deliver each service. Another macrotrend Cigler cited is the wave of municipal powers being given to counties in some states, including Texas. Here, some counties have spent years lobbying for subdivision regulation authority, and those powers have been granted to counties in certain geographical areas or with certain populations. Counties in other states have municipal powers well beyond that, or are beginning to incorporate some aspects of municipal structure by hiring professional county managers. Along those same lines, many counties and regions are utilizing alternative service delivery options or are contracting out some of their traditional functions to the private sector.
Not all states are requiring that county governments take on more responsibilities, but where local government takes on fewer responsibilities, they run the risk of becoming irrelevant. Some states have sought to take over control of local government responsibilities, abolishing the county level of government almost entirely, while other states have sought to consolidate local governments.
In 1997, Massachusetts began abolishing its county government structure after a several counties experienced financial difficulties and an increase in public distrust. As a result, residents lost local control in favor of state agency management in about half the state’s counties. Sheriffs and county attorneys are still elected in those counties to administer jails and prosecute criminals, but deputies are considered state employees and there are no commissioners courts.
Since then, residents within two of the abolished county government areas have successfully pushed the legislature to accept special charters that have created regional councils of government where the county government bodies once stood. The regional councils of government there are charged with cities and towns with select services, including planning, public safety, engineering, and water and waste disposal.
There’s no evidence the new Massachusetts model of government is more effective or efficient, or that it will have a better chance at coping with 21st-century problems. Instead, Cigler believes that smaller local governments will have to work together in order to adapt to the greater demands placed on them by the more complex problems.
“There is no research literature anywhere that says bigger is better,” Cigler said. “It may well be that collaboration is the answer. … There is nothing that you cannot do collaboratively.