Citiwire.net

For Release Saturday, April 6, 2013
Citiwire.net

Nationally, the failure of Congress and White House to negotiate a grand bargain has undermined the federal government’s ability to invest in rebuilding the economy or the middle class. As a result, it lurches from fiscal crisis to crisis.

Similarly, in the Bay Area, the inability of local governments, along with state and federal governments and others, to govern together undermines the region’s ability to compete globally and thrive locally. As a result it risks falling behind other regions in providing quality services such as transit, resolving pressing challenges such as rising sea levels, and investing in underused assets such as struggling families and businesses in distressed neighborhoods.

Joint Venture Silicon Valley drew a similar conclusion in its recent State of the Region Report. Silicon Valley is adding jobs, but income growth is uneven, youth disengagement is growing and all are concerned about the region’s capacity to maintain its reputation globally. In an analysis for the report, Egon Terplan concluded that “weak or ineffective regional governance” undermines the Bay Area’s ability to address crosscutting challenges that threaten its economic competitiveness.
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For Release Friday, September 28, 2012
Citiwire.net

The National Academy of Public Administration is preparing a memo to national leaders, calling for a new, intergovernmental policy council to help restore the health of our ailing federal/state/local government system.

This council would advance governance reforms in hopes of making the system more effective in providing the services and infrastructure needed to restore our equally ailing economy.

Initial topics that have been suggested for the council’s agenda: adopting a Value Added Tax (VAT) shared by all levels of governments, and empowering innovative mechanisms, such as for-benefit organizations, to bring old stakeholders together in new ways.

Syndicated columnist Neal Peirce argues that the “unkempt (intergovernmental system) garden needs a plan,” and NAPA’s proposed intergovernmental policy council could prepare and pursue it, given support from all levels of government, starting with the White House and the Congress.

All well and good.

But what will give this new council any better chance at success than its predecessor, the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR)?

My fellow recovering regionalists still look reverently upon ACIR’s efforts to design, test and promote new regional governance models. However, they are also haunted by ACIR’s inability to engage key government partners in controversial discussions – and all discussions of intergovernmental reform are controversial. They are haunted, too, by ACIR’s tragic demise in the polarized politics of the new century.
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For Release Sunday, February 19, 2012
Citiwire.net

What does the “New China” have to tell us, not just about economics and society but models of regional governance?

On a recent trip — my first since just after the Cultural Revolution — I concluded that although China displays painful characteristics of unfettered capitalism, the results are impressive. Ancient cities of neighborhood mazes have been converted into 21st century metropoli of high rise corridors. Development sites in Beijing and Shanghai are filled with dozens of tall cranes. New cities are housing hundreds of thousands of residents, often located in depressed regions. Stores are packed with shoppers, especially buying products with English names, such as Happiness toilet paper.

Jobs have been created for hundreds of millions of workers. Infrastructure projects are overwhelming; there are world class museums in major cities and endless transportation projects, often lined with well-manicured landscaping. A dozen transit lines already operate in Shanghai, with another half dozen under construction. And Shanghai’s Maglev that speeds one to or from the international airport at up to 430 kilometers/hour.

Not all is positive, however. The historic communist safety net that guaranteed jobs, rice, health care, and pensions has been torn apart. Great advances have been made in educating students and providing good jobs, as is evidenced in the rows of towering condos in major cities. But in rural areas, the “barefoot doctor” clinics have been abolished, requiring everyone to purchase health care. And the rural schools are woefully underfunded.
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For Release Sunday, June 20, 2010
Citiwire.net

Local governments have strengthened their capacities multifold during my professional life. I recall vividly working with some that once keep financial records by hand, depended on snail mail for communications, and only responded to their neighbors under court order. Conversely, I have seen local governments earn the respect, and accompanying tax dollars, to provide state-of-the-art roads and sewers, public safety and recreation programs, and even bus service and affordable housing.

Yet in spite of this increased competency, individual local governments have been losing the ability to address many of their toughest challenges — the ones that cut across jurisdictional boundaries — at an increasing pace since the turn of the century. If there has ever been a time for innovation in local government, it is now.

Crosscutting challenges are not new. Some were predetermined by our natural environment. For example, local governments realized that taking drinking water out upstream and dumping waste water downstream only worked for the jurisdiction at the headwaters. Everyone else was going to drink someone else’s pollution. The same was discovered when the jurisdictions drawing on a common aquifer exceeded its ability to replenish itself and had to keep digging deeper wells. Neighboring local governments realized that they needed to negotiate watershed plans to assure adequate and potable drinking water. Ditto for airshed plans to breathe clean air.

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