Devolutionary Realignment: Shedding Services,Ad Hoc Collaboration,and Political Reconfiguration

Strategic Alignment and the New Normal

The featured article in this SLGR GM section is by Professor Michael Abels who offers insights gained by reflecting on his own experience as a local government manager as well as some recent work on the post Great Recession environment (Abels 2012). He sees the challenge for local governments to be adjusting to the New Normal; that is, a new baseline of drastically constrained resources due to the Great Recession and the ongoing economic slowdown (Martin, Levey, and Cawley 2012). Response by local governments to the New Normal is chiefly characterized by their cutting both benefits to employees and services to citizens rather than reorganizing or reconfiguring their responsibilities or structures.

Abels proposes that local governments use a configuration of cross-boundary opportunities and other coping mechanisms. These will achieve what he calls a strategic alignment with the demands and prospects of the New Normal. His framework focuses on how local governments can better avail themselves to work with other institutions in three strategic areas:

Participation: extends beyond consultative government to citizen and multisector inclusion in a “deliberative” democratic process for the creation and adoption of policy that supports other strategies with information and legitimacy.

Views of the Expert Panel

To get an idea of what practicing local managers thought of Professor Abels’ proposal, how they saw the current situation, and what they were doing in their jurisdictions, SLGR GM asked five in-service local government managers to read his article and engage in a panel discussion on it. The panelists were sent a copy of the article and a couple of general questions about it to focus their thinking. The five panelists were as follows:

Ms. Michele Baker, County Administrator, Pasco County, Florida,

The discussion was held by teleconference and moderated by the SLGR Managing Editor, J. Edwin Benton. It lasted a little over an hour. The discussion was recorded and is the data source for the views expressed in this essay. In addition, the recorded discussion itself will be available on the SLGR page as a Podcast to which readers may listen.

The New Normal and the Evolution of Local Government Realignment

In general, one might say that for the panelists, the New Normal was really “old hat.” For them, decline is normal not a “New Normal.” Taken together, they had what might be termed an “evolutionary” view of the realignment of services among the levels and branches of government rather than a “strategic” one. That is, they took a much longer view on the problem of resource scarcity seeing it as a long-term and ongoing decline in support that has lasted for thirty years or more and had its genesis in the Reagan administration. Accordingly, cutback oriented changes in local governments to align service and structure with resource reduction is not a product of the Great Recession, but an ongoing practical fact of life for them. All of the panelists had this experience and all of them shared instances of responding to the downturn and of attempting to align structures, processes, and responsibilities to squeeze more service out of the fewer resources.

For example,

When asked about their views on the permanence of the current situation, all panelists agreed that it would continue. They did not see a return to an earlier era of intergovernmental relations that involved grants-in-aid and revenue sharing. Some participants believed that this is due to not only economic factors but also political ones as well: antitax and anti-public employee sentiments are prevalent in the national political arena and these attitudes impede the possibility of even local leadership coming up with local fixes to preserve local services.

Ad Hoc Collaboration

Rather than a recognized activity addressed through formal structures as suggested by Abels, for the most part the panelists saw collaboration as an ad hoc enterprise that occurred when particular opportunities arose or were identified. In short, their point of view on this might be labeled tactical rather than strategic as in Professor Abels’ view. While all of them mentioned collaborative instances, this was not a primary focus for them in their attempts to align services with resources. There were two main sticking points for the panelists in adopting collaboration as an ongoing strategy to meet fiscal scarcity.

First, collaboration does not produce enough slack resources to make a worthwhile investment in either establishing structures to promote it or conducting ongoing searches for occasions to use it. As Rod Gould from Santa Monica stated, “Collaboration does not pay big dividends.” In any event, Gould asserts it “cannot pay for 1 trillion in deferred infrastructure maintenance [and] close the gap between the haves and have not’s,” None of this, in his view, adds to fiscal stability.

Second, permanent collaboration or the consolidation of similar services across jurisdictions or of jurisdictions themselves may bring greater economic benefits, but it is rarely feasible politically. The panelists commented, consolidation efforts are most often trumped by politics and frustrated by power differentials. As Rod Gould also stated “Collaboration does not save huge money, but consolidation is not possible.” David Krings offered how in Hamilton County, Ohio, fifty of the fifty-one public safety dispatch services are consolidated and that only Cincinnati is not: it continues to have separate fire and police dispatch services. Mr. Krings also opined that if further consolidation were possible it would result in the wage bill for others rising to that of the highest paid jurisdiction.

Shedding Services

Most of the panelists agreed on one sad, but salient fact: the main business of local government is prioritizing the business of local government, because over thirty years, it has been able to do less and less while continuing to give up some responsibilities. As Michael Wilkes wryly commented, what local governments have faced for some time is “doing more with less,” but now the challenge might be stated as, “…doing less with less.” In practice, this means that a significant enterprise for many local governments is deciding, as also put by Michael Wilkes, “…what businesses can we get out of ?”

Clearly, this trend may be good news to those who think that smaller government is better, but the reduction in services delivered has real impact because of the things with which local governments are tasked. Along with states, it is local governments that are responsible for most of the country’s delivery of health, safety, and education; it has effects, when they withdraw from these policy areas because too much is loaded on them and they have to choose what they can do. As Rod Gould summed it up, “…devolution to local levels is bankrupting the system and affecting safety and quality of life across America.” Though they might disagree somewhat with Abels about the proximate causes of current circumstances and the most pragmatic ways to cope with them, the panelists did agree that local governments had an important role in addressing social and quality of life needs.

Political Reconfiguration

One area discussed in depth by the panelists that does not play a role in the Abels’ article is the effect of politics, especially legislative politics, on resources and the general climate of trust. David Krings saw state government as a major factor in local resource scarcity saying that it was due “[m]ore than [to] the Great Recession [to] a political approach to both state and local governments now, not only economic devolution but state keepings.” As an example, Mr. Krings offered that when an Ohio governor campaigns on budget savings, “these savings have come from the state taking local government revenues and keeping them.” Most of these savings, according to him come from the state keeping taxes passed locally but collected by the state such as the estate tax and not giving localities revenue due from the state’s local government fund. The effect of these actions—what Krings called state “confiscation” of funds—is considerable distrust between local governments and state legislatures and even between elected officials at these two levels.

In addition to criticism of the states, the panel faulted the federal government for getting out of the local government game. As Peter Crichton put it, “the federal government plays a key role and they cannot vacate their responsibility; neither states nor localities can fulfill their responsibilities if the Feds…continue to abandon their historic responsibilities.” David Krings saw the local governments trapped between the federal and state governments’ lack of support and their own politics. He offered the example of how the “local congressional delegation [said] there would be no federal funding available” to help with a “deficient, expensive bridge between Ohio and Kentucky,” and neither state nor local governments would back the idea of imposing tolls to pay for reconstruction. As he sees it, at all levels of government, one encounters the “attitude that services should continue, but without any funding.”

Likewise, panelists did not see high probability that emphasizing deliberative democracy as envisioned by Abels would help much. Their experience did support either efficiency or effectiveness as a guaranteed outcome of these processes. As Michael Wilkes said, “[we talk] to our citizens about what they want…[but these are] difficult discussions because everything has a constituency.” David Krings of Lockland observed that when he participated with, “hundreds of people in a planning exercise [it produced] a great plan for the coming decade,” but when the dust settled there was…“no consensus on how to pay for it.” Moreover, Krings thought that there was a general “attitude that services should continue, but without any funding.”

Yet, it is not just that the public has conflicting or incommensurable priorities, but that fact that only some may or can participate in the expression of these priorities no matter how much it is facilitated. As Michael Wilkes put it, “If you are not putting a shopping center or gas station in their back yard they don’t engage—too busy—even social media leaves out a large segment of the population. Nevertheless, most of the panelists agreed on the importance of citizen involvement and had mechanisms for it in place, Michelle Baker said that Pasco County held a citizens’ academy last year and has used a virtual budgeting exercise with citizens. Michael Wilkes of Olathe offered that they had been “doing these things and have been doing…deliberative democracy for 16-17 years,” and that they try “…to be effective in engaging citizens [in the] strategic planning to budget processes.”

Cities and Counties

Panelists were asked to comment on whether they saw differences between cities and counties in dealing with the New Normal or the Great Recession. While the participants agreed that all jurisdictions were affected by the changes in the municipal environment, whatever its duration or triggering event, they did believe that cities and counties were impacted differently. In fact, panelists seemed to see cities and counties as both burdened by increasing service demands, but with counties more affected by social service demand increases; however, counties also have the greatest potential for using regional mechanisms and economies of scale to address demands.

The demand for social services, whether funds are available to pay for them or not, fall more greatly on counties than on cities because they are most often constitutionally tasked to provide hospital, corrections, and other social services than are cities. Even when counties desire to get out of some social services that may be considered nonessential, they are the prisoners not only of law but also of a demand that may increase service loads. As Michelle Baker points out, those who live in unincorporated areas of the county have no other jurisdiction to which to turn for social services, even if these are services that the county has “not done characteristically or has funds to do.”

Due to their larger geographic areas that often contain other jurisdictions, counties are better positioned to take advantage of regionalism and, depending on the political organization of their state’s governmental administrative districts, counties may have different constituencies than cities. For example, Peter Crichton indicated that, though important, citizen engagement and participation mechanisms were not a big initiative because, “our customers are the municipalities; the bill goes to them.” Likewise he believes that “Counties will be called upon to provide more delivery of regional services than ever before and that is a challenge and an opportunity.” In Cumberland County, he has established a regional assessing office for municipalities, the first of its kind in New England.

Conclusion: Devolutionary Realignment

After reviewing Abels’ proposal, the expert panel had some disagreement with its premise. What the local manager panelists saw occurring was somewhat different than that posited by Professor Abels: the situation of local governments today is not coping with a “New Normal” resulting from the Great Recession, but rather coping with a long-standing process in the United States of devolving responsibilities to the local level and not making available additional resources to pay for them or as Rod Gould said, “Devolution of responsibilities from federal to state and state to local has been going on for 30 years, it did not start with or even accelerate with the New Normal.” This scenario has been often referred to as “fend-for-yourself” federalism (Pagano and Hoene 2003).

This condition was aggravated by the Great Recession, but the New Normal is the aftermath of just the most recent, but not the cruelest blow. In addition, a number of the panelists were skeptical about the possibilities that employing Abels’ framework could result in enough savings or efficiency to make a real difference. As Rod Gould mentioned, “no coping mechanisms can overcome the severe underfunding of local government in the U.S.… for basic services.” This means continuing to cut local government support for services whether by coproduction, privatization, or neglect.

Under these conditions, one might characterize the view of the panelists of their job more as promoting a devolutionary “realignment” of services, expectations, and resources rather than a strategic alignment of services across boundaries as posited by Abels. As discussed previously, one could characterize the activities brought up in the panelists dialog about realignment in three main ways: shedding services, ad hoc collaboration, and political reconfiguration. This point of view is a primarily service-delivery-oriented and managerial one rather than an institutional one.

This is not to say that they are not mindful of institutions, especially their state legislatures and local political parties. In fact, this might be the major point of departure between the panelists and Professor Abels. Without political reconfiguration—the third realignment category—it is not clear that local governments, especially municipalities, will have the tools and conditions they need to make headway in the current climate: stronger home rule, reduced antigovernment politics, improved state, and federal support. In short, though all the panelists agree that Professor Abels’ suggestions are good ones, what is needed for a genuine “New Normal” is realignment that is political as well as technical.