A New Model for Revitalizing Local Government
One Idea for Bringing Local Government into the 21st Century
This is another commentary in Civic Way’s series on reconstructing American government, offering a viable model for transforming local government. The author, Bob Melville, is the founder of Civic Way, a nonprofit dedicated to good government, and a management consultant with over 45 years of experience improving governmental agencies across the US. Our earlier commentary on the collapse of American Federalism provides a useful foundation for this analysis of local government.
Highlights:
We have long recognized the need for transforming local government, but lacked the political will to do it
A tiered, pyramid structure offers the best design for enabling local governments to address regional interests and deliver public services in the most efficient and effective manner possible
The county offers a proven, practical structure for forging a new local government model
Federal and state government have critical roles to play in modernizing our local government structure
Introduction
Long before the pandemic, many think tanks, academicians and thought leaders made the case for localism and regionalism. Their calls for greater regional collaboration promised several benefits. Global economic competitiveness. Improved equity. Rebalanced revenues and capabilities. Accelerated cross-jurisdictional resource and cost sharing. Expanded regional problem-solving abilities.
Then, the pandemic hit. One year later, at least 113.5 million cases and 2.5 million deaths worldwide. Over 500,000 fatalities in the US alone. An estimated 25 percent of the US population infected. A ravaged economy. Ham-fisted federal leadership. Slipshod state and local coordination. Erratic testing, contact tracing, vaccine distribution and re-opening efforts.
The pandemic also offered a vital lesson about our local government structure, one that could save lives. The legal (and often inexplicable) borders between cities, towns, counties and special districts are irrelevant relics. Viruses spread without regard to them, demanding regional responses to testing, contact tracing, vaccine distribution and re-openings. As it turns out, regions—conglomerations of local governments—provide the optimum scale for forging collaborative responses to existential crises.
Will we learn this lesson or resume old habits as soon as the pandemic wanes? Will we leave our legacy local governments untouched? Will we face another pandemic disorganized and ill-prepared?
A Brief History of Local Government Restructuring
It’s not that we haven’t recognized the need for transforming local government. It just that we’re not very good at it. Most initiatives, while well-intentioned, have been tepid and tentative, typically confined to overlays like planning bodies and new entities like regional service providers.
Many metro areas have created Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) to lead regional infrastructure planning and provide a regional planning framework for other issues. MPOs have limited powers and resources except for federally-funded transportation projects. Another mechanism for promoting collaboration, Councils of Government (CoGs), have even less power and funding. For instance, the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) reviews big capital projects in the metro Atlanta region, but lacks the authority to block dubious projects.
Many metro areas have established regional authorities to serve a need not adequately met by legacy local governments. Familiar examples include economic development, transit, airport, parks, library and utility districts. Most regional special districts serve multi-county jurisdictions. Chicago’s regional economic development agency, for example, serves the city and seven counties. Some states allow unincorporated communities to form inter-local service entities (e.g., California’s Community Services Districts).
Political mergers, which require the consolidation of independent legal entities, face nearly unsurmountable obstacles, especially in states lacking clear enabling statutes. Counties have avoided merging with one another, but there are some combined city-county governments. Some arose early (e.g., Anchorage, Denver, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco). Several city-county mergers have been proposed, including Albuquerque, Durham, Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, Richmond, Sacramento and St. Louis.
From 1902 to 2010, only 27 (about 25 percent) of 105 city-county merger referenda were approved. Examples include Athens, Augusta, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Lexington, Louisville and Nashville. In the last 30 years, there have only been ten city-county mergers (almost all small, rural areas).
Even fewer municipal mergers have been approved, and most have involved smaller cities. In 2013, for instance, voters in Princeton Township and Borough, New Jersey, voted to merge. In 2020, voters approved the merger of Cahokia, Centreville and Alorton into the new city of Cahokia Heights. Proposed legislation in New Jersey to force the merger of municipalities under 5,000 (191 of 565 cities) has gone nowhere.
The restructuring record is even more uneven for special-purpose entities. Except for a few states, special districts are far easier to create than to merge or eliminate. Once created, special districts have been very difficult to restructure, let alone discontinue.
The experience with school districts has been much different. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the number of school districts fell by 88 percent from just before World War II (1940) to the 2007, primarily through mergers. While most school mergers have involved small districts, voters have approved the merger of some larger districts (e.g., Durham and Memphis). The focus has been less about cost savings than the quest for better schools.
Redesigning Local Government
Design has become a powerful force, affecting virtually every aspect of our lives. Buildings, offices, homes, furniture, equipment, transportation, information, communications. Good design can inspire us, increase our productivity, lift our spirits, bring us together. Bad design can mislead and divide us. Social media platforms that spread hate. Processes that obscure and obstruct. Ballots that confuse.
Local government is vital, but we have largely failed to apply good design principles to the way local government is structured, financed and operated. That should change … now.
The optimum structure for local government is a tiered, pyramid structure. Why? Because it provides a simple, hierarchical structure for delivering public services in the most efficient and effective manner possible. It gives local governments a logical mechanism for allocating service responsibilities to the most appropriate level—regional (metro), municipal or community.
As shown in the diagram below, a tiered local government structure would have three levels—metro, municipal and community. The metro government would serve regional populations and support municipal governments. Municipal governments would continue to provide municipal services to component population centers. Community organizations would be informal entities established by municipalities to decentralize certain services and connect the residents of smaller areas (like communities and neighborhoods) to municipalities.
Metro governments would be independent legal entities that provide strategic oversight to municipal governments, such as approving six-year municipal budget plans, debt instruments and intergovernmental agreements, as well as any laws or policies impacting regional issues. Municipal governments would continue as formal legal entities with their own governance structures, laws and operating budgets, but subject to limited metro government oversight for the purpose of regional issues.
To encourage citizen engagement, municipalities could establish informal, subsidiary community organizations. The community organizations would have informal governance structures and serve an advisory role (e.g., DC’s Neighborhood Advisory Commissions). For instance, they could identify opportunities to decentralize many municipal services (e.g., local area planning, public safety, code enforcement and neighborhood schools).
Aligning Local Government Services
The most valuable feature—and advantage—of the tiered local government structure is that it would force us to rethink the best ways to deliver local government services.
What do we expect of local governments? What threats should they prevent? What needs should they meet? Which services require more specialized expertise and can be delivered more cost-effectively on a regional level? Which services should be decentralized (delivered at a municipal or community level)?
To illustrate, in the table below, some familiar local government services have been assigned to a suitable governmental level (the scale at which the service can be delivered most efficiently).
The tiering concept would be tailored to every metro area, but it is not new. Since its merger, for example, Miami-Dade County has used a two-tier system where the incorporated municipalities provide traditional municipal services and the county provides quasi-regional (and some municipal) services.
Repurposing Existing Structures
Once we have aligned governmental services with the optimum tiers, we must determine the best political structure. Creating a new structure de novo, while probably offering the greatest upside, would encounter the greatest political and legal hurdles. Unlike businesses, local governments must contend with existing political structures, laws and regulatory structures that are very resistant to change.
The good news is that we can build the new local government model around an existing structure—the county. And we have two prototypes from which to choose—MPOs and COGs.
In both cases, MPOs and COGs use counties as building blocks, serving regional interests through combinations of adjoining counties (MPOs in urban areas and COGs in all areas). In other words, we can form the metro tier by merging counties around regions. In North Carolina, for instance, we could merge counties around the Research Triangle and Northeast regions to form new general-purpose regional entities for those metro areas.
By consolidating counties around regions—urban or rural—we could build a tiered local government with elected leaders that serve regional interests. We also can increase our regional problem-solving capacity while, at the same time, attaining cost savings by eliminating merging multiple county governments.
What about the other existing local governments? First, the merged county, as the regional entity, would absorb all existing regional special districts (e.g., transit, fire, parks and utilities) and provide an impetus for new regional initiatives (e.g., capital improvement fund). In other words, the old special districts would no longer be independent legal entities with their own boards.
Second, the new structure would encourage general-purpose municipalities (e.g., cities, towns and townships) to share more resources and costs. The new metro governments (perhaps with targeted state aid) could provide incentives to encourage the political merger of small, adjoining cities, the elimination of redundant townships and functional mergers to improve the efficiency of municipal services.
Schools may be the most controversial aspect of local government transformation. The US has a long tradition of independent local school districts. While some states ask counties to oversight school districts, most of the nation’s 15,000+ school districts are independent entities. Does this still make sense? Do school board perform a useful purpose? Could general-purpose entities perform this function better? A new local government model would offer the opportunity to reassess the need for independent school districts.
A New Governance Structure
Using county government as the building block for our new model poses one big challenge. The traditional, hidebound governance structure of county government is incongruent with the new model.
With few exceptions, most county governments still use an antiquated governance structure. That is, a hopelessly fragmented leadership structure with an excessive number of elected officials. At the top, the form typically has multiple elected commissioners performing executive and legislative functions. Executive authority is further diffused with multiple elected officials (e.g., Treasurer, Auditor, Clerk, Coroner, Engineer and Sheriff). The Board of County Commissioners typically approves the budgets of these other offices, but their authority over the independent officers is limited in many jurisdictions.
Some urban counties have adopted an executive form, with a single chief elected official, and a purely legislative council or board. Some have eliminated most other executive offices, but the commission form prevails. The executive form should be adopted for every new merged county government. At the same time, the legislative bodies should be appropriately-sized (e.g., no more than five commissioners).
The new metro government should have a responsive governance structure that honors three principles. First, it should clearly distinguish the executive and legislative branches. Second, it should replace the multiple executive officers with a single chief elected officer. Third, it should establish a legislative council with a manageable number of elected representatives (e.g., seven).
Federal and State Strategies
The federal government has an important role to play in modernizing our local government structure. And that role has a lot to do with funding. The federal government has unrivaled influence through the power of the purse, especially by attaching conditions to federal funds. It can nudge state and local policy makers to adopt a new model by linking funds to its local adoption and implementation.
The federal government has taken some initial steps. It defines regions around counties (e.g., the Census Bureau’s Metropolitan Statistical Areas). And it requires regional collaboration for transportation projects. But it could do more. It should require regional coordination for all projects receiving federal funds. It should promote regional infrastructure projects (e.g., broadband or transportation networks). And it should launch a commission to identify regional interdependencies, risks, opportunities and strategies.
State governments also have a critical role to play in modernizing local government. In fact, local government cannot be modernized without it. State governments, in partnership with the federal government, should consider the following strategies for enabling and building a new local government services model:
Fund objective studies of local government structural options, costs and benefits
Fund local feasibility studies and implementation support
Enact enabling legislation to galvanize consolidations and other local action
Offer fiscal incentives for spurring local model adoption
State government also could promote other alternatives. While political merger offers taxpayers the most upside (in terms of economies of scale and cost savings), state leaders may find it prudent to pursue or offer less arduous alternatives, such as the following:
Multistate compacts (e.g., site selection agreements)
Regional governance compacts (e.g., revenue, cost and asset sharing agreements)
Regional ventures (e.g., economic and workforce development partnerships)
Regional service consortia (e.g., public safety, environmental and sanitary sewer)
Functional municipal mergers (e.g., permitting, inspection, technology and administrative)
One more thing. States should stop doing harm. The ideological preemption crusade is exacerbating tensions between state and local governments at the very time they should be working together. Instead, states should
focus on freeing and funding local governments to serve the public interest more cost-effectively.
Moving Forward with Eyes Open
Contemplating a new local government model, like any reform, can be overwhelming. Mergers alone are no panacea, and likely to bring daunting implementation costs. And, since savings depend on leaders making tough personnel decisions, savings can fall short of initial projections.
The true benefits of a new model may be qualitative. Diminished parochialism and infighting. Heightened visibility and clout. Economic agility, coordination and growth. Enhanced effectiveness, efficiency and accountability. Civic pride and trust. New opportunities to address stubborn regional issues, including economic, equity, health, environmental and infrastructure issues.
A tiered governmental structure will enable public leaders to deliver services more efficiently. It will boost their ability to address regional challenges and localize community services. Coupled with the right governance structure, it will unify voters around a more strategic agenda. Ultimately, implementing a new local governance structure throughout the nation will reenergize federalism and restore hope.
The pandemic is the single most compelling argument for a new structure. And it affords us a once-in-a-century opportunity to overhaul our local governments for the next pandemic. Even if its projected efficiencies are not fully realized, a new local government model will better prepare us for the next global crisis.