"Reinventing" Governmentby John Drury
There’s been a great deal of talk at the statehouse these days about reinventing our local governments and reforming our property tax system. A local government tax reform committee with 12 legislators has been formed and they are meeting weekly with the Governor working on creating significant changes to the way our governments do business in Iowa.
I’ve always been somewhat fascinated by the terms “reinventing government” and “thinking outside the box” when it comes to governments providing services to the citizens. The question, “how many ways are there to plow the snow off of a city street?” comes to mind.
The committee is being cautious about using the word consolidation when it comes to local governments, and especially cautious when they use that word about our schools. That word has been replaced by “regionalization”. (Which, by the way, my spell checker doesn’t see as a word.)
This is understandable; as legislators know, the people generally do not want consolidation and they may very well not want regionalization either. Surveys have shown that they want local governments to work for them and with them, they want to have a say in the decisions that are made. If their taxes are going up, or services are being cut, they want the opportunity to attend a city council meeting to let them know what they think. If the county roads they travel every day to get to work are in disrepair, they want to be able to go to the county supervisors and make a case for their repair.
I’ve always maintained that government is not always going to be efficient. The government is there to protect and work for the public. If it’s inefficient but works for the people, then so be it. Local government is the best government.
So I urge the legislative panel to be very careful when they tread these waters of how local governments should operate. And more importantly, they should not forget the reasons for this “reinvention.” We are reinventing government because of the dilemma in our state of dwindling populations and the infamous brain drain. In fact, many of the decisions made in the past few years have led to the de-population of Iowa, especially rural Iowa. They have taken away local control on issues that affect our quality of life and have in effect, legislated a civil war on such issues as hog confinements, pitting neighbor against neighbor. The list of polluted waters in our state has increased and we sock our kids with enormous student loan debt forcing them to leave the state for higher paying jobs and a better quality of life.
In north Iowa, one could say that regionalization means taking several small communities and combining them into a single unit of government that will work for the entire region. It means that the small towns will stop competing with each other and work together, hoping that if one of them prospers, they may all share in that glory. All of those things certainly sound rosy but it also may mean fewer services to those in the area.
If two small towns unincorporate and allow the county to operate their government, what will that scenario look like? Well, chances are each town has at the very least a Fire Dept., a Police Dept., a public library, and perhaps a community hall. It’s somewhat doubtful that the county will be interested in funding all of these services, so who gets the axe? Again, the civil war analogy comes into play.
If the reasons behind “regionalization” and “reinventing government” are to create a better way of providing the same level of services currently provided, that’s fine, let’s have a look. But if it’s to further enable the lack of any real economic development strategy in rural Iowa, it’s unacceptable. If it’s to enable the loss of our small towns and our quality of life, it’s unacceptable. And if this panel is thinking that all government can and will someday be efficient, they are wasting their time.
