Coordination and collaboration should become the buzzwords of this decades’ effort to tame government. Fighting, arguing and creating new political parties make us feel better, but the results are usually more levels of organization, not less. And the price for more of anything is higher taxes.
A few weeks ago, the town and village of Wilson were the subject of a case study by MBA students from the University at Buffalo business school. A salad dressing plant employing 150 people packed up and moved south, leaving the small, peaceful and rural town with a huge hole in its government budget, not to mention all the people now out of work. Some great ideas came out of the exercise, but by and large, it was a flawed process. The students were only given a narrow range of assumptions upon which to work. Perhaps the study should have been expanded to include the departments of psychology, law, medicine and accounting.
But let’s go back a bit, before you read “flawed” and assume “failed.”
For a mayor and town supervisor to invite outsiders into their town, discuss a negative situation the town is facing, and be willing to listen to suggestions based on business practices instead of politics — the mayor and supervisor deserve credit and applause well beyond their borders for such efforts to seek the truth without regard to their political careers.
The supervisor and mayor could have been setting themselves up for responses which placed the blame squarely on their shoulders. They had no idea what the students would come back with. And for that small reason, we should cheer and hail the community of Wilson and its political leadership. They asked the public a question they didn’t already know the answer to. How rare is that in local politics?
But what’s rarer still is open debate about the notion that we have too much government and what we’re willing to do about it. There are more than 4,400 units of government throughout New York state. Generally, we talk about this issue and think about towns that could share snow plows or even a Grundler, shaving pennies off expenses. Never do we talk about having a community like Wilson simply be what it is, a fantastic place to live with rich natural assets and a fantastic school system. Why does it need to be more? Why couldn’t Wilson scale back everything possible to allow the basic homeowner needs to be met while spurning any industrial facilities in their town? Why doesn’t the county put all industry in one town, letting others serve as bedroom communities?
And therein lies the larger problem governments at all levels face. By and large, each community must do all things for all people. Some independent town forefathers came to this area, planted their flag and named a certain amount of square miles as their own, and began to operate in a closed ecosystem, providing all things to all people within their borders. With such bold moves comes pride, perhaps the most venal of sins. Pride prevents more government reform than any other single reason a business student could come up with.
And the system is stacked against small village mayors and small-town supervisors. The pay is generally very small, so to serve your community means you are either retired or have another job.
Every great management book ever written tells you that the real people who know what goes on in any organization would be the janitor, dishwasher or whatever the equivalent would be. Those are the people who are intimately invested in the business; they know everyone, they talk to everyone and they hear everything. They can boil down all issues to the simplest of terms, stripping away all the complicated language which is usually just used to mask the obvious and protect the big cheese or higher power.
Mayors and supervisors are the government equivalents of janitors and dishwashers. They actually do the work and know how to solve problems and fix things. They are the people most trusted in small communities because they usually don’t have personal agendas or fat salaries to protect.
We should watch what happens in Wilson as a possible incubator for government management. Will the people who know the business best come up with workable solutions — and if so, will other politicians get in the way? It’s a great incubator we should all be watching, and a situation which could make coordination and collaboration popular.
Tom Christy is founder of FAIR Government, a foundation dealing with local government issues. Visit www.fair-government.org. Contact him at aim1986@mac.com.
