The Proliferation of Local Governments

Résumé du document

According to John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States, "individual liberty is individual power". Applied to local governments, this motto seems to be a good general explanation for their recent proliferation: it is a quest for independence and liberty that seems to have led numerous areas to become cities, by incorporating or seceding, and pushed special districts to multiply. From Industry, California, which incorporated to create a business-friendly environment, to Lakewood, California, which incorporated to preserve the area's independence and offer its residents cheaper services, the proliferation of governments has multiple causes, but finds its root in a desire for liberty. Today, there are more than 87,000 local governments in the United States (municipal, town and county governments, and school and special districts). For the last decades, cities and special districts have been proliferating, according to the department of commerce. These governments vary in size, power and independence. They form a complex web of local interactions that cause various problems of responsibility, accountability and efficiency when it comes to providing services or to dealing with regional issues.

Extraits

[...] They can propose to consolidate local governments, merge local governments (e.g. a special district and a city) or dissolve a special district. Indeed, a metropolitan-wide government seems to be more efficient in providing services and solving issues than a web of small local governments, hence the state desire to consolidate and merge cities. There were two waves of reforms: first, comprehensive reforms tried to unify and merge local governments; second, incremental reforms focused on cooperation between local governments. For instance, Councils of Governments (COGs) are associations of local governments that promote regional decision-making and coordination as well as mutual assistance on regional issues in order to deal with these problems more efficiently. [...]

[...] Proliferation of local governments also raises the issue of democracy. Because of the multiplication of local governments and in particular of special districts, which provide services, there are quite unclear lines of responsibility between governments. This has a direct consequence: it has become difficult for residents to hold service providers accountable for the delivery of a service or for problem concerning transportations, infrastructures, etc. More generally, the whole democratic system is undermined by the proliferation of special districts because they are not responsible before the residents: many districts are managed by independent boards of directors study shows that two thirds of special districts in California were self-governed in 1990). [...]

[...] In both case, COGs are confronted with the competition of many other organizations and of special districts. Therefore, it seems that COGs may not be the appropriate actor to deal with local government proliferation, unless state intervenes to limit their proliferation and increase their power—in order to prevent a new “political sprawl”. [...]

[...] A critic of the anarchy of urban growth, Smart Growth advocates a balanced growth, with a quality development (more responsible and efficient) in urban areas, and a preservation policy in open spaces. It aims at going beyond the traditional boundaries of municipal corporations in order to implement metropolitan policies. However, this movement is not united and faced the opposition of residents, eager to protect their freedom choice” theory). The New Urbanism movement, finally, focuses on the issues of design and architecture. [...]

[...] Conclusion Local governments proliferation has obviously numerous causes (financial, economic and social) and even though new local governments, after incorporating or seceding, thought their situation to be better, this proliferation has detrimental consequences at the regional scale. Today, solutions do exist and are being implemented, through COGs in particular. However, COGs seem not to be effective: when they are too small, they are not efficient in dealing with regional problems; when on the contrary they are too large, like the SCAG, they must reconcile many different interests (does Orange County and its density of 3600 person/sq. mi. share common interests with Imperial County and its 34 persons/sq. mi.?) and can't promote strong new policies. [...]