The structure and functions of local government were the topics at the Local Government Academy's 2005 Road to Excellence Conference sponsored by Comcast. Dr. H. George Frederickson was the keynote speaker at the Road to Excellence Conference, entitled 'Form Follows Function'. The Road to Excellence Conference is an annual event, exploring issues related to intergovernmental cooperation in southwestern Pennsylvania. The 2005 Conference was a forum on the issue of government structure, a topic that continues to generate interest among elected and appointed officials, the media, and the general public. A valuable discussion was initiated about the functions of local government in an effort to better inform the ongoing political discussion about how local authority should be structured.

Dr. Frederickson is the Edwin O. Stene Distinguished Professor of Public Administration at the University of Kansas, one of the top rated public affairs departments in the United States. Dr. Frederickson has taught, been published, and is co-editor of The Future of Local Government Administration, published by the International City Management Association in 2002. Listen as Dr. Frederickson answers the questions: Why is local government structure important? What is the impact of structure in terms of achieving economic, efficient, equitable government and what is its impact on the business climate and the quality of life for the average citizen?

Michael Foreman serves as a Local Government Policy Specialist with the PA Department of Community and Economic Development, Governor’s Center for Local Government Services in the southwest regional office. He provides local government officials with policy guidance and advice, technical and consultive assistance, and training in the following areas: general government management and administration, financial management, revenue and taxation matters, personnel management, labor relations, service delivery systems, intergovernmental cooperation, boundary change, grant writing and administration, and economic and community development. Foreman explained the relationship that exists between the state and local governments in Pennsylvania. He broke down municipalities into First-class Townships, Second-class Townships, Boroughs, Cities, and Home Rule municipalities, and presented their differences relating to structure and powers.

Alan Kugler of PA Futures is a consultant working with municipal governments on how to report the potential benefits of consolidation to present to voters, in addition to providing information for policy decision-making for citizens, public officials, and civic and business leaders. Kugler explained the political, legal, and social challenges associated with intergovernmental cooperation, municipal consolidations, and boundary change. He discussed the powers that Article IX of the Pennsylvania Constitution gives municipalities through the home rule and intergovernmental cooperation laws. Then, Kugler explained the Municipal Consolidation or Merger Act of 1994 that was amended in 2003 to enable citizens to conduct a referendum to form a joint Government Study Commission to study potential merging of their municipalities. Citizens would decide if consolidation is in the long-term best interests of the municipalities involved.

Tom Tulip is the Executive Director of the Mercer County Regional Council of Governments where he works on intergovernmental cooperative efforts for service delivery. COG programs and services include animal control, recreation program operations, a 25 vehicle fixed-route and county-wide transit system, a joint uniform construction code program, and Information Technology support provided through an on-staff specialist. Tulip was the Act 47 coordinator for Ferrel, one of the municipalities involved in the consolidation effort. Tulip spoke of his involvement in the Shenango Valley consolidation effort, which did not succeed at the referendum level. Five municipalities were involved, and it did not pass in all five. Tulip feels that the process went on for too long and too many municipalities were involved. The study leading up to the consolidation referendum took four years to complete.

Click here to read the Report of the Shenango Valley Intergovernmental Study Committee

http://www.mcrpc.com/svisc/finalreport.pdf

George Gearhart is the Director of the Shenango Valley Chamber of Commerce, and was a member of the Shenango Valley study committee for consolidation as a citizen representative of the city of Sharon. Gearhart believes that racial and economic issues were involved in preventing the consolidation referendum from being passed in all of the municipalities. He also talked about the process of conducting the study and getting the public involved, and noted that although opponents to the consolidation were organized and mobilized right away, the proponents of consolidation were not as organized as they should have been from the start. Gearhart also pointed out that the commonwealth promised grants and funding, but never confirmed exact figures or amounts, leaving municipalities wondering if the state would cover their outstanding debts moving into consolidation. Gearhart explained that after the four year study, the committee voted not to recommend anything. Then, the citizen group’s petition got the referendum on the ballot, which ultimately did not pass in all five municipalities.

Click here to read the Report of the Shenango Valley Intergovernmental Study Committee http://www.mcrpc.com/svisc/finalreport.pdf

Anthony Moscato is a Commissioner for Cameron County and was part of an effort to abolish the local and county governments in favor of one, centralized county government. The municipalities in Cameron County had talked about a plan for radical change, because some felt that there was too much government for less than 6,000 people living in the county. They planned to abolish the local and county governments and put in one, centralized county government. Only two of the county’s seven municipalities agreed to put the referendum on the ballot, however. Their biggest challenges were money and voter education, according to Moscato, in trying to get the referendum on the ballot. He also cited 'walls' that were put up by the township supervisors because they did not want to lose their jobs through consolidation, although Moscato explained to them that new jobs would be created in the process.

Dr. Beverly Cigler is a professor of public policy and administration at Penn State Harrisburg. She specializes in state and local relations and state and local policy, politics, and management, with key interests in alternative service delivery, land use, emergency management, public finance, counties, and general issues of governance. Dr. Cigler led a discussion on the various points of view and political perspectives on the essential functions of local government. She noted that the local government environment has changed, and issues transcend geographic and municipal boundaries. Cigler explained the differences between 'governance' as opposed to 'government', which includes nonprofit, public, and private sector stakeholders, and the need to learn how to collaborate in a fragmented environment. She also presented an overview of public opinion and national research on citizen expectations of local government, and the capacity of local governments to fulfill them. Cigler explained that because many local governments in PA are small, and smaller governments often have less capacity, they might have a lack of professional managers, technical capacity, financial capacity, political will, and collaborative skills. According to Cigler, there is a continuum of cooperation where local governments can start small and learn to trust each other, and once they start building capacity and become more efficient in service delivery, the objections to cooperation might begin to fade.

Barbara McNees, President of the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, discussed the expectations of local governments from the business sector. McNees thinks that the business community is easy to get along with, and all they want to see is basic services, safety and cleanliness, and predictability or uniformity before they make an investment in a community. She notes that many developments cross municipal boundaries, but cooperation and uniformity are lacking, which makes businesses wary of investment. McNees mentioned the Waterfront Development, and the issues they faced with permitting, taxing, etc. across the municipalities involved. She maintained that a technology deployment is essential because people want to do business on the internet, and said that areas doing this well will see more rapid development growth.

Sue Broughton is the president of the League of Women Voters of Greater Pittsburgh. Broughton talked about the collaboration involved in the Pine Creek Watershed Assessment project, which highlighted the League of Women Voters’ positions on multi-municipal planning and cooperation, improving water quality management, and encouraging active citizen participation in government. Broughton explained that the water management policies upstream affect those municipalities that are downstream in a watershed, and said that if form follows function, than streams would be best managed on a watershed basis. However, most watersheds include portions of several municipalities, making management more difficult. The Pine Creek Watershed includes parts of 14 municipalities. They applied for a Growing Greener Grant and received about one third of the amount requested. Broughton says that receiving only one third of the funding requested was a good thing because it resulted in public participation and municipal cooperation, raising the level of community awareness. The Environmental Alliance for Senior Involvement (EASI) were trained to do stream sampling and monitoring. They trained additional people to conduct stream sampling and monitoring, resulting in a citizen volunteer effort that saved money and produced results such as a Watershed Protection Inventory Survey that was distributed to the municipalities, where 13 out of 14 completed it. The steering committee of representatives from the municipalities such as engineers, the two sponsoring organizations, the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, the North Area Environmental Council, and citizen groups is now attempting to apply the cooperative techniques used in this project to other mutual efforts.

Tom Klaum is the Executive Vice President of the Pennsylvania State Association of Boroughs. Klaum reviewed the history of boroughs in the United States and in Pennsylvania, and mentions the importance of networking between representatives of municipalities to build trust so that cooperative efforts are more easily sought out and agreed upon. He described two things that have stood out to him about local governments in over 35 years of public service. The dedication and perseverance of elected officials that get involved is important and appreciated, but may also impede new people from getting involved was first. The second thing that stood out to Klaum was the resilience that boroughs have displayed as small communities to adapt to capacity challenges. Tom also noted the challenges in getting younger generations involved in local government, and mentioned the Pennsylvania State Association of Borough’s (PSAB) efforts to get young people involved through their junior councilperson program. Finally, Tom discussed an IGC success story from when he was a COG director in the Cameron and Somerset areas where four small communities developed a code enforcement and administration program that they would not have been able to afford on their own. When the state passed the Uniform Construction Code twenty-five years later, this COG’s code enforcement program is one of the most successful, with 22 municipalities contributing to it.

View other IGC Success Stories at www.igcsuccess.org

Elam Herr is the Assistant Executive Director of the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors. Herr said that the role of government is to provide the services that constituents want and that the private sector cannot or will not provide. Citizens in municipalities want to have choices on what their local government will do, and Herr stressed that cooperation and collaborations on service delivery projects between municipalities cannot be forced and must not threaten the existence of one area over another. He explained that the approach must be not be top down, but rather ground up where it meets with the state 'in the center' to compromise. Herr feels that new legislation should be introduced so that governments will not adhere to the 'whims of special interests and the dictates of Harrisburg'. He thinks that PA should encourage and provide local governments with training and support to make decisions that are good for them, instead of forcing cooperation and collaboration efforts.

Leanne Smith Nurse, Program Analyst for the US Environmental Protection Agency National Center for Environmental Innovation, painted a scenario of an environmental cleanup operation presented at a high school and resulting in public confusion and anger because of a lack of communication, education, and public outreach. Participants discussed the best examples of public participation that they were involved with that worked, and described what they felt made it work. Nurse explained the need for public education, and described a grassroots approach rather than top-down method as being a more effective strategy for getting the public involved. She said that an assessment of community needs and of the organization’s capacity to respond should always be conducted. Nurse cautioned that if an assessment is not performed, leaders might miss the important issues and lose the support of key participants. She suggested forming advisory committees to organize communities, and said that trips to neighborhoods who have already implemented proposed developments can be helpful in identifying what citizens want in their community. Finally, Nurse led an exercise dealing with aspects of public involvement, including: facilitation, communications, public relations, mediation, organizational health, and development.  She noted that face to face engagement, online activities, and whole system changes are formulas for successful public involvement.

Lew Villotti is the Planning & Development Director of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission (SPC). Villotti described the need for people to get outside the 'comfort zone' that they are used to in public involvement, and explained new strategies and methods of engaging the public. He explained that the old method of public involvement in SPC meetings was traditional where SPC representatives would talk, and people would voice their questions. Now, there is an interactive touch screen survey station where people provide their opinions. SPC had a transportation investment strategy station which was interactive, asking people how they would like to see transportation monies invested. There was still an opportunity to provide testimony, but people put it into a laptop instead. SPC also began involving partners in their public meetings to answer questions on different topics, such as transportation and environmental justice. They encouraged their partners to have interactive visuals to 'show' the public the projects they were working on with maps, pictures, etc. Through these strategies, SPC was able to hear more people than through the traditional method of individuals speaking in front of the room, where some people may dominate the conversation and everyone may not be represented.