LOCAL GOVERNMENT:
A NEW WORKING ORDER

By CARL H. NEU, JR.
Management Consultant and Former City Council Member
Lakewood, Colorado

A subtle and pervasive revolution is taking place in this country. This revolution affects the future of government at all levels, particularly local government.

"From representative government to participatory democracy." John Naisbitt, in his best-selling book, Megatrends, clearly identified this key social trend and predicted it would revolutionize local government throughout America. It has; and in the process, it has also altered the role of elected bodies such as city councils and county commissions. They are no longer primarily "representatives" and decision-makers; they have become catalysts for building consensus and coalitions for change.

Representative government, in which key decisions affecting communities' futures are made by elected leaders, is becoming a myth. Representative bodies were chosen to represent electors; decide crucial issues; and set the rules, policies, and laws that guided a community. Today, people who are affected by a decision are becoming progressively more intolerant of not being a direct part of the decision-making process.

Electors have come to realize that the 4R's of politics — responsiveness, responsibility, reality, and reelection — weren't always balanced in the best long-term interest of the taxpayer. In theory, elected officials are supposed to articulate and respond to voter viewpoints. However, issues have become more complex and risky from a voter's point of view. Major capital and infrastructure projects, as well as new government policies and regulations, can inflate taxpayers' living costs and "mortgage" their incomes through higher taxes. This is more true now that there is little "easy money" from Washington to underwrite local ambitions. The elector is coming to realize that he or she is not best served by elected officials whose priority is reelection rather than the responsible advancement of constituents' long-term interests.

The new working order represents a partnership between elected and elector that emphasizes education and communication as a forerunner to action. The recent emphasis on communication by mayors and councils in many cities is symptomatic of this phenomenon. City-wide and ward communication meetings; neighborhood referral processes; and "town meeting" discussions on critical issues such as housing density, land use, community goals, sales tax rates, etc., all reflect consciousness of this trend and its effect on vital community decision-making processes.

Frequently, communities focus their energies on "false issues" that really mask the underlying problems that must be addressed. An example is growth. It is a fact that many communities caught up in the growth issue have really had little growth during the last decade. But during that time, they have experienced a process of continuous change in family structures, economic activities, demographic mix, neighborhood composition, and land use and reuse.

It is this process of change that raises many of the strategic issues that face communities: land use, drain-

Carl H. Neu, Jr., Executive Vice President of Neu and Company, is consultant to numerous municipalities and county governments throughout the country and a frequent speaker at governance conferences. His writings on governance issues have been published nationally. A graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology with an MBA from Harvard University, Neu also has served as a lecturer at the University of Colorado's Graduate School of Public Affairs and its Center for the Improvement of Public Management. He has served as a member of the Lakewood, Colorado, City Council and chaired the city's home rule charter commission.

June 1988 / Illinois Municipal Review / Page 9

age, sales tax increases, transportation, economic vitality, and various other programs of interest to citizens. These issues, more and more, are being resolved at the grassroots level by citizen and neighborhood coalitions rather than through formal decision-making systems.

The role of the elected official in the new working order is to:

• Identify and focus issues that need to be addressed
• Facilitate sharing of information, communication, and education of electors on relevant issues
• Develop consensus on appropriate actions
• Ratify the emergent consensus through legislative action
• Implement programs, policies, and projects created by the legislative action
• Maintain support for the action taken

If the historical representative government process imposes a decision upon an elector prematurely, it can cause unnecessary confrontations and polarization. The elector-citizen resorts to initiative, referenda, judicial action, or recall in order to impose his or her will upon the elected body. If this body persists in forcing the issue, electors can, and do, force elections to modify charters or change the form of government.

This revolution in public decision-making literally is turning the traditional governing process upside down. The effect:

1. It has served to make the governing process more democratic.
2. Citizens (electors) have learned to circumvent the legislative process and decide issues directly.
3. Elected officials now must focus their energies on sensing vital issues, formulating informed consensus, and enabling implementation of that consensus.
4. The power of the populace to make crucial decisions directly will continue to increase, and there will be a concurrent decrease in the power of legislative bodies.
5. The elector will display more caution and skepticism over issues involving major capital commitments and quality of life. This caution and skepticism will be misread, by some elected officials, as resistance rather than a natural consequence of the new working order.
6. Effectiveness as elected officials will depend on skills that advance the new working order in the true interest of the elector.
7. Elected officials will spend most of their time outside the council chambers and board rooms in forums that stimulate communication and consensus-building — forums that take the elected to the elector.

The new leader is a courageous, insightful facilitator that helps his or her followers discover avenues that advance their true long-term interests. The old elected leader frequently was an order giver, especially in those cases where the illusion of a mandate existed. That is the way it was, but it is not the way it will be. •

Page 10 / Illinois Municipal Review / June 1988