The Empire Page

Background:  John Clarkson was the executive director of the Commission on Local Governmental Efficiency and Competitiveness which was one of the first projects of Eliot Spitzer's brief administration.  The Commission issued its final report at the end of April of this year (2008).  We asked Clarkson about the report, the Commission's recommendations and what comes next.

Q:  Looking at the recommendations in the Commission's report, which ones have resulted in new legislation, changes in policy or other positive results?

 A:  Several Commission recommendations have already been enacted into law, including restructuring of the state's shared services and consolidation grant program, new consolidation incentives for municipalities and for functional consolidation of highway services, and Wicks reform.

The new Local Government Efficiency Grant program includes changes to promote major service sharing and consolidation proposals that can save taxpayer dollars. It improved reporting on these grant-funded activities and added a new category of high-priority planning grants that will deliver funding more quickly for local governments to study consolidation or dissolution, or broad service sharing.

21^st Century Demonstration Grants provide a new model for incentive grants that challenge and support communities willing to take on major transformative projects in areas such as policing, fire protection, smart growth or other regional governance approaches.

Governor Paterson also introduced program legislation to implement Commission recommendations easing requirements for intermunicipal health insurance, reforming citizen dissolution petition procedures, facilitating highway service sharing, permitting multi-county operations for weights and measures and public health, and ending pay and perks for special district commissioners. While the session ended without passage of that bill, it is likely that these proposals will be back, along with other Commission recommendations that can help reduce costs for local governments. The potential savings are simply too large for them not to be.  

The Commission report speaks of "tipping the balance" in favor of efficiency, including consolidation of services or governmental entities, and this may be the most important result of its work. For example, a great deal of activity has been generated through a related local initiatives process in which reforms proposed by municipal and county leaders receive extraordinary state agency assistance. Through this process, many problems in state programs or legislation were identified, and many became Commission recommendations (including those in the Governor's program bill).

New state agency assistance efforts, programs and publications were also developed to support the local initiatives. This support and encouragement for local efficiency has changed the public conversation, and bold proposals are now being advanced across the state. For example, there are active discussions on dissolution or merger in at least 25 villages – a major increase in activity. Local leaders are moving forward in many areas corresponding to Commission recommendations, such as consolidating functions (including "heavy lifts" like fire and police services), moving to appointed rather than elective positions for functions like assessing, tax receiving and highway maintenance, and looking at regional jails.  

The philosophy of the Commission was that its recommendations, in concert with the efforts of local leaders across the state, would help drive change, and it was known that many of these changes would be difficult to achieve. Many will take time, but given the financial hardships that governments at all levels are facing, and the huge savings potential, it is highly likely that a focus on major service consolidations and local restructuring efforts will not only continue, but accelerate.

 

Q: Has the Commission been formally disbanded or does it continue to exist in some capacity?

A: The Commission's deliberations and meetings ended with their submission of a final report to the Governor and Legislature in April. However, the related assistance efforts for local efficiency continue, as the LGEC Commission recommended. Mindful of the disappointing long-term results from prior local government reform efforts, the Commission recommended a sustained executive-level focus on local efficiency at the state level, using existing state agency resources to support local initiatives, promote cost-savings and to follow-through on Commission recommendations. This is similar to the approaches being taken in other states.

 

Q: You mention prior local government reform efforts.  What are the biggest impediments to local government reform?  Is it the lack of a constituency for reform?  Is it because the political parties and public employee unions benefit too much from the current system?  Is it the fact that taxpayers are not represented as a group in Albany?

A: There are certainly impediments to local reform, including those you mention, although I would not say that reform has no constituency. In fact, recent surveys have shown that the public is very willing to consider reforms (including one from Assemblywoman Sandra Galef, and more recently one in Monroe County).

Many newspaper editorial boards have also strongly supported reform, including consolidation of services or governments, which is helping to change the conversation. Most of all, more and more citizens are raising these issues locally, more and more business and civic groups are organizing efforts to support reform, and I think we are just beginning to tap into the constituency. At some point in time it may become riskier for local officials not to advocate for reform than to consider new initiatives – even those beyond the traditional comfort zones.

Still, many pressures work against sharing and consolidation. Giving up direct control of an operation can be threatening, even though there are many ways to ensure that citizens still receive the services they want. Many local leaders are willing to take this risk, but there is often opposition, including from local office holders. For example, the LGEC Commission recommended moving from elective to appointive position for certain administrative functions – because it is very hard to elect a person solely for a function like highway maintenance or tax receiving and then expect them to willingly give up control of that function. It is state law that mandates certain elective positions in town governments, and changing this setup could be a form of mandate relief, empowering town boards and supervisors that may want to make changes but know that they will face opposition from such office holders. In myriad ways, the current system works against change at the local level, and these all need to be addressed, including by easing procedures for consolidation and ensuring that aid streams don't penalize communities that consolidate services.   

We also have to find ways to address skyrocketing employee benefit costs – the most recent numbers from the State Comptroller's Office show that these are going up by almost 12 percent annually. This is an unsustainable trend, and ultimately public employees will themselves be negatively affected if their governments are driven to the brink of fiscal collapse by such costs. Everyone has a stake in reform, and we cannot be economically competitive without aggressively pursuing it on many fronts. 

 

Q: How much support do you detect in the State Legislature for the Commission's recommendations that would deal with elections and elective positions.  Specifically do you feel passage is likely in 2009 for converting some positions from elective to appointive?

A: Elections and elected positions can be tough issues, and the LGEC Commission took testimony from associations representing assessors, tax receivers, and highway superintendents – all of which opposed conversion to appointive positions. In addition, changing some current provisions for local elections requires constitutional change, which is both procedurally and politically more difficult.

That said, there is a great deal of logic on the side of converting administrative, professional functions like tax receiving and highway maintenance to appointive (or allowing them to be merged with other positions). The most often expressed argument for maintaining these as elective positions is tradition, or a reference to democracy and home rule. That argument, however, ignores the fact that these positions are not elective in villages or cities, and in actuality the requirements for these as elective positions are a mandate imposed by state law!

Virtually all town highway superintendents are independently elected, and this often makes it very hard to combine operations – whether between localities, or even between highways and public works departments within a town. If town boards were allowed to convert these positions to appointive without a state-mandated local referendum, many would do so. In fact, that has already happened for assessors, and very few towns still have elective offices for that function. So perhaps there’s a way to make progress here by empowering more voluntary local action.

Lastly, while it also makes sense to schedule elections concurrently, that isn’t yet possible given the current election machinery and the crazy quilt of fire districts, municipalities and other local entities where votes are held. But we can find many ways to make progress here, we just won’t be able to accomplish it all at once.

 

Q: Based on the Commission's findings what changes would yield the biggest financial savings to the public in the shortest time period?  In other words what's not being done today that could have an immediate direct impact on local government efficiency and competitiveness?

The LGEC Commission report included savings estimates exceeding $1 billion annually, but these only covered certain areas where estimates could be made based on available data and studies (the minority of Commission recommendations).  For example, that doesn’t include an estimate from implementing regional solutions for county jails, but just because we don’t have a number doesn’t mean there aren’t major savings there. Several groups of counties are now looking at regional options, and perhaps we’ll have a success story and a better idea of the magnitude of potential savings within a year or so. 

But there’s not really one answer here, and the possibilities differ across the State in terms of what can be accomplished near term and how much it will save. On Long Island, for example, there are near-term savings available through special district reforms – other regions don’t even have these independent service entities. And focusing only on savings that yield the biggest savings in the short term can lead away from things like pension reform which can provide huge savings over the long term but not much up front. Mandate relief overall is vital, and some other changes like facilitating municipal health employee consortiums and moving to minimum employee contributions would produce much faster payoffs.

So now that I’ve thrown down all these qualifications, here’s a top ten list of local government service consolidations that can save money while maintaining or improving effectiveness:

1.      Shared and Consolidated Highway Services

2.      School District Shared Support Services

3.     Consolidation of Local Governments and Special Districts where beneficial and achievable

4.     Health Insurance Consortiums

5.     Sharing Services for Assessing and Tax Receiving

6.     Police Consolidations

7.     Fire Protection Sharing/Consolidation

8.      Consolidated Local Civil Service Operations

9.      Consolidated Emergency Dispatch

10.   Improved Regional Planning & Economic Development Coordination

There are already initiatives across the state in many of these areas, but we need to do more. And by we, I also mean state government. In each area we should have better information available to encourage and assist localities in moving forward. There are also statutory changes that could accelerate these initiatives, or even require them in some cases, and the LGEC Commission had recommendations in each area. All of this gets back to the LGEC Commission’s philosophy on how to bring about change. It has to be a multifaceted effort including more research, more encouragement and support for local changes, and statutory changes to enable and encourage reform. There are some quick wins available, but it’s also going to take a long term effort from many, many groups. Local success stories, with strong support and follow-up at the state level is probably the best way to achieve real and lasting reform.