The Ties that bind: government places heavy chains on local
control
By Marty Richman
Attend a meeting of the City Council or the Board of Supervisors
and you’ll soon realize, when it comes to state or federal dollars,
the term no strings attached does not apply. There are so many
strings attached to everything, especially funding, that the
strings become unbreakable chains.
The Ties that bind: government places heavy chains on local control
By Marty Richman
Attend a meeting of the City Council or the Board of Supervisors and you’ll soon realize, when it comes to state or federal dollars, the term no strings attached does not apply. There are so many strings attached to everything, especially funding, that the strings become unbreakable chains.
It’s well known that many weak strings acting together are super strong. That’s how engineers suspend the Golden Gate Bridge on steel wires, each of them less than one-quarter of an inch in diameter; they put 27,572 of them together in each main cable. That’s also how Sacramento and Washington, D.C., impose direct rule on Hollister and San Benito County; they attach so many strings to vital funding that local governments have little choice but to accept the money and all those strings become chains.
There is always a bit of theater where our local politicians pretend they are exercising free will and making decisions, but it’s often a charade, as the saying goes, “the fix is in.” Oh, they are permitted to maintain some small illusion of power, but in truth, the critical choices were made for them long ago and far away and all they are doing is rubber-stamping those decisions.
In too many cases, funding comes with detailed restrictions on everything down to the age limits of who is eligible for help. The county may desperately need an updated computer system to support its population of disabled veterans, but that does not matter. If money is earmarked for capital improvements to public transportation it will end up as new busses – need them or not. Try using a bus to access a website and download VA claim forms; it’s not exactly the right tool.
The only option local governments have is to refuse the money, but that is unrealistic. If the law requires that we provide expensive services, we either take the money with the strings attached or pay for a second time directly out of our pockets.
The implied insult is that what we do not know what is good for us. There is no evidence this is true. The rulers from afar have repeatedly demonstrated that they are out of touch with local needs.
There are other serious problems with this system of direct rule by funding control. The first occurs when people with no government experience use their personal wealth, celebrity and/or influence to go directly to state and national office. They are essentially dictating exactly how programs should be structured and run. Yet, the buffer of local control is not available to compensate for any of their inevitable errors.
The second issue is that those politicians who come up through the system do not get the training that only experience and tempering can bring. They are not forced to make the decisions that can teach them how to plan, decide and legislate effectively. All the difficult decisions come to them with canned answers, the one-size-fits-all method of governance.
In both cases, it’s like becoming a colonel without ever having served as a lieutenant or a captain; you make mistakes in a big way because you never had the opportunity to make enough of mistakes in a small way.
Until this system of direct rule changes, we have little chance of regaining our ability to use our local governments as the invaluable incubators and testing grounds of new ideas that they need to be. This loss of opportunity and freedom is both tragic and debilitating and it is seriously damaging our nation’s future.
Marty Richman is a Hollister resident. He writes a regular column for the Free Lance. To view it, go to www.freelancenews.com or pick up the Free Lance on Tuesdays.
