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America is doomed! There is no hope! The supreme court keeps being used as a bludgeon to roll back the progress of the 20th century! and do something about it! All too often we get wrapped up in the national politics, ruled by corporate media and profit motives. But the thing you can most easily change and cause seismic shifts in the discourse with is just in your backyard, your local government. Who cares? You should you worthless -- ahem. Local governments are highly responsive to people on the ground because they have very basic reasons for existence, services and the management of said services. When bums get in office you actually can typically get the bums thrown out. It’s also easiest for a single individual to make a noticeable difference as a member of staff. So not only are they more politically malleable they’re also more responsive to institutional change, because when you have a staff of 50, one person can change that much more on how things are done. Defining Local Government For the purposes of this thread, local government is anything below state level government, my reasoning with this is that local government is best characterized by government that is run and directed by people you have to live with and once you exceed the county level it’s entirely possible the people deal with could never enter within 100 miles of where you live, I think this is reasonably argued, no longer local. I am going to focus on city government because that is what I know, that is what I can help to understand. What Makes Up a City In order to enact change in local government it helps to understand the basic structure of it, I will get to how the politics of cities are run but we will start with the staff of a city, the people who are hired to be professionals at their work. Many of them have specialized skills that only exist inside government because the private sector doesn’t do their particular kind of work, others like myself in IT are more used to a private sector environment and don’t take on what can be sometimes observed as the public sector “miasma”. Generally cities have three general imperatives: Provide services Build infrastructure Support the environment the citizens want in their area This is all generally accomplished through what is usually identified as Public Works. There's actually a lot of digging down one can do about it but generally: quote:a broad category of infrastructure projects, financed and constructed by the government, for recreational, employment, and health and safety uses in the greater community. Forms of City Government Generally there's a few different ways that a city government is set up, at least around here. There's really no consistency to this nationally and often has a lot to do with how the population that incorporated the city felt at the time. Strong Mayor - The mayor is king poo poo, they operate the city as head executive. There may or may not be a city council, whom may act as an advisory body, appoint said mayor or be the body the mayor comes from. Many major cities, like New York for example elect their mayor directly. The defining feature of a strong mayor government is they are the top executive, they are president of the town and are head of the government functions. Staff takes direction from the mayor and those he employs directly. If you're familiar with the old Michael J Fox Show Spin City, you have a general idea of what this government functions like. Weak Mayor - The mayor is either a figurehead or head of the city council for procedural purposes. I am most familiar with this type as this is the type I work for. The city council is elected, and from their ranks they select a mayor. The city is actually run by a City Manager who is hired by the city council. Ideally the city manager is all about actually getting stuff done and keeping the city running day to day. The split of power is that the city council are the ones who pass ordinances, decide general priorities of the city and generally show the weaknesses of elected democracy. They at least in some jurisdictions are not allowed to give direction to staff, and can get into legal trouble for that, this includes the mayor as they are just another member of the city council. Strong Council - The City Council is in charge and when I have heard attorneys speak of these governments, they privately call them the "Aha good loving luck" governments. One town over from me has a government of this method, the City Council has all the power and the Mayor is in their case directly elected, but this doesn't really matter because he is basically a city manager with no actual power or segregation from the councils whims. Every petty thing you could ever consider to go wrong with government probably happens here. Admittedly I am coming off as biased but I base this on gazing next door and the tales of attorneys that run all over the state and almost uniformly this form of government works fine until the exact moment that something has to get done. An example of getting something done is a private developer buying a piece of property, deciding that they are in fact going to make money off of it by - lo and behold developing it. This usually triggers a reaction from a strong council, most commonly found in rural areas to invoke the twin gods of NIMBY and AMERICA and try to stop all progress and development in their town because they like their quiet hamlet exactly as it is. They usually burn through their entire legal budget for the year in the first two months for three years straight until the court process finally settles all forms of appeal and tells them tough poo poo you allowed the laws and ordinances to be written the way you have them in the first place, you have to follow your own dumb rules you only intended to pay lip service to for the optics of appearing "business friendly". Yes, these are all things I have seen. Staff - Staff as I'm used to hearing it, are the people who work for the government entity. They are the Clerks, administrators, engineers, inspectors, maintenance, finance and public safety personnel that are not elected and are just trying to do an honest days work. Many like myself enjoy the aspect of public service, it's our job to do the best job we can and make things better for society as whole. Interesting things Going on Now There's been some thoughts floating around that because national politics seems to be utterly broken that maybe we should start thinking about the parts of government that do work. There is a murmuring that maybe Mayors1 are2 the solution3 quote:Barber asserts that cities, and the mayors that run them, offer the best new forces of good governance. Why cities? Cities already occupy the commanding heights of the global economy. They are home to more than half of the world’s population, a proportion which will continue to grow. They are the primary incubator of the cultural, social, and political innovations which shape our planet. And most importantly, they are unburdened with the issues of borders and sovereignty which hobble the capacity of nation-states to work with one another. There is a strange and due to the way our judicial and governance are set up has two rather different issues coming to a head for local government. On one side, some states are passing laws to block municipal ISP and congress is fighting to make sure the FCC can stop them, claiming "States Rights". Apparently signaling that the GOP finds state government to be the Goldilocks of government size. quote:Blackburn said unelected bureaucrats at the FCC should not be allowed to trump states rights and tell them how to spend their money. She said it was deeply troubling that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler had repeatedly signaled he wanted to preempt state laws that hampered the rollout of municipal broadband. On the other, the City of Fife (Seems to be weak Mayor) in will attempt to argue the state can't make them legalize pot because the feds say it's still illegal. If successful in their proposed arguments, they could effectively re criminalize marijuana for the entire State of Washington. quote:Fife this week responded to a challenge to the city’s ban on marijuana businesses from a prospective pot retailer. The city argues that the drug is “still criminal, in virtually all cases, under federal law regardless of compliance” with state Initiative 502, which was approved in 2012 and supported by a majority of Fife voters. I hope this encourages more discussion about governments, state and smaller and the role they play in all our lives and proves, just with the Fife story above that 4 out of 7 people on a city of Less than 10,000 people could change the course of US history This thread in itself is a bit experimental, I don't expect that I've covered actually much in a complex topic, but more can be added as I learn what people are actually interested in. RuanGacho fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Aug 9, 2014 |
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Aug 9, 2014 05:11
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In the "weak mayor" system would you characterize the mayor as just the spokesperson for the city council? I guess what I'm interested on is how to get involved. I'll be headed back to university in the autumn but I'm still registered to vote in Houston, and I'm not sure what I can do from faraway. I did go to some meetings about public transit fare increases for the MBTA some time back, but honestly I'm not sure I helped much!
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Aug 14, 2014 19:57
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Mecca-Benghazi posted:In the "weak mayor" system would you characterize the mayor as just the spokesperson for the city council? Yeah, the mayor has only two functions in my city as far as I've observed and that is that they literally sign the paychecks of staff and run the Roberts Rules of Order at city council meetings. The way you can get involved is by actually paying attention to what if anything your local government is doing. A good start to this is signing up for whatever electronic notifications they have. In my case even though I'm a member of the staff I may not know what the various other arms of the city are up to. Huston is a pretty big place so I expect that they actually would have a fair amount of support. I can help with anyone who asks in the thread but I'll use Huston as a case for ways that you can get involved. I doubt you're the only goon there. Starting at the city website there's a few different places you can start with their volunteer page Huston seems to have a huge city council consisting of 11 district members and 5 at large members.  The city council in Huston posts it's agendas, you can use this to find out what they're going to talk about or do in a given meeting. Huston seems to be different in some ways in that it has a City Controller - This is not something I'm entirely familiar with but as far as I can tell they're part Finance Director and part City Manager, and it seems Huston actually elects them rather than they're being appointed by the Council. It doesn't entirely surprise me though considering Huston is up there as one of the most populated cities in the US at this point. quote:Houston is one of the few large cities where the chief financial officer is elected; New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh also elect controllers. Getting to the specifics of Huston it seems that you have a Strong Mayor They're acting as chief executive for the city. This is most common with larger cities. Your Mayor gave the most recent State of the City on April 3rd. This would be a good place to check what her priorities are for the city for the year. (Assuming she runs her executive agenda based on it.) Some cities are experimenting with audio and video archiving online but I suspect with the size of Huston they are using their public access rights they probably have a franchise agreement with. If you want to do actual paid work for the city it seems they have a lot of jobs, the amount they have open right now exceeds what mine has posted in the past three years combined. The city has processes it goes through to conduct is business and planning, you should attend the meetings of any department you want to potentially influence. Often the way the city will announce it's doing something is through it's Legal Notices I feel like that should be a good start to look around with if you need any help interpreting what the hell some department is supposed to do feel free to ask. Often if you want to get involved and make a change you need to have a goal in mind for what you want to accomplish, mine is "make government more efficient and build telecommunications infrastructure" with the hopes that it will grow the tax base in my town so that it can provide the services people desire. Sometimes all you need to do to get a change you want like say a Frisbee Golf course built is to get in contact with the parks and recreation department and show them that you and other citizens would really make use of it. RuanGacho fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Aug 14, 2014 |
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Aug 14, 2014 21:04
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How do you see city/local and county levels of government interacting?
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Aug 14, 2014 22:29
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Discendo Vox posted:How do you see city/local and county levels of government interacting? I actually have some very direct and interesting experience with this dynamic but I can't really detail it too much without pretty much telling the whole of SA exactly who I am but I will try to summarize what happened in a nondescript way. Basically as long as my city has existed there was a part of it inside the entirety of the limits that belonged to the county, they owned the land and the management rights to it. This meant that the city had no say whatsoever as to what was to be done with the property. (At this point anyone who's paid attention to local politics in the Seattle area in the past decade can probably figure out where I'm referring to). Despite the protests of the city, the county executive at the time wanted to sell the entire property to the largest developer in the area and basically add another 5,000 to 10,000 population to the city with no infrastructure investment for the city, basically ensuring that the city would NEVER have commercial tax base enough to be anything more than a Seattle bedroom community. It wasn't until last year that a special act passed by the state legislature basically forced the county to play ball and allowed the city to annex the land into city jurisdiction, now suddenly the county is trying to be cooperative instead of the obstructionist pain they've been for going on 15 years. As long as the city was the little guy with no rights other than attempting to act in good faith to try to help the citizenry. From what I understand a lot of this pettiness and misbehavior is caused by a small collection of county individuals that basically took it personally when the city and several others in the area decided to incorporate basically to have more direct control of their economic development of their hometowns. Those people are now retiring off and things are getting better. The county also currently uses a mess of a system that as far as I can tell is some old Cobal system, grafted into a web interface which requires the latest version of Java and is usually a month to six months behind the latest java update. This means you have a situation where cities who literally pay the state to help manage something they don't have the resources to do in house is a security risk at best and completely non functional at times at worst when a combination of web browser or java updates breaks the tool that is vital to being able to process some documents for the public in a timely fashion. Generally speaking county is trying and doing their best but like any government entity you have people who do a good job and those who don't. RuanGacho fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Aug 14, 2014 |
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Aug 14, 2014 23:42
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In some respects this seems more like an Ask/Tell thread... I asked about municipal-county interactions because a relative was involved in land use planning at a fairly high level in Montgomery County, MD, where a lot of development and zoning authority was assumed by the county government. It was a weird setup, but apparently very very successful.
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Aug 15, 2014 01:52
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Continuing with the interaction tangent, how does inter-city/town cooperation go? Let's talk transportation: a big issue back in Israel was (and I think continues to be) that many bus routes go through multiple municipalities, so any change to favor efficiency, developing demographics, etc, would basically get gridlocked before it started. Where I am now they have one publicly-funded corporation managing routes for a whole metropolitan area, which seems to be working much better. I sense that they've significantly improved things since I got here a couple of years ago. How does transportation work in your city? What kinds of problems do they deal with when they want to change routes which affect other municipalities?
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Aug 15, 2014 02:01
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Continuing with the interaction tangent, how does inter-city/town cooperation go? Let's talk transportation: a big issue back in Israel was (and I think continues to be) that many bus routes go through multiple municipalities, so any change to favor efficiency, developing demographics, etc, would basically get gridlocked before it started. Where I am now they have one publicly-funded corporation managing routes for a whole metropolitan area, which seems to be working much better. I sense that they've significantly improved things since I got here a couple of years ago. How does transportation work in your city? What kinds of problems do they deal with when they want to change routes which affect other municipalities? At least where I am at, the Public Works department plans by engineering studies which roads will be next to be redone, repaved, altered for traffic flow improvements and arranged with the support of WSDOT and King County Metro. As far the interconnection with other cities, we are touched by two major highways, both run by WSDOT. The bus routes such as they are, are dictated by King County Metro and they calculate where to run routes between municipalities and elsewhere based on how much demand there seems to be for them to be used. They actually use data to figure out where they may be under or over serving taxpayers. It strikes me as kind of odd as I have suggested, my city is somewhat a bedroom community so there is a lot of rush hour commuting but not much going on during the day. It sounds like King County Metro runs a lot like your publicly-funded corporation. Generally the staff of cities near each other are in communication with each other but short of specifics like Emergency Planning and business development we tend to be running on our own directions. Discendo Vox posted:In some respects this seems more like an Ask/Tell thread... I'm alright with that as long as the mods are, though I hope to just help people figure out how the hell their local governments work so they can get involved. As I tried to lay out with the Fife WA example it literally only takes 4 people voting one way in a small town to possibly change things across the entire country. On that note, some more content: Emergency Management You probably consider yourself a citizen of upright standing and generally well meaning, and if your home came under natural or man made disaster you'd probably consider yourself ready and able to help in a time of crisis. However there's a small wrinkle in that, you can't. See the problem is for those who spend time training to deal with the worst case scenarios is that they can't just accept volunteers off the streets and put them to work. It made national news much to the frankly, terror of emergency workers on the scene that at the Oso Mudslide workers were berated and chastised by the media that they didn't let volunteers go into the scene to help look for lost people and generally help. We had volunteers on the ground from our city in OSO and had our own city council question why we didn't allow all comers to assist. Well... We in the public sector don't want more people to die okay? It's kind of our thing. See the problem is that if we let just anyone help when poo poo gets real it introduces a few problems. 1. We don't know who you are, if something happens to you, who do we talk to about that? Chances are if you're coming into a disaster area trying to help, you're not from there or you'd also be disaster-ed. 2.No really, we really don't know who you are. Have you considered that it's probably not in our best interests to send an unknown variable into a disaster area, we don't know your skills so we can't assign you properly, you might be an excellent logistics manager and it might be all our staff who normally fill that role are trapped on the other side of a closed road but you just volunteered to fill sandbags with the 20 other people who can do that. 3. We don't know WHO you are, we probably don't want to send a convicted pedophile to go find the lost children as the school that was cut off. We really don't want to be responsible for that. The answer to this is that almost every city has an emergency plan has a registration program to pre-clear volunteers in times of emergency. This helps Emergency Operations Centers best utilize the resources available to them. EOC - The Shelter in the Storm Generally Speaking once a city reaches the size where it provides some services to it's citizens it develops an Emergency Operations Plan. This plan basically says what is going to be done if the local government has poo poo go down. There is usually a center for this at every level of government, and they generally talk to one another. EOC plans generally also establish actual buildings called EOC's, I looked up Houston's since we discussed them up thread and every one I've been in that has any sizable population in town(ie. not mine) is able to get significant state and federal grands to make what always seem like those things you only see in movies, there's always a lot of per-prepared screens, work stations and communication and logistics management. They're really cool, if you can you should ask to see your localities on a tour if you can, not all of them are open to them but they're really neat. Here's a picture of a small part of Huston's:  So the lesson? Sign up to support your government as an emergency volunteer. At times of crisis the EOC will probably have a method of getting volunteers processed so they can be put to good use, but your proactive support of your local community (and I'm pretty sure this applies to the entire western world) can benefit in a time of need. Remember that waiting means you may have to stand idly by while chaos reigns and while we might appreciate you sentiment, without knowing who you are we really will just have too much other things to worry about to assuage your feelings about it. Things of Note Going on A city government set up a gas station.  Personally I think this is awesome but this has set off every corporate/libertarian alarm accross the country because it's  Government Competing Against The Private Sector state Sen. Chris Girdler, a distant cousin of the mayor's posted:It is nothing but a socialist movement towards government trying to solve everyone's problems. And government is not the answer; government's the problem.
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Aug 15, 2014 05:01
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RuanGacho posted:A city government set up a gas station. I think it's awesome that a city did something like that to help out, do you have any other notable examples of stuff like this? Chinese Batman fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Aug 15, 2014 |
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Aug 15, 2014 05:12
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Discendo Vox posted:In some respects this seems more like an Ask/Tell thread... The short answer is that it changes from county to county. The amount of rural area, the geography of that area, local wealth, local politics, state presence, etc are all variables that can have significant impact on interactions. Somewhat related, for that reason I would suggest to people who want to interface with government to start small and work up because you'll get a better idea of where/what the boundaries of authority in your region are.
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Aug 15, 2014 05:47
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RuanGacho posted:Things of Note Going on Yeah, which speaks to what you could call the local constituent groups of both offices. What makes a constituent, I suppose, is more than simply the relationship that exists between an elected official and a voting member of the public, or a cash-donating lobbyist. What is local to the state senator - his 'public' if you will - are those in his immediate surroundings who have access him and his office, and form his local constituency. This isn't anything more unusual any sort of "money buys audience" statement, but it's an interesting reflection on how you could have - without resorting to accusations of cynicism - two honestly proclaimed statements from public officials that speak totally at odds.
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Aug 15, 2014 05:54
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Chinese Batman posted:I think it's awesome that a city did something like that to help out, do you have any other notable examples of stuff like this? It's awesome, except: quote:After years of complaints about high gas prices in Somerset, Ky., the city council and mayor did something about it. Last month, Somerset began selling gasoline to the public. Sorry but I got no sympathy for people who drive pickup trucks and complain about gas prices. (I do make an exception for those who actually need the truck for their jobs, but those are in the minority.) Still nice that the city did that, though.
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Aug 15, 2014 06:07
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Are you intending this to be just for US local government, or international discussion of the roles local government can play?
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Aug 24, 2014 15:47
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Tony Jowns posted:Are you intending this to be just for US local government, or international discussion of the roles local government can play? I'd love for international input I just don't have any real context or knowledge to be able to speak to other countries myself. I firmly believe local government is where anyone who is politically active should begin and as I started the thread with its far too easy for us to get concerned with national level politics when so much more effective governance is done daily lower down the chain. I think global society as a whole needs to pause and ask itself if the current power balance between local, and national governments really is the best way we could be doing things.
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Aug 24, 2014 16:15
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RuanGacho posted:
This part is incredibly pollyanna-ish. Most local governments, like non-local governments, are controlled by a small percentage of the population, with the majority of the population shut out from the political process in one way or another. You 'can' get the bums thrown out only if the local populace actually thinks they're buns: in towns full of Christian supremacists, for example, you're not going to throw out the rear end in a top hat Christian supremacists in the government because they'll be voted in resoundingly. In areas with mixed black and white population, you normally get far more white people in power than black, because of systemic imbalances in economic and political power. quote:Defining Local Government This treats 'local' government the same whether it's the government of New York City or the government of Nye County, Nevada, which share almost no similarities whatsoever in any way, shape, or form. Also, saying that you'll talk about anything under state level and then say you're going to talk about cities because that's what you know is just clownpants. If you want to talk about city and town government, talk about that; confusing it by adding in county/parish/etc. government isn't useful. Basically, your main premise--that local government is more reactive and easier to handle--is only true if you are in or able to create a majority of voters in that locality. For the 40% black population of a southern town, the local government is not 'more reactive'. For the residents of Ferguson, local government is not 'more reactive'. I completely embrace a discussion of local government, but not in this utterly simplistic view about how local government operates.
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Aug 24, 2014 17:04
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Obdicut posted:This part is incredibly pollyanna-ish. Most local governments, like non-local governments, are controlled by a small percentage of the population, with the majority of the population shut out from the political process in one way or another. You 'can' get the bums thrown out only if the local populace actually thinks they're buns: in towns full of Christian supremacists, for example, you're not going to throw out the rear end in a top hat Christian supremacists in the government because they'll be voted in resoundingly. In this case the government is factually just reacting to what most of their constituents want. quote:Basically, your main premise--that local government is more reactive and easier to handle--is only true if you are in or able to create a majority of voters in that locality. For the 40% black population of a southern town, the local government is not 'more reactive'. For the residents of Ferguson, local government is not 'more reactive'. "More reactive" doesn't mean local government is fairy and unicorns fulfilling your every desire, it means it's just actually more accessible, and you can at least address your concerns much more directly to those in power. Like I can't randomly show up to a congress hearing and testify, I can't even really directly contact my rep. My local alderwoman I can legit call up on her cell phone. Hell in our last mayoral election one of the 2 candidates also gave out his cell number to contact personally(as part a commitment to local government) and we're not some rural 700 person town, it's a 130,000 person city. When I wrote to our city's traffic czar over a bike corral a few months ago, not only did I get an email back from him in 20 minutes, he asked if I had suggestions in regards to its location as the new place wasn't set in stone and they were open to moving it around during the year(I had asked if it was ever going back on the street after it was taken off for plowing and he said basically "Yeah, we're actually going to transfer to York st instead of College St in a few days, but we're open to new suggestions or keeping it on College st at points if you have an affinity for that location." quote:For the residents of Ferguson, While its current state may not be very reactive to their needs, part of the protests have also been a large voter registration drive to boost Ferguson's dismal 12% turnout. So the civic leaders in Ferguson itself seem to think local government can in fact be quite more reactive and in tune with their problems as given it's conservative Missouri change isn't going to come from the top down for them. Local government isn't a magical panacea, it can be substantially more reactive, but citizens must actually engage with it.
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Aug 24, 2014 17:22
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Amused to Death posted:While its current state may not be very reactive to their needs, part of the protests have also been a large voter registration drive to boost Ferguson's dismal 12% turnout. So the civic leaders in Ferguson itself seem to think local government can in fact be quite more reactive and in tune with their problems as given it's conservative Missouri change isn't going to come from the top down for them. Local government isn't a magical panacea, it can be substantially more reactive, but citizens must actually engage with it. The 'top' is not "Missouri" but "The United States of America". What I'm saying is that it's ridiculous to have a conversation about local government without mentioning a salient aspect of local governments: Absolutely crushing minority rights and sidelining anyone and any position not in the mainstream until forced to by state or federal government. quote:In this case the government is factually just reacting to what most of their constituents want. And that is, in fact, my point. There isn't anything about that that's good. quote:"More reactive" doesn't mean local government is fairy and unicorns fulfilling your every desire, it means it's just actually more accessible, and you can at least address your concerns much more directly to those in power. Like I can't randomly show up to a congress hearing and testify, I can't even really directly contact my rep. My local alderwoman I can legit call up on her cell phone. Hell in our last mayoral election one of the 2 candidates also gave out his cell number to contact personally(as part a commitment to local government) and we're not some rural 700 person town, it's a 130,000 person city. When I wrote to our city's traffic czar over a bike corral a few months ago, not only did I get an email back from him in 20 minutes, he asked if I had suggestions in regards to its location as the new place wasn't set in stone and they were open to moving it around during the year(I had asked if it was ever going back on the street after it was taken off for plowing and he said basically "Yeah, we're actually going to transfer to York st instead of College St in a few days, but we're open to new suggestions or keeping it on College st at points if you have an affinity for that location." Since I never denied that local government can do this sort of stuff, I'm not sure why you're posting all this. Obdicut fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Aug 24, 2014 |
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Aug 24, 2014 17:24
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Wow, Obdicut, you sure showed that person actually doing work in local governments with your snide nonspecific "everything sucks" truthbomb!
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Aug 24, 2014 18:47
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Obdicut posted:I'm Obdicut, are you complaining about systemic issues? I'm here to DROWN YOU IN META-MOLASSES. OH MAN, IT'S COMING OUT OF MY NIPPLES, HOW DARE YOU APPROACH THINGS DIFFERENTLY THAN I DO. PLUNGE YOUR MOUTH AND NOSE INTO MY VISCOUS, TREACLY DISSEMINATION You've got a point.
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Aug 24, 2014 18:59
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Discendo Vox posted:Wow, Obdicut, you sure showed that person actually doing work in local governments with your snide nonspecific "everything sucks" truthbomb! I'm not saying that everything sucks, I'm addressing the particular idea that local government is more responsive. Local government is more responsive to things that the majority or power majority agree is a problem. Local government is absolutely and completely irresponsible when it comes to longstanding problems with minority groups, and this is in fact one of the defining aspects of the United States: Many areas, where a minority, even a minority with a majority of the citizenry, isn't listened to or represented nearly at all in local government. When this situation happens, the only real solution is top-down change, as the civil rights era showed, and as the current day continues to show. I absolutely agree that local government can be very responsive to actual, literal physical needs, sometimes to a really interesting degree--the amount that snowploughing matters in Boston and New York mayoral elections can be huge. There's plenty of really interesting stuff to look at there. If you just want to have a rah-rah thread about how local government is good or more accessible, that's fine, but I think it's important to look at the ways that local government routinely fucks over classes of people, too, and why and how that's possible. Ferguson is not a very unusual town for having an amazingly unrepresentative local government, and the same thing that makes some local governments malleable to change makes others completely non malleable. One thing I hugely agree on from the OP is that individual members of staff matter hugely in local government; they can change the entire tenor of an office or an organization. In my local government work, I saw a public health department that was seriously moribund turn itself around with a single hire.
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Aug 24, 2014 20:25
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Obdicut posted:I'm not saying that everything sucks, I'm addressing the particular idea that local government is more responsive. Local government is more responsive to things that the majority or power majority agree is a problem. Local government is absolutely and completely irresponsible when it comes to longstanding problems with minority groups, This is partially true, but this is due to systemic issues of racism, income inequality, ect, that require a change in the general attitude of the population(or a change in demographics) to really change. You're also only focusing on the nefarious actions of local governments against minorities. While I'd say the police arm of local governments tend to be poo poo everywhere, policy is an entirely different matter. Many local governments have taken the initiative in protecting various groups. Many cities have policies which require a contractor have X amount of minority and/or women working in the company to receive contracts. Dozens of cities have made themselves sanctuary cities to protect undocumented immigrants, the drive for LGBT protections and equality has seen much success at both the local and state level, and many cities have taken the initiative in raising the minimum wage.
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Aug 25, 2014 00:01
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Amused to Death posted:This is partially true, but this is due to systemic issues of racism, income inequality, ect, that require a change in the general attitude of the population(or a change in demographics) to really change. You're also only focusing on the nefarious actions of local governments against minorities. While I'd say the police arm of local governments tend to be poo poo everywhere, policy is an entirely different matter. Many local governments have taken the initiative in protecting various groups. Many cities have policies which require a contractor have X amount of minority and/or women working in the company to receive contracts. Dozens of cities have made themselves sanctuary cities to protect undocumented immigrants, the drive for LGBT protections and equality has seen much success at both the local and state level, and many cities have taken the initiative in raising the minimum wage. Yeah, I mean Houston jumps out immediately as a city that does stuff much better than their state level counterparts. The thing is with local governments is that the groups that currently control them do so very weakly; a coordinated push that's even a shadow of your normal GOTV effort for a Federal level election could easily tip the balance in your favor.
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Aug 25, 2014 00:06
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Amused to Death posted:This is partially true, but this is due to systemic issues of racism, income inequality, ect, that require a change in the general attitude of the population(or a change in demographics) to really change. You're also only focusing on the nefarious actions of local governments against minorities. While I'd say the police arm of local governments tend to be poo poo everywhere, policy is an entirely different matter. Many local governments have taken the initiative in protecting various groups. Many cities have policies which require a contractor have X amount of minority and/or women working in the company to receive contracts. Dozens of cities have made themselves sanctuary cities to protect undocumented immigrants, the drive for LGBT protections and equality has seen much success at both the local and state level, and many cities have taken the initiative in raising the minimum wage. I'm not 'only' focusing on that, I'm pointing out that blithely saying that local governments are more responsive to citizenry and that it's easier to 'vote the bums out' is highly contingent on a lot of other factors. I'm not denying, at all, that some local governments are way ahead of the curve on civil and economic rights. When you say that LBGT rights have seen success at the local and state level, though, you're kinda begging the question: local government here was explicitly defined as non-state, and the fact that in many cases LGBT people have to bypass their local governments and go to the state shows exactly the limitation I'm talking about. And as I said in my first post, there is an enormous difference between various scales of local government. The local government of New York and the local government of Altoona, Kansas, bear almost no resemblance to each other, either practically or politically. Hell, it would requires fewer resources to affect change in Kansas in general than it would in New York City, LA, Chicago, etc. Because of this, I think it makes more sense to talk about small towns and cities as their own category, rather than including just everything under state level as 'local' politics. For example, what Computer Parts said about groups controlling government 'very weakly' definitely isn't true for any major city I know of.
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Aug 25, 2014 01:22
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Chinese Batman posted:I think it's awesome that a city did something like that to help out, do you have any other notable examples of stuff like this? I can't give too many examples but one I was aware of was when the city of Tacoma WA, set up their own cable company, they seem to have prices generally lower than Comcast/Cox/Timewarner they offer an introductory rate of $17 a month for quote:30 SD channels Which seems alright Their internet service doesn't seem any better really though, which makes me wonder why quote:Speed (download/upload) Residential Price Range quote:Click! Network is one of the largest municipally-owned telecommunications systems in the country and part of the City of Tacoma’s Department of Public Utilities. Obdicut posted:I'm not 'only' focusing on that, I'm pointing out that blithely saying that local governments are more responsive to citizenry and that it's easier to 'vote the bums out' is highly contingent on a lot of other factors. I'm not denying, at all, that some local governments are way ahead of the curve on civil and economic rights. In part I made this thread because I want to explore the differences and try to understand what does and doesn't work, it is obviously a very different conversation when you're talking about cities like mine of less than 40,000 residents versus Huston which is the 6th largest metro population in the US. My city is very much on the edge of civilization by services standards which I like to think gives me a bit of a unique perspective as far as cities go because of the rather different push and pull between the various levels of government. When you incorporate a city you're effectively creating a contract with the state about self governance that at least in the state of Washington gives you autonomy and self governance that you didn't have previously and takes you out of the county jurisdiction in many ways previously. This can cause some resentment with county. But "local" governments as I have defined them I did so for a reason, despite their scale there is much more in common with Huston, New York and as you put it Altoona Kansas, then there is with how state and national governments work. We largely don't talk about this or even explore the implications of how these things work and how they can change things greatly. It's a big deal when New York passes a law to ban Soda Cups, it's also equally a big deal to all the residents of Somerset, Ky. are getting their cost of living significantly reduced by the acts of their Mayor. Government doesn't matter only when there's millions of people involved. Local politics can have profound effects on national issues like workers rights and equal treatment. Seattle has been talking about how their Capitol Hill neighborhood is no longer a LBGT refuge because the people that used to live there exclusively now in part feel like the whole city is a gay neighborhood. Seattle is also pushing for the $15 an hour minimum wage despite all the business opposition to it. In my experience the difference between small cities and giant ones is the scale of money and resources you're dealing with. I laid out some general ways the governments are structured and I can speak to much more detail as to how smaller ones are oriented because that's where I work. The fact of the matter is most people don't even think about that the services they use most, the laws and ordinances that most effect their daily lives don't make the radar unless they're New York or LA, because people don't engage the things they can really change. I am not the best communicator but this is what I think is my primary assertion Obdicut: There are huge swaths of government that are possible to change that most people in the western world ignore because it's not tackling the big issues, but as I've repeatedly outlined, cities are where change begins and if we want to see a different, less bought, more fair, more just governments and world, we need to start at home.
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Aug 25, 2014 01:54
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So the US has County/Parish governments that overlap with city governments? That seems like a lot of overlap for what must be effectively the same functions. In Australia one of the noteworthy parts of local government is the relative ease with which you can get elected as a third party or independent Councillor. For instance, my local council is 15 Councillors, elected by proportional STV. That means that getting 6.25% is a guaranteed win, and depending on where the preferences from major parties go you could see a Councillor with as little as 3-4% primary vote. My local Council is 5 Labor, 4 Liberal, 1 Liberal Democrat (libertarian) and 5 independents of various stripes. There'd be a Green, but our local group didn't have a candidate last time. Most Councils in NSW have "wards," which are basically districts, but no NSW Council has fewer than 3 members per ward, which means it still maintains some proportional character. Our Councils tend to be fairly technocratic. They're run day-to-day by a General Manager, who directs staff and prepares reports which are acted upon by the Council. There are some exceptions, like the very firm and direct leadership of Sydney's Lord Mayor Clover Moore, but otherwise the role of Councillors more often than not tends to be whether or not to accept the recommendations of the General Manager or other staff. Speaking of Clover Moore, the NSW state Liberals are attempting to oust her (she's fairly progressive, the Liberals are not) by arbitrarily granting every business owner and lessee in Sydney two votes each.
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Aug 25, 2014 15:14
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Waaaah the Christians are out to get me
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Quantum Mechanic posted:So the US has County/Parish governments that overlap with city governments? That seems like a lot of overlap for what must be effectively the same functions. Because of this arrangement, the county-level government tends to serve a more coordinating role, keeping townships and cities informed of what's going on, maintaining the rather fragmented network of emergency services (each township has its own services) somewhat organized and generally facilitating communication between the municipalities and offering support when needed. I'm actually running for local township supervisor right now, and by God I've been quickly learning a lot about local government.
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Aug 25, 2014 15:26
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Quantum Mechanic posted:So the US has County/Parish governments that overlap with city governments? That seems like a lot of overlap for what must be effectively the same functions. Not in Connecticut!(or Rhode Island, I think maybe Massachusetts as well) We abolished county government back in the mid 20th century. County government in New England elsewhere is pretty weak. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_town Amused to Death fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Aug 25, 2014 |
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Aug 25, 2014 15:47
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On the topic of regional government, how do New York's boroughs work? What sort of autonomy do they have, and how do they relate to things like the NYC mayorship?
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Aug 25, 2014 15:58
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How do I determine at a glance whether my town gov't is strong or weak mayor? Mayor is directly elected, but that's not dispositive, right?
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Aug 25, 2014 17:33
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Jackson Taus posted:How do I determine at a glance whether my town gov't is strong or weak mayor? Mayor is directly elected, but that's not dispositive, right? Local newspaper coverage of city council topics would be the most likely answer, assuming you have that. I live in the definition of weak mayor and it's obvious that the mayor does not wield meaningful power unless he has far more administrative powers than would seem apparent, particularly how little they get paid (I think ~$500/month or so).
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Aug 25, 2014 18:11
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Zachack posted:Local newspaper coverage of city council topics would be the most likely answer, assuming you have that. I live in the definition of weak mayor and it's obvious that the mayor does not wield meaningful power unless he has far more administrative powers than would seem apparent, particularly how little they get paid (I think ~$500/month or so). This can be another hint, generally a strong mayor has a regular salary where as a weak one will be treated with a token payment of service like the $500 a month. Subjunctive posted:On the topic of regional government, how do New York's boroughs work? What sort of autonomy do they have, and how do they relate to things like the NYC mayorship? This is a good question I don't have an answer to right this second, if I find the answer before someone not on the other side of the country does I'll post it.
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Aug 25, 2014 20:17
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Jackson Taus posted:How do I determine at a glance whether my town gov't is strong or weak mayor? Mayor is directly elected, but that's not dispositive, right? Does your mayor have any real executive power, and if so what? Can they veto council decisions? Do they nominate department heads? Do they propose a budget? We actually slightly weakened our mayor's powers in the last election, approving a measure for all mayoral department heads to have to be approved by the board of alders, although the current mayor's union coalition has a 2/3 majority so it doesn't matter(and even beyond that the board is 30 out of 30 Democrats. Like 2 of the seats are currently open awaiting special elections but I can safely say it's 30 out of 30 Democrats) Subjunctive posted:On the topic of regional government, how do New York's boroughs work? What sort of autonomy do they have, and how do they relate to things like the NYC mayorship? They work by their nominal existence allows the city be able to pretend it cares about anywhere other than Manhattan 
Amused to Death fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Aug 25, 2014 |
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Aug 25, 2014 21:46
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Quantum Mechanic posted:Speaking of Clover Moore, the NSW state Liberals are attempting to oust her (she's fairly progressive, the Liberals are not) by arbitrarily granting every business owner and lessee in Sydney two votes each. What?
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Aug 26, 2014 00:05
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Badger of Basra posted:What? Evidently, in Australia, as in London and slightly less so in America, corporations are people too!
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Aug 26, 2014 01:06
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Yep. Many local councils in Australia grant votes to businesses as well as residents in an area (and if you own two businesses? You get a vote for one each!). State governments make the rules which govern local governments, so if one is being a thorn in their side (such as Lord Mayor Clover Moore in Sydney), they can try changing the laws to gently caress with them. In this case, not just doubling the vote for businesses, but making it compulsory for businesses to vote - but not residents. QM's example of party alignment in NSW local government is interesting, because in Tasmania, parties - other than the Greens, who place a high emphasis on the importance of local government as part of the whole grassroots democracy thing - tend not to officially run candidates in local government elections. There are councillors who are obviously members of a particular party and have even run for that party before, but as far as the council is concerned, they're technically independents.
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Aug 26, 2014 01:29
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This is very interesting to me because I actually went to national politics for the opposite reason. I've worked every level (city, county, state, federal) and there are a ton of places where on the local level you would come into complete roadblocks. Obviously your mileage may vary. I'm currently in a city of over a million people and I have to go to a ton of chamber of commerce events and it's like the same 300ish people at all of them, essentially setting the agenda for the entire town and they really do run the town. No one outside of these 300 people is going to tell anyone what the gently caress to do unless it comes from the feds or state. Everyone important in the town gets paid like 2500/year and thus they rely entirely on private sector jobs as well as private companies to hire them when they retire. They sell their votes for contracts no different than many in Congress do, and arguably more often as a percentage since it's LITERALLY required for sustenance (try living on 200 bucks a month). I've worked a lot of local elections and issue based campaigns, especially in the medical field. In many places local politicians are infinitely more incestuous than you could possibly fathom happening on the state level or federal level. If you live in an area that you can change something in a real way for the better, that's awesome, but it's entirely incorrect to assume that local politics is more reactive to what citizens want, especially if you live in an area where it is EXTREMELY difficult to vote in local elections or where there are literal fundamental and systematic issues that are impossible to overcome without tearing down the local level and starting over. Your local level being great depends far more on the feds and state than I think you're giving credit for. Without them working with you and without the basic building blocks of a reactive government, it can be just as futile if not more than the feds. Your state plays a HUGE role in local government, and depending on how stingy your town is, it might literally control most of the money in that local government. It's also where the most grievous forms of abuse happen because it's the least visible to the national media. You can rant about the BOP all you want, you'd still trade a federal pen for Joe Arpaio's jail any day. You can talk about the DEA and their billions wasted, but it's the local cops who give you a colonoscopy against your will and jail most non-violent offenders. You can rant against Scalia but at least he wasn't literally being paid on a per child basis to lock of hundreds of non violent child offenders.
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Aug 26, 2014 04:16
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mugrim posted:This is very interesting to me because I actually went to national politics for the opposite reason. I've worked every level (city, county, state, federal) and there are a ton of places where on the local level you would come into complete roadblocks. Obviously your mileage may vary. Despite your direct refutation of my premise I won't argue against it because I agree, it really matters where you are. Do you think if there was a national push for local transparency, voting rights and monetary responsibility it could be more like the ideal (which I've experienced more than not, but the city used to be way more a fiefdom than it currently is) I describe?
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Aug 26, 2014 05:58
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It's very hard to have a national push for local things, unless there's some way to generalize that set of specifics- which would sort of defeat the purpose. To the extent that this would occur, it would likely come from interstate policy development groups, like the governor's conferences.
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Aug 26, 2014 06:05
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Discendo Vox posted:It's very hard to have a national push for local things, unless there's some way to generalize that set of specifics- which would sort of defeat the purpose. To the extent that this would occur, it would likely come from interstate policy development groups, like the governor's conferences. With the existence of ALEC I'm fairly well convinced that we can destroy ourselves with national influence as much as we like.
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Aug 26, 2014 06:29
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RuanGacho posted:With the existence of ALEC I'm fairly well convinced that we can destroy ourselves with national influence as much as we like. Destroy? Absolutely.
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Aug 26, 2014 06:35
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