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Consultant urges cooperation among counties
Local governments must end their "wars" with each other in order to gain funding from legislatures.
Coordinated and cooperative strategies are the only way local governments can sustain their efforts to provide the services citizens demand.
By JIM GRANSBERY
Of The Gazette Staff
County governments must lead the effort.
"County government is the only local government entity that serves the needs of all the people and land and is accountable directly to the electorate for results," said Carl Neu.
Neu, an author and leadership consultant, provided Montana’s county leaders Monday with strategies developed in other states to meet the demands for services in the face of declining resources.
His workshop was presented to Montana’s elected county officials, mostly county commissioners, as the Montana Association of Counties opened a weeklong meeting in Billings. "Building County Musclepower" is the theme of the annual midwinter meeting.
Neu began by comparing the state and federal government "Twilight Zones" to the "real world zone" of local government.
"I am not being facetious," he said. "There is a disconnect from reality at the state and federal levels."
Gordon Morris, the executive director of MACO, said he calls the disconnect "marble fever," or what locally elected legislators catch when they get to the capitol.
Montana, like most other states, operates on the premise that county commissioners can do only what the Legislature allows. Efforts to provide more local control have not fared well in Helena. A full-fledged reform package presented in the mid-1970s was rejected and piecemeal efforts since then have only partially given counties more flexibility in dealing with local government problems.
Neu said local governments are under assault at all levels and they need to create a new declaration of interdependence.
"Real leadership starts at the grassroots, while autocracy starts at the top," he said. "Create the required change or others will impose change upon you."
Neu related the experiences of Oregon county officials in their efforts to deal with resource scarcity and the competing and conflicting effects of going it alone.
He said that county, city, school district and special jurisdiction districts needed a single funding base for their shared constituencies or "all the people." He said the Oregon model calls for a systematic approach that focuses on the shared interests that overlap.
While the needs of the community in Portland are quite different than those of Pendleton, both areas of the state have common interests in how human services, public safety, community development, transportation and economic development are provided.
Local governments have to be treated as equal in the partnership of providing those services with the funding provided by the state, he said.
"There needs to be a process for educating legislators on the needs of local governments," he said.
He suggested the relationships that have to be fostered not just between counties and other local governments but citizens, legislators and their staffs, candidates for public office, nongovernmental agencies and business leaders.
"You have to frame the agenda for the Legislature for funding," he said.
Details
Today at the Montana Association of Counties Annual Midwinter Meeting:
8:30 to 9:45 a.m. Montana Attorney General Mike McGrath and John Shontz, attorney with the Montana Freedom of Information Network, will lead a workshop on open meetings and public access to public records.
11:15 a.m. to noon, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
1 to 2 p.m., Secretary of State Bob Brown and Cascade County Commissioner Peggy Beltrone will discuss Montana and the Help America Vote Act.
For more information, call MACO at 457-7207.
Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
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