You can see Warwick from the top of EG Town Hall but the two have not been able to work out regionalized fire dispatch after three years of working on it. (Photo by Bob Plain)
Regionalization is one of those issues in Rhode Island that many people talk about but never seems to move forward.
In a recent GoLocalProv article URI professor Ed Mazze suggests again that the state should regionalize along its five counties. But Warwick Mayor Scott Avedesian explained to RIPR Political Roundtable this morning why it’s easier said than done.
“When it comes down to the details everyone gets very territorial and no one wants to give at all,” he said. “In every county, there is someone that nobody wants.”
Mr. Avedesian would know; a three year effort to regionalize fire dispatch services with East Greenwich just recently fell apart, East Greenwich Patch reports this morning.
Regionalization presents some serious obstacles for Rhode Island, which along with Connecticut, is one of two states in the nation with no form of county government, according to the last U.S. Census of Governments. As noted in GoLocal, Sen. Louis DiPalma (D — Little Compton, Middletown, Newport, Tiverton) is working on legislation this session that would, in theory, alleviate some of the obstacles.
Perhaps if the General Assembly was to offer incentives to cities and towns for regionalization it could get them to voluntarily associate along geographical closeness or cultural similarity. The state should not to regionalize based solely on county lines drawn in the 17th century when Rhode Island was entirely different than today.
Such an incentive for voluntary association will still have to be powerful, but it’s possible. For instance the GoLocal article places regionalization in a context of property taxes. But the recession, combined with the cuts to state aid, forced municipalities to raise property taxes (as the article points out).
Restoring that aid as a condition for consolidating services across municipal lines could see our state’s communities become much more willing participants. Offering a loan or other funding mechanism for getting services in line with each other might also see communities more willing to participate.
Furthermore, an unsaid issue is that “efficiency” and “cost-saving” often means job loss. We need to make sure our police and fire departments are either protected from that, or else there’s something waiting for anyone who has to be let go due to redundancy.
A part of consolidating services is to break beyond lines on the map in exchange for fiscal sense. If we remain trapped in a 17th Century mindset about the importance of our vestigial counties, look for regionalization to be a troublesome road, filled with issues of geography and suburban-urban clashes.
We need to be better aware of recent history before we sign on to increased vertical integration for cities, towns, and counties.
Central Falls was not just soft; it was pillaged by members of the professional class, so-called, and left in a heap to recover. Judges did it. Can you believe that?
East Providence once had a tax base vital enough to support its schools. People there were encouraged by the same pillagers (many of the faces are the same) to sacrifice their property values and environmental oversight for lower sewer fees. (An oversimplification, but not by much–that’s the game.)
West Warwick hasn’t been taken over by the state yet, but I’m sure it will be.
Point being that it’s easy to take advantage right now. Little to nothing has been done in the way of reform.
So, reward the pillagers with increased power and larger domains?
Does ENGAGE RHODE ISLAND have a PRO-ACTIVE BLUEPRINT for all of this?
I’m guessing that they might.
In the nexus of colonization and behavior management, can there be any room for legitimate local control?
Maybe not.
Good post Sam. I’ll admit not so much to being territorial but afraid of linking to another community that has a history of fiscal irresponsibility. The best approach is to provide incentive and allow the communities the freedom to pick their partner. I’m emailing a link for this post to my reps.
Why do we need to protect public jobs? The whole point of regionalization is consolidation which should eliminate duplicative efforts and underutilization.
If not to decrease the expense of offering the same quality of services (or offer better services at the same cost) what’s the point?
The primary goal of regionalization should be reducing the size and cost of government (given equivalent quality) or maintain size and cost and offer different, better services (which will necessitate the end of some positions and the start of new ones).
Jason, I think there are a few issues here.
First, one of the reasons our national economy has struggled is because we put a large number of public employees out of work. Their work didn’t disappear, it got shifted onto other employees. This happened right at the moment when more Americans needed the assistance of their government. So many government employees saw their already stretched capital, both fiscal and human, saw added stress. The led to government inefficiency, because a negatively stressed employee is not a top-performing employee.
Frankly, we already have a high unemployment rate, and we shouldn’t look to increase that rate. Beyond that, each lost job hurts our GDP as that source of economic spending (the now unemployed worker) starts saving.
Second, is the reason I’d say to any proposal that offered to cut jobs in the name of “efficiency” : what are the people going to do? It’s not like those people are going to be leisurely lying around. They now represent liability to the government, they could very well end up on unemployment or using other government resources. We shouldn’t cut one expense in a part of the system to raise the expense elsewhere.
So employees need to have a job as they exit. New positions should give some weight to employees who have been made redundant. Private sector employers advocating these changes need to step up and hire those who have been made redundant; or else those administering the consolidation need to hunt down job openings for those being let go. Or else some stopgap measure needs to be created or made available.
I’d make these same recommendations to the Green Movement. There’s no reason to mobilize the anger of workers in the name of efficiency. We care about protecting the planet, we should care about protecting people as well. We care about having effective government, and likewise we should care about having effective citizens.
“The led to government inefficiency, because a negatively stressed employee is not a top-performing employee.”
That’s not really true. If they used to get A done, now they are charged with A+B, but can only do A+B at 80% they could do A, then it is not true that (A+B)*.8 < A. It depends on B. You’re erring on the side that people were already working at optimal productivity. As someone who has actually been employed in government, I would say this is a bad assumption.
“We already have a high unemployment rate, and we shouldn’t look to increase that rate.”
The question here is whether a government job is the best way to decrease unemployment. It can be, but many time’s it is not. Short term there is pain associated with job loss which makes a recession a tough time to make this kind of change. Ultimately, however, a government that spends less to accomplish the same goals is better for the economy. So decreasing duplicative jobs is a good thing, even if those folks on a micro-level lose their jobs. If they don’t eliminate the jobs but rethink and offer more services, this is can also be good– it depends on how valuable those additional services are to their communities.
“What are the people going to do? It’s not like those people are going to be leisurely lying around.”
You’re right, they won’t leisurely sit around. They will likely get other jobs and contribute to the GDP in that way. You’re almost arguing that losing a job results in being a massive perpetual burden to the State and that’s not really true at all, even in this economy.
Nothing specific has to happen in the public sector to favor these people. They have long work histories, strong skills, are far more likely to be educated than the typical unemployed person, etc etc. Some may choose to leave RI to do state-work or government work in places with population growth that need more people with their skills and experience. This is a very good thing.
It’s really hard for me to accept the arguing that job loss is always bad even when it results in equal services for fewer employees and fewer resources. If you wanted to argue that we don’t typically achieve one side of that coin, that’s a matter of thinking about better policy and implementation more likely to produce those outcomes. But the idea that using the government as a perpetual jobs program is a good thing is pretty far toward communist-socialism not even really democratic-socialism and requires some funky economics that I don’t think hold up.