Regional Government: The Cleveland Way

The Cleveland Plain Dealer just kicked off a series on efforts to consolidate government services and create a more "regional" leadership structure. Which should sound familiar. Lots of the same issues are at work here, so it's worth a look.

Comments

[Paul Galvanek]

Looking to other regions for answers on regionalism is pretty useless since the regions are so different in their make ups. Regionalism in Allegheny County is nothing more than code for; how can the crooked morons that bankrupted the city and drove their population out reassert control over those who left. A perfect example of why regionalism won't work here can be found in the recent shenanigans of PAT, an organization that is supposed to serve the entire county but when it comes to providing service does so almost exclusively with downtown Pittsburgh in mind. That's what consolidated services will look like, everyone paying taxes for services delivered primarily to the city if the current bunch of goons gets the "regionalism" they want. If anyone ever wants to get serious about regionalism the first step that is going to have to take place is the City of Pittsburgh's one party Soviet style political machine is going to have to be disassembled. Dissolve city government, purge the public payrolls of all the Costas, Lucchinos, Flahertys, Murphys etc, and give the city one council member in a county council that's been redrawn with true representation in mind instead of the gerrymandered farce engineered by James Burn and Dan Onarato that currently exists, then maybe it will be taken seriously. Otherwise the hundreds of thousands of people, like myself, who've fled the city for other parts of the county are never going to consider plans that put us back under the boot of the Democrat thugs we worked and saved to escape.

[Sam M]

Paul,

I agree that all regions are different, and that solutions in one place will hardly be a panacea everywhere. But I do think it is interesting to see how some people approach some of the issues.

I think your response is important. A lot of people view this a as greedy, free-riding suburbanites sucking the life out of cities. And I am open to the idea that some of that is going on. But it is important to remember that cities failed people in fundamental ways. And continue to fail them.

Which creates sort of an intractable situation. Because to "fix" the situation will require someone to take one in the teeth, either in terms of taxes or control or what have you. And no one wants to take one in the teeth.

Nasty business all around. No easy solutions. And no matter which solution we choose, someone is going to have to pay for mistakes other people made long ago.

I think being in municipal/county government would have to be about the worst job ever.

[Paul Galvanek]

If it were a simple matter of paying for past mistakes in order to move forward I doubt you'd see this much resistance to the idea of regionalism. I think it's more the case that the people who are CURRENTLY making mistakes refusing to acknowledge their failures, insist on doing things the way they always have and desiring the ability to repeat them on a larger scale because it benefits them and their well connected friends. As long as the "leadership" in the problem areas refuse to accept that they're the one that need to change, I not only don't want any part of regionalism if I live in a safe neighborhood with good schools and low taxes I want as many barriers as possible erected to keep the corruption and sleaze that has destroyed the city institutions from ever encroaching on my space. Everyone knows, whether they'll admit it or not, that regionalism as it would be enacted here simply means giving city politicians the ability to strip the rest of the county of its resources, more do nothing public jobs and bloated contracts in exchange for votes and services and institutions reduced down to the putrid level of the city.

[Jeremiah]

I would have agree with Paul on the last point. Local media may have chosen to look the other way but it certainly wasn't lost on the residents outside of the city that at nearly the same time Luke Ravensthal, Dan Onorato and other county/city officials were patting each other on the backs for spending public money on yet another sports venue, Butler County and Cranberry officials were announcing the arrival of a new Westinghouse nuclear research campus and 3,000 highly paid engineering jobs, many moving from existing Allegheny County facilities that will soon be empty.

Tax money being spent to build office space downtown when Pittsburgh already has the highest vacancy rate of any city in the country, light rail tunnels from downtown to the North Shore while already inadequate bus service to the suburbs is being slashed to the bone, public school reorganizations that focus on finances while ignoring the shortcomings of the curriculum and social break down within the schools, macing in the Sheriff's office, sweetheart contracts to the fire department in exchange for endorsements etc and next election cycle all the people in the city who are doing it or their anointed underlings will get re-elected without so much as a hint of an alternative.

The entrenched political machinery in the city and county seem invested in making the same mistakes over and over and over again and regionalism sounds like code for; how can we keep shoveling money to our cronies and stick suburbanites with the tab. Pay higher taxes so more Costas can have public sector jobs and get their own streets paved while the rest of the region falls into disrepair? mmmm, nah don't think so.