By Neal Peirce For Release Sunday, January 31, 2010
© 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
Swimming in red ink, deficits rolling in as far as the eye can see, what are America’s state governments to do?
The “realists,” notes government reform expert Ted Kolderie, “tell us the only options are to cut and to tax.” Their clear message, he suggests: “With more we can do more; with less we have to do less. We don’t do ‘different.’”
But they’re bitter consequences, especially in a recession. Budget cuts reduce vital services. Increased taxes just take money out of peoples’ pockets, perversely making economic recovery all the tougher.
Raymond Scheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association, hears lots about the monstrous budget dilemmas the 50 state governors face. The time’s at hand, he believes to “to look at new and different governance models for the delivery of services.”
I asked him for examples and he didn’t hesitate.
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By William H. Hudnut III For Release Monday, February 1, 2010
Citiwire.net
An Indianapolis-area ex-CEO of a hospital group called me the other day — not about health care policy, but rather regional planning in central Indiana. He wasn’t interested in some way to force unified regional government — to expand the geographic scope of Indianapolis’ Unigov system, which Dick Lugar (now Indiana’s senior senator) founded in 1969-70 and I later led as mayor for 16 years. This ex-CEO’s concern was different: How do we get the region’s top players on the same page when it comes to such critical issues as land use, transportation and housing.
The call was heartening because it demonstrated to me how America’s business leaders are starting to grasp that in this new, mobile, wired age of ours, boundary lines are relatively meaningless and obsolete. And that some are willing to take the lead to create new ways of approaching regional problems–quite far ahead of most political leaders, I might add, who too often are little more than self-protecting institutionalists, or so rigidly ideological that pragmatism has fled them.
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