Sounding the Opening Bell

...The resurgence of counties?especially urban counties experimenting with county executives, county managers, reductions in independently elected officials, and the adoption of new contract procedures and reciprocal agreements with cities for the performance of certain government functions—has been significant...

...These voluntary associations of elected officials have already demonstrated their effectiveness in many areas and hold much promise for the future...

...After their previously unsympathetic treatment at the statehouse, cities and counties are reluctant now to give up their new Federal relationship...

...This will provide a permanent study group on state government, with specific research in problem areas to be undertaken by temporary two-year groups rotated among the major universities and each under the direction of a former governor...

...Sanford also downgrades the contributions of urban counties, which are extending their traditional role as administrative units of the state government to include urban functions...

...The Sanford effort has also led to the Institute of the States...

...Sanford argues that "the city cannot solve its problems permanently unless its problem-solving devices reach out effectively to surrounding territory...

...Such a program would ultimately achieve his goal of strengthening the states...

...Sanford's optimism is based not upon past performance, which he reluctantly concludes has been very poor, but upon his belief that "states are here to stay as a matter of political reality," and that what might be called "creative competitive tensions" between the states and the Federal government offer the best hope for serving the total needs of Americans in the future...

...For example, nowhere in the book are metropolitan councils of government mentioned...

...Specifically, he argues that "super-cities do not cover enough land area or enclose enough people within their limits to justify their mayors' seeking Federal aid without involving the states...

...This brings him to an equally detailed prescription for the legislative branch, involving changes not only in the structure of state government but in its philosophy...

...The Federal government has responded with over 170 major grant-in-aid programs of varying effectiveness, many of them initially channelled through state capitols...

...In a system of short-term governors, often with provisions against running for re-election, the area that suffers most is long-term planning...

...Approaching the problem in this way, it is understandable that Sanford largely ignores or glosses over alternative and complementary mechanisms, now in the experimental stage, to coordinate local action...

...An Institute on State Programming for the Seventies is currently completing its first year at the University of North Carolina...

...At a time when the very relevance of the institution of state government is being widely questioned, Terry Sanford has come forth with a spirited brief in defense of the federal system that stresses the viability of the states within the federation...

...Reviewed by THOMAS P. MURPHY Professor of Public Administration, University of Missouri at Kansas City With somewhat uncharacteristic succinctness, Everett McKinley Dirksen in 1965 expressed the view of many knowledgeable persons in and out of government when he predicted that before long "the only people interested in state boundaries will be Rand McNally...

...Under the Mus-kie plan, a National Intergovernmental Affairs Council, to be chaired by the President and composed of Cabinet officials whose programs relate directly to state and local government, would be established...

...The Sanford study differs from prior studies in its concern for action no less than investigation...

...In addition, Sanford seems to overlook situations where the governor and the mayor of a major city would be of different political parties...

...Sanford says the states should take on the job of representing the interests of all local governments in Washington...

...Only in the final half are we offered a glimpse of the new role they may be able to play, coupled with specific recommendations to implement his proposals...

...The states have all these...

...We shall see in the near future just how acute the states' instinct for self preservation is...

...The Lakewood plan initiated in California, for one, has proven an extremely successful innovation and could set a pattern for contractual arrangements between counties or cities and the states...

...In other words, even though the states have not held up their end of the bargain in the past, they still occupy a strategic position in the Federal system and are demanding another chance...

...The capable former governor of North Carolina declares at the outset that his purpose is to discuss how the states "might serve both the immediate desires of the people and their enduring principles of government...

...If they are not needed as active participants in the urban environment, if the Federal-city dialogue that has emerged from desperate necessity can begin to meet the cities' needs, what meaningful role is left to the states...

...The author contends that a governor must be made personally responsible for budgeting, but that each state must also "develop a planning mechanism which uses all the means available, not just the budget process...

...The metropolitan councils have been made up of county as well as city officials...

...This is the real crisis of the states...

...Creating state departments of urban affairs would seem to provide all the trimmings but none of the substance for effective state-local partnerships...

...His staff laid the groundwork for the creation of a nationwide Commission of the States, on the theory "that education was too important to be left to the haphazard choice of unconnected local and state efforts and too complex to be left to a single guiding national hand...

...in fact, they have usually been formed on the basis of county boundaries, since their jurisdictions cover areas larger than cities...

...Is it reasonable to expect a Democratic mayor to refuse to discuss Federal aid with a Democratic President and instead depend upon a Republican governor to carry the ball for him...

...He wisely adds: "Planning is a never-ending, dynamic process for bringing about the changes necessary to reach desired goals...

...The migration of unskilled, uneducated Negro and other disadvantaged groups into the inner cities has generated a counter migration of middle-class citizens to the suburbs, leaving the core with diminished revenue sources and skyrocketing costs due to unemployment, sub-standard housing and medical facilities, as well as rising crime rates...

...This now gives the states a means for developing policy decisions without the Federal government...

...The question is why have they not done more, what might lead one to expect a reversal in the trend of state inaction...

...It is hard to believe that a mayor like John Lindsay would ever give up his direct relationship with Washington...

...It is ironic that Sanford devotes more space to discussing the fiscal and tax reforms carried out in Maryland by Governor Agnew than he does to county government...

...The reason for the author's defensive stance, and for the often frenzied self-questioning now going on in many statehouses, is quite simply that in their turtle-like response to the social and technological revolutions of this century the states have been badly outflanked by Federal and local agencies...

...The product of a state's efforts must be a coordinated and comprehensive planning process, not a plan...

...Sanford's failure to mention the intergovernmental training and manpower bills proposed by the Administration and Senator Edmund Mus-kie (D.-Maine)—calling for wholesale exchange of Federal, state, and local personnel to provide state and local governments with people capable of administering social programs that might eventually be decentralized to the state level—seems curious...

...The problem not faced up to is that the states today face a "credibility gap"—for they already have the mechanism to do all Sanford proposes...

...The states, with possession of taxing, annexation, eminent domain, and zoning powers, the overall view and supervisory position, can be more successful than any government...

...Not even a project funded by Ford and Carnegie could have hoped in 218 pages to encompass all the relevant questions...

...While it is somewhat early for a complete evaluation, there is evidence that this change will not automatically reverse the directions of some states by making them responsive to the needs of the cities, and thus will not encourage voters to support the reforms in state government which Sanford proposes...

...Since almost half the states are considering new constitutions, the timing is good...

...His clincher is that "the national government does not have the legal authority or the instruments for carrying out action, and the cities do not have the position or outlook...

...Agnew was elected governor on the basis of his service as the chief executive of Baltimore County...

...Given this aim, it is indicative that he feels compelled first to spend nearly half of the book outlining a rationale for their existence...

...The ex-governor is at his best when discussing the means of transforming and overhauling state government...

...Besides the specific progress already achieved, perhaps the greatest value of the Sanford project has been its sounding the opening bell in the states' fight for citizen support of state government reform...

...The action area today is in the cities...

...He details the changes necessary to turn governors into real chief executives, noting that strong executives also need strong legislatures...

...The most serious omission of the book, though, is its failure to explore in detail the implications of the reapportionment of state legislatures...

...As the urban crisis has mounted, however, the tendency has been for the cities to deal directly with the Federal government, by-passing the bureaucratic bottleneck at the state level...

...By way of significant steps to improve intergovernmental relations, Sanford supports Senator Muskie's proposal to provide the President with "a mechanism for domestic affairs comparable to that available in foreign affairs...

...A spokesman with the reputation of Terry Sanford, who was a constructive and innovative governor, may lend credibility to the states' plea...