Time for a regional, systems approach to gov’t services & taxes
With new King County Executive Dow Constantine and new Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, and deficits pounding the public sector at the local, county and state levels, I believe it’s time for a comprehensive systems approach to look at how we deliver public services.
Central questions: If we were designing government from scratch today, what would it look like? What level of government should provide what type and level of service? How can we unleash the entrepreneurial energy of our public employees and private sector partners to improve the efficiency of service delivery? How can we utilize technology together in a new, open, transparent model so the public knows where to go for services?
Most importantly, how can we put the public at the center of our model?
King County delivers public safety, land use, water treatment, Metro and other services. Seattle delivers hands-on services such as utilities, streets, human services and more. The state hovers above and sometimes delivers services directly such as foster youth, nursing home payments, education funding and sometimes provides a more functional coordinating role as in public health.
And yet all three levels of government are struggling financially and operationally to keep up with demand as the Great Recession pounds on.
In terms of dollars, the state provides taxing authority to local governments. It’s one of the most important constitutional authorities we have in Olympia. Yet who should have what type of taxing and spending authority? Does our model work today? Are we providing too much authority around taxes to Olympia and too little at the local level? Or is a regional model as in Sound Transit a more appropriate path in today’s regional world? How much is enough and for whom?
And other regional questions need attention: Transportation, the future of Seattle Center and more. There are regional plans for Puget Sound cleanup, Sound Transit, Puget Sound Regional Council and more. Are they working?
In order for our state to seize the opportunity of this crisis, and to embrace systems change, we need a more coordinated regional plan of action.
We should put all of our taxes and services on the table and look at them in a coordinated, comprehensive and objective fashion.
Let’s have a regional summit and put it all on the table for an open, coordinated, regionally-driven dialogue about how we collect money, how we spend it, and how we can work together more effectively.
Let’s seize the opportunity of this crisis to do more than rearrange programs, let’s tackle core systems issues that go to the heart of what we want our regional to look like in the 21st Century.
Government 2.0 is not just about the idea of opening old databases and accessing information. It’s about a new look and a new outlook.
Your partner in service,
Reuven.
I believe that Schools should consider a BOLD tactic ….
teaching academic content to students.
Reuven,
There is always a lot of talk about zero based budgeting but there seem to be a fundamental hurdle to doing it. What’s the bugbear here? Is it legislative, special interest, inertia? Let’s pick the top candidate and strike hard before the opportunity get’s away from us.
The bureaucracy and traditions of the early nineteenth century english navy is instructive here. While this was an organization that was effective overall it was almost in spite of itself and was in steep decline (even while England’s economic and political power was in ascendancy). The navy was rife with inefficient, even horribly corrupt, practices. There was much jealousy between various departments, merit was often not rewarded…it was even punished in several notorious cases, Cochrane most famously. Petty rivalries often took a backseat, sometime a spectacular backseat, to the obviously needs of the country during a time of existential war.
It seemed hopeless to change such a long adopted and powerful system and yet reformed minded people eventually banded together and remade that Navy into something much closer to what the country and the people who paid to support it actually needed. It happened. Through a wonderful combination of crisis and the lack of self-interest of a few concerned subjects/citizens that impossible, powerful institution was remade to serve the society it was suppose to serve all along.