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| Breaking Out from Government Silos and Borders |
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| Opinion - Guest Columns | |||
| Neal Peirce | |||
| Monday, 29 June 2009 03:00 | |||
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Washington, DC, USA. For at least a half century, “silos” and borders have been tripping up effective governance in America. The silos loom highest at the federal level, where massive departments from Transportation to Commerce to Labor rarely speak and almost never work together. Borders proliferate close to home, dividing metro areas into hundreds of economically linked but separately governed cities and suburbs. And borders, as state lines, plunge straight through such massive citistate regions as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and St. Louis. But the Obama era is bringing glimmers of hope for change. This spring the new president’s Transportation and Housing Secretaries – Ray LaHood and Shaun Donovan – made a public pledge to collaborate in joint field work of their departments. On June 16 the new Environmental Protection Agency chief, Lisa Jackson, joined in under the banner of advancing more “livable,” sustainable American communities. In the near future, it’s likely Energy Secretary Steven Chu will also align his department with the alliance.
Washington, DC, USA. Science observes the universe, records what has occurred, and then develops a testable  theory that can explain those observations and make predictions on future ones.
Albert Einstein was very good at thi...A new politics, based on the metro economic reality and the country’s huge energy, climate, transportation and housing needs, is clearly coming into focus. Silos and borders won’t go away soon but may be in for a healthy, long-overdue challenge.“We will all be working off the same playbook to formulate and implement policies and programs,” Donovan said. “For the first time, the federal government will speak with one voice on housing, environmental and transportation policy.” The most amazing statements come from LaHood, the former Republican congressman Obama recruited to head the Transportation Department. For 50 years, LaHood confesses, federal transportation outlays have heavily favored scattered road development that requires autos for most trips, even very short ones, undercutting transit and mixed-use communities. Another result he notes: auto congestion – an $80 billion annual drain on the American economy also imperiling communities’ quality of life. LaHood is enthusiastically backing the idea of “livable communities” including “complete streets” that encourage mobility for all users — “whether they are children walking or biking to school or commuters riding transit or driving motor vehicles.” What explains this tectonic shift in federal approaches? The obvious explanation: Obama’s personal belief in community-sensitive design and planning, born of his Chicago experience. But it’s now turning out Obama not only appointed progressive department heads with new missions, but is staffing those agencies with appointees who not only believe in the new gospel but started to implement it in their prior state and local government jobs. Lead examples are HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims (former King County, Wash., Executive and early climate change evangelist), DOT Undersecretary for Policy Roy Kienitz (former Maryland planning director and later chief aide to Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell), and the EPA’s John Frece (a smart growth leader in the Maryland administration of then-Gov. Parris Glendening). Their big collective challenge — to turn around large, entrenched, separate bureaucracies, making sure the collaboration celebrated in Washington gets reflected in actual field operations. But even if silos are made less formidable, what of the thousands of borders that divide communities in our metro regions? Won’t smart growth, “livability” agendas run a cropper if new transportation, housing, environmental initiatives are splintered into thousands of small government pieces? The new White House Office of Urban Affairs has yet to follow up on the metro-wide focus for federal initiatives that the Brookings Institution and others have advocated and Obama explicitly endorsed in his presidential campaign. But it’s known to be mulling one lead idea: challenging governments and civic leaders across regions to come up with their own ideas for joined-up metro-wide transportation, energy, housing and environmental projects. Federal departments could then negotiate the details and help fund proposals with the most impact for sustainability and livable communities. Metro regions, says Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, new president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, are such critical linchpins of the national economy that they need direct relationships with the federal government to bolster their livability and global competitiveness. Nickels and Tom Cochran, the Mayors Conference’s veteran executive director, favor going outside center city boundaries to create political alliances with executives of the large suburban counties. It’s time, says Cochran, “to form a political operation to demand” more effective federal response to entire metros’ needs. There’ll be plenty of political and bureaucratic obstacles to combined city-suburb approaches. But a new politics, based on the metro economic reality and the country’s huge new energy, climate, transportation and housing needs, is clearly coming into focus. Silos and borders — they won’t go away soon. But they may be in for a healthy, long-overdue challenge.
 Neal Pierce is a nationally Syndicated Columnist. See these search results for a complete list of Mr. Pierce's articles or visit the TS-Si.org Article Archive.
 The TS-Si News Service is a collaborative effort by TS-Si.org editors, contributors, and corresponding institutions. Sources can include the cited individuals and organizations, as well as TS-Si.org staff contributions. Articles and news reports do not necessarily convey official positions of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates. We welcome your comments. Use the form below to leave a public comment or send private correspondence via the TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.TS-Si is dedicated to the acceptance, medical treatment, and legal protection of individuals correcting the misalignment of their brains and their anatomical sex, while supporting their transition into society as hormonally reconstituted and surgically corrected citizens.
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