Government
Power to Our Neighborhoods!
By Gregg Mosson
What's the best way to combat the apathy of today's citizen's and
improve their social life?
For Baltimore lawyer George W. Liebmann, the answer is to expand the
power of what he calls "sublocal" groups--the little clusters of people who live
in the same neighborhood.
In his newly revised book Neighborhood Futures, Leibmann
envisions a decentralized American government that funnels decision making and
no-strings-attached grants and vouchers to newly strengthened community organizations.
Liebmann wants to revive the body politic with the localism that was prevalent in colonial
and revolutionary America.
Liebmann argues that federal bureaucratic solutions have alienated many
citizens, and they now feel disconnected from a faceless and professionalized bureaucratic
society. So he advocates empowering sub-local institutions like neighborhood associations,
residential community and condominium associations, individual schools, and individuals
(through vouchers) to give citizens participatory power in meeting their own local needs.
The growth of residential communities and condominium associations in
recent years demonstrates people’s desire to engage in sub-local communities that
offer participatory opportunities. Today there are several hundred thousand residential
community and condominium associations established by private deed covenants, governing
about a quarter of the American population, writes Liebmann. He says this trend represents
a "move away from big-lot development, in which each family had a large yard, to
smaller individual lots supplemented by common areas for recreation and other
activities."
Liebmann would like to see neighborhood associations given authority
over such issues as local trash collection, neighborhood-wide planning, traffic-flow
rules, beautification, and urban renewal. The associations would collect property tax
revenue, a small percentage of federal income taxes, and user fees for common grounds such
as parks and swimming pools.
To further the goal of local control, Liebmann supports the charter
school movement in the United States, as well as various European models where individual
schools are controlled by boards comprised of parents, teachers, and a minority of
administrators. Interestingly, the U.S. trend in school management has been toward
consolidation of schools. In contrast, Europe has largely decentralized school control.
Neighborhood Futures argues that local entities can best provide
"labor intensive services such as day-care, care of the elderly, primary education,
street governance, and block redevelopment." But Liebmann acknowledges the need for
mechanisms of oversight, whether to combat corruption or balance inequalities. Overlapping
jurisdiction, in contrast to deregulation, "was Madison’s solution to the
problem of majority tyranny," he notes.
John Stuart Mill once noted that people in a commercial society will be
"essentially mean and selfish," unless their public spirit is cultivated by
extensive participation in government. For Liebmann, the federal bureaucratic solution
cannot cultivate community unless it uses grants, vouchers, and other mechanisms to
empower local and sub-local communities, school, and neighborhoods.
Source: Neighborhood Futures: Citizen Rights and Local Control
by George W. Liebmann. Transaction Publishers. Revised edition 2004. 189 pages. Paperback.
$29.95. Order.
