Regional Collaboration — Lots of Foreplay. No Intercourse.

Last Monday, I attended the Crain’s  “East Meets West”  Conference in Grand Rapids.   The ex-Mayor of Indianapolis, Stephen Goldsmith wowed the audience with stories of how he slayed the dark side of unionism and bureacracy (laziness and selfishness) through management by walking around … and listening.  Then, State Rep. Marie Donigan (Royal Oak) chatted up her idea to create a state office to promote regional collaboration between Michigan communities.

Needless to say, the red-hearted Grand Rapids folks were polite about yet another Lansing money sucking idea, but let’s get serious here.  Regional collaboration isn’t going to happen in this state until our communities start going bankrupt and we force the administrators and unions to figure out how to work together.

An office filled with consultants and studies and of course, a few ex-state legislators who just happened to be term limited out of their jobs isn’t going to make any one in government to agree to give up their job or their city council seats or their budgets.  In fact, the real impact of Donigan’s  Intergovernmental Advisory Office (embodied in House Bill 5930) will be to delay regional collaboration by encouraging meaningless studies, community dialogues, conferences, etc.

As most people in the business know, there are many laws on the books in Lansing that actually make it more difficult for communities to cooperate, including Public Act 116 of 1954, which permits intergovernmental collaboration agreements to be used as a cause for recall efforts against elected officials. Check the Citizens Research Council report which describes the many legal obstacles.

If Donigan wants to serious about regional collaboration, she’ll quit the kissing and hugging and square off the real roadblocks to regional collaboration—her fellow legislators in Lansing.