The Dynamic of Local, State

The Dynamic of Local, State and Federal Governance

American governance has been based in Constitutional ideology since the founding of our nation. Woven within the myriad premises which have defined this ideology and the document giving it foundation is an ongoing debate concerning the balance of governmental oversight and relative individual or community autonomy. One of the core philosophical divides in the founding of our nation concerns the issue over federal authority and state or local rights, with our Founding Fathers, modern elected public officials and the general population debating this point strenuously and in perpetuity. There is, indeed, a deeply ideological root to all of this, which denotes that the 'grand experiment' which is America if founded on hard-won compromise between two divergent positions on this matter. The result is centuries of consideration toward the resolution, or at least the accommodation, of this compromise. At issue in this discussion is one of the clarifying legislative endeavors concerning this issue, and one which does appear to choose a specific side in the debate. The Home Rule Enabling Act is one which directly addresses one of the subordinate questions to the larger debate over federal versus state and local rights. This discussion will focus on the implications and applications of the Home Rule Enabling Act as it associates to the broader question of the relationship between federal and local governance, leading us to conclude that while the latter is a subordinate to the former, we have gradually moved in the direction of affording more and more broadly implicated rights to the latter. The whole of this discussion centers on the notion that the local governance is the unit most closely attached to the specific needs, demands and desires of the public who elected it. In a sense, therefore, the locality is the venue wherein individuals, groups and leaders may work closely together to effect meaningful policy and, where needed, change. However, for a great many years of our history, in fact leading well past the middle of the 20th century, the legislative position on the flexibility and freedom of this level of governance would be extremely limited. Prior to the establishment of official legislation denoting the existence of implied powers, it was understood only that the local government would be entitled to act on only those powers explicitly afforded it by the denotation of federal constitution, law or legislation. Naturally, this was a circumstance that would result in no small degree of conflict, resentment and impracticality. For the local government, the degree of its ability to respond to community needs and popular demand would be extremely limited by the condition of being beholden to federal policy and leadership. Naturally, the distance which this would create between local publics and the laws and policies governing or serving them would promote something of a disenfranchisement. The ultimate outcome of such a condition would therefore be the obstruction of individual rights, which would be clearly less represented in the body of the broader governing system. Its detachment and lack of proximity to the countless local publics over which it presided would render early a federal government with far too much authority with which to deprive individual and local rights. Our research addresses this as a condition which was inherently problematic and contrary to rationality. As Price (2008) argues, "it would be the height of folly for people to establish governments that deprive rights. But accordingly, the state expressly confers the authority for a community to exercise a right to self governance." (2) Indeed, even at the juncture before it had become more assumptive to argue on behalf of the application of implied powers for local government, it had been the case that local communities had been at least officially awarded the right to select and execute effective local representation. And as to the research question guiding this discussion, it is well understood that local governance is technically authorized by the power of federal government, and therefore, is to be seen as something of a step-child. Even further removed in its explicit relationship to the federal seat of power than are the state governments that might, in this analogy, be considered biological offspring, the local government had historically accepted its role as something of a public liaison to policies outside of a community or township. Many other localities, however, had struggled with this condition, recognizing there within a condition of governance which severely handcuffed the ability of local officials to channel the will of the people or to shape policy according to real and immediate civic demands. The response would be the beginning of a process in 1969 which would, by the early 1980s, evolve into an assumptive and necessary aspect of the hierarchical chain of governance and authority. Establishing what would become a clear and groundbreaking precedent, "in 1969 an amendment to the State Constitution was approved by Maine voters and in 1970 the Maine Legislature passed the Home Rule Enabling Act, and since that time Maine's cities and towns can not only exercise those powers expressly granted or necessarily implied but also 'any power or function, which the Legislature has power to confer upon it, which is not expressly denied or denied by clear implication.'" (Starn, 1) This precedent would have a remarkably liberating effect on the way that localities could begin to shape policy and provision. Increasingly, cities and towns could act according to the relationship between population, public office and geographical implication instead of reporting to an array of standards crafted from a nationalist perspective. More and more, the development of Americas localities would begin to take on their own cultural mores, ideological prerogatives and geographically-specific demands with a freedom not even represented in the relationship between the public and its remote federal governance. One of the principles argued by President Reagan, who presided over the formalization of this approach to federal liberalization toward local governance, according to Price, would be the idea that America should be defined by the culturally diverse and autonomous faces of our local communities and outstanding cities. This change would, of course, produce the positive economic outcomes inherent to more sensitive and focused policy approaches. One of the more important developments which would unfold here from would be a greater standardization of independent state actions concerning commercial interactivity. Federal restrictions upon interstate commerce, the philosophy implied, were similarly detached, insensitive and impractical to the needs of a growing economy. Therefore, a greater liberalization toward self-governance within the broader system of the United States would be reflected in the heightened emphasis on interstate compacts. Such economic arrangements could be brokered betwixt states with the ability to craft processes and policies absent of federal intervention. "Unlike federal actions that impose unilateral, rigid mandates, compacts afford states the opportunity to develop dynamic, self regulatory systems over which the party states can maintain control through a coordinated legislative and administrative process." (Post, 1) This, again, allows for those public officials elected in more precise regional contexts to attend to the demands apparent within a more concentrated economic setting such as a state or locality. The variables which separate the needs of so many states and localities-whether economically, geographically, culturally, racially or even in terms of age-cannot be addressed by the overarching authority of the federal government, which lacks both the intimate understanding and the sense of personal accountability which are requisite to responding to popular need and demand. Today, we may say that we have a reached a fairly high point of integrative self-governance, where federal, state and local authorities exist in a hierarchical but non-entangled dynamic which retains the sensitivity of local responsiveness. According to Zimmerman (2007), who traces the history of this trajectory to the middle of the 19th century, "continuing resentment of legislative interference resulted in the development of a new constitutional amendment directing the legislature to devolve upon a municipality adopting a new charter all powers capable of devolution except civil relations and the definition and punishment of felony." (Zimmerman, 25) The graduating implications of this premise can be seen today in what must be assessed as a positive scenario, where local governments are enabled to directly affect popular demand. This endorsement of the preservation of local authority comes with the understanding that implied powers are all those entitlements which are not explicitly defined as unconstitutional, illegal or illicit. This is to suggest that the federal government is in a place of authority still, to at least restrict the movement of states and localities within the boundaries of lawfulness. Simultaneously, federal government is prevent from levying to great a social, economic or cultural control on state and local bodies which it cannot acutely represent. Indeed, we may say that this is a direct reflection of the compromise sought and discussed in this research discussion. States and localities must be entitled to respond to their publics, even as they remain beholden to the philosophical girding given by federal authority. Works Cited: Post, S.S. (2002). Understanding Interstate Compacts. American Political Science Association.