The County Council unanimously rejected Rollingwood's appeal of the Council's decision against allowing Rollingwood to vote on incorporation as a municipality. In honor of this decision, it seems a good time to post an interesting piece by Bill Neil. I posted my views sometime ago but I thought it might be good to have an alternate perspective.
Bill Neil is the former Director of Conservation for NJ Audubon Society. He served on Governor O'Malley's Transition Team for Planning and Smart Growth and was a candidate for the Democratic seat on the Montgomery County Planning Board. He serves on the Steering Committee for Democracy For America (DFA) in Montgomery County. The views expressed are his alone.
Whatever the merits to the very specific tug and pull between the Montgomery County Council and Rollingwood Village of Chevy Chase's bid to become a municipality, this relatively new resident (two and a half years) with a long experience in New Jersey pleads: don't go down this road. It is a true and human failing that power structures and governments become complacent, if not worse, over time, and that the impulse to create a new structure "closer to the people" always has some merit and some appeal, but on the whole, and despite some of my recent testimony on growth policy, we who live in MoCo should be largely proud of our government and its past accomplishments.
I write from the perspective of a citizen who has grown increasingly active in Rockville, MoCo and Maryland politics, and who draws upon 13 years of front line land-use politics at the state level in New Jersey for a statewide conservation organization. New Jersey, which I have described as a "21st Century technology state with medieval governmental Jurisdictions" had 566 municipalities the last time I checked, suggesting a feudal map of Germany, and the League of Municipalities has wielded veto power in the legislature over many a reformers dream.
The municipalities, not the counties, unlike most of Maryland, have land-use powers, and when New Jersey has acted, famously, towards environmental reforms, it has acted with state regulations, including the creation of our Pinelands Commission (1979) and Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission (1969), regional entities that have set national precedents. In 2004, New Jersey bucked the national trend against new regulatory bodies and created the Highlands Council to protect its hilly watershed region in the northern part of the state. That achievement took 15 years to enact - and the main obstacle along the way was the cry to protect municipal "home rule."
Compressing a lot of time and history to make a point, "progressive" political and environmental reforms in New Jersey have a long tradition of emanating from the powerful Governor's office, starting at least from the time of Woodrow Wilson, and working through the legislature to balance entrenched municipal power at the local and county level (our past infamous Hudson County and Atlantic City machines are most prominent in the "don't imitate" column).
Looking at the problems of the Metro DC region, and Maryland - Governor O'Malley has reminded us in his Aug. 18th address to the Maryland Assoc. of Counties that we have "the second worse commute in the nation" - also especially air pollution (and therefore Global Warming) and the problems of the Bay - we have to face the fact that the solutions are regional in scope - and therefore multiplying jurisdictions will only amplify our already monumental hurdles in these policy areas. Progressive Montgomery County has already dropped the transportation-transit innovation ball for far too many years since the completion of our Metro system. (Many have labeled the Inter County Connector, the ICC, the wrong solution from the last century.) Even if we co me up with new funding for new mass transit and stay inside the county - everyone knows that real progress even for our own county residents must involve Prince Georges County, DC and our two prominent Virginia neighbors. That's because the existing Metro system just doesn't match up well with our diverse new employment destinations, there are not enough jobs in PG itself, and the general traffic flow - if that's what one can call it, is from east to west, towards northern Virginia. Thinking of the troubles of the Purple Line with very local opposition groups, do we really want to foster greater governmental fragmentation looking forward to our brave new 21st Century? I don't think so, whatever the merits on the feel ings and sub-plots of the Rollingwood Village-MoCo turf struggle.
When I hear the appeal to the notion that the best government stems from "being closest to the people," this Jersey native remembers not only the colorful history of the infamous local machine politics but also the woeful lack of environmental enforcement at the local government level - which always had the power to act but rarely chose to utilize it. When in the anti-regulatory 1990's, the Republican dominated legislature wanted to devolve state permitting powers to the local level, I spoke out strongly against the idea, citing the tradition of municipal corruption in New Jersey, much to the outrage of the League of Municipalities lobbyist, who publicly called upon my employer to reign me in for besmirching municipal honor, such as it was. When I replied I was ready to read from a long, long list of local officials who had been indicted or gone to jail, I wasn't taken up on the cha llenge, perhaps because the legislature didn't want to get tied up for days as I went over the record year by year, town by town.
I'll close with some local color from Tony Soprano's home state to emphasize that we in Maryland shouldn't head down this path. Manchester Township, a "sleepy" south central locality not too far from the Jersey Coast, became the municipal "wanted poster" in the 1990's for outrage when a good chunk of the local government resigned, was indicted or went to jail for wholesale fleecing, outright stealing from the municipal purse on a systematic scale that drew gasps from even jaded NJ spectators. The fact that many thought the culprits were emboldened by the fact that so many of the township's residents were senior citizens new to the area and therefore not watching closely only added salt to the public's wounds.
And my very local memory of where I lived, in the NJ Highlands, rural Bethlehem Township, during the 1990's, even leaves me with a bit of a lump in my throat, after witnessing a government transition that ended in a physical stalemate with the opposing parties with their hands literally upon each other's - throats. The background was how much development was coming and whether our township should become the state and regional depository site for - are you ready - nuclear wastes from regional atomic power plants and hospitals...with the prospect of great $ local rewards for worrying about one's daily radiation dose. If we said yes it was going to be our problem for centuries...sure to bump up citizen interest....As the feelings intensified, the local election didn't have a smooth last transition meeting and the parting scene, with opposing parties locked in choke holds and the NJ State Police being called to the scene (we didn't have a local police force) to pry the parties apart....left a lasting impression with me that, sometimes, just sometimes, the government closest to home might be profitably traded, if you will forgive that term given the state of current Wall Street jitters, for one just a little bit more removed from local passions….
Greetings to you all from
Bill Neil
