Is Their a Role for ICMA and its members in the Federal Deficit Debate?

As of this writing the United States government is $13.4 trillion in debt, in excess of ninety percent of our annual GDP.  This debt translates into $43,000 in debt for every man woman and child in this country or almost $120,000 in debt for every taxpayer.  If you add in the unfunded obligations associated with Medicare and Social Security and the IOU’s that sit in the Social Security Trust fund it is almost four times that much.  It is my premise that sitting silently while our federal government representatives compound this circumstance, we are condoning bad management and unsound public administration.  Through our collective silence we are condoning the enslavement of the future of our democracy, we are condoning the removal of choice from our descendents, and and we are condoning an impingement upon their freedom as a result of our unsustainable demand for federal programs and promises. We are condoning unconscionable generational theft and erosion of the future security of this country.   As the gate keepers for our own communities we drive home financial accountability and sustainability - yet we sit by quietly as a profession while such an unsustainable circumstance is derived for our country.  Do we have a leadership obligation, an obligation based upon principle and professional standards of sustainable stewardship, to speak up and establish ourselves in this conversation?  Would this not reinforce our relevance as professional public administrators?

The unsustainable circumstance associated with the various threads of federal deficit spending is not the fault of Republicans or Democrats.   I would argue that this is in fact our collective fault as citizens and stakeholders.  We as individual stakeholders in our democracy own this country and its governance, but we also own our own narcissistic wants and needs and have become intoxicated by the siren song of the retail political system that plays to our individual self interest, to our detriment as a nation and form of government. 

We are living in a fascinating time. The intersection of our collective unsustainable financial practices and customer focused retail politics is full of huge potholes. As a professional who has been involved in public administration for 35 years, I sometimes shiver; sometimes cry when I see how self interest has invaded the soul and therefore the culture of this country.   The founders feared such a circumstance and hoped that a unique republican form of democracy would assuage the likelihood that self governance would turn into anarchy, having succumbed to the self interest of its stakeholders. 

It is my belief that the self interest of the day is in great part fueled by the “have it your way ” commercial messages constantly sent to us, and then these messages are translated into expectations from government as if our government is just some other commercial venture.   It shows up in the form of the rampant, “I can’t control my urges and I want it all now,” personal and sovereign credit crisis that we as a country have gotten ourselves into.  Our self serving needs are further facilitated by public policy geared to try to make everyone equal.  

If you think that the mortgage lending crisis was bad, lift up the covers and you will see that the same derivative instruments used to securitize home mortgages were also used to securitize the automobile floor plan debt that supported car dealers and credit card debt, each of which in large part define our consumer culture.   As someone who has a partial responsibility to invest $1 Billion a year in public funds, I have had the scary opportunity to face up to just what is in my government’s investment portfolio.  It was a scary insight into how even conservative investment practices have been influenced by, in fact infected by, these instruments.

As stakeholders in a democracy, we have ourselves to blame for all of this.   I am sorry, I know that is not politically correct, but if you believe is self governance then you have to be willing to look inward before you look to others for blame. We demand from our government what should be the burden of our own personal responsibility.   We elect people who tell us what we want to hear and reject those who tell us what we need to hear.   We drain courage from the political system and fragment our desires into such small parcels of special interest that it is impossible to defend the common interest.   Honestly, we know this.  We deal with this culture every day at the local level where it is just not good enough to have a piece of land preserved for recreation, it has to have a certain type of turf grass, mowed seemingly daily to a certain height, fertilized to the desired level of green and equipped with every line, base, goal, dug out, parking, lights and possible recreation instrument available – all from a constituency that says lower my property taxes and don ’t make me as a user pay for the special treatment that I get because heck, I am entitled to it because “I pay my taxes.”  But we manage this expectation with process, engagement and accountability.

With all of the talk about sustainability, where is ICMA as a leader when it comes to financial sustainability?  If we believe in sustainability, if we believe that we are stewards of the democracy that has been entrusted to us, then it is time to stand up and demand the same type of accountability that we are responsible for at home.  We are after all the largest value based, ethically self accountable collection of public administration in this Country and that does account for something.

We are as an organization the embodiment of good government leaders standing up and saying “we have had enough!”  Formed out of the public demand that local government be more transparent and accountable, ICMA is a symbol of the professionals who achieved these goals.  It seems, however, that having achieved that success the profession has been in search of public relevance ever since.  The cyclical upwelling of form of government referenda is often the reactive flashpoint, accompanied by a self serving collective ringing of hands.  We worry that citizens don’t appreciate the value we bring, that we are not understood, and that we are taken for granted.  We wonder aloud, in conversations or seminars, about our collective relevance.

Many of us have worked hard to add a new realm to the mission of accountability and transparency – the realm of sustainability.  While marketed as the “triple bottom line” I personally fear that the sustainability conversation has been mostly about our environmental heritage, hand wringing about community health and little about financial and social health.  The reality is that they are all linked in truth, they are a triple bottom line, but in the end nothing much happens without money. 

I argue that it is time for ICMA to establish a new purchase on the higher ground that defines what it means to be a responsible and sustainable government, focusing that quest on the unsustainable financial practices of the federal and state government.  We in local government are the role models for living within our means.  Professionally management is clearly the delineator between the practices of local government and those of the state and federal government.  We know it is hard work.  We know it is doable.

I suggest that it is our responsibility as stewards of sustainable communities to begin to make the demand that the federal and certain state governments learn to do the same.  But are we willing to take such a stance or are we fearful of the fallout?  I fear that we may be unwilling to acknowledge this responsibility as a new benchmark for “relevance” because we are unwilling to deal with the politics and possibly fearful of managing the consequences should the federalist system upon which we also rely for largesse take us seriously.  Like any exercise in leadership we have to master the context and in so doing be willing to look into the mirror first and acknowledge that we all have our hand in the till of federal financial irresponsibility.

It is time for ICMA as an organization to stand up as a representative of thousands of professional public stewards and collectively scream as loud as we can “I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it any more.”