Levels of Government

Murphy’s Law Quotes

1. If anything can go wrong, it will. (see Murphy’s law)
2. Systems in general work poorly or not at all.
3. Complicated systems seldom exceed five percent efficiency.
4. In complex systems, malfunction and even total non-function may not be detectable for long periods (if ever).
5. A system can fail in an infinite number of ways.
6. Systems tend to grow, and as they grow, they encroach.
7. As systems grow in complexity, they tend to oppose their stated function.
8. As systems grow in size, they tend to lose basic functions.
9. The larger the system, the less the variety in the product.
10. The larger the system, the narrower and more specialized the interfaces between individual elements.
11. Control of a system is exercised by the element with the greatest variety of behavioral responses.
12. Loose systems last longer and work better.
13. Complex systems exhibit complex and unexpected behaviors.
14. Colossal systems foster colossal errors.

I do not think it would be too much of a stretch to say that most people are, at some level, dissatisfied with government. Be it because of things they see on the news about the federal government, things they read in the paper coming from the state capital, or things they see on their property tax bill at the local level. But aside from maybe this last example, most people get their information about the government through the media. I am fortunate in this aspect because as an employee of a local municipal government, I get to see the inner workings of things and therefore can be dissatisfied with my government for completely organic and original reasons.

See folks, I’m talking about water here. Yes, water. Rain, rivers, streams, floods, groundwater, surface water, runoff, erosion, wells, watersheds, and endangered little turtles that somehow live in every pond anyone is ever trying to turn into a shopping center. You see, when development takes place, managing the water for that development is a big deal and a substantial part of my job. Water needs to be managed so that things like rain don’t turn into things like flooding. This is done through what is called a “storm water ordinance” which has rules for people who are building things that require them to build ponds and drains and channels on a property to manage water. In this way, water is controlled and kept from being destructive. Instead, the water is allowed to slowly and safely seep back into the earth and everyone, including endangered turtles, are happier for it.

Storm water regulations have been with us about as long as hippies have, 1970s or so. And they have evolved over time and gotten more cumbersome and restrictive. They’ve also changed as the science behind them has changed. That brings us to the here and now. The state of Pennsylvania has recently decided that storm water management ordinances of little municipalities all across the Commonwealth aren’t good enough. Oh sure, they do a great job of managing water on a specific property but apparently we’re all part of some bigger “ecosystem” or something. Therefore, we need new storm water ordinances so that the management of water on one lot is congruent with the management of water on nearby lots as well as things like streams and ground water tables and little endangered turtles.

Stay with me here…

So today I attended a meeting held by County Planning Commission where the municipalities in the County were to learn about these new regulations. Except we didn’t. Learn that is. Why? Because no one has the new regulations yet. Or rather, they have them, but you’re not allowed to see them. And now we get back to the point, levels of government. See, first the state government says, “we need to do X” but we don’t actually do anything so here’s a directive and if the levels of govt below us don’t follow the directive, we’ll cut off your funding or something. (incidentally, the federal govt usually just said the same thing to the states to start all this)  Then the county governments in the state get nervous and start taking action. But they don’t actually do anything either so they say to the levels of government beneath them, “hey the state demands you do X and you better listen but don’t come to us because its not really our job to help you”. So then the municipalities in that county say, “well, guess we have to do X or we’ll lose our funding and then our taxpayers will be mad at us”. So then the municipality actually DOES something and takes whatever action the state originally wanted. This is usually in the form of adopting some new law or regulations. Except that doing this isn’t free. Lawyers have to be involved, stenographers are needed, advertising needs to happen. Basically there is cost. So the municipalities tend to get a little upset when these decrees come down because of the cost involved. So when I go to a meeting like this and I learn that the state wants me to adopt a new storm water ordinance and I have a deadline on when to do it….but the state won’t tell me what the new ordinance is supposed to say….and the county can’t tell me what the new ordinance is supposed to say….but everyone is telling me to hurry up, thats when it occurs to me just how broken the levels of government in this country are. Thats when the murphy’s law quotes become quite clear and thats when I decide to pass this all on to you the viewer so that you can, like me,  be dissatisfied with your government for better reasons than what you see on TV.

Oh yeah, and this is very possibly my last post. Pepperdine’s academic year is just about over and the whole point here was to teach people about why majoring or focusing or whatever they call it, on local government as a track was a good idea. I hope I have done that. After all, you see what I put up with….I could use the help.

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