|
Figuring Out How Local Governments Work Together. We often think of our municipalities as distinct, self-governing entities. We see the name on the welcome sign, pay our taxes to the municipal office, and maybe even harbor a friendly rivalry with the next town over. This image of fierce independence is a cornerstone of local identity. But behind the scenes, a more complex and cooperative reality is often at play. This collaboration frequently takes the form of a Council of Governments, or COG. While the name might sound like just another layer of bureaucracy, COGs are a powerful and surprisingly nuanced tool for inter-municipal partnership. Let's explore some of the most impactful and counter-intuitive realities of how these organizations function, revealing the hidden trade-offs and unexpected benefits of local government cooperation. COGs are Powerful Partners, Not a New Layer of Government. A common fear among local officials is that any form of regional cooperation is a slippery slope toward consolidation—a new, larger government that erodes local control. However, the fundamental structure of a COG is designed to prevent this very outcome. COGs are voluntary associations of municipalities; no community is ever required to join. Crucially, participating municipalities retain their local autonomy and independent identity. A COG is not a super-government. It has no taxing power of its own and cannot exercise any power that has not been specifically granted to it by its member communities. The entire framework reinforces local control; even the COG's internal organizational structure, including voting representation, is a matter of local choice. This structure ensures that decision-making authority remains firmly in the hands of the local elected officials accountable to their residents, directly addressing the public’s fear of a "loss of local autonomy" and making the entire model of cooperation politically feasible. COG’s Greatest Strength is Also the Greatest Weakness. The voluntary nature that makes COGs acceptable to independent-minded communities is also the source of their greatest operational challenges. This central paradox defines the delicate balance they must strike. Because a COG is a voluntary association and lacks its own independent legal authority, it cannot compel municipal commitment to regional policies. If a town decides a specific program isn't in its best interest, it can simply decline to participate, which can lead to uneven participation and weaken the effectiveness of a regional initiative. This reliance on consensus is made even more difficult because COGs often manage a broad patchwork of interests, policy goals, and regional expectations among their diverse members. Progress can be fragile and easily derailed if not managed carefully. This paradox is important because it highlights the immense difficulty of achieving meaningful, region-wide results. COG leaders must constantly work to build and maintain trust among diverse members without the authority to mandate action. A COG Can Lower Costs for Local Businesses as well as Government. COGs are well-known for creating government efficiencies, like saving taxpayer money by jointly bidding for refuse collection or sharing expensive public works equipment. What is less obvious is how these partnerships can deliver tangible benefits to the local private sector. One of the most powerful examples is the development of model ordinances. A COG can bring its members together to draft a single, uniform ordinance for complex issues like stormwater management or false alarm reduction. When member municipalities adopt this model ordinance, they create a consistent regulatory environment across the entire region. This has a direct and positive impact on local businesses by eliminating the confusion and expense of navigating conflicting municipal codes, making it simpler and cheaper for contractors and developers to operate across multiple jurisdictions. This is just one of many surprising roles; COGs also add value by coordinating shared GIS mapping services or even forming land banks to acquire and repurpose blighted properties. COG Meetings are not an Extra Meeting for Elected Officials. It's easy to dismiss government meetings as bureaucratic formalities, but for a COG, the meeting itself is a core function. Beyond voting on joint purchasing contracts or service agreements, a COG’s primary value often lies in its role as a communication hub. A COG offers a neutral arena where elected officials and managers can build professional relationships, discuss mutual problems, and learn about regional, state, and national issues that affect them all. This regular, structured dialogue is invaluable. Over time, it allows municipalities to develop common positions on major issues and present a united front to county or state government. Sending this "clear and strong message" does more than just enhance the probability of a positive policy outcome; it is a strategic tool for avoiding legislative stalemate caused by conflicting recommendations from individual municipalities. The downside, however, is that this group deliberative process can be slow, sometimes frustrating officials who feel "it takes too long" to reach a decision. COG Alternatives Have Hidden Costs. When municipalities need to cooperate on a single issue, like running a joint police force, they can use a simple Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA). This direct, contractual approach often seems faster and easier than forming or joining a multipurpose COG. However, choosing the simpler path comes with a significant opportunity cost. By opting for a series of single-purpose agreements instead of a broader COG, municipalities lose several key strategic advantages: an organizational framework for future shared programs, a neutral forum for ongoing dialogue, and a unified regional voice. Over time, this choice can lead to more than just missed opportunities; it can create tangible administrative problems. Relying on multiple, separate IGAs can result in administrative fragmentation where programs evolve in different directions, creating hidden costs and operational chaos such as unequal pay for similar positions or inconsistent and divergent features and practices across various joint ventures. The "simpler" choice in the short term may lead to greater fragmentation and less strategic coordination over the long term. Intermunicipal cooperation through Councils of Governments is a complex but powerful tool for modern governance. Far from being a simple administrative arrangement, it is a dynamic system full of non-obvious trade-offs. COGs must balance the need for voluntary participation with the goal of meaningful action, and their greatest strengths are often intertwined with their most significant weaknesses. They are not another layer of government, but a platform that preserves local autonomy while enabling regional strength. Considering these hidden complexities and powerful benefits, how should your own community strike the right balance between fierce independence and strategic regional partnership? Is it forming a Council of Government? If so, how and when and for what purpose? Navigating the path among the various choices is our distinct honor when working with clients. Let us know how we can help. Allegheny League of Municipalities (ALOM) is a place-based association of municipalities in Pennsylvania. Organized more by geography than by particular type of government (cities, boroughs, authorities, etc.), ALOM brings municipalities together each Spring. The potential of the these local governments to act collectively is unlimited! To celebrate and congratulate ALOM on successfully pulling together another conference, still a challenge in post-pandemic 2023, the following ad was placed in the conference book to inform local leaders of our services and to offer a free online confidential organizational assessment tool (COAT). This tool has been developed to help local government boards and staff identify needs in forming a development plan. Assess your organization's focus, culture and actions today. Submit a service request here or text or call 412.353.3997 to get started. 
Tis the Budget season and many executive directors, municipal managers and other public administrators in small organizations aspire for better budgets that facilitate policy making, particularly for volunteer boards or part-time elected officials.
Budgeting is an expression of values. But in a small organization, how do find time to do more than a basic spreadsheet? Instead of carrying around that frustration, why not set an intention to improve your budget little by little over a series of years? This smaller, incremental approach, if done with a clear vision of where you are going, will bring about lasting gains and won't require dropping everything else while you valiantly try to raise the bar . To do this, take inspiration from the free criteria of the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) Distinguished Budget Awards program. That may seem counter intuitive as the Award is a significant accomplishment. But with the right "baby steps" approach you will begin to see real gains in the quality of information available for making decisions. Start by being aware of the mandatory criteria of this program (see table below). This baby step allows the weaving-in of budgeting activities into the day-to-day management of your organization (instead of waiting until "budget season"). For example, has a strategic, comprehensive or other planning process recently taken place? Great! Rely on the mission, goals and objectives in that to kick of the goals of your budget. Participating in a certification programs such as Sustainable Pennsylvania? Awesome! A good place to start for performance measures. Once you know the components of a "good" budget, you can begin to plug much of your existing work into each of the following major categories of the GFOA Criteria. This table presents the budget questions to be answered by each category (table best viewed in desktop browser). Make incremental gains over a few years and you are well on your way. It makes me think of what my dad always said, "Inch by inch, life's a cinch...Yard by yard, life is hard."
The Government Finance Officers (GFOA) of US and Canada has issued an "End the Acronym" policy statement urging all stakeholders to refer to the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report as just that or as the "Annual Report" or even say each letter of the former acronym individually "C. A. F. R." As the premiere professional organization of government finance officials, GFOA is challenging a population that loves acronyms to discontinue one of the most widely used. It is about upholding the profession's ethics. The acronym sounds like a slur to a more international audience and GFOA has placed a high value on Diversity and Inclusion in its new Code of Ethics. This got me to thinking about how the Code has changed. I had been using the old code in teaching and training for years, so I pull out my synopsis of it a lined it up with the top level statements of the new code (in a spreadsheet, of course!):  What was most striking in this comparison was the use of "I" statements in the new code. That and broad statements of principles. It is simultaneously more expansive and more succinct. Overall, a very impressive change. When I dug a little deeper I found the YouTube video GFOA produced for the new code. At time of writing it has 3 likes (one of which is mine!) Give it some kudos if you too are impressed by GFOA's more holistic approach to ethics and how government finance strives to make the world a better place. After all, what we budget and what we measure is ultimately a statement of values.
And speaking of values, GFOA has also come out with a publication to take inclusion up a notch and address directly issues of racial justice and the concept of defunding the police. Whether that phrase inspires or exasperates you, one thing for sure is that local governments and finance officers will sit at the cross roads of divergent views. GFOA has taken the topic head on and produced various resources. Coaching and facilitation helps organizations and individuals address important topics in a proactive and forward-focused way. I feel honored to be in this space and to do work imbued with peace and accountability. If you are tackling issues of ethics as an individual or in your organization, finance or otherwise, please let me know if my services can help. Happy Pi Day ! Pi. 3.14159265359. And so on. The number representing the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is fondly celebrated by math lovers every year on March 14 has come again. Seemingly infinite and also constant, pi inspires lots of math-y fun and the baking of pies.
A few years ago a local leader suggested the formation of a regional committee to produce ideas for intergovernmental cooperation projects (we will get to Pi here in a moment). While discussing it, the concept of ideation was landed upon as the description of what the committee will do . What separates ideation from brainstorming is that it is structured process. There are likely a lot of definitions, and the one we landed on was project ideation, and that project ideation is
Being government and all it was time for an acronym. Project Ideation became PI, and the PI Team was formed. And then a non-governmental type read the letters P and I sandwiched next to each other and saw, oh my goodness, an actual word! Then it all clicked. The "Pi Team" was born. I love this story. Pi as a metaphor is so relevant to the creative process and creative shared in ideation. Like Pi, creativity is infinite and ideation is a structured and known process--a constant. The story also tells about perspective--I saw an acronym, someone else saw a word, and not just any word. The perfect word for what the acronym was trying to embody-a testament to the intelligence of teams. This came about not just because of an additional person being added to the discussion but the inclusion of the outsider's voice (nongovernmental in this case). And then there was the circle. The very shape of the ideal committee. And let none of this overshadow the purpose of the team -- intergovernmental cooperation which requires all of these things: creativity, structure, diversity of perspective, and the circle way. So Happy Pi Day. May you celebrate it as a science and an art. As the infinite and the constant. As the user of the circle and the consumer of pie. Please contact me if I may help your ideation and team intelligence to flourish. Have you ever been asked if you “believe” in climate change? I have and it caught me off guard. Believe? Is this a theology exam? Or what about this one: do you think climate change is real? Real? Is the reality of this something I can assess? Isn’t there someone more qualified? (increasing my streak of insights from comedians to 2). As an initial reaction, this kind of question bugs me.
However, I really do appreciate the interest. So, letting go of my reactions, what do situations like this teach that can allow me bring my authentic self to conversations about important things? Thinking about what I would have liked to have been asked helps me to think about how to have important conversations. What stands out is that a focus on my experiences with changes in climate would make a difference. "Have you experienced climate change in your life?" There I have something that I can share. “Yes, I have had experiences with changes in climate. The dog got lyme disease and a travelling suitcase brought home some hitchhiking bed bugs. Yuck! And I have noticed we get more extremely heavy rain storms, landslides and flooding...” The interest in my story allows me avoid a perceived test or having to defend a position on a topic that feels complex and difficult. It also creates space for me to ask, “How about you?” Regardless of your answer we are conversing, not declaring positions. Sometimes direct questions in search of a "yes" or a "no" don’t serve us. They are extractive, and when we’re being extracted, we aren’t connected. Yet connection is what we need to create solutions for group problems: like invasive pests and landslides. And climate change. Connectedness leads to creativity when a conversation includes perspective taking: How about you? When we tell our own story and also listen to the perspectives of others we get into a more constructive group problem solving space. We can be much more positive and effective. As humans, we organize our thoughts and experiences into a set of beliefs and judgments, especially about complex or important subjects. It helps us remember things and handle a lot of information. At the same time, it is our humanity that allows us to work together. Next time you find yourself being asked about your beliefs and that generates an internal dilemma, try this experiment. (1) Smile and take a breath to disarm those totalizing words (“believe”, “real”) and (2) shift to your experiences. (3) Follow up with a question about the questioner’s experience. And when you are the questioner, and it's a situation where you want to work with someone, lead with questions about experiences and not beliefs. See if that helps to build connection, creativity and problem-solving. Let me know! Innovation in the public sector is not an oxymoron! In fact, government is a fertile environment for innovation because of the dedication to service, deep reserves of expertise, and competition for resources found there. Traditionally, bureaucratic thinking constrains innovation because of its general nature to be rule-oriented with an emphasis on equality towards all actors. A 2015 article from Stanford Social Innovation Review gives the idea of co-creation in government, a popular method of organizational change and innovation in the private sector, a thorough exploration. One of its authors, Francis Gouillart, is also an author of the seminal work on the topic, The Power of Co-Creation (2010). Co-Creation was also a topic for 2018 webinar by Alliance for Innovation, and featured a case study from Hennepin County, MI. I took some time to compare the steps of Co-Creation with the Arc of Coaching as developed by Duquesne University Professional Coach Certification Program. The table below explains the alignment in a simplified way. Within each step resides many tools deployed by the professional coach. If your organization is adopting a Co-Creation approach to change, professional coaching techniques and practices can help. Please contact me for further info or assistance.  For a generation, one of the most influential ideas to impact public service has been the landmark publication Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector, by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler. A rallying cry to "revolt against bureaucratic malaise" and "build something better," it has inspired many public officials seeking to promote initiative and a sense of ownership in public organizations. Costs have been reduced and programs have been reformed because of the performance management programs inspired by Reinventing Government. However, a recent column in Governing magazine outlined the unintended consequence of performance management: some public officials felt diminished by the performance management process, which shut down creativity needed to solve problems. For reinvention to deliver its high ideal, how can the technical changes such as performance management programs be built upon to allow people and groups to adapt and improve? We offer our help with this through an approach of peace and accountability. This is particularly useful when elected officials struggle with the efficiency and effectiveness of the organizations they have been tasked to lead or when staff feels politicized. This matrix shows the top level "action words" used to describe our assistance:  An approach imbued with peace and accountability doesn't avoid tough issues or assure certain outcome. It does, however, add integrity to an improvement process by building support across the spectrum of opinions on how effective workers and organizations perform. The result: increased creativity, critical thinking, and shared responsibility.
The TED talk by leadership expert Simon Sinek provides insight into the importance of trust in human relationships and organizations. Inspiring words and good advice, especially for governments and nonprofits with small budgets and scarce resources. Want to make the most of funds available? Hire and empower good employees and don't micromanage them . Are you an executive or employee feeling micromanaged by a board? Consider whether or not the seven big questions are driving them. If not, seek help. When considering the problem and costs of micromanaging, the lack of trust is the consistent theme.
It is always helpful when when we consider the perspectives of others. It enhances our ability to consider a variety of viewpoints and get to better decisions. The "logic of politics / logic of administration" graphic below provides a handy visual for learners seeking to become familiar with the perspectives of elected boards and paid staff. In addition to depicting points of view, the diagram literally shows "the gray area" and who is in a situation to be in-between. From 1994, this is an oldie but a goodie.  |
aboutSusan Hockenberry's blog of suggestions for info and updates. 
Visiting City Halls
archives
October 2025
categories
All
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RSS Feed