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Most conservatives who study local government,
including those scholars who are sympathetic
to the tradition of the American Founding,
laud special districts as a vital element of
American federalism. Special purpose governments,
so the argument goes, complement the
multi-layered tapestry of counties, cities,
townships, and school districts. But unlike
other forms of local government,many special
districts have confusing boundaries and
narrow functions and do not appear on the
radar screen of most voters.
The low visibility of a special district is
by design. Their primary function is to circumvent
state and local tax and expenditure
limitations. Instead of being a vital element in
a federalist system—a system devoted to the
protection of liberty—special districts are
simply another seductively useful tool of the
expansion of the administrative state. Why,
then, do conservative analysts support special
districts? The answer appears to be that special
districts are part of the vast network of decentralized
units of local government. There is,
however, more to liberty and freedom than
decentralization.
Special Districts in America
There are approximately 35,000 special district
governments in the United States. Many
of these governments are similar in scope to
the largest state governments and commercial
banks in the United States. It is common for
special district governments to maintain significant
financial reserves. A recent study of
special districts in California by the Little
Hoover Commission found that they retained
funds that were on average "nearly two and
one-half times the annual gross revenues of
these districts." One such district in particular,
the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California, had a reserve fund in excess of 500
percent of its annual operating costs.
These governments are a major component
of the American federal system. Their
influence has increased over the past 40 years.
According to political scientists Ross
Stephens and Nelson Wikstrom, the scope of
their activity increased over 150 percent from
1957-1992, more than any other type of government.
What accounts for this? Why are
special districts formed?
Cities or counties may create a special
district and, in addition, private citizens may
petition the state for the creation of a district.
Special districts are created for a variety of
reasons: 1) to offer a service that has not been provided by general-purpose government;
2) to allow unincorporated areas to provide
services generally reserved for larger urban
areas; 3) to provide for regional services,
whose provision does not fit into the framework
of existing municipal boundaries; and
4) to satisfy conditions of a federal grant.
The most pressing reason, however, for
the creation of special districts is the desire of
local officials to avoid tax and expenditure
limitations. According to Robert Smith, a local government expert, special purpose governments
are the "borrowing machines" of
local government. In their function as a
method by which to evade tax limitations,
another commentator has referred to special
districts as "political bomb shelters." They
exist and operate below the surface and
provide a smoke screen for government
activities that would otherwise come under
greater public scrutiny.
Special districts often have unusual boundaries
whose existences are unknown to the
vast majority of the public. Even professional
political scientists may find the task overwhelming,
as Nancy Burns attests:
Given these conditions, it is not surprising
that voter participation in elections
for special district boards is generally quite
low, with 5 percent turnout considered
high. In addition, special districts can even
be hard to monitor for those who are supposedly
in charge of them. Political analyst
Victor Jones revealed that the directors
of the Brentwood Recreation and
Park District in Contra Costa County,
California "were stunned when it was
accidentally discovered that the district
had ceased to exist seven months ago."
Special districts are for all intents and purposes
invisible governments and this
invisibility may be their most useful trait.
Special districts allow tax dollars to be
collected and spent without a meaningful
opportunity for citizen input. Large segments
of policy are taken out of the arena of representative
politics. Special districts hinder the
vital role of local politics as a vehicle by which
a citizen receives a necessary political
education—an education vital to the health of
a regime that claims to be self-governing.
Finally, instead of creating a scope of government
whereby various factions compete with
one another and are forced to compromise for
the sake of the common good, the single focus
of a special district provides a narrow interest
with its own private fiefdom whereby it can
operate without the need to compromise
with other competing interests. Special
districts, therefore, fail the major tenets of
conservative thought on local governments,
yet most conservatives or likeminded scholars
support them. Conservatives appear to like
the chaotic features of special districts when
contrasted against the centrality of a unitary
system dominated by the national government.
Perhaps a way out of this theoretical
dilemma is a closer examination of the
American Founders' thinking on this question.
And no founder thought more deeply or
felt more passionately about questions
concerning proper local government design
than Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson devised a
system that was decentralized yet highly
structured, as opposed to the chaos dominating
local government in America today.
Jefferson's Ward-Republic System
Jefferson considered the creation of a wardrepublic
system of local government one of
the two most important elements upon which
the future of the republic depended, the other
being the creation of a public education system.
Jefferson devised a four-tiered system
that would comprise national, state, county,
and ward levels. Each county would be divided
into checker-box wards of about 25 square
miles, large enough to ensure an appropriate
level of support for vital local functions, yet
small enough to allow for regular direct
participation. Jefferson's goal was to encourage
citizens to be active members of their
government. In this way, the revolutionary
spirit of the regime would survive the potentially
ossifying characteristics of an established
constitutional government.
Hannah Arendt claims that the ward
system, although never implemented, was
Jefferson's most cherished political idea.
According to Arendt, Jefferson's ward system,
"with an almost weird precision," anticipated
the Soviets and Räte, which made their
appearance in "every genuine revolution" in
the 19th and 20th centuries. These councils or
local organizations were at odds with the centralizing tendencies of the leaders of these revolutions.
According to Arendt, these leaders
failed to understand the extent to which the
council system "confronted them with an
entirely new form of government, a new public
space for freedom which was constituted and
organized during the course of the revolution
itself." Arendt's Jefferson saw the ward system
as the "only possible non-violent alternative to
his earlier notions about the desirability of
recurring revolutions." The ward system
would institutionalize the revolution. It would
simultaneously check the tyrannical tendencies
of the central government and the enervating
tendencies of a private local life. Such
dangers include a private debasement of
virtues into the selfishly commercial—devoid
of politics and filled with corruption.
Jean Yarbrough concurs with Arendt that,
indeed, wards are at the "heart of his mature
understanding of republicanism," an understanding
which went beyond the mere maintenance
of institutional forms. Without the
proper revolutionary character, even the most
cleverly constructed republic might not last.
Understood in such a way, ward republics
reveal the radical character of Jefferson's politics.
Richard Matthews calls this the politics of
"perpetual revolution." And Michael Zuckert acknowledges that ward-republics were the"most remarkable and probably the most
important feature of Jefferson's system."
Jefferson, adds Zuckert, "had a point of continuing
value, and that the amalgam for which
he stands continues to have power in the political
culture."
Jefferson's ward republic model was not
developed as a result of a manic penchant for
geographical neatness. It was an attempt to
maintain the spiritual core of the polity, its revolutionary
principles. Jefferson thought that a
highly structured system of local government
containing geographically concise units was
central to the survival of the republic, the only
means by which we could avoid a recurring
need for actual revolution. The Byzantine
structure of local government today stands in
contrast to what Jefferson had in mind. The
soul of the regime is not decentralization for
decentralization's sake. A structured decentralization
like Jefferson's ward system—not
chaos—is nearer to the principled core of
American federalism. In fact, the chaotic quality
of local government today aids the development
of a large bureaucratic government.
Jefferson's structured decentralization
concept provides geographically recognizable
spaces in which citizens could potentially
develop meaningful attachments to local government. Such an attachment would serve two
important purposes. First, it would allow
the citizen an accessible approach to political
life and would thus foster a
political education in the Tocquevillean
sense. Second, citizens with strong local
attachments would be more likely to resist
the centralizing tendencies of national
governments.
During the final 16 years of his life,
Thomas Jefferson pondered questions about
the proper structure of American local government.
He came to believe that the future
of the republic depended upon the answers. By studying Jefferson's theoretical ward
republic system, it is possible to remedy a
major flaw in the conservative literature on
local government. Certainly, decentralization
is important, but a polity cannot live
on decentralization alone.
* * *
Brian Janiskee teaches political science at
California State University, San
Bernardino. With Ken Masugi, he is coauthor
of Democracy in California and
co-editor of The California Republic.
Return to the Spring, 2004 edition of Local Liberty
