ABSTRACT
This practitioner’s perspective highlights significant changes in intergovernmental relations and management since the 1960s through a lens of 23 years’ experience as Executive Director of the National League of Cities (NLC). IGR has been “unraveled” by a “Perfect Storm” of forces, including the growing importance of money in politics, bolstered power of special interest groups, and polarization along partisan and philosophical lines. These forces have been accompanied by a deinstitutionalization of intergovernmental organizations that once monitored and reported on developments, issues, and trends that confronted jurisdictional partners in the federal system, convened meetings to further understanding of the consequences of national actions on states and localities, and lobbied for more federal grants-in-aid, greater consultation, and fewer costly regulations and unfunded mandates and preemptions. Recent lobbying priorities of the “Big 7” public interest groups are reviewed, together with changes in their lobbying strategies and a scorecard of victories and defeats. Basically, the “Big 7” organizations have shifted from offensive to defensive positions to limit damage from federal actions. There is little appreciation in Washington, D.C. of the needs of local governments and impacts of federal policies on cities and counties. These units and their representatives are considered special interest pleaders. As a result, the “new intergovernmental reality” is that the “Big 7’s” influence has diminished and that local governments will increasingly be in a fend-for-yourself position in intergovernmental relations, which might not necessarily be bad news given their closeness to citizens, capacity to innovate, and caliber of local leaders. This “New Localism” could help compensate for reductions and rollbacks of federal domestic responsibilities that lie ahead.
