“One of the most critical factors underlying the ability of local government to meet the growing expectations placed on them is the quality of the architecture and operation of the intergovernmental fiscal system. Local government finance is important not only because the role and impact of local government have dramatically increased, but also because this progress has recently been confronted by daunting challenges”.
A quote that could have come from any article about Irish local government. But it is from a study by Jorge Martinez-Vazquez Georgia State University in the United States.
It’s not surprising we recognise the issues – there are common themes shared across sub national government globally. Challenges from tackling isolation in rural areas to combating climate change, from how to manage new modes of transport to how to finance devolved administrations. Of course, everywhere is different and there are no blueprints, but there are lessons to be learnt and ideas to think about from all over the world. Developing countries can illustrate innovation with few resources – there are many examples of how digital technology can transform lives without huge infrastructure costs; the US has lessons about city mayors; Finland is an example of advanced fiscal autonomy at the local level.
Our international briefings are covering increasingly diverse issues. New Zealand, for example, has had a major shift of policy recently to focus on wellbeing as a principal objective of government policy – what will having a statutory role to promote wellbeing mean for local authorities: how will it affect service delivery, how can it be measured and how can communities be effectively engaged? This agenda was familiar to Ireland some time ago in the work of the County/City Development Boards for example and in Scotland now but it is a more fundamental development in New Zealand.
Going back to the paper from Georgia, funding local and regional government is of concern everywhere. Many of the questions we are asking in Ireland currently are being asked globally – what is the right balance between funding locally and from the centre, is devolution matched with greater fiscal powers, is equalisation compatible with local incentivisation, what should be the main sources of funding?
LGiU Ireland has found there are new ways of funding local government – our highlighted a potential new tax –would it be possible in Ireland? And another closer to home and something broached over the past number of years in Dublin – with Edinburgh proposing a tourist levy: locally contentious but accepted elsewhere like the Netherlands. Debates around additional local taxes in Ireland are not new of course – but being able to identify where they exist in other countries and what issues they raise is surely important if we are to get beyond the rather stale debate we have had here for too long?
What other issues have we been talking about from a more global perspective? Housing, underground waste, electric vehicles, city mayors, public service performance, food deserts, child friendly elections, period poverty, managing dog fouling, managing demand for health care visits. Not to forget experience and best practice from LGiU Scotland and LGIU International, and our series on local government in countries across the world.
Seeing what is happening across continents and countries can help us put what is happening here in context and in perspective. And it illustrates where local government has a crucial role in meeting the critical global challenges like climate change – how are we doing in Ireland now that we are advancing our adaptation strategies? Devolution of powers to local government seems to have stalled in some countries since the global crash – was that inevitable and how can it be reversed and are there lessons for Ireland as Government advances further reforms?
Of course we can’t go into detailed analysis in a briefing or blog but we can highlight where great ideas are coming from and global challenges being tackled at the local level. Subsidiarity has never been more important – here and internationally.
