Local Government Quotes

“Internationalism is in any case hostile to democracy….The only purely popular government is local, and founded on local knowledge. The citizens can rule the city because they know the city; but it will always be an exceptional sort of citizen who has or claims the right to rule over ten cities, and these remote and altogether alien cities…To make all politics cosmopolitan is to create an aristocracy of globe-trotters. If your political outlook really takes in the Cannibal Islands, you depend of necessity upon a superior and picked minority of the people who have been to the Cannibal Islands; or rather of the still smaller and more select minority who have come back.”
― G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America

“The objection to an aristocracy is that it is a priesthood without a god.”
― G.K. Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi

“Inter-jurisdictional competition for growth can and does lead to potentially misplaced investments - stadiums instead of schools, highways instead of health care. There is nothing intrinsic about the mark in jurisdictions that ensures that it will produce the right kind of spending, even if we knew that that spending was.”
― Richard Schragger

“Despite having become an urban nation in the last century, Americans still have yet to come to terms with the exercise of urban democratic power. To do so requires treating cities as something other than consumption preferences or as location providers for agglomeration-seeking firms, or as entities that are incompetent, corrupt, and in need of discipline. We have to think instead of the city as a process of economic development, as a generator of the middle class, and as the primary location for the exercise of robust self-government.”
― Richard Schragger

“Consider one of the most important developments in local government finance in the last 50 years - state constitutional taxation and spending limitations. Starting with Proposition 13 in California, adopted in 1978, many states began to severely limit local governments' ability to tax and spend. In the California case, these limits were arguably spurred by rapid rises in property values as newcomers found their way to California in the 1970s. Again, an institutional reaction appear to *follow* economic growth - California was growing rapidly and existing residents were concerned about the fiscal effects brought about by the influx of immigrants. Colorado's Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR), adopted in 1992, also appears to have been in part a reaction to rising tax rates brought about by increasing service demands of increasing populations.”
― Richard Schragger

“Local and state governments can help civil society by building towns and cities in ways more conducive to neighborliness and community building. Walkability is a big thing. Mixing residential and commercial development would create real neighborhoods where people can walk to the corner store for a gallon of milk and run into their neighbors. It could allow for “third places” like neighborhood pubs, barbershops, and sandwich shops.”
― Timothy P. Carney, Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse

“Citizens hold a powerful tool: the ability to choose civility at the ballot box. That choice has ripple effects. When we elect leaders who practice self-control, respect & collaboration, we get stronger communities.”
― Diane Kalen-Sukra, Save Your City: How Toxic Culture Kills Community & What to Do About It