Creative Localism

Taking the oath at his third inauguration, Iowa's Democratic Governor Harold Hughes bluntly stated the theme:

"I think we need to pay less attention to states' rights and more attention to states' responsibilities." In other inaugural addresses and legislative pronunciamentos, Governors across the nation last week indicated that the states are at long last facing up to the urgent needs of an expanding population and an increasingly complex urban society.

One of the biggest problems facing most Governors is the outmoded machinery of state government itself, and in Arkansas, Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Iowa, the chief executives called for major changes in basic operating laws. Colorado's Republican John Love, embarking on his second term, decried his state's "crazy-quilt development of overlapping, duplicating, and sometimes competing groups of governmental jurisdictions," warned that it could not sanguinely face the challenges of the future with the "organizational patterns of the 19th century."

Urban Emphasis. Arkansas' Winthrop Rockefeller, so nervous at his first inauguration that his hands shook and--as he admitted--he could "hardly talk," asked for basic revisions in the state's 1874 constitution, and proposed a thorough, professional study of state operations, which are now hindered by an incredible total of 187 boards and commissions. As if to make the Republican Governor's job of managing and coordinating the various boards that much harder, outgoing Governor Orval Faubus packed them with 93 last-minute appointments.

The problem of controlling the urban environment was high on nearly every Governor's list of concerns. In Ohio, Republican James Rhodes, who had not shown much concern for the cities during his first term, set up a cabinet-level Office of Urban Affairs, promised action to combat air and water pollution.

Sprawl & Smog. Washington's Daniel Evans, one of the most dynamic of the young Republican Governors, observed, in a mid-term address to the legislature, that his state now faces the explosive growth that California has experienced. He asked for more and better state and local planning as well as for a department of transportation and an environmental quality commission to make sure that the state does not suffer from sprawl and smog. Love proposed similar action for Colorado, gloomily noting that the present "evidence is that we are in the process of destroying much of our natural environment, busily engaged in building cities that are for all practical purposes unlivable."

Oregon's incoming Republican Governor Tom McCall, at 6 ft. 5 in. the tallest Governor in the nation, asked for a 15% tax hike to finance his ambitious program. He also urged Oregon to become the first state in the Union to appoint an ombudsman to protect the citizen from police and bureaucratic abuses (TIME, Dec. 2). Said McCall: "It's a modern addition to traditional checks and balances." New Jersey Democrat Richard Hughes in his fifth annual legislative message similarly suggested that his state be the first to establish a public-defender system and outlined an agency to protect consumers.

Change--or Else. Indeed, to an unprecedented extent, the emphasis in nearly every state capital was on reform to enable the states to play a more active role in their own social and economic betterment--a theme that might be called creative localism. And most

Governors agreed with Washington's Dan Evans, who said: "State governments are unquestionably on trial today. If we are not willing to pay the price, if we cannot change where change is required, then we have only one recourse. And that is to prepare for an orderly transfer of our remaining responsibilities to the Federal Government."

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