John Borchert - Setting Priorities and Keeping Them in Minnesota Land Development

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John Borchert, director for Center for Urban and Regional Affairs at University of Minnesota, speaking to the Commission on Minnesota's Future in Alexandria. Borchert’s speech was on the topic of the ways and extent to regulate, without violating our democratic precepts.

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(00:00:00) They came up here this morning. My thoughts wandered back repeatedly to the first time I ever made the trip. up US 52 from the Twin Cities I to Alexandria it was a couple of months after VE day and my wife had like all good North dakotans had come to Detroit Lakes for the summer and it stayed there to wait for me to get back from overseas and As a native at that time. Of Northwestern (00:00:41) Indiana, I (00:00:46) I was struck by a number of things that I saw. along this route as I came up northwestward from the Twin (00:00:55) Cities the (00:01:00) cleanliness of the landscape (00:01:03) the (00:01:04) beauty of it, especially when one gets Beyond st. Cloud and gets up into the park region with its mixture of Rolling Hills and lakes and ponds and farms and churches in small towns (00:01:22) and I was struck with (00:01:24) the With the order and the by at least by all the standards I had ever knowing the order and the level of services. I in the medium-sized towns such as st. Cloud or Alexandria Detroit Lakes. The land the people with towns the whole thing made an immense impression on me. I didn't realize at that time the within just a very few years. I would be making my home up here for probably forever more. No, I certainly for the next quarter-century and there's no sign that anything is going to change in the immediate future. Now the other thing of course the one can't help but think about is he retraces steps in that way of? thirty years (00:02:16) ago almost (00:02:19) the enormous changes that have taken place since then in the United States generally and in the state and of course in the whole (00:02:25) world. (00:02:29) In a very real sense in this last quarter of a century or so, we have been in the process of building of rebuilding the country in general the Midwest and Minnesota in particular. There's really a whole new pattern of settlement and of population distribution. And of ways of life and of making a living that's emerging out of the old. There's a there in a very real sense. If you look at the maps over time, there's a new Midwest emerging out of the old and it and and this process goes on all the time, but it has gone on at an extremely rapid rate in the last quarter century, and this is reflected. Very much in the pattern of say the past decade. And what I'd like for you to do first of all with me just briefly is to picture the map of population change in this country. In the last decade and think about some of the forces that are that this map reflects. there are I suppose three main elements in the picture. But I see one is the increasing concentration of population and population growth in the country. app three kinds of location one is the metropolitan areas of the country, but let me hasten to say that. the relative growth is not Simply at the largest metropolitan areas one of many myths that we have about the situation from which we start to try and look ahead. At this time in the United States is that the population is concentrating in a few in a few of the largest great megillah politan centers, and this is a very tricky thing to try to measure and to get out but it but it I don't think that in a relative sense. It certainly isn't true and even an absolute sense. It's not true. If you take the metropolitan areas of the United States that say at the time of the 1960 census had over a million people and you look at their share of the national population say 10 years earlier and 10 years later. It has gone down and it's gone down quite distinctly from something like sixty three percent to about 57 percent and its continuing to drop the fact is that all Americans are not moving to New York Chicago and Los Angeles and if you look at the if you look at the at the The growth where it is taking place. Where is this this shift going? It's going to the generally to medium-sized metropolitan areas which are in turn then moving into these large size classes. And what were actually doing is redistributing the population the country very significantly and what has been going on ever since World War Two. And the results of the Chrysler well-known if we stop and think about the rise of Phoenix and Atlanta number of other places that that are really absorbing a very large proportion of the growth of the country and not only the not only The Sensational new places of the Southwest in the South but places like Indianapolis and Rochester New York and Columbus Ohio a lot of the of the smaller and medium-sized metropolitan areas and then some of the places at the lower end of the high-order like the Twin Cities are Dallas-Fort Worth. So that's one sort of concentration. Another is in a few growth centers in the commercial farming areas of the country what you're growing largely by cannibalizing smaller towns around them when you find these places all through the western part of the Prairie States and up and down the Great Plains. There are probably four or five dozen of them. And then you also have what I guess you could only describe as as new cities that are emerging on the map in several parts of the country. And this is happening in response to the to the search the increasing search for a manatee and the increasing ability Financial ability of individuals to live where they want to live and be more Footloose than they have been in the past and we all know About the the great population increment in Central and South Florida and in parts of the southwestern deserts places like Lake Tahoe the southern Ozarks or probably less well-known parts of the Southern Appalachians. I supposed in southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas today, you've got retirement colonies and and of all descriptions of Ages and sizes and income levels that must add up to well over a hundred thousand people. Growing rapidly. It seems to me the only way you can describe it as a dispersed new city much of with much the same kind of economic base and growth characteristics that you've got in in some of the studies of the Southwest. Molly centered low-density places on the map Now they're the growth there the growth concentrations. All right. Also, another characteristic of this map is the dispersal within the major growth areas. In general what we're doing is evening out the density of our large centers and this thing this has gone on inexorably despite all kinds of rhetoric and all kinds of programs from time to time which were which were supposed to try to turn it around. All right in general we in the process of rebuilding the pre automobile sections of our cities. We have been rebuilding them at lower densities. All right. And everyone is familiar with this pattern if we had the map up here, you could see it in all the major metropolitan areas the country of the Ring of non-growth our population decline of the words lowering density decline is really not a good word. Just moving to lowering densities and these core areas and then the growth rings around the outside what your first packed in the traditional suburbs and now are spreading out for often times as much as sixty to a hundred miles in the direction of any kind of a manatee Hills Woods Lake Shore which happens to be somewhere within long distance commuting range or the zone of commercial and Industrial influence from these Metropolitan centers. For example, as you go northeastward out of the out of Atlanta Into the Blue Ridge. It's really hard to say where Atlanta ends and as you go west word out of Washington are Baltimore. You have the same problem or northward out of the Twin Cities. (00:09:58) And (00:10:00) so you've got these these growth rings including the part-time farmers and the ex urbanites and the hollow cores. And the other thing that's happening. Is that the large cities which were formerly centralized around the railroad station in the heart of the streetcar Network becoming what we call in some of the professional jargon conurbations are clusters of individual Senators. If you take the Chicago or the New Yorker the Los Angeles areas, for example, one of the Striking things today is the change in the newspaper circulation pattern I where you can go into these outlying centers such as San Jose or the Fox Valley Cities west of Chicago or the Long Island suburbs east of Manhattan and find daily newspapers that are essentially Suburban papers and published without any relation to any particular Central business district, which have circulations over. Areas of the Metropolis that are far greater than the circulation of Central City metropolitan dailies, and this is a reflection of the fact that the city is breaking down. These traditional railroad era cities are breaking down into multi-centered conurbations, and there's been enough study in Europe of comparisons. For example between the ruler, which is always been a conurbation in Paris, which is always been highly centralized to show that either way. Either way. It'll work in effect. You pay your money and take your choice, or maybe you maybe maybe you just pay your money and take your chances. Either one will work as a national Center either one will work as it as an urban region. Now then there are the white areas on the map if you can visualize those and they cover most of the math and they simply reflect the facts of increasing Capital intensity and farming and Mining and in forestry and diminishing use of Labor in the production process. And in a way, if you look at the declining studies of the United States the stagnant or declining urban areas at least as measured by population you find that they reflect also the increasing Capital intensity of manufacturing in the reduction of Labor requirements in the manufacturing industry. So you get the Youngstown Ohio is in the Terre Haute sun' and as a matter of fact about a third of all them of all the standard metropolitan areas in the United States are non growth, which is an answer right there the notion that size breeds growth. They just happened to be museums of a particular industrial Epoch in the evolution of our Urban pattern. now this is the kind of changing situation that were in and that we've been in that in a spectacular way since the 1950s and since World War Two. now I'm not going to go into all the details that have led me to lie to these impressions in these conclusions about this process, but let me say the desire of study at the thing that I have become more and more impressed with and perplexed by Is the thought what seems to me to be the fundamental unpredictability? of so many of these changes I the reason is of course that that the changes in technology that moved us from the railroad era to the automobile era or from the steamboat era to the railroad era or from the green eye shade and sleeve Bannon quill pen era to the computer era these changes have depended on tomorrow's knowledge and consequently patently. We didn't have it. Today. We'd had it, you know, there wouldn't have been any changes. We they would have already been here. They depend on tomorrow's (00:13:56) knowledge (00:13:58) and it while we can we can brainstorm and we can Delphi and we can get out in front of the stuff in the short run. I guess I'm not persuaded looking at the way it's gone. So far any way that we can get out in front of in the long run. It seems to me that there are only two ways that we can approach the problem. Of the fundamental unpredictability of so much Che of the change that characterizes an urban system an urban Society like ours and one is to improve and to work on our adaptation abilities. so that what it so that we understand the system and we monitor it well and we've got some idea of what's going on when changes do take place and we can figure out how we're going to adapt and we can figure out what we can control and in terms of small parts of the system and in terms of our own behavior and the behavior of the groups that we belong to and the other approach, of course at the other end of the spectrum is simply to control So then effect there is no change that you don't anticipate which in another way says finally that there will be no change and in a very real sense. This is the problem, of course in the in the Eastern European countries and Soviet Union in trying to adapt a system which is basically resting on controls of the whole society and try to adapt that to the kind of technology and organization that's evolved in the west as a way of doing business because the two things are fundamentally antithetic. You can't you're either adapt you control My reading of a lot of history suggests to me that control may just be fundamentally impossible least in the larger system as long as human beings are human. now if I look at this changing map them. And by the way, don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying here at this point now that you just give up and go home, but it does seem to me that there are there are some some basic things here that that are that we need to consider at the outset or at least I do because they worry me and ice. I'm just talking about I'm thinking out loud with you. now if I look at the this map and the changes in it I'm impressed with the fact that it reflects some very powerful forces and I indicated what a couple of Marv. One is that the concentration of employment in the services in the United States? And I suppose that it is the only way that it's the most fundamental means that we have had of of avoiding either more inflation than we've had or more unequal distribution of income than we've had and still produce the increases in living standard for a large number of people that we have had and I expected as we try to battle inflation in the future and as we try to further increase the living standard for the remainder of the population the future that we're going to need more of this Capital intensity in manufacturing and in the other agriculture, the other lines of basic production not less than consequently and increasing concentration to continue increasing concentration of people in the services. It seems to me as a foregone conclusion. Hi. At least is unless we change a lot of our goals very basically another thing has been the search for a manatee. One could I suppose look at the we tend to look at sprawl and suburbanization and is diminishing density of our of our urban areas as a kind of evil. It has earned malays. It's fallen on the society. But I suppose another way of looking at it and the way one of my friends in sociology likes to put it and I would have certainly agree. I guess myself that one might look Instead at the at the industrial city as it evolved early on in Northwestern Europe in the industrial revolution as a as the aberration in the long term evolution of our cities and our settlements I which for the time being because of the development of of modern industry and a lag in the development of personal transportation for a century or so behind that we build our cities that much higher densities anybody really wanted we pulled people out of villages and small towns and and packed them into the industrial city and rows of tenements stack three four five stories high so they could be within walking distance of the factory, but the factory finally produced enough Surplus Goods that we were able to break out of this and have the Is your time to develop new ideas and new ways of transportation so that we could begin to build a modern city, which got us back in a more open space again. I'm impressed with the fact that every transportation and technological Revolution. We've had this affected the development of urban centers in the United States when the small call cleared we've wound up with lower density more spread out urban areas and urban populations. And so what I'm saying is it's it's what another of my colleagues calls a search for Marlboro Country the search for a manatee along with the concentration of employment. The services is very basic set of powerful forces behind the evolutionist pattern as we've seen it and while it I would not argue that it's all desirable in fact a lot of it and if not, most of it may be quite undesirable to a lot of people may be the most of us, but what I am saying is that it still reflects some very basic forces that I think are at work in our society and as we think about how we might want to change These patterns. I think we got to be very careful that we aren't throwing out to separate the dishes from the dishwater. Now, there's another issue when I think about the forces behind this map and that is the the Enigma as I've called it a public policy or of national policy. We've had legislation introduced as you all know at the federal level in several different ways. And we've had White House conferences and papers produced under different administrations all dealing with this question of a national population distribution policy or National Urban policy. It seems to me that you can divide the kinds of policies that we have at the national level. And a several different categories and then examine each want to think about what effect it's likely to have on the distribution of population. Have goods and services in the country geographically. Once that would be social policies. I can in general if you look at our social policies in the Health and Welfare education information field. They tend to the benefits are the services tend to run two people pretty much wherever they are and these forces I'd say are therefore geographically neutral our state aid to education for formulas. For example in this state. I'd say a geographically neutrally wind up not encouraging in and of themselves not encouraging migration necessarily from one place to another for purpose of economic gain, and this is the way we mean it to be and I think this is the way it is. There's these these programs generally in the social policy area are generally are tend to be geographically neutral at least as they're carried out at the federal level. And at least in in (00:22:28) any (00:22:28) intent now another set of policies, I'd classify as development policies. And these are these policies have generally been Capital Improvement programs to benefit either the private productive sector of the economy or the public service sector building things are helping people to build things and I would say that in general these policies have been aimed at helping regions, but not particularly people they tend to help all the people in a region, but maybe not any of the people in another region. And it seems to me that this type of development probably this type of policy is probably going to have to undergo a great deal of modification before it finds any permanent place in our in our federal programs are National programs. It'll probably have to we'll have to have Regional development benefits that will flow to every part of the country. And when you've done that again, you've made the thing neutral as far as Geographic population redistribution is concerned. So it seems to me that if I look at our social policies and our development policies insofar as they're going to work. I don't see them having any particular effect on the patterns of concentration and density rearrangements on that have been going on in the country for the last quarter Century or more. Another set of national policies that I think will be may be of tremendous importance in affecting population distribution will be the environmental policies that we're talking about in which we've adopted in are attempting to implement. It seems to me they may affect population distribution in two ways one. Is by raising the cost of processing raw materials of all kinds and if this happens then it shifts more importance than ever over to using the highest quality available natural resources and locating in places where you get the greatest possible economies of agglomeration reduction of Transportation costs in order to offset the cost of increasing Environmental Protection. and it seems to me the effectiveness then is to reinforce the population distribution patterns that have characterized the post-world War II period to bring people generally closer together in the major population regions or clusters the country. It seems to me that an increased emphasis on recycling will have the same effect because what this does in effect is is make the the sources of waste products become the major source of raw materials and consequently the bigger the city and the more stuff we pass through it the more raw material or is it the other end and it seems to me again locational factories of agglomeration economies set into set him to operation and increase recycling. It seems to me also, Favors the continued further concentration of population in the major regions not in that back to the railroad style City, but in the major service and Market areas in the country. In summary, it seems to me that these trends that I have pointed out on the map of the country reflect some very powerful forces. And that if I when I look at the at the at the possible policy options that we that seemed to me to be open to us in Broad categories. Anyway, it isn't clear to me that they are going to drastically change the distribution of people and settlements on the land of the United States. In fact, it seems to me that they are likely to reinforce the kinds of changes in patterns in a general way that we're familiar with in our own (00:26:47) time now, (00:26:54) So much for the the Persistence of these forces. and the my concern about the basic unpredictability of them the thing I'd like to look at next with you for a few minutes is the possession of Minnesota with in this National pattern. We all know that this region here. Is out at the North Western periphery or a little beyond the traditional North Western periphery of the major concentration of markets manufacturing facilities and transportation routes and interaction in the United States. It's out at the margin or a little beyond the margin of that Northeastern core (00:27:41) region (00:27:43) and consequently we all know and we've got all sorts of documentation on it and we've heard a lot that we've we have relatively High Transportation costs to the National Market. We have therefore need to compensate for this position in some way if we are going to be in the National Market on a large scale and we all know that we are And we compensate by specialization production by efficiencies by Innovation. And the only other way you can do it is with low pay and we don't like to think that we do any of that and yet it's probable that we do. But the thing that intrigues me is that it isn't just a question that it isn't just a question always of low pay joining one particular group that we discriminate against but probably in some ways all across the board. (00:28:42) No, (00:28:43) and if and insofar as we're going to get around that we have to compensate then buy more efficiency or buy more Innovation and buy more specialization. Now if you look at the what we've actually done. up to now in this (00:29:04) location (00:29:07) And I'm thinking particularly not of Agriculture, but of the of the superstructure of manufacturing and services financial institutions. And so on that we've built on top of this that go to the National Market without the benefit of this local agricultural resource base and which is you know account for at least half of our economy. However, you might measure it. And they also account for virtually all of the employment growth in the state in the last quarter century. Now the first one thing we've done of course is we've had a net out-migration from this state to almost from the time that it started because we haven't been able to absorb all of the young people that were born here and of the labor force ultimately at least not at the levels at which their parents and they all wanted to live and this was partly because their parents and I guess including my generation yours have (00:30:08) I (00:30:09) wanted to educate them at least up to the National Standard or above so that they would have the kind of Mobility that would enable them to satisfy their desires in one place if not (00:30:21) another. (00:30:25) So in a way in one sense, we've stayed competitive in the income structure the country simply by having a net out-migration, but that's really not the interesting part of the story to me. We've also been competitive. And that story in itself is a very long one very interesting one and it's one about which I don't think we know nearly (00:30:51) enough. I (00:30:56) but it comes down. It seems to me two things. One has been traditional high standards of performance. You can look at indices, you know of Hospital facilities and libraries and educational facilities and educational levels of the population and savings per capita and patents issued and divorce rates are put it the other way around non divorce rate stability of households corporate headquarters growth rate of corporate headquarters in all of these things the state stands out as considerably above where you would expect it to be on the basis of its population are its wealth alone. No, I'm not at all sure that we know why this is it's easy and not a pat ourselves on the back and say well it's because the good Scandinavian Stocker the good German stock at a good finisher Irish or what are we having a beat or to say something about the fact that we've got compared with other states the universe a high level of church membership are we can talk about how good our schools are but we don't really know. What it is? All right, you can look decorous it another things. You can look at the of course. It had our share of the country's Legacy of a couple centuries of slavery and a century of utter neglect of a large part of the population of Plantation South and the Legacy from that in the modern era in the major urban areas the country and you can see the we haven't got very much of that Legacy. What are the problems that have gone with it? However, you want to describe it. So maybe it maybe maybe we look so good for no reason that has anything to do with what we've done at all. But just what a lot of other people have done. And all right. I think there's a lot more to it than that myself. I'm quite strongly persuaded example, even if you take the behavior patterns of our Suburban nights, they're different from most Suburban nights in the country in terms of how they support foreign student exchange programs or the medical ship. Hope project and all this kind of stuff. very different from most other, Suburban Heights But it's a complicated picture and I'm sure it involves a lot of the different variables that were talking about but what it comes down to it seems to me is a lot of people who have for some reason or another over a long period of time showing by the crude measures that we have relatively high standards of performance. And in terms of Devotion to the general welfare. and At the same time a love of the Land There what I guess I've sometimes referred to as the Pine and Sand Road culture of the Twin Cities and of most of the state. And I don't say that any derogatory way it did. I guess I'm part of it. I become part of it over. thirty years 25 years and what we finally wind up with a lot of people who live here and like it in all walks of life and all of us could think of all kinds of stories. I think that illustrate that so why come out now, if I look at this National map and at the position of Minnesota within it is (00:34:41) that (00:34:42) There is nationally it seems to me going to be in the future not so much emphasis when all the Smoke Clears not so much emphasis on drastic Buck Rogers types of changes in the settlement patterns population distributions, but rather a lot of policies that that purposely or inadvertently are going to reinforce. A lot of the of the characteristic patterns that we've seen develop in post-war America and for that matter in post-civil war America. and rather a much greater emphasis than we've had in the past on making the system work better. I'm kind of taking the thing as it is, but try to figure out how to make it work better. Now. I guess my thesis here would be that we're going to have to continue to do this just to hold our own and we're probably going to have to do it more systematically and perhaps with more dedication than we have in the past. Just to hold our own because it seems to me that this is the direction of major thrust in our society. That is likely at least if One Believes In the in the future in the basic decency of mankind and I do now finally then and then I'll sit down. I'm sorry. I've taken me quite this long this late start we got the question is next question. I can't help but ask myself as I think along these lines. What do we do? (00:36:26) And (00:36:28) I am afraid that I get stuck here on some rather. What seemed to me to be rather basic. Although maybe not always the most exciting kinds of jobs and frankly. I've gotten kind of fed up with the foundations for example public and private that are constantly want to do something Innovative and then no follow through with somebody else worry about the follow-through will take will skim off the cream and you guys figure out what to do with the rest of it how to keep the rest of it from souring And you know, we've had this in just program after program. And it seems to me that we've been we've been trying new ideas long enough now that maybe we ought to pick out a few of them and settle down on them and see what we can do in terms of maintenance. I'm struck is I just leaving through the Statistical Abstract United States time and again with how little we spent on maintenance in the society maidens of anything. We're always going out building something new whether it's institutional or intellectual or physical and I'm going off to the next Green pasture. And we've much of our problem I think is essentially a maintenance problem that's caught up with us. Now it seems to me that that doesn't mean we're going to go on do it building new things and moving new places all the things going to go on. And it seems to me though that we are going to probably want to pay as much attention to standards of Maintenance and priorities of Maintenance as we pay to standings for location of new things and development of new things and promotion of new things and innovation. And it seems to me that one one thing we've got to do. Is 2 2? Spend more time on the setting of standards and priorities. and I think the notion that we can do this without very wide public participation is has been demonstrated to be Out Of Tune and therefore the job is going to take a lot of people a lot of time. but I think for example of the mountains of environmental impact statements are piling up in Washington and state capitals and we've generated a whole new industry here and I don't have any objection, you know to stop and I'm trying to think systematically about what we're going to do the environment if we put in a sewer plant or a highway or anything else but there ought to be it seems to me a much more systematic means of evaluating these things once they're produced then we have at the present time. The only way right now that we can finally the way all these I suppose it will finally have to decide when there's a contest the way always will finally have to decide whether environmental impact statement is adequate or not or whether the environmental impact is too much in that will be in the courts, but there ought to be some way to shortcut this in most of the cases and right now it doesn't seem to me that we're very close to this. No, all right at the same time, so we need some sort of priorities and it seems to me for Or suitability scales for Land Development and for land preservation. And we need to look at these things separately and see where the high priorities for each is in conflict with the other. And I will sort out most of the country right there and enable us to focus on the few critical areas. I we need standards and priorities again for the maintenance of quality levels of quality of our information and education services are health and housing transportation. And also for quality of Land Development, this is probably a good place to talk about that subject. So we need to set standards and priority. Secondly, I think we're only in the we only have the barest crudest beginning. of monitoring performance and of monitoring proposals I used to sit for four years on the board of the pollution control agency when it was first organized. And I used to sit in these meetings month after month and try to figure out what in the world is going on there. With the you know, just really a fascinating process and those are your in the legislature. This is old stuff to you. But I to me, it was really fascinating all these different contentious groups and nobody with the information that he needed. Some people had a lot of it some of them had none of it, but nobody had more than about 10% now maybe of course we argue that's the way all decisions have to be made. Anyway, this is what makes Administration an art. (00:41:56) I (00:41:56) believe this but but still, you know, it seems to me as we look towards the future. This might be the highest priority place to start trying to improve things because seems to me is the key to improving anything else. I came to conclusion C. We sat there, you know, and we we had a law that said that we were suppose that the agency was supposed to classify the streams of the state so that they said you'd be able to apply a stream classification some systematic way to the tuning evaluation of proposals to put a sewer plant or a paper mill or something else on this stream where that stream. Well, I don't know how it is this morning. But the last time I looked we still didn't have such a classification. No, he had nobody seemed to mind it is to drive me out of my tree but didn't really see her. The mind is very much. Then you'd get all sorts of other things that would come up where we had we were supposed to be monitoring the streams and you look at the map of stream monitoring stations in Minnesota by for all the agencies combined and see how much monitored stream mileage we've got, you know, you can have the most Preposterous things going on for months and I finally realized that the problem here apparently was that the law was never passed with any intention to be enforced. But I would I was the guy who was out of step and that the idea was not that we're going to set a rule here and then see to it that we keep it. At least roughly but rather that we're just gonna we're gonna be legally establish responsibility in the event of a catastrophe. This was the way it seems to me because all the cases we had, you know, we just they were as one always is always a catastrophe of some kind either either you either actual or imminent and and different scales. Of course in one man's catastrophe is sometimes one communities catastrophe but it seems to me that this monitoring the performance in the land use area and the waste management area and also in the Human Services area is fundamental Jerry knows the year or so ago we got Talking about the some of the problems. I want to come back to this is what what is the role of the regional commissions and I didn't have any idea really I had ideas but I wasn't really really good. And so I thought you know one thing we ought to do is to look it at the plans and all programmed. Look at all the programs that are going on now that need to be coordinated because everybody seems to agree and if you look at the Preamble in the legislation, we everybody seems to agree that we need coordination. So let's see what there is to coordinate. So we mapped about 400 different programs state and federal and my my goal was to be able to put a dot on the map and say so when I walk into an office and a storefront somewhere in Park Rapids or good Thunder and it's got a sign on some public program and agency that I don't know where I am on the map. And I don't know what area is service from this office and I'll also have an organization chart in - ah know where I am and the structure whose reporting to whom and where these thoughts flow of Management Authority and decision is You can imagine what this stuff looks like when you get it on the map. All right, you have places with school lunch programs and no school milk place with school milk programs and no school lunch place was both place with neither and you think well now this side related probably the town site. So you get big ones and little ones in the same category and you get others that that are begging another category. There's a little another category and I would defy anybody to make any sort of correlation out of it that would help him to understand it. Now so I we found this with many programs some others we found were had all the patterns that you'd expect on a very good management conditions. So it seemed to me that the monitoring of performance is another element that that follow standards and priorities the second one the third one and his evaluation evaluate the performance of the proposals. And resource use and Land Development and delivery of services seems to me. This is what Vic Arnold's talking about. For example the respect to copper nickel. We don't know their copper-nickel developmental come the next 15 months the next 15 years or never. But when it does come we ought to have some idea of how we're going to evaluate the proposals that are bounced off of whatever the state agencies are that license and and permit and Zone and the local agencies that zone in the regional Commissions in the state agencies that are that helped to coordinate this and that leads me to leads me to the final Point under this what to do and that is according to coordinate the use of powers to enforce these standards and priorities and this is where you close the circle you can't coordinate the powers unless you have set the priorities and know what it is you're trying to do. And by the same token, you can't coordinate. If you haven't can't back up the line here and find out what your monitoring data shows you and what your standards show you and what your evaluation it's showing you and let me cite some examples of this. We we're trying to proceed from the part of the Land Management studies produce. This map is built a data bank that is behind (00:47:45) it (00:47:46) to some further ideas now and development a deal maybe was to produce alternatives to this map showing what the priorities are these different kinds of land and different kinds of local conditions and different kinds of locations for different kinds of development and different kinds of preservation. Now the question arose when we were in the process of thinking this through I wonder how much of the state's land how much the state's land week over which we can now control the use how much of that land is there. Well, we got some of Professor Bryden Freeman students from law school and they went to work on this hired a couple of graphs of second year law students and they went through the through the archives and statutes and and they they classified Powers according to what you could do whether whether you could purchase whether you could buy easements whether you could at least whether you could sell whether you could regulate the kinds of regulations and they found that the state agencies. Have I believe the number is well over 600 different powers that have been delegated by the legislature to control and use we put these on the map of Pope County just as a tries a dry run and we found that over two thirds of the land of the county was subject to some combination of controls under these various authorizations. now the as I said before we found the same kind of thing and it'll show up in the atlas of Human Services that Jim saw him Dean Hannah each log are going to produce it that some of the people who worked on the region to him nine study of done now for the whole state and you see all these gaps and overlaps and and not only in geographical areas, but in program areas in the whole management and monitoring evaluation scheme Matrix, It seems to me that this coordination then is can only be achieved. as I say if we have standards and priorities if we have monitoring and if we have evaluation and you have to in order to do these things in a democracy. You've got to operate in the public Arena and you've got to have the greatest possible amount of information. now as I look around who are what part of the system has these characteristics? when the public sector we've got local planning commission's and local legislative bodies to whom the legislature has delegated over the years going back to the at least in the 30s a substantial range of powers to control and use and operate various kinds of Human Services. We've got the regional commissions. To whom the legislature has delegated. The number of review powers are possibilities to establish review powers. We've got the invite the over groups of counties cluster zakat is to see whether the counties are coordinating with one another and to see one of the agencies and I in that region are coordinating with one another and with the County's both federal and state agencies. We've got the Environmental Quality Council, which has a lot of these same Powers at the state level. To see whether regions are coordinating with one another at least on questions of environment. We interesting we don't have anything comparable in the social and Human Services area the present time. and I expect we're probably going to have to have at least if the eqc shows the whole concept of work. And Lord help us and finally, of course, we've got the legislature. Now all of these bodies local legislatures state legislatures local agencies Regional commission's eqc have coordinating rolls. They all operate in the public Arena through public hearings open meetings. So on. Now what about the information? Well, they all have staffs They've got the classroom in other words with the open meeting and the public hearing. They got the teachers with the staff. You've got local Planning Commission staffs Regional Commission staffs estate planning eqc staff legislative (00:52:42) staffs. (00:52:46) So, you know, I have the same feeling when I back off and look at this structure that I have on my back off and look at the changing population pair United States. That it is the way it is because it reflects them very powerful forces in the evolution of a western Society. And that the problem is not to tear the whole thing up and start over with New Towns or new agencies. But rather to make the confounded thing work and it seems to me that that the that I come back down to this question of this business of Of coordination of people that have the power to coordinate of operating in the public Arena and is getting information. And believe me is any of you who are familiar with the operations of state or local government or federal government and I include the University of Minnesota. I have got to be impressed with a with with how much just plain systematizing of the data. We collect and the information that collectively we have about the operation that is needed. And I guess I'd conclude just by saying what I've often said in the presence of Jerry Christensen. I know a lot of other people at that I don't get discouraged by this and I don't feel it. We're either that were not necessarily doing anything. If we don't do something that is all brand new and shiny because I think we're at every stage of this business in the middle (00:54:28) of (00:54:33) one of the great sub experiments of the experimentation of the human race on Earth that we're trying to to resolve a major question at this time, and that is how do we decide how much to regulate and what to regulate and how to regulate because that you can't plan without having some control some sort of Regulation, you know, you're thinking about the future if you're not going to put into some kind of structure the question is how much to regulate how to regulate why and when without violating our Democratic presets and it's an evolutionary process and a lot of nuts and bolts to it. We're all in it together and I wish you well.

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