After 30 years--burning impatience.

• Author: Peirce, Neal
• Position: Commentary - Reprint - Column

Pass the 30-year mark writing the country's first national column focused on state and local government--as I did [in February]--and what do you feel?

My answer: burning impatience.

Here's this magnificent American federal system, a union of states that hold immense original powers, a system perfectly designed for experimentation and innovation.

But instead, we too often seem frozen in time. Just consider our states' basic organization--bicameral state legislatures and independent executive branches.

We've had a century of tumultuous change, domestic and foreign. A century ago, as a widely forwarded e-mail recently noted, the average U.S. life expectancy was 47 years, 8 percent of homes had a telephone, there were 8,000 cars in the U.S., and 144 miles of paved road. Today we're toying with genetic codes to propel lifespans past 100, telephones (land-line or cellular) are ubiquitous, and autos and the roads to serve them dominate our built environment.

Yet in the entire 20th century, only one state--Nebraska--even tried out a unicameral legislature, which can act faster and be less prone to stalemate.

Just check our 50 states' antiquated local government structures. We're fragmented into thousands of local units--cities, townships, villages, boroughs. Many counties still elect coroners and sheriffs and perpetuate a hydra-headed commissioner form of mixed executive-legislative leadership. Many states suffer bitter town-against-town battles for tax-producing industries or chain stores, letting private corporations garner outrageous concessions. Plus, most state governments tightly restrict local governments' taxing powers, denying fundamental self-government to local citizens.

Other nations--Britain and Germany, for example--have reviewed and radically reduced their local government units. But not our states--too politically dangerous, governors and legislatures conclude.

There are many ways states could use their powers more smartly. Big majorities of Americans have poured into metropolitan regions--I call them the modern world's city-states. These regions provide the universities, industries, and legal and financial power that keep state governments solvent, and the nation competitive in global markets.

State legislators too often micromanage their local governments. They'd do a lot better, like smart corporations dealing with subsidiaries, to give regions autonomy and demand performance from them--to make regions, in corporate-speak, the...