Commentary: Local Government, the Internet, and Sustainability

• Date: 01 January 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12165
• Author: Val Washington
• Published date: 01 January 2014

Commentary

Val Washington is attorney at Allen

& Desnoyers. Previously, she oversaw

the upstate off‌i ces of the Environmental

Protection Bureau of the New York State

Attorney General’s Off‌i ce, later became

executive director of Environmental

Advocates of New York, and, more recently,

served as deputy commissioner in the New

York State Department of Environmental

Conservation.

E-mail: val@allendesnoyers.com

Local Government, the Internet, and Sustainability 99

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 1, pp. 99–100. © 2013 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12165.

Val Washington

Allen & Desnoyers, LLP

In their article, Sonia Royo, Ana Yetano, and

Basilio Acerete attempt to measure local govern-

ment commitment to sustainability goals by

examining the existence and success of e-participation

tools.  eir dispiriting conclusion is that use of the

Internet by municipalities—in this case, European

municipalities—to engage the public on sustainability

issues has been halfhearted and largely unsuccessful,

even for those local governments that have signed

on to a larger, high-prof‌i le coalition ef‌f ort. But, as

the authors point out, we are still learning how the

Internet can be used as a democratic tool, and it may

well be that a municipal Web site is simply not a

promising vehicle for the promotion of a local sustain-

ability agenda.

 e authors begin with a somewhat desperate premise

that has also been embraced in the United States,

which I will paraphrase this way: in the absence of

focused national and international action on climate

change, much rests on the willingness and ability of

local governments to act on their own initiative to

encourage sustainable practices.  is assumes, fairly,

that national leadership has shown neither the courage

nor the vision to act in a responsible way on climate

change, despite a capacity on the part of the citizenry

to learn and act in pursuit of sustainability, leaving it

to government of‌f‌i cials who are in more direct touch

with the public to harness that capacity.

 is construct places an enormous burden on munici-

palities, and the authors choose e-participation as a

surrogate to measure commitment to meeting that

burden. Perhaps this is unfair.

Focusing f‌i rst on the ability of a municipality to take

on sustainability as a priority, it must be said that

the economics of governing at the local level has

been particularly fraught in the recent past. Most

cities across the United States are struggling to meet

their basic obligations. It is, therefore, more likely

for a local government to incorporate sustainability

practices when those practices are compatible with a

tight budget or, better, make a dollar go further.  ere

is also a requirement for expertise, which often goes

beyond existing staf‌f resources. It is not surprising that

the authors found a lot of window dressing surround-

ing municipal initiatives that was not matched with

actual community engagement.

To the extent that progress has been made, successes

are attributable to a number of factors that feed into

municipal capacity.  e authors mention the greater

likelihood of progress in communities with a highly

educated citizenry.  e cities in the United States

most noted for environmentalism and a sustainability

ethic, including a particularly famous handful in the

Northwest, are characterized by a youthful, idealistic,

and prosperous citizenry, which has certainly had a

great inf‌l uence on municipal policy independent of

any administrative mechanisms for public involve-

ment.  ese cities have variously adopted zero-waste

goals, plastic bag bans, bike and car sharing, smart

growth initiatives, and alternative energy incentives.

All of these initiatives are points of pride for civic

leaders and citizens alike.

Even in less well-to-do communities than Seattle, San

Francisco, and Portland, the public often provides

the inspiration for municipal action rather than the

reverse. To the extent that polling, petitioning, or

lobbying reveals a strong public desire for new initia-

tives, whether hike/bike opportunities or constraints

on municipal pesticide applications, local govern-

ment will try to be responsive. Needed expertise often

comes from larger governmental units—in the United

States, this would be either state or federal agen-

cies—or from environmental organizations. Nonprof‌i t

organizations, in particular, also play a critical role in

rallying the public in a way that local governments do

not ordinarily do.

As for the issue of the Internet as a tool for progress,

the results of the study are not surprising. With the

range and amount of information available to almost

every citizen, municipal governments are not in a

Local Government, the Internet, and Sustainability