Thoughts on the Chelsea receivership.

• Author: Cyr, Ed
• Position: City in Massachusetts

It is clear that municipalities across the nation face many of the problems that brought the City of Chelsea, Massachusetts, into the condition where receivership was necessary. To respond to the pressing needs of those communities it is necessary to recognize the true nature of those problems and develop the tools to accomplish reform.

In Chelsea, we have succeeded in the first phase of the recovery--balancing the operating budget. As we move into the second phase--placing the community on a footing sound enough to sustain itself unassisted--we must face up to the structural impediments to this reform and the significant capital deficiencies. This will not be easy.

A difficulty we will have to overcome involves a failure on the part of the public to allow those who manage the public's business the tools that private-sector managers take for granted. Government, often the focus of derision and even ridicule, is in fact operating in a context that the public has established for it. If we are dissatisfied with the results we must examine their causes--these operating assumptions--and strive to reform them.

To those who say government should be more businesslike, we respond, "The rules of the game, established by law and tradition, make that impossible today." The definition of our mission, our budgeting practices, our hiring policies, contracts and procurement practices all weigh in against a businesslike approach. We are living with 50-year-old systems, born in response to problems long since put to rest, systems that reflect a profound and ongoing ambivalence that we Americans have about investing trust in government officials.

Americans have a love-hate relationship with governance. They want it to do everything but trust it to do almost nothing. They tie its hands whenever possible and then want officials to respond with the nimbleness of private-sector entrepreneurs. The Chelsea Receivership, with its unique freedom from local political constraints and its expanded management options, has provided a unique laboratory to test management assumptions.

A Management Stalemate

One lesson of Chelsea is that the obstacles standing in the way of local government make it almost impossible for even the best managers to stay focused on the primary mission--providing basic services to their citizens. Instead, politicians and managers are caught up in a complex web of competing interests, laws and traditions which have created a dangerous political...