GovernmentExecutive.com

April 1997

REINVENTION REVOLUTION: REPORT FROM THE FEDERAL-FRONT LINES

Increasing Citizen Involvement

Facilitator: Lea Johnson, Council for Excellence in Government
Speakers: Sonia Burgos, Office of Crime Prevention and Security, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Ralph Ennance, County Executive for Oneida County, New York
Tom Fry, Bureau of Land Management
Rachel Rowland, Director, Intergovernmental Affairs, FEMA
Date: Lab - April 7, 1997; April 8, 1997

Exciting new strategies to increase community involvement in the governance process are emerging from various federal government agencies. These strategies are based on the premise that citizens intimately understand the way their communities work, and that their input into program design and management can help the government decrease its own expenditures.

Ms. Sonia Burgos, the Director of Crime Prevention and Security at HUD, focused on citizen involvement in public housing. In order to receive HUD assistance, a housing development must send a proposal that details not only the nature of the problem, but also a plan for collaborative crime prevention. To sustain involvement beyond the initial proposal, residents form councils that report on the effectiveness of the new programs. (Ms. Burgos has found that single mothers and senior citizens are most likely to participate in these programs.)

"National Night Out" is a HUD-sponsored event wherein citizens relate to their own communities their desire to live in a safe environment. In addition, HUD has run twelve "One Strike and You're Out" conferences designed to improve public housing safety. Any resident caught breaking a law (including alcohol consumption) at the housing development is evicted. The department has linked its crime prevention grant money to drug prevention; thus drug-related crimes have fallen.

Community policing strategies have pushed cops out of their cars and into cooperating on crime prevention with the community. The agency's intent is to lower the community's crime rate, thus decreasing the need for a police presence and eliminating the need to invest in new police cars. Another way to cut costs has been to train people in crime prevention programs by video and live satellite feeds. So far this has been done at fifty sites, decreasing travel time and other costs for the agency.

The Director of Intergovernmental Affairs at FEMA, Rachel Rowland, discussed her office's experience in preventing arson related hate crimes through citizen involvement. In June 1996, President Clinton, in response to a rash of church fires in the southern states, announced a National Arson Prevention Initiative. This initiative bore a clearinghouse run by FEMA to provide communities with the tools to fight arson.

The community of Utica, New York turned to Secretary Witt at FEMA at the request of Congressman Boehlert due to an alarmingly high rate of two arsons per week, which was three times the rate of New York City. The city was suffering from urban outmigration, a smaller tax base, and a general economic downturn. In addition to these problems, the city owned 500 abandoned buildings. Arson fires were raging out of control when Utica signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the FBI, ATF, and the Department of Justice. The goal of the MOU was for the city to identify vacant buildings and design action plans to reduce the number of arson fires, with an initial grant of $100,000.

After the communities receive the grant money and assistance in setting up the program, they must take over the program. A total of five pilot communities have received training on how to train citizen volunteers. This frees up FEMA to do more training in other cities and to maintain the clearinghouse. The training is comprehensive; it includes information on Neighborhood Watch programs, boarding up buildings, and community outreach to advertise Board-Up Days, Cleanup Days, etc.

When the Clinton Administration designated the Grand Staircase-Escalante as a National Monument, the Bureau of Land Management needed to ensure citizen involvement. According to Tom Fry of the BLM, soliciting citizen involvement is crucial to easing the fears some westerners possess; many believe that any new government regulation is an expansion of federal authority at the expense of state control.

Most public lands managed by the BLM are state or federally run, but the regulations are numerous and confusing. At the behest of the NPR, Mr. Fry has worked to decrease the number of regulations and make them understandable. BLM approached local governments to strategize and plan for citizen involvement in this regulatory review process.

Fry left the group with several principles that increase citizen participation in government process:

Don't limit access to information. For the public to understand why their involvement is important, they need to know what the laws mean and how the community can make these laws work for them.

Be open and honest to build trust. To involve the community and increase involvement, it is necessary to give up some power and authority to increase a sense of citizen ownership.

Set up joint workshops with local government. Citizens can then access different levels of government officials at the same time.

Let communities make some of the decisions, and provide numerous updates on the planning process.