Regional Local Government Has Been Silenced

By Evan Liblet

To the Editor:

The Metropolitan Regional Council, the region's one and only association of local governments, became a thing of the past early this week when it was forced to discontinue operation due to severe funding cutbacks engineered by the Tri‐State Regional Planning Commission. Despite direct appeals for support from elected officials representing many of the region's localities, the Tri‐State commissioners saw fit to drive the council out of business.

For nine months, the Council and Tri‐State have been arguing over $240,000, appropriated under Section 701 of the National Housing Act. The council operates MRC‐TV, a regionwide interactive television system, as a planning and regional communications tool. Tri‐State has claimed that much of the programming done over MRC‐TV — including thousands of hours of management trahiing and conferences on subjects as diverse as solid waste management and battered women — ought not to be paid for out of “701” funds. In November of 1978, the commissioners voted to cut off all of the council's “701” money, thereby insuring the council's demise.

What is involved here is more than one regional organization overcoming another. The Metropolitan Regional Council exists — and has existed since 1956 — for no other reason than to serve the region's 600‐plus local governments in their day‐to‐day dealings with the Federal agencies, the states and one another. Tri‐State has long been criticized as being Manhattanoriented and, worse, uninterested in local governments. In response, TriState's new director created a new division of assistance to local governments, whose annual work program is a virtual carbon copy of that which was proposed by the council.

The Tri‐State commissioners represent no one other than the governors who appointed them to their respective commission seats. By driving the Metropolitan Regional Council out of business they leave the region with a communications void which they themselves can never hope to fill. What really has happened is that the voice of local government in this complex region of ours has been effectively silenced by governmental appointees. The leviathan which makes its home on top of the World Trade Center is going to have to work very hard to convince this region's chief elected officials that it has even the slightest idea what regionalism is all about.

EVAN LIBLIT

New York, July 13, 1979

The writer was director of planning for the Metropolitan Regional Council.