PhilaNight

Last Friday I got to sit in on a meeting of the Metropolitan Caucus, Southeastern Pennsylvania’s most recent attempt at regional cooperation among elected officials.  The Caucus includes the Mayor of Philadelphia and Commissioners/Council Members from Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties.  This group met for the first time last March, setting out to address issues that affect all five counties.  They have some good political reasons to band together:  decisions made in Harrisburg have a serious impact on the region, and Southeastern Pennsylvania could command a powerful voting bloc in Washington.  There’s also an increasing amount of federal grant funding that favors regional applications.  Getting these leaders around the same table is a good place to start.

The Metro Caucus is still testing the waters, but there are good models for this kind of cooperation.  Some of it is happening right here in our region – the Southeastern Pennsylvania Regional Task Force is a network of Emergency Management Coordinators from the five counties that has been in place since 1998.  And there are more comprehensive metropolitan coalitions in other parts of the country, most notably in Chicago and Denver.  These models are useful, but they have their limits – each region has its own unique set of local and state politics.  Still, they prove that it can be done.

Even though regional ideas often take the form of big projects and sweeping policy reform, one thing that was pretty clear in the Metro Caucus meeting was that these officials aren’t all that interested in grand concepts of regionalism.  First of all, they have the welfare of their own constituents in mind – it’s rarely the case that local and regional interests are perfectly aligned, especially in the short-term.  And then there’s the fact that the Caucus just wants to get something done.  The meeting focused on some low-hanging fruit, especially initiatives that might result in cost savings for all of the counties, or more state or federal funding coming to the region.

Take procurement, for one.  The Metro Caucus is figuring out what it can do to increase communication between county purchasing departments, some of which is already happening.  If all five counties could consistently negotiate as one coalition, they could save a lot of money – our tax dollars – on everything from office supplies to hybrid cars.  They’re also submitting regional applications for federal stimulus grants that would pay for things like transportation infrastructure and energy-efficiency building retrofits.

These initial efforts may seem humble, but they require coordinated staff, new lines of communication, and new relationships between the Caucus members.  They’re strengthening all of these now, which will help them address the harder cases down the road.  They’ll be looking for that next project pretty soon – an initiative that’s doable and gives them all something to take home to the voters.  Any ideas?

- Jack Higgins