What are advantages and disadvantages of local government?

Answer 1

Advantage:

1. Might be closer to make personal contact

2. Would know more about your local situations and requirements and where you need help.

Disadvantage:

1. It would cost you more in taxes to pay the cost of Government, not shared by many others.

2. Many services would now cost more, schools, medical, hospitals, etc. Big Government would not be supporting it any longer.

Answer 2

Benefits:

• Laws and policies are tailor-made to local needs
  • Each state has different family and criminal laws so liberal states have more laws protecting the environment and civil and worker rights whereas conservative states have more laws and harsher sentences for violent crimes and drugs and supporting religious activities.
  • More urban counties have more of their government devoted to public transit, ports, efforts to deal with homeless and drug users, etc. whereas rural counties have differents sets of problems - water rights, agricultural pollution, threats to livestock, seniors who are shut in and isolated and providing medical care to people who otherwise wouldn't have access to it (because the population is too sparse to support doctors, etc.)

• Promotes stability by allowing rich areas stay rich (with the greater investment they are able to make by having a higher tax base) and poor areas to stay poor (the oppostie).
• Local governents are easier to pressure by citizens than the federal government. The feds are much more prone to special interests. People EXPECT to meet their local leaders and to be able to speak with their local leaders directly, face-to-face, even if its at a meeting. Local governments are more responsive.
• Only the feds can make things "top secret". The feds are much more secretive. The only grounds for secrecy in the constitution are "national security" which means the secrecy is only justifiable by the feds (all beuracracies try to be secretive if they can but that's another story).
• Decisionmakers inevitably are biased towards making decisions which benefit themselves (because those sound like good decisions) and if the decisionmakers are local, those decisions are more likely to benefit their communities. In other words, if the local and state laws were made in Washington, then they would benefit Washington and not everybody else.
• They balance each other. For instance if there's corruption or racism at the local level (Chicago or the South, respectively), then the state or federal level can intervene and vice-versa (for instance, Los Angeles' refusal to enforce federal Immigration laws or Nevada's suing to keep out a long-term nuclear waste dump.)
• Often a particular locality can "experiment" with an innovation before it is adopted or not adopted more widely. Examples include wind energy, the "broken windows" crime-fighting strategy, Arizona's mandatory e-verify use for all employers and bootcamps for first time criminals. Oregon's Death with Dignity act allowing physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients remains very controversial in the rest of the country.

Drawbacks:

• The three levels of government play "pass the buck" with each other - The higher levels with unfunded mandates (you have to do such and such but we're not going to pay for it) and the lower levels with creative accounting (well if we call the program such and such and say that its for this when its really for that then it qualifies for funding by the state and feds.)
• There's some redundancy
• Its more expensive
• Its confusing to the citizens
• Sometimes there is a lack of talented candidates at the local level for elected, appointed or civil service positions. Decentralization requires education to be widespread.
• Its confusing and expensive for businesses because each state has different regulations which can affect business operations. Counties and cities can have laws which affect land use and some operations as well.
• Its expensive and involved when litigation crosses state lines.