G.O. Whittaker
(In a letter to the Editor)
GIVEN THE seemingly uninformed debate as to the ultimate substantive value of utilising a regional approach in marshalling scarce resources within the context of Jamaica's local government reform thrust; the following is submitted.
At approximately 4,411 square miles, Jamaica, is the largest of England's former island colonies in the Caribbean. It is the only one to have been spatially divided into Counties and Parishes. Trinidad, approximately half the size of Jamaica and the next largest island in the former English West Indies, was divided by the English into Counties: ones roughly the size of Jamaica's parishes. Barbados which is significantly smaller than Jamaica, was partitioned only into parishes.
The above facts do pose the intriguing question of the potential optimal value of Jamaica's three counties in promoting greater spatial equity in service delivery and national development as a function of Local Government reform. Some have argued (like the former Minister of Local Government, Arnold Bertram) that the original intent of Jamaica's counties was that of the administration of legal justice. While true, one should not overlook the nexus of regional county courts and legally empowered regional local government entities in the dispensation of certain types of grassroots services, such as: marriage licences, land title registration, car registration, and birth certificates; the corresponding service fees being used in part to fund such grassroots quality of life projects as the repair of certain community roads and public service equipment.
In Jamaica's context there seems to be a general oversight as to the cost saving value of the island's already configured counties. Here are some benefits: Unlike parishes, Jamaica's counties offer a wider/more diverse range of geography-based resources on which to promote resilient industrial development towards widening the respective fiscal spatial economy/tax base (e.g., each county has relatively healthy developed mix of tourism, agriculture, mining, manufacturing and commerce). The increased spatial-based potential for revenues via counties (as opposed to the smaller/weaker parishes) would serve to "spread" and thus help reduce the per capita rate of autonomous local government taxation on the island's already tax-burdened masses.
The spatial configuration of counties would offer an opportunity to collapse/combine some critical and expensive administrative costs between spatially focused groups of parishes. This would afford the critical saving of scarce resources: ones to be reinvested/spent elsewhere in the county to the benefit of all. Counties would offer a unique advantage for spatially integrated physical/environmental planning and policy execution in a manner that the more spatially fragmented parishes do not offer (thus allowing for the more efficient/effective use of scarce, expensive technical expertise). Counties would help promote a spatially streamlined local government administrative structure: one designed to help reduce the tendency for confusion and waste via the "fiscal balkanisation" of the island's already weak tax base; a situation possible if parishes were to be the largest administrative unit of a restructured local government system.
Counties would achieve this goal in part by serving their respective parishes as administrative co-ordinators and facilitators and selectively, service delivery lead agents (especially for the timely delivery of such more expensive and complex grassroots services as community road repair). County government (controlled by the parishes) would also help central government to monitor waste and streamline some of the more expensive aspects of local government service delivery.
Finally, it should be noted that the absence of counties in any Jamaican local government reform structure would serve to render the respective parishes (and their communities) further vulnerable to the fiscal constraints of the island's weak economy thereby increasing the risk of central government intervention and possible economic/political manipulation (in terms of reversing the spending priorities of grassroots decision-makers).
Thus in essence, the increased potential for fiscal stability offered by a system of resource strong counties presents the Jamaican grassroots with the greatest level of potential opportunity for true participatory empowerment towards an improved state of (local) democracy.
garfield.whittaker@csun.edu
California State University,
Northridge, Los Angeles
Via Go-Jamaica
