The Editor, Sir:

The Thursday, September 27 edition of your paper carried an article written by Martin Henry on the ongoing cloudy situation surrounding the island's local government reform thrust.

While I realise that there is much ongoing ignorance as far as the operational value/benefit of regional county councils are concerned (within the context of empowering parish councils to collectively accomplish more for themselves via mutual cooperation in the sphere of expensive service delivery), I would like to take the time to address what seems to be a misinterpretation on the part of Mr. Martin as to the essence of the concept/notion of 'efficiency' from the perspective of public administration/local government service delivery goals.

Curbing spending

Students of public administration are quite aware that service delivery 'success' in the public sector is not only measured in terms of levels of money profits and/or money savings, but also in terms of customer satisfaction and the effective accommodation of grass-roots equity concerns.

Without available resources, government cannot offer crucial equity-based services. Thus, it is imperative (especially within the context of Jamaica's weak and struggling third world economy) that government seeks to curb wasteful/inefficient spending, the goal here being to garner and redirect given scarce resources (re: ones obtained via cost saving/efficiency exercises) towards the targeted delivery of equity-based services.

It is with meeting this objective of equity-oriented efficiency in local government service delivery that I call on Jamaica's local government planners to carefully revisit the issue of a need to promote appropriate spatial-based operational cost savings via parish-run county councils, a move that would be to the benefit of the island's many fast-growing communities in need of resources towards timely/effective bottom-up development planning.

Wasteful bureaucracy

If successive People's National Party and Jamaica Labour Party-led governments persist in designing bottom-up revenue empowered local government bodies primarily around parish councils, they will find that the relatively wide variation of geography-based economic resources available at the parish only level will, in a dysfunctional manner, serve to precipitate:

Increased chances for spatially hap-hazard/inequitable provision of services, given the greater opportunity for service delivery shortfalls between wealthier and poorer parishes.

Increased chances that parishes will seek assistance from the superior economies of scale and critical mass-based efficiencies to be found in central government's nationally scaled operations, all at the expense of the effective promotion of grass-roots fiscal self-sufficiency and attendant decision-making autonomy.

Increased chances that parish-based tax and rate payers will face significantly higher per capita levels of taxes and fees vis-a-vis the potentially lower per capita rate of taxes and fees that would accrue via the larger, resource wealthier county configuration.

All of this, alongside th degree of spatial administrative focus and grass-roots control afforded by counties in contrast to the more spatially diffused national perspective engendered on the part of a more distant, cumbersome, untimely, grass roots-insensitive and thus wasteful central government bureaucracy.

I am, etc,

GARFIELD WHITTAKER

garfield.whittaker@csun.edu

Department of Urban Studies & Planning

California State University, Northridge