A recent article by Bruce Fisher in Artvoice argued that the autonomy and will to self-determination of local communities in Erie County are obstacles to proper growth and economic development. Fisher maintains that the more rural areas have already lost the battle to "development" intruding into their way of life. He argues that only planning by a control board will save the day for Erie County.
Whether the conditions and ways of life of the communities in question in Erie County have already been eroded and compromised is beside the point. The sense of community is still alive and in fact may be reconstituted on the basis of the residues of existing traditions, customs, practices and values.
There is no guarantee, let alone much promise, that a central planning board will be able to achieve any desirable sense of sustainable community nor any balance between town and country. Mr. Fisher seems not to get that there is a deep sense of mistrust, justifiably so, of any move toward centralization of powers that may function to turn control of the constitutive activities of the peoples lives over to technocrats who claim only neutral regulatory powers. Such professional planners are not necessarily guided by principles and values that would serve the ways of life that apparently the communities, towns and villages, seem to want to live.
If there were some assurance that a “planning board” were not in the pockets of the traditional political parties which are not to be trusted to preserve local autonomy, integrity and sovereignty, nor under the influence of ‘developers,’ let alone the influence of the bureaucratic centralist ideology of liberal democratic Washington, then such “centralization” of control may conceivably come about in such a way that it would be representative of the interests expressed by the smaller communities. But there is no such assurance and our history of centralism, pseudo-federalism and expropriation of local wealth by the State is reason enough not to trust the professional political technocrats and “developers.”
It is also odd that Mr. Fisher castigates Legislator Reynolds--who voted against the control board after consulting with the people of the targeted communities-- for doing what he was elected to do. It is also more than odd that Fisher attributes economic decline to ‘fractured, local governance.’
But it seems that the professionals and professoriat at Buff State concluded during their conference [on the economic plight of the region in light of Obama’s stimulus promises], that the same technocratically inspired “professionals” who would serve on a control board for regional planning would also be the ones, of an academic variety, who would know better how to effectively spend the hoped for stimulus money. I don’t know how it is possible that such a conclusion could be reached-- that the money would best be spent by regional planning boards as opposed to local governments-- given that the best and most effective use of the money is not determined a priori.
My incredulity and my suspicion grow when Mr. Fisher assures us that the planning board would be a “nonpartisan, disinterested, and apolitical county planning body.” To me this sounds like our author is either living in a fantasy or actually does believe the people of the towns and villages are a bunch of yahoos. Or possibly the academic credentials have gone to his head.
The plot thickens when our good academic technocrat claims that his is an “approach that could finally help Erie County government take the next evolutionary step toward being a functional, metrowide coordinator of public health, infrastructure, and economic conditions.” At this point it seems clear to me that democracy plays little part in Fisher’s utopia. And the use of “evolutionary step” is embarrassing or at least requires some explanation of how he understands history, change and democracy not to mention self-determination. At best this is an autocratic vision which may well fly should the Obama administration buy into the 'regionalist-control board vision' of the Buff State conferencees.
Lastly I would like to know how Mr. Fisher defines the “public interest” that he claims is being “thwarted” simply by people practicing their political imperative within a democracy if not within the imperative of a new populist opposition. It is this populist sensibility which undoubtedly best understands what's in the public interest. It is also this new populist consciousness that detects the dangers of Fisher's technocratic vision taking on new life under the auspices of an economic crisis in which all such schemes seem justifiable when exigency and efficiency become everything and democracy becomes a luxury not a fundamental, unimpeachable political value.
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