Local Government Handbook

LOCAL TREES OF LIBERTY

 Deeply rooted in the soil of freedom and human dignity
Supported by trunks and branches that build trust and ensure high performance
Continuously renewed through the many leaves of citizen governance and energy
For the purpose of serving all humanity
 

Chapter 1- Handbook Overview: What and Why?

This handbook is for local elected officials who wish to improve the performance of their systems of governance. It is the product of the ongoing mission of the Center for Public Service (CPS) to improve governance capacity through education, training, and technical assistance (https://www.pdx.edu/center-for-public-service/about).

This handbook can help local elected officials and the management leadership team assess how well they are helping each other perform their different governing roles. It can help them decide what performance they should and want to improve, identify and evaluate their options for improvement, and assess the time and resources needed to make these improvements. While you may get started anywhere, you may find our Governance Performance Diagnostic a useful place to begin (Governance Performance Diagnostic).

The primary audience for this handbook is local elected officials, but these officials cannot implement the practices in the handbook by themselves. They need the help of their staff, organizations in the public and private sectors, and constituent trust. Elected officials are the bulls-eye of the target audience, but anyone who wants to understand how local government works and cares about its performance (the efficiency, effectiveness, transparency, fairness of its decisions and operations) is likely to find something of interest in the handbook.

Chapter 1 of this handbook outlines the origins, purposes, and structure of the handbook, including how to get started, advice for elected officials, and guidance for the constellation of all those involved in governance.

This handbook is designed to be read as a whole or in parts. Click on any of the sliders below to access an overview of each chapter. Click on Download Full Handbook to access the handbook.

About the Authors

The handbook’s authors were brought together by these partnerships and a common belief that our local governing bodies are the backbone of American democracy and have grown more so with the partisan political gridlock at the national level of government. The authors have spent their careers building local governance capacity. Their independent work in those careers led them to a common and unsurprising conclusion: improving local government performance is more successful when local governments build from a strong working partnership between the senior management team and their elected officials.

Doug Morgan has taken the lead in organizing the Center for Public Service, serving for more than ten years on governing boards and providing training to elected officials and career administrators. He has been the lead author on five books devoted to improving local government, He is a Professor Emeritus of the Public Administration Department at Portland State University.

Terry Moore, co-founder of ECONorthwest, has spent much of his career helping local jurisdictions improve their planning, evaluation and decision-making in the areas of land use, infrastructure, finance, and economic development.

Mike Gleason has spent more than 50 years in local government as a manager of cities and counties in the Pacific Northwest and as a consultant since retirement.

Margaret Banyan is a Research Professor at Portland State University’s Center for Public Service. She has worked with local boards and senior managers to improve local policy-making in Oregon and Southwest Florida. Dr. Banyan is the communicating author for questions on the content of the handbook.