States Counterplan 1NC



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----Ext. Local Control




Local nature of the CP solves for large government one size fits all programs


Glaeser 2012, (Edward Bloomberg View columnist and professor of economics at Harvard, Feb 13 (Web, 2-13-12) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-14/spending-won-t-fix-what-ails-u-s-transport-commentary-by-edward-glaeser.html “Spending Won’t Fix What Ails U.S. Infrastructure,” LJ)

DE-FEDERALIZE TRANSPORT SPENDING: Most forms of transport infrastructure overwhelmingly serve the residents of a single state. Yet the federal government has played an outsized role in funding transportation for 50 years. Whenever the person paying isn’t the person who benefits, there will always be a push for more largesse and little check on spending efficiency. Would Detroit’s People Mover have ever been built if the people of Detroit had to pay for it? We should move toward a system in which states and localities take more responsibility for the infrastructure that serves their citizens.¶



Local control increases accountability- ensures success


Miller 2009 (John, Virginia Transportation Research Council Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment, Virginia’s Long-Range Multimodal Transportation Plan 2007-2035 INSTITUTIONAL CHANGES IN TRANSPORTATION DECISION MAKING, http://www.virginiadot.org/projects/vtransNew/resources/VTrans2035_Decisionmaking_FINAL.pdf AS)

Several articles have noted that greater local involvement can lead to local governments being more directly accountable to citizens. Examples include the use of “quick-take” condemnation authority which may be exercised by local governments (Seefeldt, 1987), the ability to protect local neighborhoods from the threat of through truck traffic (JLARC, 1992), and an ability for local staff to respond immediately to citizen complaints regarding a specific project (Whitley, 2006). A similar advantage has been noted when decentralizing decision authority within an organization. For example, a review of the Texas Department of Transportation noted that that providing substantial authority to district offices (rather than centralizing decisions at the headquarters level) enabled a sharp customer focus and allowed for “timely and least expensive access, contact with the public, and knowledge of local conditions.” (Rylander, 2001).



Local control makes states more responsive


Miller 2009 (John, Virginia Transportation Research Council Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment, Virginia’s Long-Range Multimodal Transportation Plan 2007-2035 INSTITUTIONAL CHANGES IN TRANSPORTATION DECISION MAKING, http://www.virginiadot.org/projects/vtransNew/resources/VTrans2035_Decisionmaking_FINAL.pdf AS)

Oates’ decentralization theorem, as put forth in his 1972 article “Fiscal Federalism”, expanded upon the earlier work of Tiebout. The theorem is founded upon two basic assumptions, both of which turn out to be reasonably valid. The first assumption is that of asymmetric information between individual communities and the central government which limits the ability of even the most ambitious central governments from addressing the needs of each community separately. Local governments, on the other hand, “are presumably much closer to the people and geography of their respective jurisdictions; they possess knowledge of both local preferences and cost conditions that a central agency is unlikely to have” (Oates pg 1123). To draw from an example consistent with the topic of this paper, consider the United States, which is comprised of tens of thousands of heterogeneous communities, each with their own demographical and geographical characteristics. The infinite factors that fall into these categories and work to make each community unique will certainly lead to an equally unique set of preferences of public goods for each community. The second assumption Oates makes is that even if it could somehow take each community’s preferences into consideration, there are often constitutional barriers in place that limit (or prohibit)the central government from providing different levels of services across jurisdictional boundaries resulting in a “certain degree of uniformity in central directives” (Oates 1123). Although the federal government in the United States plays an important role in income redistribution by varying the degree of aid to state and local governments on a needs base, this is different from actually altering the amount or quality of public goods and services provided and, in most cases, intergovernmental grants actually work to equalize incomes by compensating for “perceived geographical inequalities”, ensuring that minimum standards of public goods and services can be achieved in poorer regions (Oates pg 12).



Accountability to the public means better policy making


Musser 2012 (Brandon, Graduate student at the Central European University, Economics department, Economic Policy in Global Markets, Master’s Thesis, “The Effects of Fiscal Decentralization on Highway and Transportation Spending in the United States” April 6th http://dw.crackmypdf.com/0996971001342193466/musser_brandon.pdf AS)

Tiebout’s conclusion, in a nutshell, was that as long as the assumption holds that “consumers” are mobile between communities and local governments have sufficient incentive (tax revenue) to attract and maintain constituents, it follows that (local) government policies should be highly sensitive to the demands of its citizens otherwise dissatisfied citizens will exercise their option to move to another community which they find to be more favorable. Despite the obvious costs associated with moving from one community to another that renders mobility less than entirely perfect, as well as the fact that residents take several non-economic factors into consideration when choosing which community to reside in, such as proximity of friends and family or countless other personal preferences, the assumption of mobility can’t be entirely dismissed. This assumption gains validity especially as we consider smaller and smaller jurisdictions (e.g. communities rather than states).




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