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91 Nat'l Civic Rev. 1 (2002)

handle is hein.journals/natmnr91 and id is 1 raw text is: NOTE FROM THE PRESIDENT From its inception, the National Civic League has focused on the importance of municipal government reform to the quality of our political life. Long- time readers of this journal will need no review of NCIs role in developing and updating model city charters. As the charter revision project (http://nclweb.org/ npp/charter/process.html) moves forward, we are again devoting an edition of the National Civic Review to issues of local government structure and perfor- mance. The articles collected here examine everything from charters them- selves to the role and position of the mayor, the city council, and the chief administrative officer in various forms of local government. As the presentations at last year's National Conference on Governance made clear, information technology is having a profound effect on the practice of politics in this country. At every stage of the process, from raising money and disseminating information to enhancing transparency, improving service delivery, and encouraging participation, this technology is not only accelerat- ing the pace of political activity but perhaps even changing its nature. Taken together, these multifaceted changes are a particularly telling example of how politics and political actors influence and are influenced by ongoing develop- ments in society as a whole. The flip side of this engagement in the swirl of events is government structure, which is why constructs such as a municipal charter are so impor- tant. By establishing roles and responsibilities, a charter helps ensure stability in the governance of a community. Without trying to sketch a theory of poli- tics here, it is useful to think of political practices (such as voting and law- making) as being embedded in networks-institutions and institutional relations-that are in turn governed by norms and values. Municipal charters are part of the codification of institutional relations and lend order and stabil- ity to the political system. That said, a charter itself must be adapted to changing circumstances, which is why the model city charter is again being revised. There is a litany (by now familiar) of problems and pressures with which communities continue to grapple. Issues of economic development, land use, sprawl, housing, schools, health care, and crime are but some of the most obvious. Except for a narrow class of essentially technical questions (which, despite this status, have signif- icant real-world implications), a charter by itself cannot solve these political problems. A poorly designed charter can make political issues more intractable; a well-designed charter can mitigate certain problems while enhancing the prospects for progress in others. But most of all, just as a government budget is a political document that indicates policy priorities, a charter is a blueprint for the kind of political practice a city regards as desirable. NATIONAL Civic REVIEW, Vol. 91, no. 1, Spring 2002 © Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1

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