By Scott Mitnick

Ryan Eggleston, township manager, South Fayette, Pennsylvania, and I were honored to represent ICMA at the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE) Annual Summit held in Bournemouth, England, this past October. The main topic of the three-day event was devolution or the transfer of municipal services from national to local control.

What was interesting about learning of this major undertaking is how this topic has come full circle since I was a student at Bristol University more than two decades ago. The challenge going forward will be to what extent London will provide local government access to revenues needed to provide the services that are being pushed back to local authorities.

The UK had highly decentralized local authorities decades ago, and then changed to the point where it is now—one of the most centralized government structures in all of Europe. One of the summit speakers had a great quote: “The English want the social services provided by the Scandinavian countries but are only willing to pay taxes at the rates charged in the U.S.”

Before attending the summit, I presented a guest lecture on “California Local Government” at Bristol University. The lecture concluded with a viewing of the ICMA Life, Well Run video and distribution of ICMA brochures.

The students were from different parts of the UK, Russia, and Asia. They were curious about how local government services are provided in America and asked thought-provoking questions. At first it felt strange to give a lecture at a university where I was once a student. By the end of the day, I was glad to have done so.

The politics (political science) department chair shared how most of the British public administration programs have been phased out during the past two decades. Apparently, there is a decreased appetite to teach public administration in the UK, as well as to train future leaders to manage in the strange, new world order of devolution that the British national government is promoting.

After the summit, I spent time with a former Bristol classmate who is now a London lawyer specializing in English devolution and related constitutional issues. Right before my visit, he participated in a BBC interview covering this very topic. As Clay Pearson’s article in the March 2016 PM points out, those of us outside of the UK are lucky we don’t have to deal with these types of issues.

It will be interesting to watch the structure of British local government change and evolve over the next decade. While this is creating stress and uncertainty for our counterparts in the UK, it may end up providing unexpected opportunities for the next generation of local government managers. Time will tell.