In making water resource decisions, water agency officials respond to three core values— availability, quality, and cost—in that order, with cost rated a distant third (e.g., see Steve Rayner, Denise Lach, and Helen Ingram, “Weather Forecasts Are for Wimps: Why Water Resource Managers Do Not Use Climate Forecasts,” Climatic Change 69 [2], 2005). However, cost to the Flint, Michigan city budget was the overarching concern when the state-appointed Emergency Manager (EM) made the decision to switch to cheaper sources of water and not to apply anticorrosive treatment to new water supplies from the Flint River, instead of its previous source, Lake Huron. The taste, smell, discoloration, and high levels of lead in the new water supply were noticed immediately, and people took to the streets in protest. The EM who made the decision to change the water source adopted the cover-up that came after, armed with municipal takeover laws that gave him sweeping authority. He shuttered city offices, laid off employees, restructured collective bargaining agreements, sold city assets, and raised water rates. The EM and his cadre of advisors were freed from internal restraints such as voting or public participation, enabling them to introduce and pursue their draconian agenda. According to Ashley Nickels, such municipal takeovers, when implemented at the local level, have both material and symbolic effects. She concludes that state laws intended to get the local government’s fiscal house in order led to the restructuring of power, helped determine who participates and who protests, and in the case of the people of Flint, caused lower levels of service, higher costs, and a less attractive community for residents and new businesses.
Nickels draws on standard public policy theories from writers such as Deborah Stone, Paul Pierson, Anne Schneider, Helen Ingram, Suzanne Mettler, and others to argue that the feedback effects of policies create winners and losers, encourage the participation of some while marginalizing others, and modify institutional structures and processes. Municipal takeovers are intended to remove politics from the equation but are inherently political and have lasting political impacts. Putative benefits to urban finances fade quickly while policy-making processes are more permanently changed to further disadvantage the already disadvantaged, such as the poor and people of color. Narrative and causal story analyses are employed to reveal the dominance of a development regime that Nickels associates with the rationality project: this perspective assumes that the root causes of financial failings are lack of leadership and management skills to resist irrational and self-serving interests. Nickels’s recommendations are that politics needs to be restored and strengthened by removing state-appointed managers, rebuilding and strengthening democratic access and participation, and designing policies that foster democracy.
The book delves into the history of state interventions into local fiscal matters and court decisions that grant states broad powers to intervene. At least 19 states have formal laws allowing interventions, but such actions have happened most frequently in Michigan, where laws are particularly aggressive. More municipalities are likely to get into fiscal trouble as devolution of responsibility to local levels continues at the same time that climate change, the frequency of extreme weather events, and the high cost of infrastructure overwhelm local resources.
According to Nickels, the diffusion of takeover laws and more applications of such laws to troubled cities will harm democracy. Takeover laws advance elite interests that are favored by developmental agendas and narratives portraying local governments as inept and unable to deliver balanced budgets or economic progress. Although some nongovernmental organizations are considered as potential actors that challenge decisions harming the environment and discriminating against the poor, this book comes to a different kind of conclusion about some nonstate actors in Flint. It notes that the C. S. Mott Foundation is a powerful participant in Flint politics that promotes economic development at the expense of other values.
The book is worthwhile reading and will serve undergraduate and graduate public policy classes well, as illustrative readings showing how prominent policy theories can be applied. Nickels adds importantly to the small literature examining how policy feedback affects democracy and participation. Urban water policy serves as a focal point for elucidating how political forces shape policy and how policy reshape the exercise of political rights. Although pursuing balanced budgets may yield short-term benefits to the city, the long-term impact of such policies erodes democracy. While EMs are in control, structural changes are made that strengthen elites and undercut public participation. By decreasing access to local decision makers, such policies increase distrust among residents and lower their likelihood of involvement in local affairs. Democratic accountability is lessened considerably.
The book is not without problems. There are issues of how bureaucracy can serve democracy that Nickels does not sufficiently consider. She views water agency decisions, to which she gives little or no attention, as part of the development coalition that is dominated by the rationality project. Referring to the work of Deborah Stone (Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision-Making and Climatic Change, 1997), Nickels claims that the takeover law favored experts who obfuscated the real effects of water pollution by chemical and economic analysis that lay persons could not understand. However, the book shortchanges the ability of bureaucracy to deliver democracy-serving change. Agencies are certainly not rational actors, whatever their claims. They are dedicated to their missions: agency welfare and service to their constituencies. Water agencies embrace initiatives to protect water availability and water quality. Agencies may resist legislative or higher administrative directives by mobilizing opposition from constituents and using procedures to skirt directives that do not serve their core values. Therefore, water utility professionals in Flint must have played a role in the decisions leading to the controversy. Professional water managers know well the history of backlash when other cities failed to add anticorrosive chemicals when switching to new water sources. The Tucson water utility’s switch from groundwater to water from the Central Arizona Project is a well-known example. Except for the actions of the EM, the book gives us little insight into the actions of local and state administrators facing the crisis.
Strengthening democracy and participation in water issues means making water agency decisions more transparent and accountable. But the process of democratic policy making needs to include a role for scientific expertise. In this dangerous age of science denial, democracy is best served when public protestors can rely on science to bolster their case. When environmental and water utility agencies’ science is falsely branded as biased or irrelevant, democratic policy making becomes more remote. Nickels’s book is an important reminder of why these issues matter.
