Discussion Question covid 19 staying ahead of the curve.

Running Head: SYNOPSIS

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SYNOPSIS

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SYNOPSIS

Chinitha Jones

RP 506: Intergovernmental Relations

Dr. Richard Mushi

In the novel, Supermajor, chapter three, we come across one man who is a great leader with outstanding leadership qualities, Jerry Abraham. This person has brilliant ideas for Louisville, Kentucky; he knew exactly what this city needed. For this reason, Jerry approaches the people of the town with his manifesto, selling the best of what he has in the city in his ability; he knew well that for this to succeed, it had to work in conjunction with the other jurisdictions, for it to grow. Basing on this knowledge, he vies for the mayor's post and is elected the mayor in 1985. Because of his exemplary performance in the city, Jerry got re-elected twice. Because of the knowledge that Jerry had on improving Louisville's well-being, which was only through working hand in hand with the surrounding counties, he managed to bring together his county with the surrounding Jefferson county merging of the two counties got the new name, Louisville Metro. We find Abraham's son benefiting from his father's effort of uniting the counties; he lands a top job in the new Louisville Metro County handling the economic reports.

The chapter also discusses the federalism type of government about intergovernmental relations; federalism in this chapter is viewed as a government where power is divided between the central government and the regional governments such as the state government, provinces, cantons, and lands. The division of power between these governments makes every government have legal supremacy within their jurisdiction areas. This is the system applicable in the United States; however, the system faced opposition from Morton M. Grodzins and Daniel J Elazar, who rejected the model noting the separation of the functions from the central government to other local governments is impractical and undesirable as the governments are operating in the same area. Therefore, the powers and procedures should be centrally placed for one government to avoid collisions between the central government and the other governments in terms of operations.

Federalism is in several forms discussed in this chapter, including dual federalism between 1778 and 1933 in the United States. In this type of government, the functions and the responsibilities of the federal governments, as well as that of state governments, are separate. The other form of government discussed in this chapter is cooperation federalism; during this era, intergovernmental relations were more centralized in Washington, where the federal dollars' role was more valuable. Creative federalism occurred between 1960 and 1968. Lyndon Johnson started this; this era was known as the great society where there was tremendous growth in the number of grant programs from 50 in 1961 to 420 by the time Lyndon was leaving the office in 1968. The plans included legislative landmarks such as the Medicaid, the elementary and secondary education act, and the model cities program.

Federalism occurred between 1968 and 1980. Richard M. Nixon, who won the presidency in 1968, recognized all the kinds of federalism and hence gave his ruling, the new federalism. Nixon proposed revenue sharing to make the new federalism policy effective. In the new federalism, all states and localities received funds without any restrictions on how the money was spent. President Nixon proposed the consolidations of the categorical programs to be put to purpose-block agents in a specific policy area like education. He included relatively few restrictions on their use.

Between 1980 and 1993, new federalism was introduced, known as the New New federalism. This was brought in the then-president Ronald Reagan, who was inaugurated in 1981. President Ronald intended to reduce the size and scope of government and the creation of the intergovernmental system, which brought in greater prominence to states and localities. This President also wanted to reintroduce a more dual form of federalism. He tried to step back from the cooperative federalism developed for over 50 years before President Ronald came into power.

During this era, President Reagan changed the national priorities by cutting the taxes and mounting the deficits by driving the federal policymakers to cut the funds of going to states and localities. When President Obama took over in 2009, he fundamentally accepted the mayors and other local officials' arguments. They agreed on making the metropolitan areas the primary economic drivers in the U.S. and noted that they deserved to be treated as assets, not problems.

In 1992, President Bill Clinton came into power, where he changed things by committing himself to cooperate with state governments. President Clinton wanted to reform the federal-state relations where he claimed to support state activism.