Experiments in Public Services

Today's lead editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune decries two recent experiments by local governments in delivering public services ("Don't Experiment with Public Safety").  The editors believe that public safety (police and fire) should be exempt from efforts to redesign government at the local level.

However, for small municipalities, public safety makes up the bulk of the services they provide.  To exempt those services from any makeover attempts gives small communities little room to maneuver.

In 2011, the town of Foley, Minnesota, decided to replace patrols by county sheriff's deputies with patrols by private security guards.  As the editors note, private security guards do not have the same powers of arrest, etc. as do sworn peace officers.

Nowthen, Minnesota, (yes, you read that correctly) ended patrols by deputies and replaced them with...nothing, in a cost-saving measure.

The editors lump together these two actions, but I think a reasonable distinction can be made between a community that tries a different method of delivering a service (Foley) and a community that ends the provision of a service (Nowthen).

As far as I can discern from the editorial, the editors' biggest problem with experiments like Foley's is less that public safety will be compromised, but that public "expectations" may not be met.  A lot of expectations will be disappointed as we move from a "giveaway politics" to a "takeaway politics."

Not all experiments will go well, but many will succeed and provide examples to other communities.  But to say that experiments in delivering services cannot be tried is guaranteed to lead to failure.