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American democracy succeeds by trial and error. Our history is littered with flaws and mistakes, corrected and amended, re-broken, and fixed again, often thanks to citizen input. That is why local government - bottom up, grassroots democracy - provides the best opportunity for experimentation and correcting the mistakes that a top-down view of government too often misses.
Yes, some things need to be uniform - things like traffic signs and rules of the road, public health, and our currency, for example.
But many of the best ideas start local. Maybe it's a commission, or a new approach to public transit. Maybe it's stricter rules for storm water drainage based on regular, extreme rain events, a unique idea on how to multiply options for affordable housing, or an idea to offer incentives for entrepreneurs. Heck, even school boards are local and the legislature actually recognized that when it set a floor on the use of electronic devices for students - districts can build on that.
That's precisely why our best opportunities for collective self-improvement are often discovered not in the halls of Congress or the office of the governor, but in the city council chamber or the county administrative building; in the small rooms and local communities that serve as civic laboratories. And that's why recent top-down efforts to strip those small, local rooms of their ability to experiment and innovate are so short-sighted.
Our communities are different, counties are different - their local economies and their built and natural environments are different - and that is where local governance and public input come in. We're different, and that's a good thing. We're not all square pegs to be shoved into round holes.
Just look at my neck of the woods. Iowa City isn't the same as Tiffin. Tiffin isn't Solon. West Branch isn't Riverside, which isn't Coralville or North Liberty. And so on. Even for communities separated by less than 30 minutes of drive time, the community-based approach on any given policy issue can vary significantly. And when the legislature imposes a one-size-fits-all "solution", it leaves little room for local governments to adjust to local needs. It's like telling everyone in a household that they must all wear the same size or kind of shoe.
In the past, preemption battles usually played out between the states and the federal government. Iowa doesn't much like it when the federal government imposes limits or a mandate. But recently, these fights have filtered down to states and municipalities. In the past ten years alone, dozens of preemption bills have become law in Iowa as Republican lawmakers in Des Moines sought to consolidate and centralize power under their governing trifecta. The statehouse slammed the brakes on local government efforts to enshrine workers' rights, provide affordable housing, manage local elections, enhance civil rights protections, and codify electrical safety requirements. These exertions of state power aren't made with each individual Iowan in mind - they impose a set of ideological goals and preempt local governance. Maybe they would like to sit in the mayor's or the councilor's chair and field public comment? Given how many opt out of basics like forums and town halls, that seems a stretch.
In 2008, for example, the statewide minimum wage increased to $7.25, a number adopted shortly thereafter by the federal government. In 2015, recognizing that $7.25 was insufficient at both reducing poverty and meeting local cost of living needs, the Johnson County Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance establishing a higher, local minimum wage that would begin at $8.20 and rise to $10.10 by 2017. Then, in March of 2017, Gov. Terry Branstad signed a law preempting that ordinance, reducing the enforceable minimum wage in Johnson County back to $7.25. Our county adjusted and innovated based on local need, to provide a higher quality of life for local residents, and the state said no - we know better - under the guise of "needing uniformity" and "it would be confusing."
Establishing a floor, a minimum standard of regulation, allows localities to experiment and innovate while protecting baseline freedoms for everyone. The Smokefree Air Act, for instance, was passed in 2008. It established a floor to protect public health but didn't prevent local governments from going further based on community demand. But establishing a floor is very different than simply saying no because someone in the legislature doesn't like what a particular local government is doing. There are also other checks and balances at work here - voters weigh in every two years, and if an ordinance is at odds with state law or the state constitution, a court can strike it down.
Our local communities are nimble - they can respond more quickly and with precision to local constituents' needs. Let local governments experiment and let the state adjust based on the results. We might all just learn something. Will all of the ideas work? Of course not. But democracy, like flowers, grows and flourishes from the ground up, not the top down.
Janice Weiner, a Democrat from Iowa City, is the Iowa Senate Minority Leader and represents District 45 in the state senate.