The special municipality elections may be over, but the new mayors of Greater Taichung, Greater Tainan and Greater Kaohsiung now have to face the complex process of organizing the mergers of the current cities and counties into those new entities. Without measures to restrain the power of the new mayors relative to their county and city predecessors, the essence of democratic politics could be lost.
Unfortunately, the current approach of the three special municipalities is to merge the smaller unit with the larger units, maintain dual administrative centers and distribute government bureaus and departments evenly throughout the new municipalities. These plans are mostly political motivated and not based on administrative or economic needs. Such an approach is unfavorable for the long-term development of these areas.
At the moment, the first thing the three new mayors need to do is quickly improve or restore administrative efficiency, to ensure the mergers benefit the public.
When pressed for time, local government heads often make policy decisions and personnel adjustments based on the “public need” — code for voter considerations. This approach makes it difficult to make long-term decisions and plans, thus sacrificing administrative efficiency on the altar of political convenience.
In other words, the mayors need to quickly resolve administrative and personnel disputes. The quickest way would be to use their political authority, but that would undermine administrative efficiency because of the lack of complementary measures.
Take for example the dual administrative centers to be adopted by these three new municipalities. This policy will be implemented to meet the demands of voters in different districts, but it could easily create problems when coordinating city planning. For instance, business that could used to be processed in 10 minutes could now take a day or even longer after the mergers, and this will effect administrative efficiency.
The main reason to merge these cities and counties was overall development, and as such the dual administrative centers should be a transitional solution, otherwise the mergers will be rendered almost meaningless. In particular, if bureaus and departments are evenly distributed between the two administrative centers in an effort to balance local development, cross-departmental coordination will become more difficult and more expensive.
In addition, since there will be two administrative centers, some officials will have to travel further to get to work and this will interrupt the pace of their lives, which could in turn directly affect the commitment to their duties.
The organizational mergers in these three special municipalities should be a matter of long-term organizational engineering. Without a fundamental vision that focus could be lost, which will sacrifice the original intent of the mergers.
Not long ago, Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) said that the special municipality mergers were likely to bring chaos for at least a year. Compared to the relatively simple upgrading of Taipei County into Sinbei City, the creation of the three southern special municipalities involves the merger of a city and a county, and as a result the adjustment period is much more complex. As such it is likely that these municipalities will experience much more than a year of chaos and it could even drag on for the duration of the new mayors terms in office.
In the past, the reconstruction of government organizations was generally dominated by political factors, the specialist fields of organizational development or reform receiving little attention. For example, the streamlining of Taiwan Provincial Government was undertaken, at least in part, for political reasons. Such factors have also affected reorganization of the central government in recent years.
The relocation of the Fisheries Agency to Kaohsiung a few years ago was one such political decision. According to the agency’s own Web site, its headquarters was relocated to Kaohsiung on Oct. 29, 2007. To encourage staff to move south, the agency -promised to give those who moved to Kaohsiung a salary raise, but many were still reluctant to go.
As a result, an announcement later appeared on the agency’s Web site stating that “in response to the call of 40 fishery associations and groups nationwide in June 2008 for the agency to move back to northern Taiwan in order to improve administrative efficiency, the agency is transferring cross-departmental and policy-making affairs back to its Taipei office.”
Less than a year after the move, the agency moved its key units back north. I can’t help but wonder if the compensatory measures were inadequate and the policy itself was wrong. Or did the agency have some difficulties that were not revealed to the public?
The mergers of cities and counties should not be implemented on the basis of political considerations alone. Today, the three new southern mayors are exercising their “exceptional powers” to make decisions concerning the mergers. However, government leaders seldom meet their “exceptional responsibilities” by making decisions on mergers based on administrative efficiency.
Such an approach cannot but undermine the very reason for the mergers — enhanced efficiency
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Yang Yung-nane is director of National Cheng Kung University’s Department of Political Science.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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