Policy Consensus E-News — October 2004
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In this issue:
- ADR in Virginia Gaining Momentum
- Texas Trains State and Local Leaders as Public Policy Fellows
- California Study Examines Merits of Collaborative Watershed Management
Virginia’s Interagency ADR Gaining Momentum With
Top-Down Recognition and ‘Pot Luck’ Programming
 Governor Mark Warner |
Virginia’s growing list of accomplishments in state-supported consensus building and DR processes now includes top-down encouragement from Governor Mark Warner.
Among Warner’s Management Objectives for 2004-05—aimed at making Virginia “the best managed state in the nation”—is completion of six major administrative dispute resolution pilots under the tutelage of the Interagency ADR Council, and a 25 to 30 percent statewide increase in the use of ADR processes, as measured by the Council’s annual survey.
The ADR Council, created in 2002 just after passage of the Virginia Administrative Dispute Resolution Act, provides training opportunities, assists agencies in developing DR and consensus building programs, and develops recommendations for using and improving DR processes within government. The act itself encourages the use of ADR by local governments and legislative and executive branch agencies in a variety of areas.
Claudia Farr, Director of Virginia’s Department of Employment Dispute Resolution, and a member and lead staff for the ADR Council, said the Governor’s support complements the “grass roots passion” that exists within state agencies and among council members.
Texas Training Offers State and Local Leaders
Collaborative Problem Solving Tools
The
Center for Public Policy at The University of Texas School of Law recently
completed its seventh Fellows Training in public policy conflict resolution
and collaborative problem solving. The Center sponsors the biannual training
for high-level government policy makers, public interest group leaders,
and experienced Texas mediators.
“The goal is not to train Texas leaders to become mediators, but to give them another tool for dealing with complicated policy issues,” said Jan Summer, the Center’s Director and a PCI/NPCC Board member. Fellows are typically the kind of people who would sponsor a collaborative process to address a Texas policy issue, she said, but who generally have little access to these problem solving tools and how they can be used.
Since the program’s inception in 1993, the Center has trained about 200 Fellows. This year’s participants included four legislators, directors of all the cabinet level environmental agencies, chiefs of staff, judges, university officials and a number of commissioners and agency personnel.
According to Sen. Todd Staples, one of this year’s Fellows, “the training helped shine the light on consensus building and its value to our society. The skills of negotiation and conflict resolution are critical to the public policy arena, and the CPPDRF program serves as a model to find solutions to today's complex problems.”
Frequently, the Center hosts luncheons or workshops in which Fellows participate and offer input on current and future programming or policy matters. At their workplaces, Fellows “begin using the language and really start thinking in more collaborative ways,” says Summer. “When they have a public-sector problem to resolve, they now view collaborative processes as a possible tool for resolving it.”
PCI Executive Director Chris Carlson and PCI/NPCC Board member Ralph Becker were among the presenters at the four-day training, focusing on states’ use of collaborative processes in government in Texas and throughout the country. CDR Associates provides the Fellows with training in collaborative decision-making and conflict resolution, and a specialist in self-directed learning presents tools for recognizing and improving personal approaches to conflict.
For information about the Fellows training, contact Jan Summer.
California Study Examines Merits of
Collaborative Watershed Management Groups
Findings
from a recent investigation of watershed stakeholder partnerships, published
in August by The Center for Collaborative Policy at California State
University, reveal both concerns and promise about the democratic merits
of collaborative watershed partnerships.
The study by William D. Leach, the Center’s Research Director, presents a framework for assessing the democratic merits of collaborative policymaking processes, and uses the framework to evaluate a random sample of 76 watershed-based stakeholder groups in Washington and California.
According to Leach, who presented his findings at the Association for Conflict Resolution’s annual meeting in September, the results should ease critics’ worries that collaboration is akin to co-optation. Federal and state agencies are the most prominent categories of stakeholders in watershed partnerships, the study shows, both in terms of numbers at partnership meetings, and in the influence they wield over policy issues. While Leach’s study raises concerns about adequate representation by national environmental groups and others, it revealed no evidence that devolution diminishes government’s role in watershed management.
The entire text of Leach’s study is available on the Center’s website.
Watershed Solutions: Collaborative Problem Solving for States and Communities, a report by NPCC Fellow Lang Marsh, makes recommendations to governors and other state leaders about how to initiate these kinds collaboratives, and gives examples of successes from around the country.
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