Issues Facing Intergovernmental Relations
The state and the federal government should complement each other. The federal government exercises powers in a semi-autonomous manner, keeping the state government in check; this prevents the country from having an all-powerful central government. However, there are instances when the state and federal governments clash on some issues. There have also been major debates on which matters should be handled by which government. Sometimes the national government has been seen to arm-twist the federal governments into doing things in a certain manner, for example, adopting some legislation.
The first major issue is the policies and legislations put in place to govern various issues. There have been debates on which laws should be proposed by the national government and which ones should not. While states want to maintain their autonomy, it is seen that some laws touch on broad issues that affect every American and should therefore be established by the national government to create uniformity. On the other hand, some people argue that people from different states feel differently about particular issues and should not be generalized by national government policies. It can be argued that each state has its unique needs and instead of yoking all states under one policy; the national government should issue regulations and give the states a freehand to self-determination. This way, the two governments will be complimentary.
An example would be the proposed education policy which has resulted in a law suit. A story published by Yahoo News (para. 2) details how the adoption The Common Core Standards has been challenged in court and termed as ‘driving the country towards a national curriculum’. The Common Core Standards refer to the use of benchmarking in English and Mathematics to assess a student’s ability and established a comparable assessment across states. According to Yahoo News (5) the standards have been adopted by some 40 states. This partial adoption now creates a lack of uniformity and a conflict between federal and state laws.
Other issues like gun control, marriage equality and illegal immigration have also raised conflict between the two centers of authority. There has been a school of thought that illegal immigration should be left for each state to determine its legislation. While issues like gun control and marriage equality are seen to be touching on everyone one way or another and should be left to the national government to come up with uniform laws to determine this.
Environmental relations is also major problem in intergovernmental issues. Many are of the view that since each state has a different environmental status, each should make their laws and polies to suit their kind of landscape and environmental condition. The federal government does put up environmental policies on broad issues. This is usually used by the state governments as an indicator of how to tailor their environmental issues and how far they can go. The feral policy sort of benchmarks state policy on the environment. An example is the Clean Air Act; in some cases, the EPA overturns permits given by states. The endangered Species programme is an example of a policy that states use as a pointer on the bare minimum operation. Different states may add on to the list provided by the federal government. However, there have been cases where some states have deemed as insufficient the policies provided by the federal government. An example would be the regulation on non-point water source pollution which is seen as poor.
Bureaucracy lack of coordination of programs is also a major issue pitting the notational government against the state government. The existence of strict bureaucratic processes has led to poor services or underperformance in some cases. Bilmes and Daley (3) site an example where areas with similar roles e.g. veteran affairs, have not been streamlined to function cohesively hence the many cases reported of mismanagement and negligence. Other terms and processes have also not been aligned (4) making things like the federal health exchange not properly running.
The third issue that features in intergovernmental relationship between the two governments is the budget and taxes. There have been reports where the national government has been said to manipulate its grants and funds for states with the aim of manipulating them into adopting certain legislations. An example is given in Yahoo News where the government is accused of ‘manipulating federal grant money’ to make states adopt the adopted common standards of education (Yahoo News para. 1). In the past states were arm-twisted into adopting certain laws in order to receive highway funding.
There will always be issues between the states and the national government. This is because of the different interests that the two entities represent. However cohesion and compromise should be achieved for the proper working of institutions. It therefore important for laws, policies and regulations to complement. The national laws should provide a benchmark for state laws and each state can adopt a law, with permissible modifications to suit its needs. Like Blimes and Daley propose (5), similar services should be streamlined for uniformity.
Works Cited
Bilmes, Linda & Daley William. ‘Management’. Idaho Statesman. 9/4/2014. Print.
Yahoo News. ‘States. Rights Issue’. August 27, 2014. Web
