Control Freaks

I like driving. I like smashing things, and driving is a fun easy way to smash things. My favorite things to have smashed, so far, include a Plymouth sedan, a Ford station wagon, a Chevy Impala station wagon, assorted bushes, a brand spanking-new Scirocco (totaled!), and I think a Honda, or Toyota, I’m not sure because it got away from me. The state doesn’t let me drive anymore, since the Honda, or Toyota.

But I don’t mean to reminisce about my fun cab driving days. I want to talk about driving public policy.

Driving provides a great metaphor for how power is exercised. It leads you to pay attention not only to who’s in the driver’s seat but also how the controls are set up, and how they’re used. Are there airbags? Are there cup-holders? Can the driver lock the kiddies in securely with a push of a button? Or can they open their doors and hurl themselves to the pavement, risking instant death, any time they want?

I was alerted to the value of driving as a metaphor for the control of public policy by the people at the Committee to End Homelessness in King County (CEHKC). They are working out what they call their 10-Year Plan Dashboard Project. The idea of this Dashboard Project of theirs is to maintain 9 or 10 measurements associated with eight desirable outcomes having to do with ending homelessness in 10 years. These measurements will be made available to the Governing Board of CEHCK, and updated on a regular schedule. The Governing Board will steer policy accordingly.

Then, when the measurements go “red,” or “tits up,” as we professional drivers call it, the Governing Board will call in the professional mechanics, otherwise known as the CEHCK InterAgency Council (IAC).

For example, people who want to end homelessness would like there to be lots of apartments that poor people can rent. So the Governing Board at CEHCK says, increasing “access to existing units (rental) stock for people who experience homelessness in King County” is a desirable outcome. But they don’t know how to measure access to rental stock. So the associated measurement is gotten by counting the number of fully subsidized rental units in the county. This they can do because they know all the folks handing out the subsidies on a first-name basis, and have them all on speed-dial.

The Governing Board will eye the “fully subsidized rental units” dial along with 8 or 9 other dials like it, while they drive the 10-Year Plan Cadillac, making this policy decision here, that policy decision there. Then, like I said, when the dial swings way down, they’ll pull over. They won’t look under the hood and pretend to know what to do. Instead they’ll immediately call the mechanics, the IAC, on their cell phones. These mechanics, by the way, happen to be mostly the same people who manage the subsidized properties. So they’re confident they can fix anything to do with subsidies. They guarantee it!

Notice there are no nasty politics involved. The metaphor doesn’t put legislators in the Cadillac. Instead it puts them on and around the road, as obstacles to avoid. Also, nobody is handing out tickets when the driver hits a lamppost.

There’s another way to do this kind of driving. In 2003, Scotland passed a law granting all citizens the right to housing, and created what amounts to a 9-year plan to end homelessness by making 2012 the deadline for turning the right into reality.

So in Scotland the legislators, or parliament, got in the car at the outset, inserted the key and turned it. They put their First Minister in the driver’s seat and told him to watch not 9 or 10 dials but a few more than 5 million, one for each citizen. The courts will keep the driver from swerving off the road.

No driving on the left side of the road in America.