David Helpap on Serving in Local Government in Rural Areas

Frederica Freyberg:
In a sign of the times, a candidate for Douglas County board in Superior won two seats as a write-in in a spring election that had four board races without any candidate on the ballot. Our next guest has studied the declining interest in service in local government, especially in rural Wisconsin. David Helpap is a UW Green Bay professor of political science. Professor, thanks very much for being here.

David Helpap:
You bet. Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:
So how increasingly common and widespread is the kind of situation that we saw in Douglas County with too few people running for local office?

David Helpap:
Well, I think what we’ve seen over the last few years is that there has just been a declining interest in participating in politics more broadly, but when we start talking about rural areas, we have a situation where the population is declining in a lot of those areas. It’s getting older, and there has been some significant concern from those who are currently in office that once they retire or move on from public service, that there really isn’t going to be the next sort of cohort of individuals to take their place, that the next generation, the next group doesn’t really have an interest in taking on that role.

Frederica Freyberg:
Why doesn’t the next generation want to step up in that way?

David Helpap:
Most of these positions, the pay is limited or it is entirely voluntary. And so to take off time and to not be compensated for it, that can be difficult, particularly if you have a family. There is this need for social connection, for social capital to have people involved, to, you know, feel like they’re a part of the community and feel comfortable taking on those leadership goals within that community. When that sense of community goes away, particularly in rural areas, where there isn’t a huge population anyway and sort of that sense of community may not be there, may not — may have declined over the years, that makes a situation even more challenging.

Frederica Freyberg:
And meanwhile, many of these communities face rather daunting problems for which they need this kind of leadership. What are those kinds of particular issues related to rural local government that they’re having to deal with?

David Helpap:
A lot of the challenges that have been plaguing rural governments for a long time continue to exist. So limited resources, lack of capacity, challenges with delivering good quality services, but then there are some more recent challenges like affordable housing. There was a lot of concern about just good quality affordable housing in their community. Access to high-speed internet, substance abuse, those types of issues. And it is, I think, a challenge for some communities because there isn’t necessarily that capacity there to address them or the expertise to address them. Where, for larger communities that have been dealing with some of these problems for some time, that there is infrastructure in place to address it, but that may not be the case in smaller communities.

Frederica Freyberg:
So what are the ideas about how to address this?

David Helpap:
So getting, I think, more state support would help address the — one of the biggest concerns, I think 98% of communities said that they could use more resources, not surprising. Right? But at the same time, there may be opportunities to partner with other local governments, counties. Counties in Wisconsin typically provide a lot of services anyway. I think there’s this growing recognition that in order to solve a lot of the problems, big societal problems we have, regardless of if you’re in an urban area or a rural area, that some of that cross sector collaboration is needed, that we need to bring in multiple different levels of government, nonprofit organizations, private businesses to really sort of move ahead with social welfare issues, infrastructure issues. It is valuable to have those types of partners.

Frederica Freyberg:
We leave it there. Professor David Helpap, thanks very much.

David Helpap:
Thank you for having me.