Washington -- Starting with President Bill Clinton, this town's newest phrase is ''reinventing government,'' a tribute to David Osborne, whose ''Reinventing Government,'' last year, may be the first public administration book ever to make a best-seller list.

...Enter a new organization to help them out. Its chair is none other than David Osborne, who says governments must now go through the same radical restructuring that is sweeping through American business. His Alliance for Redesigning Government will try to connect the thousands of government reformers who now, in his words, find themselves part of ''a movement without a central nervous system.''

As a first move, we decided to assemble a balanced, bipartisan advisory committee of government officials, labor, nonprofit and media leaders. Aiming for 20 acceptances, we sent out 40 invitations. To our astonishment, 37 people accepted. Just a sampling of the list includes our vice-chairs, Oregon Gov. Barbara Roberts (D) and former Indianapolis Mayor William Hudnut (R), U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), Govs. William Weld (R-Mass.) and Roy Romer (D-Colo.), and Mayors Sharpe James (Newark) and John Norquist (Milwaukee). We also have such star city managers as Camille Barnett (Austin) and Robert Bobb (Richmond)...

Welcome to Visalia, California -- a city that could teach most companies a thing or two about good management.

By DAVID OSBORNE | Sep 1, 1985

...When the school district sprang its trap, Gaebler asked his staff the same question. Months later, after a series of negotiations and land purchases, a four-parcel swap and sale left the district with $1.2 million and a prime site for its new school -- and the city with commercial property that it expects to sell for a tidy profit.  [Note:  somebody should investigate the history of that deal.  It sounds like an "arranged success".]

The deal was without precedent elsewhere, as far as anyone in Visalia knows. But for Gaebler and his staff, it was not unusual. This is a city, after all, that stepped in and ran a minor-league baseball franchise for six years -- the only municipally owned professional baseball team in the United States at the time -- after the Mets pulled out and no private buyer turned up. It is a city that won the scramble to buy an Olympic training pool last summer, at a savings of $400,000, because, after hearing about the deal on a Thursday, it was able to cut a check the following Monday.

Visalia, in other words, is what Don Borut of the International City Management Association calls "one of the most entrepreneurial cities in America." Borut may not have taken a scientific survey before bestowing that honor, but from all the evidence, he could not be too far off. At first glance, "entrepreneurial government" seems a contradiction in terms. Many entrepreneurs consider government, by its very nature, to be inefficient, unwieldy, and bureaucratic -- the antithesis of entrepreneurial. Hence the widespread belief, in business circles, that the government is best that governs least. Ted Gaebler and his colleagues have proven that there is another way.

Gaebler, whose glasses and deadpan delivery bring fleeting images of a taller Woody Allen, is a fanatic on the subject. He speaks in rapid, precise bursts, with the zeal of an apostle. If an entrepreneur is someone who knows there is a better way and will risk everything to prove it, Gaebler fits the definition perfectly. He does not think of the city manager's position as a job, he says, but as part of a mission "to change the nature of city government." He took that mission to new frontiers last month, when he became city manager of San Rafael, Calif., the seat of affluent Marin County.

..."Be a catalyst," Gaebler urges other government officials. "Be a broker. Don't be a doer. My ideal concept of city government is a $150,000-a-year city manager and five $100,000-a-year assistants. Period. They do nothing but broker the community's services."

More important, he stresses, government officials must learn to take risks and seek profits, "think outside the box," avoid paperwork and regulations. Managers must be given autonomy and encouraged to continually rethink their "product mix." They must learn to "leverage the maximum benefit out of [their] dollars by using other people's money." They must be willing to divest services -- "we gave the library to the county, the ambulance to a private hospital, day care to the churches and the junior college" -- but they must also thrust city government into roles not ordinarily considered its province. And all the while, they must be given room -- and must give their
subordinates room -- to make mistakes.

"I am trying to get people to think like owners, not bureaucrats," Gaebler preaches. "To have the mental set, 'If this were my money, would I really spend it this way?"

... Gann's group has taken a survey of business people in town concerning the city's intervention in the marketplace,and he plans to present the results to the city council. Before Gaebler took the job in San Rafael, there was talk of one or two "anti-Gaebler" candidacies for council this fall, although no one predicted such campaigns would succeed. Even among the developers, the desire was to set the city manager corralled, not fired.

Bill Evans, another developer, believes that for most of his colleagues, the real problem wasn't Gaebler's specific actions, but that "he'd accumulated so much power. . . . Was he really interested in Visalia, or was he interested in creating what he wants -- a new kind of city government?"

Gaebler's personality only fanned the flames. He likes the limelight and is quick to engage in battle. Being a visionary, he is forever rallying his troops to new entrepreneurial frontiers -- talking, for instance, about the city as a corporation, himself as its chief executive officer, and the council as its board of directors. "It was a little scary to some of the folks outside, who heard my internal pep talk words and took them literally," he says.

...The classic example came when Gaebler grabbed statewide television coverage by proposing to rebate $25 of Visalia's budget surplus to every citizen as a "share" in the city. The police, who wanted higher salaries and better retirement pay, were outraged. And the city council, which had never passed on the idea, was embarrassed.

Meanwhile, his handpicked successor, Don Duckworth, faces some serious internal problems. The staff Gaebler leaves behind is in the midst of a transition from the excitement of start-up to the plateau of sustained achievement. The novelty has worn off, people are stretched thin, and the strains are beginning to show.

In many ways, it seems, Gaebler fits the stereotype of a charismatic entrepreneur who can inspire people with his vision, but who lacks the patience to manage a success. His style is to throw a lot of balls in the air and let his staff handle what comes down. In Visalia, he defined his role as 90% "external" -- dealing with the council and the community at large -- and relied on three assistants to run the organization. "Ted is an idea man," says Carol Cairns, "not an operations man."

Practical Public Administration: A Response to Academic Critique of the Reinvention Trilogy

We need to confess to our bias since, after all, we are Americans. We are pragmatic, practical, and we seek action. While we may differ from others of diverse international backgrounds, we write from our experiences in American government, particularly local government. Rather than debate age-old theories and philosophies, we actively seek ways to make our organizations better and to delight the citizens we serve. We recognize that many readers view the “reinvention” or NPM approach negatively because of its failure to take root in Eastern Europe. The idea especially appeals to administrators in the United States because of our history and political culture.