Planning versus “a plan”

John R. Brown

It may have been Dwight Eisenhower who said that “plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” A plan, in other words, may become outdated or irrelevant nearly as soon as it is agreed to, whereas the process of planning never stops. Planning is a means—or rather a set of tools—that individuals and groups of people within a community (or a broader set of jurisdictions—a “region,” perhaps— can learn to use to govern themselves better.

The 1987 statute that authorized regional water planning asserted that each “region” should be able to “plan for its water future.” But this is not how it worked out. No criteria were established for constituting regional entities, defining their membership, or specifying the scope of their authority. A Regional Water Plan had to be “accepted” by local jurisdictions in the region and finally, by the Interstate Stream Commission (ISC). But acceptance did not imply that any elements of a region’s “plan” would ever be implemented by the agencies responsible. Once a regional entity’s work was done, State support (intermittent and inadequate at best) ended. No ongoing role for the regional entities was envisioned, nor was monitoring of the RWPs undertaken. Some of the regional groups survived; others did not. Some had to be reconstituted to update their regions’ plans.

In 2007 and again in 2015, the New Mexico Water Dialogue convened day-long workshops at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge to enable ISC staff and regional water planners to address their concerns face-to-face. The Dialogue’s relationship with the ISC had been fraught from the outset, seen broadly as a struggle for control of the planning agenda between regional entities focused on the importance of planning for their regions’ water future, and State actors concerned with consistent methodology so that regional plans could be compared and “folded into” a State Water Plan.

The Water Security Planning Act (WSPA) of 2023 is designed to provide a bridge across this divide, by authorizing the creation of regional water security planning councils and investing them with authority to coordinate water planning and management actions within their regions. The councils are intended to be largely self-organizing and representative of all stakeholder interests in each region.

This degree of decentralization Is often referred to in political science lingo as polycentric governance. It involves sharing authority to create a system of co-responsibility between institutions of governance at the regional and local levels according to the principle of subsidiarity (i.e., the theory that decisions should be taken at the level closest to where they will have their effect) increasing the overall quality and effectiveness of decision making, while enhancing the authority and capacities of sub-state levels.

ISC duties include assuring regional water plans meet standards for approval, not merely accepting them for filing.  The law says ISC’s approval of plans requires it to recommend the approved plans’ priorities for state matching funding.

Will it work? Governance is not the singular province of governments, and examples of effective collective action abound. Planning is process, demanding the ability to reconcile diverse values, beliefs, and expectations in pursuit of a common goal. After the basic facts about a problematic situation are agreed upon, success depends on the good faith efforts of a wide range of participants.

Governing, at sub-state, multi-jurisdictional scales is, at least in part, a problem of coordination among operators, regulators and stakeholders who share existential—but often competing— interests in a common source of supply (of a scarce collective good). The evolution of institutions for successful governance requires that actors adopt shared strategies for implementing plans and resolving issues, and that they make enforceable commitments to each other to carry them out. As their actions yield benefits and costs participants may adjust operating rules within the limits of their authority, including provisions for monitoring the resource as well as the behavior of actors who affect its condition.

Editor’s note:  John Brown served as the Executive Director of the New Mexico Water Dialogue in the early 2000s and was heavily engaged in regional water planning under the 1987 law. John is a member of the NM Water Advocates Board and was a student of Prof. Elinor Ostrom.