Zephyr Teachout Quotes

Devolution [decentralization of government] cannot stop at the State House. It must go down to City Hall.

Quite as serious an error [of the French] is the failure to provide for local self-government. As this lies at the bottom of republican institutions, and should be, moreover, the first concern of democracy

The more responsibility you can move toward local government, the better of you're going to be … City governments do better than their State governments in terms of accountability.

With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs.

I'm a strong supporter of states' rights to do what they need.

Throughout my political career, I've believed in the concept of home rule. Some call it local control. Whichever phrase you use, the concept is the same - the best decisions are those made closest to those who will be impacted by the decisions.

I happen to be one who believes very strongly that state and local governments have their proper roles.

You can have very big local government. By big, I mean very engaged government. Do you measure it in terms of the number of laws? Number of employees? You could make arguments for either one. I tend to think the axis of the size of government is the wrong concern. But I do think that situating power more locally is a legitimate approach.

I know people don't like America very much, but the one thing it's very good on is local government.

We have to allow people in the states to make their own decisions, to get government agencies out of the way and let local people make decisions about what's best for them.

The value of democracy lies in the fact that good or bad government has its roots in the localities where people know each other and where they account for their actions to their neighbors.

I think that the more we, as a state, yield and cede decisions to the federal government, the lesser we'll be for it as a state.

The only way to make government more efficient is to make it smaller and to make it more local.

If we as a party are serious about devolution, then we must respect councils and nations enough to determine their own agenda.

I think it is time for a radical federalism in this country, where people trust innovation coming from the local level and ramp that up.

Lisa Nandy is absolutely right that we need to devolve economic power away from Westminster and learn from what Labour councils around the country are doing.

Local self-government…is the life-blood of liberty.

There's a lot of the Midwest and the West in Justice Rehnquist's approach to constitutional law. And by that I mean a recognition that people know pretty well how to govern themselves, that government that is closest to the people is apt to be more responsive to their legitimate concerns and needs.

There's much more we can be doing in Parliament, we could be giving more power back to people at local government level, through local referendums.

That's what I think regions are about, making central government more accountable and fairer.

My philosophy is not a bean-counting, accounting 'look at this.' It is a philosophy that smaller government is better government, and government that is closer to the people is best of all.

A majority in all parties do, I think, want to see local government recover its old vigour and independence.

I think a lot of things could be handled locally.

Central government's such as Canada's have become too small to deal with the big global issues, yet they remain too large and distant to deal with problems of local control.

There is a lack of emphasis and detail on self-government of business enterprises and community government. There is too much emphasis on the part that the Project Director and his staff play. Governmental officials should not impose their will on the residents, but the government should be formulated by the residents. It is absolutely essential that the personnel understand and sympathize with the policy of self-government.