Institute
for Regional Studies of the CaliforniasInstitute
for Regional Studies of the CaliforniasHistorically, international boundaries denote a clash of cultures, races, economies, and governments. Toward the end of the twentieth century, borders were barriers to interaction. However, the globalization of the economy and the end of the Cold War have led to a reduction in the barrier function of international boundaries. Although they still serve as a zone of transition from nation to nation, the degree of change is becoming much less critical and less noticeable. This is most notable with economic differences, but over the years culture and race have filtered from nation to nation across international borders. In the face of these changes, government has remained the most insulated from these trends. Traditional attitudes regarding national sovereignty have made government structures the least prone to fuse or mix across borders. In most instances, there have been few examples of cooperation across international boundaries.
The San Diego-Tijuana metropolitan region is prone to all of the issues that characterize border regions worldwide. However, the San Diego-Tijuana region also has a history of being a point of transfer and exchange of national characteristics due to economic transfers, tourism, and needs relating to supply and demand of both major cities. The two cities have learned to coexist and complement one another. One of the more interesting instances of this coexistence is revealed in the area of governance.
Both the United States and Mexico are constitutional, federal republics, meaning that each nation uses three levels of government (federal, state, and local) to regulate and distribute services. Their similar structure is contrasted, however, by the traditional centralization of power in Mexico and its relative decentralization in the United States. The trend of globalization has spurred the devolution of power to local levels in the past decade, influencing the function of government in both nations. This transfer of power is a difficult task, implying the alteration of levels of influence, control, or prestige. When different levels of government are unable to work together to get things done, agencies referred to as boundary spanners may step in to bridge the boundary between levels of government on both sides of the border. This same mechanism is used along the border between San Diego and Tijuana.
In the United States, governance is divided into the following:
1. Federal agencies and policies usually dominate air and water quality, national parks and public lands, endangered species, and other environmental issues, as well as issues that deal with law enforcement, immigration, and drug and contraband smuggling. The presence of national representatives in the San Diego region to address many of these issues calls for the development of intergovernmental relationships, negotiations, and cooperation. One of these national presences in San Diego is the Department of Defense (DOD), due to military installations in the area and their impact on the local economy and governance. Ream Field is a Naval installation located in the International Border Planning Area in the Tijuana River Valley adjacent to the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve.
2. State governments often grant governing powers to local governments to distribute or manage resources. Water quality, coastal zone management, transportation (primarily highways), state parks, wildfire suppression, education policy, higher education, and economic development are examples of public policy areas in which the state has primary jurisdiction. Many of these issues, however, are managed day-to-day by the state's local governments. Although public health care and welfare are largely the responsibility of state governments, in California these services are administrated day-to-day by counties.
3. Local Government. In California, there are three primary local government entities: counties, cities, and special districts, and all are involved in the transborder region.
Counties serve in many areas as the administrative agents of the state. The San Diego County Board of Supervisors is the elected policy body responsible for carrying out state policy for health, welfare, air quality, elections, courts, and criminal prosecution, and for making county policy in areas such as land use, transportation, law enforcement (including jails), public works in the unincorporated areas and vital statistics, and tax assessment and collection county-wide. The county is divided into incorporated areas within the boundaries of cities and unincorporated territory that lies outside of cities for which the county provides municipal services.
Cities provide municipal-type services for the residents of San Diego County's 18 cities, including firefighters, police, water, sewer, parks and recreation, library, public works, streets and roads, land use planning, and economic development. Portions of Imperial Beach and San Diego lie within the U.S. part of the International Border Planning Area and the City of Chula Vista forms a section of the northern boundary of the planning area. The remainder of the area is located within the unincorporated area of the County of San Diego. Map 1 shows the boundaries of these jurisdictions.
Special Districts are usually single service governments that are found throughout the county. Over 250 exist in San Diego County. These districts provide education (through school districts), most water, sewer, and fire services in the unincorporated area of the county, and a significant number of transportation services through the San Diego Unified Port District (Lindbergh Field and the Port of San Diego), the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), and a transit district, the Metropolitan Transit Development Board (MTDB). SANDAG has the authority to plan and distribute sales tax funds for streets, roads, light rail transportation, the Coaster passenger train, and selected state highways. SANDAG is not legally a special district, but it has operated in a fashion very similar to a special district in relation to transportation since 1988.
The International Border Planning Area includes numerous special districts. For example, water is provided by the Otay Water District, the City of San Diego, the Tia Juana River Valley County Water District, and the California-American Water Company. School districts in the area include the San Ysidro District, the Sweetwater Union High School District, and the South Bay Union School District. Additional districts include fire protection districts and the community planning areas, all illustrating the complexity of governance at the local level in San Diego.
1. Federal. To understand governance in the Tijuana region, it is necessary to consider the highly centralized nature of the Mexican federal government, which predominated until the 1990s. Prior to this period, the majority of public services, such as urban administration, investment in infrastructure, environment, economic development, education, health, housing, and culture, among others, were directly provided by the federal government. As a consequence, the governing roles of the states and municipalities were marginal, including their capacity to cooperate or even communicate with local governments across the border. Bilateral relationships were controlled by the national government, even those related to functions of the local governments, such as transportation, urban planning, streets, and infrastructure for border crossings. This centralized model has been progressively modified in the last decade, creating space for states and municipalities to govern.
2. State. The state of Baja California has a governmental structure similar to that of California. Baja California consists of five municipalities, one of which is Tijuana. Among the state's main responsibilities are health services, basic and higher education, large-scale urban infrastructure, potable water and wastewater systems (despite their municipal function), economic development, highways, environmental regulation, public ministry, and judicial police. The state's financial structure is highly dependent on transfers from the federal government, as the state has no substantial local tax or revenue sources. Even following this decade of devolution, fiscal policies are still highly concentrated within the federal government.
3. Local. The municipality is the only form of local government. Due to recent decentralization programs and the vigor with which administrative and political independence has been pursued, Tijuana's municipal government is one of the most active in the country. In assuming greater autonomy, Tijuana's city council has expanded traditional municipal services to include garbage collection, street illumination, police protection, vehicular traffic, regulation of construction, street maintenance, urban planning and development, and the civil registry for vital statistics. Additionally, the city council has enlarged its functions to include economic development, large projects of urban infrastructure, cultural programs, and sports. In the near future, the municipality will assume the responsibility for regulation and enforcement of some environmental areas, including vehicular emissions. This trend is a further indication of the growing relevance of local government in Mexico.
Within the Municipality of Tijuana, there are six administrative districts, or delegations (delegaciones). The International Border Planning Area includes parts of three of these delegations: Playas de Tijuana, Zona Centro, and Mesa de Otay. With further efforts to decentralize, services such as the maintenance of streets and public parks, urban planning and development, civil registry for vital statistics, solid waste collection, and street illumination have been devolved to six municipal districts. Municipal government in Tijuana is undergoing significant transition.
The difficulty in coordinating different levels of government in one country, let alone two, has led to the creation of quasi-governmental, regional coordinating entities to circumvent governmental structures and issues relating to jurisdictional limitations, rivalries, or jealousies. Local examples in the San Diego region include:
In Mexico, there is a trend to divide public functions among the three levels of government and their coordination is established case by case. Institutionalizing intergovernmental coordination in Mexico is in its initial stages and, as a consequence, is problematic. Intergovernmental coordination is a growing need that is just now being recognized in Mexico. Examples of intergovernmental institutions include:
The U.S.-Mexican border region also has a need for the creation of boundary spanning, quasi-governmental entities that transcend the border in order to accomplish public pursuits. Perhaps the longest-running and best-known example of such an entity is the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC)/Comisi—n Internacional de L'mites y Aguas (CILA). Created by treaty in 1889 and reconfigured in 1944, the IBWC/CILA deals with issues ranging from the maintenance of the boundary and its markers and the allocation of surface waters between the two countries to addressing some surface water sanitation issues, including the construction and maintenance of international sewage treatment plants. The IBWC/CILA works to produce coordination not only between the United States and Mexico, but also between and among their various governments. Thus, for the recent construction of the International Wastewater Treatment Plant in the International Border Planning Area, the IBWC/CILA worked closely with federal, state, and local governments on both sides of the border.
The La Paz Agreement (1983) provided coordination on border environmental matters. This agreement eventually produced the Border XXI Program in 1996, which involves primarily U.S. and Mexican federal government entities, although the state and local ones are increasingly active in the process. The experiences of this program and the 1992 Integrated Border Environmental Plan for the Mexican-U.S. Border Area (IBEP) were preliminary steps toward binational environmental cooperation under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
A more recent step in binational governance has been the formalization of previously informal relationships between twin cities. Examples include the agreements of cooperation recently signed by San Diego and Tijuana (Letter of Agreement, April 1993), and those already existing between El Paso and Ciudad Ju‡rez. These agreements have not created special organisms and usually experience limited efficacy, but they provide examples of city governments moving toward greater cooperation in exchanges of information, planning, and coordination.
Binational collaboration and cooperation between the states of California and Baja California are particularly effective in the area of planning and development of transportation projects. On May 6, 1996, a letter of intent created the Bi-State Transportation Technical Advisory Committee (BTTAC). The task of the committee is to coordinate local and state efforts to plan and develop transportation infrastructure for the border region to the year 2020. The letter of intent has increased technical exchange and binational planning and activity coordination among the transportation agencies on both sides of the border. The BTTAC is comprised of representatives from the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), the Imperial Valley Association of Governments (IVAG), and the cities of Calexico and San Diego. Baja California partners in BTTAC include the State Secretariat for Human Settlements and Public Works (SAHOPE) and the municipalities of Mexicali, Tijuana, Ensenada, and Playas de Rosarito.
The wisdom of boundary spanning has also been embraced by the North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA side agreements between Mexico and the United States produced new binational entities to address the environmental problems that plague the border region: the Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC) and the North American Development Bank (NADBank). Their tasks are to identify, coordinate, design, and finance environmental infrastructure projects, particularly in the areas of wastewater treatment, water pollution, and municipal waste problems. BECC is a binational organization representing states, localities, and the public on both sides of the border. NADBank is the financial arm of the process, providing evaluation of financial feasibility and developing financing packages for BECC projects. As binational institutions, BECC and NADBank have the ability to work with all levels of government on both sides of the border. For example, in June 1997, a project was certified by BECC to upgrade sewage conveyance from Pump Station No. 1, located in Tijuana adjacent to the International Wastewater Treatment Plant, and to upgrade the San Antonio de los Buenos treatment plant (see Map 5). The project was proposed by the State Commission for Public Services of Tijuana (Comisi—n Estatal de Servicios Pœblicos de TijuanaÐCESPT), the state government agency that serves Tijuana. Partial funding came from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Mexican federal government, and the financing package was arranged by NADBank. IBWC/CILA was involved in the project, as were municipal agencies from San Diego and Tijuana. The project also included an extensive public comment process on both sides of the border. Thus, one new boundary spanner, the BECC, was able to successfully cooperate with all levels of government on both sides of the border, as well as with other regional stakeholders in addressing a border issue. These institutions (IBWC/CILA, Border XXI, BECC, and NADBank) were designed to be boundary spanning, literally and functionally, to create pragmatic solutions for the shortcomings of federal governance in binational matters and involve all levels of government, nongovernmental organizations, and the public.
An interesting state-level initiative that grew out of the NAFTA activities is the California Border Environment Cooperation Committee (Cal/BECC). Created by the governors of Baja California Sur, Baja California, and California in 1994 at the 48th General Assembly of the Commission of the Californias, Cal/BECC is charged with identifying mutually agreed upon environmental infrastructure needs along the California-Baja California border and seeking funding for those projects. Specifically, Cal/BECC works to help identified projects achieve BECC certification and NADBank funding. This three-state organization also serves as a vehicle for environmental planning, technology transfer, and technical assistance programs. Cal/BECC has a tri-state, seven-member board of directors, meets quarterly, and has support staff housed at the State Water Resources Control Board in Sacramento.
The U.S. and Mexican federal governments now realize that they cannot solve all local transborder problems and that there is a need for local authorities in both countries to interact directly on issues of mutual concern. Accordingly, in 1992 Mexico and the United States created the Border Liaison Mechanism (BLM). Established in the San Diego-Tijuana region in 1993, the BLM enabled the consuls generals of Mexico and the United States in San Diego and Tijuana to convene the three levels of government from both sides of the border to address important issues. For the first time, local governments were enabled to directly work on binational issues. The initial committee of the BLM worked on border crossing issues at the ports of entry and later committees were established for public safety and mutual aid, migration and consular protection, water, and culture and education.
 Photo |
| Tijuana's municipal palace in the Zona Río.Photograph by IMPlan. 2000. |
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