Choices from Seventy Years of American Experience

Chuck Bean — former Executive Director, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (2012–2023). Written pro bono, with no government or donor affiliation.

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What the book is

A free digital book for Ukraine's mayors and hromada heads, members of parliament, planners, and the people who work with them.

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American communities have built and rebuilt one institution for seventy years: the voluntary council of governments. I look closely at one hundred of them: how the law provides for each one, how their boards divide seats between a big city and its small neighbors, and how they are paid for. Then I carry those lessons onto Ukraine's own map: 72 metropolitan areas, 51 of them under Ukrainian control.

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The book is a menu of choices, with the trade-offs made plain: how an enabling law can be written, how a board can be built, how the work can be paid for. Ukraine's founders and drafters make those choices. In the last chapter I say which ones I would make, and what each one costs.

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The English and Ukrainian editions will be released at the same time, and both are coming soon.