When I went to work at the Advisory Council on Historic
Preservation (ACHP) in 1979, my boss was the ACHP’s first executive director,
Robert R. Garvey, Jr. Bob was one of the
“Big Three” (with Earnest Connally and William Murtagh) who had set up the U.S.
Government’s historic preservation program after enactment of the National
Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) – which, as executive secretary of the
National Trust for Historic Preservation, he had been significantly responsible
for creating. He was also substantially
responsible for creating the process of federal project review under Section
106 of NHPA – the “Section 106 process” that, with various additional bells and
whistles, we know and love (sic) today.
I was reminded of Bob – long retired and sadly, long dead –
the other day while reading the transcript of a meeting about a Section 106
programmatic agreement (PA). The consulting
parties had labored for months to develop the PA – an intricate piece about
management of a federal installation – and reached agreement on its provisions,
for implementation of historic preservation plans of various kinds. These plans would, if carried out, ensure
that all changes to historic buildings and landscape elements were done in
accordance with the recommended approaches in the Secretary of the Interior’s
Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties, under the supervision of qualified
professionals, with various kinds of public review and opportunities to resolve
disputes.
“But remember,” said the representative of the State
Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO), according to the transcripts. “You’ll still have to submit each undertaking
for our review.”
“Of course,” said the federal agency’s representative, and
one could imagine heads bobbing all around the table. “That’s the law.”
Well, of course, it’s not the law. SHPO review of projects is not a matter of
law; it’s prescribed in the ACHP’s regulations (36 CFR Part 800) as part of the
Section 106 process. The regulations also
provide that agencies can negotiate PAs as alternative ways to comply with
Section 106 – which was what the agency, in this case, had done.
But legalities aside, it was the SHPO’s attitude that
brought Bob to mind. Bob had a sort of
mantra that he drilled into the heads of all those who worked under his
direction. It went like this:
“Our job is to work ourselves out of our jobs.”
The idea was that over time, we should get federal agencies
and other change agents to address the historic preservation impacts of their
actions so naturally, so mindfully, that they wouldn’t need regulatory
nit-pickers like us – and the SHPOs – looking over their shoulders.
Reviewing that transcript, it struck me that it had been a
long, long time since I had heard anyone articulate or even allude to Bob’s
mantra. I don’t think most historic
preservation people or agency officials or representatives of regulated
industries even know about it, or can relate to it.
It seems to me that in the years since Bob’s generation
departed the historic preservation scene, we’ve become comfortable with the
idea – indeed, deeply committed to the idea – of a permanent historic
preservation bureaucracy, whose good gray officials review every project and
insist that “proper standards” – as they understand and articulate them – are followed. The members of that bureaucracy, and those of
us in the private sector that advise clients about how to comply with the law,
have become deeply committed to its perpetuation, and really can imagine
nothing different. Hence the SHPO’s
assertion in the transcript, and the agency’s bland acquiescence.
In retrospect, I suppose it was inevitable. Create a bureaucracy, and it will inevitably
evolve into a self-perpetuating one. One
that, I fear, is often more concerned about perpetuating itself than about the
principles and policies it was set up to advance.
I wonder, though – as we approach NHPA’s fiftieth
anniversary – if we shouldn’t revisit Bob Garvey’s mantra, and think about ways
to work ourselves out of our jobs.
