Gridlock impossible at 'kitchen table'

Negotiations were intense, as environmentalists, fishing interests, agricultural groups, and the timber industry squared off. I [Governor Kitzhaber] spent a lot of time going from meeting to meeting, making sure one group's concerns were really being heard by another. Sometimes, I met with people one on one. Over time, we reached a solution. We connected the salmon and clean water issues in a way that allowed for local variation. We promoted use of watershed councils around the state, giving them authority - but stipulating that solutions be acceptable to all, including private landowners. Instead of imposing a government-drafted plan, together we created a locally based solution that everyone could accept. It worked.

To rebuild the trust that leaders need in order to be effective, we need to step out of hearing rooms and into schools, universities, libraries, and even the town square. This collaborative governance requires leaders to do certain things:

• Identify and raise issues that can be resolved only through people working together;

• Create an opportunity and place for people to come together to address issues;

• Use clear, common-sense language to talk about possible solutions without predetermining the outcome;

• Conduct public negotiations that integrate contending interests; and

• Create agreements about what we're all willing to do and under what conditions, and then take action.

These aren't pie-in-the-sky ideas. All this has happened, in places from Montana to Ohio, from Texas to North Carolina. It just doesn't happen enough.

We're talking about agreements that might be hard-fought compromise during which conversations can be heated. They involve give and take. But agreement is not giving in. Agreement is what grown-ups do. Productive agreement means that all sides gain more than they lose.

In Wyoming, we faced seemingly endless unresolved issues when it came to land use - all working at cross-purposes on natural resource issues. My own background [Governor Geringer's] reflects a time when folks would get together to resolve an issue or agree on something by dropping by the house, leaning on the hood of a pickup truck for a chat, or going inside for coffee and a visit around the kitchen table. So, thinking back to my upbringing, I began the "Governor's Kitchen Table" process. Federal and state agency directors and their staffs came together to identify priority issues that needed to be addressed collaboratively.

I began every meeting, not with minutes of the last meeting, but by asking people to describe their backgrounds, what their careers had been like, and what they cared about. Participants discovered they had more in common than in conflict. They took an interest in one another almost immediately. The results of this simple invitation to actually work together, instead of each in their own agency office, were extraordinary. Just two examples: We were able to resolve a number of forest health issues and agreed on road improvements to and inside Yellowstone Park. Any one of these, by itself would be a significant achievement.

Other leaders, too, are beginning to call people together to work out difficult issues. But, given the nature of the new, complex problems we face, these efforts must snowball.

Leaders across America, will we rise to this challenge or will we lower our sights? If you agree that it's time to get to work, we'll meet you at the table.

• James E. Geringer, a Republican, was governor of Wyoming from 1995 through 2003. John Kitzhaber, a Democrat, was governor of Oregon from 1995 through 2002. They cochair the Policy Consensus Initiative and the National Policy Consensus Center.

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