State and Local Government Powers

As the Tenth Amendment clearly states, those powers not delegated to the national government are reserved to states and the local governments they establish. However, the Constitution is almost silent on what these powers might be. The only significant state power specifically mentioned by the Constitution is the ability of the states to call for a constitutional convention and to ratify (or reject) proposed amendments to the Constitution.

Additionally, the Constitution forbids state and local governments from engaging in several specific activities. Most notably, state and local governments cannot:

• Make treaties with foreign governments
• Print or coin their own money
• Overrule civil judgments (such as divorce settlements) of courts in other states
• Treat nonresidents differently from residents (except for charging nonresidents more than residents for tuition to attend state colleges and universities)
• Refuse extradition requests from other states (if someone is charged with a crime in another state, a state must surrender the suspect to the state where the crime was committed)
• Wage war against other states or nations

Many constitutional scholars have assumed that those powers not mentioned at all in the Constitution were intended to be left to state and local governments. The most significant policy area over which state and local governments have exercised almost complete control has been public education. While the national government has provided hundreds of billions of dollars to help pay for the provision of elementary, secondary, and higher education, it has, for the most part, left the details of education policy to the states. States have, in turn, delegated most of the day-to-day operations of school districts and schools to local governments (primarily school boards). Additionally, state and local governments are the exclusive providers (or regulators) of public utilities and services such as water, sewage systems, garbage removal, and the maintenance of streets. Most of the other powers traditionally exercised by the states are not exclusively state powers, but rather powers that are shared by both national and state governments.

Examples of shared powers include:

• Anyone who earns a paycheck knows that income is taxed by the national government, by most state governments, and even by some municipal governments. Governments at every level collect taxes to fund their activities.
• National, state, and local governments maintain law enforcement agencies that often work together to prevent and punish the same crimes.
• Virtually every level of government makes, implements, and interprets the laws that apply to its sphere of influence.

It is with regard to these and other shared powers that the marble cake metaphor is most appropriate.