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| Vol. 18, No. 34 | June 10, 1999 |
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| Vol. 18, No. 34 | June 10, 1999 |
A delegation of mayors from Slovenia, a former Yugoslav republic, will come to the University this fall to get a firsthand look at how U.S. cities raise money.
Their trip is funded through a United States Information Agency (USIA) grant awarded to Mark Huddleston, political science and international relations, to introduce revenue-raising strategies to Eastern European city officials. The first phase of the grant began in April when he, Arno Loessner, urban affairs and public policy, and Ronald Gardner, former mayor of Newark, traveled to Slovenia to conduct a series of workshops on funding city government. Loessner is a specialist in municipal finance.
The workshops come on the heels of local elections in Slovenia held in the fall of 1998. Huddleston, whose expertise is in public administration, was awarded the grant based on work he did in Bosnia in 1995 just after the war. He said he expects the Slavs to be successful in making the transition to a democratic form of government.
Slovenia is one of southeastern Europe's "biggest success stories," Huddleston said. He considers the nation very democratic with a high level of economic development and on the verge of joining the European Common Market and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It was the first republic to break away from Yugoslavia in the early '90s. While the dissolution of Yugoslavia led to war in Croatia and Bosnia, Slovenia has remained relatively untouched even by recent events in Serbia and Kosovo.
"Slovenia has always been a kind of odd-man-out," Huddleston said.
It's the western-most republic of the former Yugoslavia and shares borders with Austria and Italy. What may be as important, he said, is that the dominant religion is Roman Catholic, closer to the European than to the Eastern Orthodox and Muslim religions of most of Yugoslavia.
Huddleston, Loessner and Gardner were in Slovenia in late March, just as NATO began the air war in Serbia and Kosovo.
There was almost no sign of it, other than the sound of aircraft passing overhead from the base in Aviano, Italy, Huddleston said. "We saw one, small street demonstration in Ljubljana and a Serbian church was vandalized. I saw no anti-NATO or anti-American demonstrations. It was really kind of eerie, but there was nothing."
They held sessions in Ljubljana and Maribor attracting 30 city officials hoping to put into practice what U.S. municipalities have been doing for hundreds of years. When Slovenia became an independent republic, it began the slow progression from socialism to capitalism and from a highly centralized state to autonomous local governments.
Huddleston said he thinks the trip to Delaware will make real what the mayors were taught during the workshops. "Based on the response of the mayors, we apparently provided a lot of information they found useful. We'll probably accomplish more when they can see how it's done in the U.S.," he said.
Huddleston's first contact with the people of the former Yugoslavia began with the Dayton Peace Accord that ended the war in Bosnia. He was hired by the International City Management Association, under contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development, to work as a consultant to the Bosnians in forming a governmental structure that could help them recover from the war.
"It was the single most interesting thing I've ever done in my life," Huddleston said.
Like most Americans, Huddleston said he has had little life experience with war.
"I got there six months after the Dayton Accord. There was still gunfire and roadblocks, and the first thing we were told was how to get to Turkish bases, which housed the NATO forces in our sector, if war broke out. "
"It was an emotionally wrenching experience. Every day on our way to work, we saw the burnt out hulks of houses and cars. During one side trip, I stayed in a hotel room that was pocked-marked with bullet holes. On another trip in January 1997, we only occasionally had heat and hot water.
"Most Bosnians lived on subsistence aid packages. The people we worked with hadn't been paid their salaries for over a year; they got goods instead of money. The psychological damage was overwhelming. A lot of people had nervous disorders. Almost everyone I dealt with was traumatized by the war in one way or another. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced and living in shelters, temporary housing and public buildings. The economy was a shambles, housing virtually destroyed, the basic infrastructure a mess" he said.
In order to begin to recuperate, start building again, they needed a basic governmental infrastructure, and "that's what we were there to help them do, " Huddleston said. 
-Barbara Garrison
