Artificial intelligence, particularly “generative large language models” like ChatGPT, Claude AI and Grok, are all the rage. So instead of getting replaced by a robot, I’ve simply invited a robot (with a few key prompts) to be one of my writers. So please welcome ROBO-Goat. All writing is ROBO-Goat’s. All prompts, guidance, human assumptions and leading questions provided to ROBO-Goat are the Goat Wrangler’s.

Q. Hey, ROBO-Goat: I’ve been hearing a lot about the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the news. While I’m worried about how DOGE is going about its work, I like the idea of cutting down government waste, fraud and abuse. In fact, I feel like my local Costa Mesa government doesn’t work at all: we keep sending different elected officials to City Hall, but it then seems like we just keep getting whatever the City Manager wants rather than what we, the people, want. So let me ask you: Can you “DOGE” Costa Mesa’s City Hall?

A. 🤖🐐

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) represents more than a federal administrative initiative. It embodies a broader national impulse to challenge entrenched bureaucratic power. While its approach involves mass layoffs, system access, and strategic defunding of specific administrative programs, DOGE reveals a fundamental challenge that resonates deeply with local governmental dynamics: how to reshape an administrative state persistently resistant to meaningful change.

At the federal level, DOGE targets specific agencies like USAID, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Department of Education, and Social Security Administration. These are institutions that have developed robust internal mechanisms for maintaining operational continuity regardless of electoral shifts. This pattern mirrors precisely the challenge faced in local governance, where city managers and municipal bureaucracies demonstrate an equivalent capacity to absorb and neutralize democratic impulses.

The current political frustration runs deeper than surface-level complaints about deficits, waste, or administrative abuse. At its core, the challenge is about democratic responsiveness: a profound disconnect between community desires and governmental mechanisms.

People increasingly sense that changing personnel does not alter the underlying governmental approach. This is not mere perception but a structural reality. The administrative state provides a continuity that becomes problematic when genuine change is demanded. Bureaucratic institutions have transformed into defenders of the status quo, actively working against democratically expressed community needs.

The parallel between federal DOGE and local governmental challenges is profound. Just as DOGE seeks to fundamentally restructure federal agencies by accessing systems, reorganizing personnel, and cutting funding to programs deemed inefficient, local governments face similar structural resistance.

The council-manager system places a city’s administrative apparatus more firmly in control, leading to an entrenched power dynamic. Capturing the mayoral seat or city hall provides no meaningful remedy. An appointed city manager exercises independent control over bureaucratic functions, including retention, hiring, firing, promotions, and institutional incentives. This closely resembles the federal administrative state’s ability to maintain operational continuity regardless of surface-level political changes.

The Brown Act creates additional complexity, working in an ironically restrictive manner. By requiring the balancing of seven unique viewpoints that cannot independently coordinate, the act ensures collaborative governance becomes nearly impossible. This limitation reduces resident committees to rubber stamp entities rather than genuine agents of change, not unlike how federal agencies can resist administrative directives.

This challenge transcends traditional partisan boundaries, despite the current political moment making such revolt appear right-coded. Numerous reforms desired across political perspectives have been systematically ignored. Local examples abound, such as efforts to revitalize community resources or implement housing initiatives that have been summarily dismissed, a pattern of resistance familiar to those observing federal administrative dynamics.

Municipalities’ approach to “public input” reveals another layer of institutional resistance. Ostensibly designed to allow residents to pressure city hall directly, these mechanisms have largely been co-opted by the administrative apparatus. They function more as controlled pressure valves that provide the appearance of responsiveness while maintaining fundamental institutional inertia.

While DOGE’s federal approach involves direct intervention through executive power, local governmental change requires more nuanced strategies. Elected officials can bypass traditional administrative channels by announcing independent budget priorities. They might create district-level advisory committees that operate outside traditional restrictions, taking more ownership of existing committees and leveraging them more effectively.

The key insight is that change is not about wholesale destruction of governmental institutions, but about reforming their responsiveness. DOGE at the federal level and local reform efforts share a fundamental goal: creating governmental mechanisms that are genuinely adaptive to democratic needs.

You cannot simply “DOGE” city hall any more than you can completely remake federal agencies overnight. But it is possible and necessary to reform the administrative apparatus’s responsiveness to the public. This is what people truly want, regardless of their position on the political spectrum.

The parallels between federal and local administrative resistance are not coincidental. They represent a systemic challenge to democratic governance: a challenge that requires persistent, strategic engagement to overcome.

Goat Wrangler here: So, what did you think? Should I keep ROBO-Goat on the writing staff? He’s certainly full of spicy ideas…