Entering the Eighties, the Municipal League remained active but at a much lower pitch. By this decade, it was becoming a victim of its own, numerous successes.

The League had triumphed in fundamentally restructuring both city and county government and it had promoted creation of a successful Port and an innovative county-wide Metro with broad powers in water quality, waste management, and transit.

The League had secured adoption and major revision at a Comprehensive Plan for Seattle. It had promoted countless improvements in public procedures, practices, services, and facilities.

The League had helped to root out patronage hiring and graft at all levels of government, and through its candidate evaluations, had helped to promote the election of honest and able public servants. The League had made the idea of citizen participation respectable and it helped to secure the reforms to make it effective.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the League began as early as its 60th anniversary to question whether there was anything left for it to do. Given the myriad of single issue and special interest groups, it asked itself, is there a role for a centrist, progressive, consensus-based organization such as the Municipal League?

The question really answers itself. In such a context, there is more reason for such an organization than there has ever been before. The alternative is a community politics defined and dominated by its extremes. It is to give voice to the center that the Municipal League was created, has always worked, and remains an indispensable institution.

The challenges of growth, social need, incipient corruption, government waste, and the abuses of power are not artifacts of the past. The problems of mass transit, or urban sprawl, or environmental degradation, of poverty have not been solved; indeed, they have no permanent solutions.

Seattle and King County have experienced a remarkable 75 years since the Municipal League was established. The nature of the next 75 years will depend in large part on the region's ability to achieve and maintain agreement on a common set of values and goals for self-government, economic development, and social improvement. Such agreement can only come from the center. and that is why, if the Municipal League did not already exist, we would have to create it.