"I need help."

There are conversations in local government that change how you think about leadership. This is one of them. In this episode of PCC Local Time, I sit down with Chief David Lash of Northern York County Regional Police and Chief Dave Steffen, retired chief of Northern Lancaster County Regional Police, to talk about how the idea of wellness actually converts to meaningful outcomes inside a police agency.

Link to an earlier episode with Chief David Steffen on Regional Policing

Be sure to check out MuniSquare on Substack and our YouTube Channel

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Opening: why wellness and policing are difficult to connect

02:00 A 25-year relationship: how it began

05:30 The shift in policing culture around wellness

10:00 February 2025: the UPMC shooting

13:30 Immediate response and the role of support systems

17:30 Continuity of care and leadership perspective

19:30 September 2025: the second critical incident

22:30 “Two minutes of hell”: what happened and what followed

24:30 Leadership under pressure and the role of relationships

26:30 The three-word call: “I need help”

28:30 Reframing wellness as culture, not program

29:30 Reducing stigma and normalizing support

31:00 Moving from reactive to proactive wellness

32:30 Total wellness: beyond mental health

34:00 Building access: systems, providers, and trust

36:30 Wellness and use of force: a possible connection

38:00 Mindfulness and officer buy-in

39:00 Feeling valued as a core metric

40:30 Resistance, generational differences, and adaptation

44:30 Extending wellness into the community

46:30 Budgeting for wellness as essential, not optional

48:00 Culture shift: from external image to internal strength

49:30 Closing reflections: what can be carried forward

Two municipal managers introduced host Nancy to the same book: Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara. Chris Garges and Joe Hogarth (also Chief of Police) join her to unpack what a four-star Manhattan restaurant can teach local government.

Through a municipal lens, they talk about the front of the house and the back of the house, how "toiling in obscurity" is part of our success, why imitating others is a bad idea, and what Joe calls the nobility of the work.

This PCC Local Time podcast episode has been created in partnership with APMM - the Association of Pennsylvania Municipal Management.

🎧 Full show notes and quotes at MuniSquare. Subscribe and get more content like this.

00:00 Opening: what can a restaurant teach local government?

00:02 How Joe and Chris found the book

00:05 Nancy’s restaurant story and the customer experience lens

00:07 Silos, roles, and balancing departments

00:09 Real teamwork across public works, police, and codes

00:11 Volunteer work and building connection across staff

00:13 Why stories matter in shaping culture

00:16 Purpose, community, and significance in public service

00:20 Chris on marathon mindset and mental toughness

00:22 Why collaboration meets resistance

00:23 Vulnerability and the myth of the all-knowing leader

00:26 Humility, learning, and asking better questions

00:27 Learn from others, but do not imitate blindly

00:29 Hierarchy, feedback, and speaking honestly

00:31 Hospitality as a daily dialogue

00:33 Younger employees and visible community impact

00:34 What leaders do with resistant employees

00:36 Encouraging people when the work never feels finished

00:38 One takeaway for managers

00:39 Nobility, purpose, and the meaning of service

00:41 Final story: when someone thanks an officer for arresting them

Why would anyone choose to evade governance, and what do contemporary versions of that choice look like in the communities we serve? What familial stories do we carry forward that are, at root, an attempt to evade government?

The late James C. Scott, Yale political scientist, agrarian studies scholar, and, as he put it himself, an anarchist willing to raise only two cheers (as he titled one of his beloved books, Two Cheers for Anarchism), spent a career asking that question.

Today we explore Scott’s book The Art of Not Being Governed, which outlines an arc of our history that is, for the most part, about people who have lived outside the reach of government systems. That we have fled, adapted, and re-integrated elsewhere, partly or fully, is fundamental to our human story. These stories reveal our diversity and resilience, but also our reluctance to be made “legible” to governments.

Here with me are Dr. Mike Rowe (University of Liverpool), Dr. Tom Bryer (University of Central Florida, soon to be founding director of the Center for CivicLands and Democratic Stewardship at Old Dominion University), and Dr. Mandie Cantlin (township manager and lecturer at West Chester University).

Together we take up Scott’s larger question: why do people stay within systems of governance, and why do they leave? Drawing on examples that range from Southeast Asia to contemporary communities, the conversation moves through themes of resistance, mobility, sustainability, and public trust.

Our conversation offers many jumping-off points for deeper inquiry into how people navigate the edges of being governed. For those of us working in and around local government, Scott’s work asks us to look more closely at how people experience governance, and what it means to belong to a place.

Check out MuniSquare.Substack.com and subscribe for more content on local government's role in our lives today.

• 00:00 — Molokai and the choice to say no
• 05:30 — Why people stay or leave a place
• 06:30 — Scott’s work and challenging linear progress
• 09:30 — Rethinking prosperity and subsistence
• 12:00 — Why people choose not to be governed
• 13:30 — Modern examples: homeschooling and personal autonomy
• 16:30 — Diversity, identity, and “legibility”
• 18:00 — The push and pull of government in everyday life
• 20:00 — Contemporary forms of resistance
• 21:30 — Subsistence thinking in modern economies
• 23:00 — Development, sustainability, and local choice
• 24:30 — The role of government when people resist
• 26:00 — Participation, “state picking,” and civic voice
• 29:00 — Public trust and agency
• 30:00 — Ecological systems and unintended consequences
• 33:00 — Climate, risk, and the role of the state
• 37:30 — Hill people, mobility, and “flight”
• 40:00 — No single path forward
• 41:30 — Civilization, exclusion, and who belongs
• 45:30 — Living with tension in governance
• 47:30 — Closing reflections