Mayor Livingstone responded to three questions, posed respectively by Grand Island (NE) Mayor Ken Gnadt (on city county consolidations), Bellevue (WA) Mayor Chuck Mosher (on mandates) and Alice (TX) Mayor Fidel Rul (on city charters).

With regard to government consolidation he said "we've reduced the number of tiers É [and] that's important, you need to bring government as close to people as possible, you need to simplify as much as possible."

And, with respect to mandates from the national government, Livingstone reported, "I think we have the same problem. I think it's the situation that if you're in the national government and you want to get the headline about freezing taxes or reducing taxes, so what you do É is dump the burden farther down the food chainÉ. I think we have to say to governments, yes, we're happy to carry on these programs, but we need the funding in order to do it. I'm in a position where my city puts 19 billion pounds more into the national exchequer than we get back in support. Now I think a dynamic city like London should be making that contribution, but it can go too farÉ ."

In reply to the question on city charters, Mayor Livingstone reported on the legislation involved in establishing his mayoral office. He said, "the government legislation that created a Mayor for London was the longest act of Parliament for 70 years. It was longer than the legislation establishing the government of India in 1933." It was "very, very descriptive legislationÉ. The pretty obvious thing about our position in London, we did nothing there before; there was no permanent staff. The government hired about 60 temporary staff to answer the phone, prepare some initial briefing papers. We spent the last six months establishing our senior officer corp. We won't be fully staffed for another six months. Then I have to have eight strategies laid down: transport, economic development, air quality and so on. These will take about two years to get the force of law. In a sense, this first administration, myself and the assembly, is putting the system in place. And so we are establishing within the prescriptions of the central government very much our own rulebook, which, if we get it right, others will copy. I remember the business community circulated the job's specification, what they thought the Mayors should have as their qualities. But one of the questions with this was what experience do you have of establishing a 3.2 billion-pound organization from scratch."