Next Crop of Leaders Is Not Stepping Forward : Government: Fewer younger people are running for office, especially in rural communities. Family pressures, the slow pace of change and poor pay are blamed.

For Pete Cowles, enforcing the law as an Idaho State Police trooper is easy.

Being mayor of a small southwestern Idaho city was hard.

Cowles became one of the nation’s youngest city officials in 1985 when he was elected mayor of Caldwell at 25. He keeps a photo of how he looked four years later. It shows a man with dark circles under his eyes, flecks of gray in his hair and a hangdog look that makes him seem 20 years older.

“I look at that picture to remind me that I can never put my family through that again,” Cowles said. “It’s a wonderful feeling to be able to enjoy what you’re doing and to smile about it.”

Officials in many small towns across the nation have little to smile about these days. Experts say people in their 20s, 30s and 40s too often choose to sit on the political sidelines rather than run for the city council or school board as their parents did.

“The young people are not staying around to serve,” said Bill Jarocki, executive director of the Assn. of Idaho Cities. “I don’t know where the next generation of leaders is going to come from.”

Wayne Forrey, a Boise, Ida., consultant on government regulations to more than 300 Western cities, sees trouble on Main Street: the graying of local leadership.

“In the older generation, I think serving on the city council was a very honorable calling in life,” Forrey said. But today, “I don’t hear people say: ‘I want to give something back to the community.’ Now, it’s: ‘Give me, give me, give me.’ ”

After eight years as first selectman in Haddom, Conn., John Blaschik Jr., 35, admitted he is “pretty much burnt out.”

“People moved away from the cities for the lower taxes, but expect the same services,” Blaschik said.

He wants nothing more than to finish his term this year and canoe down the Connecticut River with his young son.

“Incumbents are saying: ‘I’ve had enough.’ It’s a tougher job than it was, and people don’t appreciate you the way they did 20 years ago,” said Don Wray, executive director of the Municipal Assn. of South Carolina in Columbia. “Somehow we’ve got to turn it around, and I don’t know how you do that.”

Wray, 65, recalled how his father served on the school board in Humboldt, Tenn., in the 1930s.

“I was impressed by his willingness to serve, despite his limited education,” Wray said. “Yet my three sons pick up the paper and see nothing but how bad we’re doing. All they see is the fairly ugly side.”

The jobs of local elected officials require more of everything these days--more knowledge, more time and more thick skin to handle the inevitable carping.

Michael Cochran, executive director of the Ohio Township Assn. in Columbus, said state and federal governments have issued complex--and often contradictory--regulations.

“Those things are putting a burden on people who in most cases are not equipped with staff to deal with those things,” he said. “They’re just going to overwhelm the small town councils.”

Alan Smith, executive director of the Idaho School Boards Assn., said the average length of service for local school trustees has dropped to about four years, half what it was just 15 years ago.

“It’s just a continuous hassle on a school board, and I think people grow tired of it,” said Smith, a former board member in Bancroft, Ida. “I don’t think I’d run for the school board now.”

Jeremiah Floyd of the National School Boards Assn. in Alexandria, Va., said the problem is being seen over and over again across America.

“They find out quickly that it’s not something where they can come in . . . and make revolutionary changes,” he said.

In the Idaho resort town of McCall, John Allen Jr. knows leadership takes stamina.

His first elected position was on the Oakland, Calif., School Board in 1923. The former California congressman was elected McCall’s mayor in 1987--two weeks before his 88th birthday.

“Change is a gradual experience,” Allen said. “Maybe that’s why I don’t get too worried.”

Still, meeting the financial requirements and state and federal mandates involved in such projects as a new sewer system or school curriculum can sap the hardiest city council member or school trustee.

In the north-central Idaho town of Tensed, Steve Johnson wanted a seat on the board so he could push for consolidation of Plummer and Worley schools. He succeeded, and his son is in the first graduating class at Lakeside High School--15 years later.

For town council members and mayors, pay also can be a sore point. Cowles said that he “nearly went broke” on the $16,500 salary as Caldwell’s mayor. It since has been raised to $27,000.

But most Idaho towns--and towns across the country--pay elected city officials only a small stipend or nothing at all. School board members in Idaho always have worked for free.

Jim Parker said that he “has not received one nickel” in eight years as mayor of Rathdrum, Ida. And since Lyle (Stub) Myers died last June, after 31 years as a city councilman, Parker has been turned down by half a dozen people he’s asked to fill the non-paying position.

“It’s tough to ask people to take time off from their jobs and families for workshops or attend two meetings a month lasting three to four hours,” he said.

Cowles said his “shoot-from-the-hip” style and occasional thin skin often got him into trouble with Caldwell’s old guard.

“Within a year, I was so frustrated and disillusioned because I was not allowed to get things done,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that young people who so often want to make a difference aren’t allowed to do so.”

Still, there is reason for hope.

Rathdrum’s Parker said that he’ll run for mayor one more time this fall so he can bring in a city administrator to do the day-to-day business of the fast-growing Panhandle town.

Blaschik said that Haddom schoolchildren visit City Hall and write essays about local government as part of the curriculum.

And Barbara Fox-Jones, a school board member in Fairfield, Ala., and president of the Alabama School Boards Assn., said there are more than enough people in her state who are eager to serve.

Half of the state’s school board members are appointed, however, and there are no provisions for recall. Fox-Jones concedes that the willingness to serve might diminish if legislation passes to have all board members elected.

“Appointed school board members have said to me: ‘If it would require election, I would not go for it,’ ” she said. “I think we would lose some of our very best people.”

Wray said that the new generation of leaders might be made up of women and seniors. “We’ve seen a tremendous increase of women in local government--from 4% to 5% 20 years ago to close to a third now,” he said.

He’s emphasizing training for local elected officials.

“These people are anxious to learn, and what we have to do is increase their capacity to govern,” he said. “It’s more than picking up garbage or police work or putting out a fire.”