Task force considers how to reform met Council

On Feb. 1, the Metropolitan Governance Task Force issued its final report on how to reform the Metropolitan Council. 

It offered not one or two recommendations, as some members had hoped for, but five different proposals for how the Twin Cities regional planning and service agency might operate in the future.  

“I certainly understand that not coming up with one recommendation, or two, is concerning, but I think it does reflect the reality about this,” said task force chair, State Representative Frank Hornstein (61A). “This is different from previous task forces. I think the extent of public engagement was different. I think the diversity of views was different. I think the legislative presence to have equal members of the parties involved, regional interests represented and having the townships here was very valuable.  We are advancing five proposals that have not been advanced in previous reports and they are significant proposals.”

The task force that was created by the state legislature in 2023, has met 15 times and held four additional meetings to hear from the general public. 

Six of the 17 task force members, including Hornstein, live in Southwest Minneapolis. This includes Sam Rockwell, Executive Director of Move Minnesota; Myron Orfield, from the University of Minnesota Law School; Hennepin County Commissioner Marion Greene; Mary Pattock, a former chair of the Cedar-Isles-Dean Neighborhood Association; and State Senator Scott Dibble (61) who was pivotal in the creation of the task force. 

“I have to say that I am disappointed that we are not advancing a recommendation,” said Dibble. “I think some of what we saw was folks becoming more and more entrenched in the perspective they brought to this table initially.”

The Metropolitan Council was established by the state legislature in 1967 as the regional policy-making body, planning agency, and provider of some essential services for the seven-county Twin Cities metropolitan area that includes 181 cities and townships. It is managed by a governor-appointed 17-member board, and oversees Metro Transit’s bus and rail system, Metro Mobility, wastewater treatment, regional parks, and affordable housing projects. It relies on funding from user fees for wastewater treatment and transit services, state and federal sources, and a seven-county property tax.

 

 

While the task force did not agree on a specific new model of governance, they did agree that the current one is not working. 

 At its Jan. 17 meeting, the task force unanimously voted to affirm that “there is widespread confusion and widespread disagreement about who is and who should be accountable for Met Council vision, planning, execution (construction and operation), and performance evaluation,” and that “the basic issue the legislature should address in any Metropolitan Council reform or governance changes is how the council should be accountable to the public and to state and local governments.”

On Jan. 24, they also approved principles to “serve as a guide for the legislature as it considers the task force’s governance reform proposals and other recommendations.” This included proportionality, regional orientation, compensation, clarity of accountability, credibility, accessibility, transparency, and collaboration. 

 

 

They reviewed different proposals from task force members that ranged from maintaining the governor-appointed board but altering the nomination process, to replacing it with an elected board, to replacing it with a larger council of governments with local elected officials, or a combination.

Greene’s proposal was to keep the number of members and districts the same as the current Met Council, but to have them be elected by voters within their districts instead of appointed by the governor.  

“This proposal for an elected Met Council came together in an effort to design for accountability, transparency and simplicity, proportionality and regional vision,” said Greene. “There is not another appointed body that even comes close to having a budget of $1.4 billion.” 

State Senator Erik Pratt of Prior Lake offered two versions of his proposal that would create a 40-member Council of Governments (COG) with seven seats representing each county chosen by their respective boards, and 33 seats proportionally allocated for currently elected officials from cities or townships. 

Edina Mayor James Hovland proposed keeping the governor-appointed board, but increasing the number of local elected officials on a nominating committee.

Both Dibble and Pattock proposed creating two governing bodies, one a COG and the other directly elected.  

Pattock’s included changing the Met Council into a COG made up of mayors, county board chairs and township chairs appointed by the governor. The second governing body would be an elected Metro Area Transit Special Services District board of directors. They would be responsible for building and operating a metro-wide transit system consistent with the goals of the new COG Met Council.  

Dibble called his directly elected body the “Metropolitan Regional Civic Council.” Sixteen of its 19 members would be elected to represent districts, and three would be appointed by the governor. It would have taxing and bonding authority, provide public services (transit, sewers, etc.) and share planning responsibility equally with his proposed COG.  

The COG he proposed would be comprised of locally elected officials from the seven counties, cities and townships and selected by a caucus of those groups with the number of members to be at least as large as civic council. They would be consulted on major policy decisions, be responsible for evaluation of services provided and have the power to require the civic council to reconsider decisions and veto them with a two-thirds vote. Any veto, however, could be overridden with a 2/3rds vote of the civic council. 

“The proposal I developed was in direct response to a lot of what we heard from town council members, city council members, county commissioners and the like,” Dibble said. He added that it “takes the power out of the hands of an opaque and unelected bureaucracy and puts it squarely in the public sector and the public square for open discussion and debate, whether that is through the direct election of elected officials on the one council or through the highly valued collaboration that is driven through the power that is given to local elected officials.”

 

 

Looking ahead to the legislative session, Dibble said, “The debate will continue, and I am looking forward to that.”

“I hope that the legislative members of this task force will take what we have learned from around the country, from around the region, from each other, and bring that to the table as we try to address this critical issue,” said Hornstein. “I hope we take these ideas into the legislature and advance one or more of them, or come up with some blend of ideas, that can achieve our goal of bipartisan support for some real attention to the governance of this issue.”

“We have given the legislature some useful tools for solving a very difficult problem,” said Pattock. “The progress we made was most of all was to have a unanimous vote on what the problem is. We agreed with the legislature that, yes, there is a problem and its accountability. The second thing we are giving the legislature is a set of recommendations. I think that is a lot of help if the legislature chooses to use it and I trust they will, because this is an important problem and it’s their job to fix it.”