I wish you luck in going up against 'local control,' Mr. Speaker

by: Eric B.

Sun Oct 11, 2009 at 10:41:23 AM EDT

Let's say that you live in the village of Shepherd, in southern Isabella County. You own a house that you'd like to turn into a bed and breakfast, and find -- alas -- that this use doesn't fit into how your neighborhood is zoned. But, your property falls on the border of a residential neighborhood and a business district in which a bed and breakfast would be considered a reasonable use. So, you decide to go get your property rezoned from residential to mixed use.

The village council -- half of whom fall asleep halfway through the meeting, half of whom spend the meeting frowning at people and new ideas, and half of whom excuse themselves one-third of the way through the meeting to go off to the Shepherd Bar for a beer -- give your plan an unexcited wave of approval.

Yet, you're not done. The village has its own zoning ordinance, but so does Coe Township. So, off you go to the township planners and then to the township board for approval of your plan. While there, your two arch-enemies -- Snidely McSneerington and Bob Evil -- decide they don't like the fact that they saw you wearing a St. Louis Sharks T-shirt, so they get the township board to vote against your plan.

Luckily for you, the entire thing has to go to county government, where a planning and zoning expert has to review the decision to make sure your Constitutional right to dispose of your property isn't arbitrarily violated (say, over a T-shirt). That guy says, "Why, I think this was maybe illegal." The township board's decision is overturned, your property is rezoned, and cannons shoot confetti all over the village streets, leaving a mess for the unionized, three-man street department to clean up.  Huzzah!

more...

Maybe you can see the downside to this, which is the long, annoying process you had to go through to get your property rezoned.  You also had to go through three layers of government, one of which made a decision not based on any law, but because of a local sports-related grudge.

This brings us to Andy Dillon who in today's Lansing State Journal talks up government and school structural reform.

"We now have to show (voters) that we're serious about doing the tough stuff and that's looking at tax reform," Dillon said. "That's looking at the structure of government, the cost of government ... whether that be consolidation of schools and city services.

"We have to do what GM did to itself. ... It wasn't until (GM) hit the wall that the real structural changes happened."

The "like" of my like-"meh" opinion of Andy Dillon. There is much money to be squeezed out of poor or redundant delivery of local services. I liken it to squeezing the toothpaste from the bottom of the tube. It promises to be the most difficult thing in all of government to remedy, however, because a) there are no cheap political points to be won by shouting or demagoguery, b) local governments acknowledge that delivery of services is often done not so well, but gloss that over by always pretending it's someone else, and c) the issue is complicated and often incredibly boring to talk about, so everyone would prefer you do things that satisfy a).  As in...

But Brad Biladeau, associate executive of government relations for the Michigan Association of School Administrators, said Dillon's proposal wrests too much control away from school districts.

"This is something that we're very concerned about," Biladeau said. "We must be careful about legislating away community identity. ... It should be a local control issue. (Consolidation) has got to be done at the local level, and not something done with the stroke of a pen in Lansing."

Truth in talking points. I'm not sure if it makes more sense to eliminate schools through consolidation or if you simply create umbrella school districts that centralize administration and planning for things like transportation and purchasing for the local schools ... that is, run a lot of administrative functions through the local RESD, and use the buildings purely for educating kids.  I do know that back in the 60s, the little Gratiot County village of Riverdale lost its school into the Alma School District, and to this day people are pissed off about it and hold a grudge against Alma Schools that made it very difficult for the district to replace its middle school, even though it was falling down on everyone's shoulders. In fact, Riverdale gave Alma Schools its only school board member who actively campaigned against that bond issue.

Two last points:

Dillon, who calls himself an optimist, gives real reform only a "50-50" chance of passing next year. He sees it passing only if there is a groundswell of support from outside the Lansing beltway.

"I do think reform has to come from the outside."

The "meh" of like-"meh."  Good idea, he says, we just need to find someone else to execute.

Here's an idea -- stop punting on second down.

One last thought ... I was reminded that it chafes my county's administrator that the county's townships -- all but one of which offer no services more complicated than rudimentary parks or an individualized zoning ordinance -- are sitting on a combined fund balance of $8 million, some of which represents 200-300 percent of annual expenditures (usually, it's considered smart financial stewardship to keep about 20 percent on hand, if you can manage it).  This doesn't represent conservative local officials being frugal. It represents local officials being chintzy.  Perhaps there is a way to discern statewide how much money is just sitting there because local officials just hate spending money, and encourage them to put it to good use ... I don't know, expanding the availability of broadband Internet (the commerce highway of tomorrow) in rural areas, or set up local revolving funds where local governments can lend money to people to fix up or weatherize homes and which can be paid back through property taxes.