Met Council chairwoman quits, wants 'just to have one job'

Metropolitan Council Chairwoman Susan Haigh announced her resignation Wednesday, saying it has proved too time-consuming to juggle the demands of her work for the regional planning agency with her day job running Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity.

"I'm ready now just to have one job," she said.

Haigh, 63, leaves at a time of tumult for her agency. A yearlong dispute over the $1.7 billion Southwest light-rail line was quickly followed by a growing insurrection among suburban leaders over the council's plans for transportation, affordable housing and parks.

And questions still remain as to whether the council members should be elected rather than appointed by the governor.

Haigh will stay on until Gov. Mark Dayton names a successor for what is now a part-time position paying $61,414 a year.

In a statement, Dayton said Haigh "has devoted her career to building strong and vibrant communities," leading the Met Council "during a very challenging time. I am grateful to her for her exemplary leadership and service."

Haigh said Wednesday her replacement will likely work full time. "It's really a big job," she said. "These are really important issues that take a lot of time and attention."

Haigh oversees a mammoth agency with an $890 million annual budget, 3,700 employees and a 17-member board. Its oversight ranges from transportation planning to affordable housing to wastewater management for the seven-county metro area.

Suburban unrest

This fall, in an unprecedented move, the five purely suburban metro counties came together to push against the Met Council's long-term regional transportation plan, which suburban leaders say virtually ignores their needs.

But Carver County Commissioner Gayle Degler said he doesn't think Haigh's resignation will change things there. "I don't see her as the roadblock," he said. "It was the policies and the implementation of the council that we were trying to address."

Anoka County Commissioner Matt Look agreed. "Make no mistake, the Met Council is a staff-run organization. So really it doesn't matter who is there," he said. "And I think that staff likes to overstep their bounds on numerous occasions. It's really up to the Legislature to say, 'OK, you've overstepped your bounds and it's time to rein you in.' "

The Met Council's transportation plan focuses on transit in urban areas, Look said, and that will clash with the priorities of the incoming Republican majority in the state House, which he said will emphasize funding for highways and roads.

Haigh said that the council gathered a lot of reaction from stakeholders to form those plans, and that balancing the needs of a multitude of communities is challenging.

"I think that the reality of it is that you represent a regional perspective," she said. "You are always going to have local communities that have dreams and goals and aspirations for what they would like to see, and our job is really to balance a scarce amount of limited resources."

Incoming Scott County Commissioner Mike Beard, a former Minnesota House transportation committee chair, focused his campaign on fighting the Met Council. It doesn't matter so much who the chair is, he said — rather, it's the structure of the organization itself.

"[Haigh] is a good person who was put into a difficult job with growing suburbs, and being asked to do an urban-centric program for the next 20 years," he said.

Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin said that there is always tension between communities, but that the region has made tremendous progress on major projects with Haigh at the helm of the Met Council.

"There's not a region in the country that has made as much progress in the last four years as we have," said McLaughlin, who also serves as chairman of the Counties Transit Improvement Board, a regional transit body.

Highs and lows

In June, Metro Transit's $1 billion Green Line debuted, linking the downtowns of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Haigh, who was a Ramsey County commissioner when the Green Line was first proposed, said the opening was especially satisfying.

Also during Haigh's stint, service began for the 11-mile Red Line bus rapid transit last year, linking Lakeville, Apple Valley and Eagan to the Mall of America — and with the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and downtown Minneapolis by the Blue Line light-rail connection. Orange Line bus rapid transit connecting Minneapolis to Burnsville is awaiting federal funding.

But the complex planning process behind the $1.7 billion Southwest Corridor light-rail line was fraught with controversy.

In September, a group of residents displeased with the rail line's proposed path through Minneapolis filed suit in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis seeking to block the project. The suit, still pending, initially named Haigh, the Federal Transit Administration, and the Met Council as defendants, though Haigh was subsequently dropped from it.

The Southwest line, the largest public transportation project in Minnesota history, will span a 16-mile stretch from downtown Minneapolis to Eden Prairie. It is slated to begin service in 2019.

"It's pretty obvious that we have not had a good experience with the Met Council under her leadership," said Mary Pattock, of the Lakes and Parks Alliance, which filed the lawsuit. "We're hoping the governor will replace her with someone who will pay more attention to the people who live in the metro area, especially since [the Met Council] is not an elected body."

Haigh has spent most of her career in public life. A graduate of Macalester College and William Mitchell College of Law, she was a Ramsey County commissioner for a decade beginning in 1995, a chief deputy Ramsey County attorney, assistant Dakota County attorney and a staff lawyer with the Met Council before that.

She has held her current job at Habitat for Humanity since 2005, a position that pays $170,474 in salary and $4,807 in additional compensation, according to documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service. A nonprofit organization that focuses on affordable housing, the local chapter of Habitat had $21.9 million in annual revenue as of June 30, 2013.

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