Isn’t it time, at last, for the Met Council to be an elected body?

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of guest commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

In America, there’s broad agreement: Citizens have the right to choose their leaders. But if you live in the Twin Cities, a huge body of local government shapes your everyday life — and you have no direct voice in it. It’s a violation of the basic tenets of democracy that are fundamental to the American system. And that problem is making our region worse.

For decades, the Metropolitan Council has determined how the Twin Cities will grow and evolve. It oversees land use, transportation and sprawl across the metro region. It determines where we live, how we get around, and how dense our communities are. It can intervene in local planning and can guide funding to — or away from — municipalities. It can tax us like any other local government, and it spends billions of dollars annually.

But the people affected by the Met Council’s decision? We have almost no voice in those decisions. The Met Council is entirely appointed by the governor, and operates in near-complete anonymity.

The basic concept of the Met Council is sound. The Twin Cities is divided into hundreds of jurisdictions, but forms a single interconnected economic and social unit. Fundamentally, the council’s job is to prevent destructive competition between different parts of the region. Between the late 1960s and mid-1980s, the council effectively managed the benefits and burdens of regional development. It scrutinized comprehensive plans to ensure that suburban governments were providing their fair share of affordable housing. It enforced a Metropolitan Urban Service Area — functionally a growth boundary for wastewater infrastructure — which limited sprawl, and protected agricultural land and natural habitat.

Unfortunately, that system has eroded. The share of lower-income housing units built in central city locations has increased while the suburban population has grown, leading to the creation of wealthy, exclusionary suburbs with little affordable housing. The urban service line has been weakened, permitting an explosion of low-density exurban communities. This in turn has strained infrastructure, threatened natural habitat and locked in millions of miles of annual automobile commuting. Making matters worse, the Met Council has overseen projects that have devolved into financial boondoggles — especially the Southwest light rail, billions over budget after a process that lasted more than three decades. Over time, the body has developed a reputation for highhandedness, blowing off concerned constituents. And the council often errs with impunity, with zero real consequences for messes like the light rail situation.

The Met Council has substantial legal authorities and responsibilities. But, being appointed, the council members have no voter mandate to use those authorities. They often seem reluctant to guide or constrain their own staff, who have usually worked at the body for longer and have a patina of technical expertise. Meanwhile, career staff have shown limited appetite for high-stakes decisions that might engender controversy. The end result? Instead of a muscular council willing to balance the political trade-offs inherent in good planning, we’ve engineered a weak council that drifts through major decisions.

Now imagine if the council were elected instead. The power dynamic changes. Elected officials answer first and foremost to the constituents who elected them. They must make promises to win their seats. Usually, they feel compelled to try to keep those promises afterward. Elected officials also naturally form coalitions based on shared interests — for instance, the central cities and the inner suburbs share many problems, and could collaborate on solving them together.

There is plenty of precedent for functional elections at this scale. If sufficiently salaried, an elected council would most closely resemble a very large county. In Minnesota, large county commissions attract deeply qualified, policy-motivated candidates. There’s no reason to think an elected council would be different.

There are efforts to reform the council underway, including a legislative study commission last year. Unfortunately, that commission did not produce clear recommendations. Regardless, the best solution remains an elected and accountable Met Council. No system of government is perfect, but here in the U.S., we’ve decided that the least-imperfect option for choosing our leaders is electing them. The Met Council would work better if it played by the same rules as the rest of the country.