Minneapolis seeks hybrid Met Council

The Minneapolis City Council on Friday endorsed a proposal to have metro-area mayors, council members or county commissioners make up a majority of the Metro Council. People appointed by the governor, as all Metro Council members are now, would constitute the rest.

The city's legislative proposal reflects a belief that the 17-member entity that oversees land planning, airports, sewage treatment, transit and other functions needs more public accountability. City Council Member Elizabeth Glidden, who headed a council study group, said that including local officials who stand for election would increase the public's input to the Metro Council.

"It's a big entity that affects a lot of us, but I don't think that it's well-understood by those impacted by its actions," Glidden said.

The city's proposal also calls for a more muscular Metro Council that spends more time working to reduce racial and economic disparities within the region and emphasizes keeping existing public facilities in good shape rather than building new ones.

The city also wants the metro body to be more active in planning and nurturing large facilities operated by the public sector, a category that includes sports venues. The municipal trade group Metro Cities is calling for a comprehensive look at the Metro Council's structure and activities.

But the centerpiece of the city's proposal is a revamping of the council itself.

It leaves to legislators many of the details, such as how to apportion council seats between city and county representatives. But it says that seats should be proportionally split among developed and developing areas, and that population should be a factor.

Hornstein said the idea of putting elected officials on the council has drawn support from Dakota County and some cities. He noted that the San Diego, Denver and Washington, D.C., metro areas have a council-of-governments approach in which local elected officials make regional policy.

New Metro Council Chair Susan Haigh, a former Ramsey County commissioner, said the need for the council to be politically accountable must be balanced by the need for its members to keep a regional perspective.

Jim Solem, who formerly served as the chief administrator of the Metro Council, said that changing who serves on the council is less important than expanding its reach beyond the seven counties over which it now has jurisdiction. He said that the council-of-governments approach has lost favor because it hasn't been effective on regional issues.

Peter Bell, who just stepped down as Metro Council chair, said he could support a mixed council -- with caveats. He said that governor's appointees should still form the council majority, because elected officials would be likely to act more parochially for the interests of their constituents.

Bell said that if elected officials were added to the Metro Council, that move should be offset by eliminating some of the governing bodies on which they now sit, especially for transit planning and operations. An advantage to having gubernatorial appointees is that they can put the region's interests ahead of parochial interests when allocating park or transit spending, Bell said.