Met Council critics will seek bill to overhaul agency in 2017

Half a century ago, a group of Republican legislators joined forces to build what is now the Metropolitan Council, with the goal of fixing the region's ailing water treatment system and bolstering the Twin Cities' growing suburbs.

Now, a different group of Republican leaders says that the Met Council has grown too big, that it's too beholden to the governor and that the only solution is to break down the body and start over.

"It's not the way it was 50 years ago. It's changed dramatically," said Chris Gerlach, a Dakota County commissioner and former Republican legislator. "Our regional governance is held hostage by statewide partisan politics."

A Met Council spokeswoman declined to comment.

The Met Council is a regional planning agency whose members are appointed by and serve at the same time as the governor. The agency's reach has expanded from wastewater to include transportation, housing and parks across the seven-county metropolitan area.

In 2014, a coalition of commissioners from Dakota, Anoka, Carver and Scott counties banded together to push for major Met Council reforms. Last year, they made the controversial decision to hire a lobbyist to convince the U.S. Department of Transportation that the Met Council violates a federal rule guiding how such a body should be governed.

Last year, the coalition released a set of "principles" for Met Council reform. Ideas included a council made up of local elected officials, such as county commissioners, with staggered terms.

Next year, with the help of leaders from about 40 cities supportive of the cause, coalition members plan to flesh out those ideas and try to pass a bill to overhaul the agency.

"This isn't just a reactionary deal because somebody didn't get a sewer pipe or somebody was forced to build low-income housing in the middle of a nice neighborhood," said Scott County Commissioner Mike Beard, a former Republican legislator. "This was a Republican idea, to have a regional, cooperative system. But I think that the mission creep has carried it way beyond what constitutes good, open, responsive government."

Dayton said in a statement that the Met Council has been a favorite target of local governments since its beginning.

"It is the natural tension between regional governance, which takes a broad, regionwide scope, and each county and each city, which is rightfully looking at its own individual interests," Dayton said. "I will respond to specific proposals when I see them in the 2017 legislative session."

Members of the suburban coalition aren't the first to suggest fundamental changes to the Met Council.

"There have always been people who have been concerned about the council," said Jim Solem, the Met Council's first regional administrator. "Some who don't want it, some who think it should be elected, and some who just basically don't like government."

Coalition members say this time is different. They say the governance issue has reached a critical mass, in part because of what they call overreach by the administration of Gov. Mark Dayton, a DFLer, particularly his last-ditch push this fall to secure funding for the Southwest Light Rail line.

That decision is something for leaders across the state to be concerned about, said Anoka County Board Chairwoman Rhonda Sivarajah, a Republican.

"When you're giving the Met Council money, clearly that impacts greater Minnesota as well, because it's all coming out of the state budget," she said.

Coalition members agree that support from outstate legislators will be crucial to passing a reform bill. And some rural communities on the metro fringe, anxious that they could someday fall under the Met Council's jurisdiction, already are on board.

"We'll do everything we can to make sure the Met Council doesn't put its tentacles into our county and try to take our authority away," Rep. Joe McDonald, R-Delano, said of Wright County. "I'm not worried; I'm cautious. And always observant," McDonald said.

Still, getting leaders outside the metro to invest in a metro issue can be a tough sell.

"It's so hard to get lawmakers on either side of the aisle that don't live in the seven-county metro area to ... even show they care, let alone do enough research to get to a point where they would contribute to the dialogue," said Mary Liz Holberg, a Dakota County commissioner and former Republican legislator.

One possible solution that Holberg has tossed around, half-jokingly: Introduce a bill extending the Met Council's reach beyond the metro, then sit back and wait for outstate legislators to jump on board.

"Most rural legislators won't care," Gerlach said. "So they need to be asked or they need to be offered something in order to care."

Emma Nelson • 612-673-4509