Association of Minnesota Counties to lawmakers — treat us like adults
The Association of Minnesota Counties (AMC) appeared before a Senate committee this week, AMC spokesman Jim Mulder leaving a message — treat us like adults.
The AMC is looking to redefine the relationship between counties and the state. Some of the watchwords the county people are heralding are governance, flexibility — allowing counties to work as labs of democracy — and transparency.
The latter watchword translates to having the state, when pushing costs onto counties, making it clear exactly why the transfer is taking place.
Mulder gave a thumbnail sketch of the status of counties.
In discussing recent polling, Mulder pointed out the survey results suggested, among other things, that the more people know about their local government, the less happy they are with it.
“The like us when they don’t know what we do,” he told amused senators.
County officials, explained Mulder, take it for granted that counties will never be adequately funded. He pointed out the changing dynamics of county spending.
In the 1960s, typically counties spent about 65 percent of their budgets on roads and bridges, he said. About 15 percent of the funding was spent on human services.
Today the percentages are almost reversed, he said.
(In the early days of counties, local men were required to contribute one day a year to fixing county roads. Also, if they wanted to work off a road assessment, they could, earning $3 a day, said Mulder.)
Mulder highlighted how the sometimes clumsy relationship between counties and state government has resulted in a superabundance of dispatch centers in the state — about 140, county and state — while the AMC believes Minnesota could get by with just 30 such centers.
County commissioners need to be allowed to make decisions, argued Mulder. More than a quarter of the spending Minnesota’s 87 counties do — about $700 million worth — is mandated spending, he argued.
The relationship between the state and counties has felt like “a parent/child relationship,” Mulder opined.
He, though, added that there has been times when the state had reasons not to trust the counties.
Years ago, in some counties, the solution for people needing human services was a one-way bus ticket to the Twin Cities, he said.
Sen. Ann Rest, DFL-New Hope, indicated that the status the counties desired may be a tough one to keep.
Rest spoke of her experience on a school management team. Everything went splendidly, she recalled, until the parents made a decision the principal did not like.
After that veto, the team lost interest, fell apart.
The vexing problem that deflated the team was where people should sit at football games.
