David Michael Miller
Mayor Paul Soglin and I disagree. Yeah, I know. Stop the presses.
But this is a fundamental issue on which the mayor and I have a strong but civil difference of opinion. I support keeping the current part-time 20-member city council while Soglin wants a full-time 10-member body.
The mayor and I, along with former mayors Joel Skornika and Joe Sensenbrenner, were invited to speak before the city’s Task Force on Structure of City Government on Sept. 13. That group was formed after council members threatened to take away the mayor’s authority to appoint council members to committees, and to sit on the powerful Finance Committee. Soglin suggested a committee to look at bigger issues and the council wanted a different committee; they compromised and so here we are.
The task force is in the information gathering stage and chair Eileen Harrington told me not to expect a report until sometime in the middle of next year. That would still be in time for the council to take up what could be the most interesting and contentious issue that it needs to wrestle with: the size of the council itself.
With the census coming up in 2020, the law requires redistricting in time for the next cycle of elections so that districts have about the same number of residents. As long as we’re redrawing district lines anyway, it’s a good time to think about how many alders we want.
At the task force hearing, Soglin said that there were three kinds of council models to choose from. The first is what he called an “honorarium” model in which members are paid something like a per-meeting stipend. The second is a part-time council where members are paid a regular salary, albeit a modest one. And the third model is a full-time council with full-time pay.
The mayor told the task force that he thought the current part-time set-up was the worst of all worlds because it limits the kind of people who can afford to put in relatively long hours for little pay.
Let me concede for the record that our city has a big council compared to other places, that it can be ungainly and that the middle-ground compensation is appealing only to those who don’t really need the money.
I’ll also concede that council meetings can sometimes be characterized as “everything’s been said but we’re waiting for everyone to get around to saying it.” And finally, it’s true that the council occasionally gets itself tied up in knots arguing about things beyond its purview, though I haven’t seen much of that lately. In short, the Madison Common Council can be a little crazy and a lot inefficient. But complete sanity and efficiency is overrated in a democracy. Real democracy is a messy business.
So now let me make my case for the status quo.
For starters, a full-time council is going to be really expensive. Council members will call for full-time salaries and benefits. Each council member will demand staff support and everyone will need office space.
Second, a full-time council will invite big money into our local politics. The current small districts can be won by door-to-door campaigning. As a result, a candidate can win with just a few thousand dollars for a couple of brochures and some lawn signs. With bigger districts and a full-time job at stake, media buys will start to look more attractive. That requires a lot more money and developers, bar owners and anyone with a financial interest in city decisions will be more than willing to help out.
Third, there’s little evidence that a full-time body will do a better job. Do you really think the state Legislature is doing the will of the people? I spend some time in Milwaukee and folks I know there who work with the full-time Milwaukee Common Council openly call it dysfunctional.
Finally, there’s no reason to think that a full-time council will open the door to a wider range of candidates. Running for an office that requires a lot of fundraising favors those who already have access to people and interests with money. The state Legislature is populated by a lot of lawyers, real estate agents and accountants.
Chances are that you’re going to hear a lot more about this issue as we get closer to the census and to redistricting. It should be an issue in the mayoral race and in council contests. We should know where the candidates stand because this isn’t some technicality. It goes to the heart of how Madison’s local democracy will function in the future.
This is one instance in which, I believe, small is not beautiful and bigger is actually better.
