Regionalism needs details and dialogue to succeed in NE Ohio

Now that Cuyahoga county voters have passed a reform of county government, the focus will turn to regionalism, the reform of municipal government in our region. But this is one change that will likely never come before voters. If history is any indication, it’s also very unlikely to ever receive a vote before any city council, township board or county commission before becoming law. But when it is enacted, this regionalism plan will fundamentally reshape the way Northeast Ohio lives, works, and governs.

The public has a positive view of regionalism in general. Polls tells us voters want our local governments to collaborate more, to reduce waste and inefficiency, and to work together to promote a more prosperous region.

Four years ago a group of mayors and community leaders began meeting to explore ways to achieve these goals. The Northeast Ohio Mayors and City Managers Association has admirably taken the first big steps to working together –sitting down and discussing solutions. Unfortunately, the result of their meetings is a proposal, the Regional Prosperity Initiative, or RPI, that is long on tax redistribution and a new central land use planning authority, but short on cost savings and economic benefits.

The solution is due in large part to where the mayors went for their answers. Myron Orfield, a former Minnesota legislator and urban planning consultant, was one of the group’s early advisors. His philosophy is simple –regions like ours have a bad economy because their central cities are failing. Cities are failing because their suburbs have sapped them of their economic strength. Restore their strength by diverting taxes from prospering suburbs back to cities, and redirect new development back to those same urban areas through centralized land use planning. This form of regionalism started over 30 years ago in his hometown, the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

RPI members have presented their ideas, based largely on the Twin Cities model, before local leaders throughout the 16 county region. The local response -- “We’re in favor of regionalism in principle, but we need more details.” Which cities will be asked to give up future tax revenues? Who makes the decisions on which cities receive the extra tax money? Who will make the decisions on where new developments will be permitted, and how much say will the affected communities have? And most importantly, will we get a vote on the final plan?

Instead of answering these questions, RPI members point to the Twin Cities results as an answer and call to action. “The Cleveland area is failing,” they say, “because we don't plan growth and cooperate (share taxes) the way they do in the Twin Cities.”

The Twin Cities area has experienced growth, but this is due in large part to their white-collar economy compared to our dependence on manufacturing. We can’t change our economic base, but in the aspects the RPI says it can control – sprawl, poverty and government costs, the Minneapolis-St. Paul area is far from being a model. In fact, Cleveland outperforms the Twin Cities in these categories -- our region has less sprawl (Brookings, 2009) a lower poverty rate among African-Americans (Census, 2002) and has a lower cost of municipal government (Gund-Miller, 2002).

The RPI seeks local endorsements, while it remains frustratingly unclear on the most basic question – how will regionalism come to NE Ohio? The only published answer is that the RPI will be enforced on the region by a state mandate. RPI Chair Mayor William Currin told an Ashtabula audience “the group wants to enact the plan from Columbus, through state government, so that each one of the 571 municipalities in the 16-county region would not have to sign on individually.” The Twin Cities plan came into being this way, as an emergency measure, tacked on to an unrelated bill in the Minnesota legislature.

Regionalism doesn’t have to be forced on unwilling cities. Denver communities were given an opportunity to join or leave their regionalism plan by a local vote. Regionalism had to be sold to skeptical city governments, based largely on results. In the past eight years, Colorado municipalities representing over 87% of the Denver area have joined. Results will answer skeptics and reduce distrust faster than predictions from experts.

Fear of ceding control can only be overcome by open, honest dialogue. Our municipal leaders should insist on all the details and the right to a vote on a regionalism plan. It has taken a long time to get us to this point. Let’s not miss the opportunity to do this right.

Originally published in Crain’s Cleveland Business as “Regionalism cannot be Universally Applied”-- Nov. 30, 2009

Twin Cities Regionalism has more lessons for NE Ohio

A once prosperous suburban shopping mall, mired in a declining neighborhood, loses one its last anchor tenants and faces the prospect of closing down. Randall Park in Cleveland or Rolling Acres in Akron? No, it’s Brookdale Shopping Center in Brooklyn Center, MN, once one of Minneapolis’ premier indoor malls, now whipsawed between newer malls developed farther out from the city, and a reputation as being in a poor, unsafe part of the Twin Cities metro.

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, per capita income in Brooklyn Center fell from 87% of the metro area average in 1990, to 75% in 2000, to 64% in the most recent Census survey. This is critical, the paper reports, because this puts Brooklyn Center close to Detroit’s 60% mark --the nation’s worst city to suburb income ratio.

Why is this troubled inner ring suburb 10 miles from downtown Minneapolis significant to regionalism discussions in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio? Because according to the urban planning experts behind the Regional Prosperity Initiative, it shouldn’t be that way. The Regional Prosperity Initiative, or RPI, is a plan for a Northeast Ohio 16 county regional revenue sharing and land use planning organization patterned after the Twin Cities Met Council.

The RPI is advocating this form of Regionalism in large part due to the success they hold out in the 7 county Minneapolis-St. Paul Twin Cities region. The RPI-Twin Cities model shares new growth tax revenues from more prosperous, growing areas to restore the deteriorating urban core and inner ring suburbs. Applying “equity” to tax revenues is designed to help the worst areas of the region by channeling dollars where they are needed most, restoring the vitality of cities.

What is significant about the plight of Brooklyn Center is not that there is poverty; there is poverty in every city. The critical point is that despite an almost 20 year diversion of tax revenues to inner core suburbs like Brooklyn Center, the gap as seen in the Twin Cities between the prospering areas and those that are failing is among the worst in the nation. There are statistics beyond Brooklyn Center’s anecdotal evidence showing that revenue sharing does not always work as planned. The Twin Cities has had its RPI model in place for decades, yet the most recent Census reports their urban poverty rate among African-Americans is higher than Cleveland’s.

The Regional Prosperity Initiative’s land use planning would direct and manage new growth areas throughout the region, which stretches out to Ashtabula, south to East Liverpool on the Ohio River, west to Mansfield, and north again to Vermillion. It would serve a dual purpose of preserving open spaces from urban sprawl, while encouraging growth back in the cities where infrastructure exists, awaiting development.

Again, Twin Cities/RPI regionalism fails to deliver as promised. Research released by the Brookings Institution: "Job Sprawl Revisited", the movement of employment in a region, shows that for the period 1998-2006, the Twin Cities areas under a regionalism plan actually lost a greater percentage of downtown jobs and sprawled jobs outside the downtown area at twice the rate of Cleveland.

Another benefit advocated by the RPI brand of regionalism is the cost savings that results from consolidating government resources. The Met Council alone has 3,700 employees, taking on consolidated functions of transit, parks, and libraries among others. Nevertheless, the per capita cost for Municipal Government is 25% higher in the Twin Cities than our region, according to 2002 figures in Cost of Government Study for Northeastern Ohio, funded in part by the Gund Foundation.

The rush to put the RPI plan in place by 2010 is predicated on large part on the “success” of their model in the Twin Cities. This “success” may prove illusory or insignificant in a discussion about seriously redesigning the way Northeastern Ohioans live and work.

The inconclusive economic benefits of regionalism from the Twin Cities in terms of cost savings, controlling sprawl, and reinvigorating our urban cores should cause our community leaders to reconsider the RPI plans alongside other regionalism plans with measured success. Denver’s Mile High Compact replaces the RPI’s state-mandated involvement with a voluntary plan, allowing each community the chance to be sold on the benefits. Kalamazoo has a successful regionalism plan that is business-driven, and Baltimore’s focuses on collaborative efforts to reduce government costs. Even our own home-grown solutions as evidenced by the Fund for Our Economic Future show that we can collaborate without the heavy hand of another layer of government.