News & Events
August, 2006
One Person, One Vote?
One of the core values deeply instilled in each of us since childhood is a keen sense of fairness. It's a gut-level feeling that drives us to share with each other, to accept differences, and ultimately, to demand restitution when the balance between work and reward is broken. We typically define what is fair by how it impacts us personally, being less concerned with an imbalance in our favor or with a situation that touches only a minor part of our lives. Sometimes, it's easy to let an unfair condition persist simply because we lack to power to change it. Sometimes, the persistence of an injustice boils over into revolution.
Recently, there has been rehashing of the question of fairness in our regional governance model. Our major forum for regional decision-making is SEMCOG, the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments. SEMCOG's most influential role is in establishing the vision and short- and long-term goals for the development of our transportation system. Although initiated by federal legislation, SEMCOG is a membership organization, depending on the support and participation of communities in our region to effect change. Each participating unit of government sends a delegate to the general assembly.
The organization has a complex voting structure that some have argued unfairly disadvantages existing urban communities in favor of smaller or developing rural areas. The easiest way to judge the fairness of the vote is our national standard of "one person, one vote." Generally, decisions at SEMCOG are made by simple majority votes of delegates. Both the SEMCOG General Assembly and their Executive Committee have an option for a complicated (and rarely-used) population-weighted vote, in an attempt to ensure that actions of each body are representative of the region. A subtle challenge within this population-weighed vote is that the votes are actually first divided almost equally between counties on one side and cities, villages and townships on the other. The result is that representatives from urban areas are shorted. An analysis by David Rusk, a noted urban affairs expert, showed that Detroit, with a fifth of the region's population, only controlled a tenth of the vote. Coming back to that gut-level feeling: not fair.
But decisions are made by those who show up. And that is fair, right? Regular SEMCOG participants note that a large number of delegates never come to the meetings. The absence of urban voices at the table might account as much for the attendant decisions by the Executive Committee. Observers note that SEMCOG seldom faces contentious votes and speculate that regular participation by urban delegates could substantively change the region's strategic focus.
As tensions build over regional investment policies, SEMCOG's voting structure becomes a critical lynchpin for reform. The agency exercises significant influence over transportation, water and sewer investments and environmental protection programs. Restructuring the way communities participate in those decisions is a timely topic. As multi-jurisdictional decision-making becomes increasingly important to voters and advocates with economic, environmental and social development interests, the calls for an equitable and sensitive regional government are only going to get louder. And success hinges on each participant ultimately being able to say, "That feels fair to me."