University of Minnesota Law School Scholarship Repository Minnesota Law Review 1968 Metropolitan Government: Minnesota's Experiment with a Metropolitan Council Minn. L. Rev. Editorial Board Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mlr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Editorial Board, Minn. L. Rev., "Metropolitan Government: Minnesota's Experiment with a Metropolitan Council" (1968). Minnesota Law Review. 2931. https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mlr/2931 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Minnesota Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Minnesota Law Review collection by an authorized administrator of the Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Meiropolitan Governmeni: Minnesota's Experiment with a Metropolitan Council [E]xisting governments have little relation to the region as such, which in organizational terms is amorphous and un- crystallized. The metropolitan area has no capital, courthouse, or city hall, no corporate existence, no body, no soul, no sense of being, indeed no being in any concrete meaning of the term. Al Smith was from the sidewalks of New York, not from the sidewalks of the New York-Northeastern New Jersey Standard Consolidated Area. Davenport-Rock Island-Moline is not a place name but a shelter designed to afford the statistician refuge from political fallout.' I. INTRODUCTION Relocations in population, industry, finance, and racial bal- ances have created metropolitan problems of staggering magni- tude.2 The great needs for more and better housing, transporta- tion, crime prevention, sanitation, pollution control, recreation and education programs have motivated governmental responses from many levels. However, such responses have often been handicapped by structural defects in the various systems of gov- ernment involved,3 such as the multitudinous fragmentation and overlapping nature of governmental units4 in our metropolitan areas and their lack of resources to attack area-wide problems. 5 The relationship among units is often characterized by competi- tion rather than coordination 6 and interests of the metropolitan area as a whole go without consideration in the decisions of any single unit. Attempts are being made on two fronts to cure the 1. R. MARTIN, METROPOLIS IN TRANSITION 141 (1963). 2. In recent years an increasing amount of scholarly attention has been focused on these problems. Woodbury, Some Notes on the Study of Urban Government, 12 PUB. POLICY 113 (1963). See generally FOR- TUNE, THE EXPLODING METROPOLIS (1958); J. GOTTMAN, MEGALOPOLIS (1961); S. GREE, GOVERNING THE METRPorojs (1962); E. GUTLID, THE TWILIGHT OF THE CITIES (1962); Y. WILLBERN, THE WITHERING AWAY OF THE CITIES (1964); R. WOOD, SUBURBIA: ITS PEOPLE AND THEM POLITICS (1958). 3. Cutler, Can Local Government Handle Urban Growth?, 1959 Wis. L. REV. 5; UNITED STATES ADVISORY COMMISSION ON INTERGOVERN- ERNMENTAL RELATION [hereinafter cited as ACIR], REPORT ON GovERNMEN- TAL STRUCTURE, ORGANIZATION, AND PLANNING IN METROPOLITAN AREAS, SUBMITTED TO THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS, 87 Cong., 1st Sess. (Comm. Print 1961) [hereinafter cited as ACIR, Gov- ERNMENT STRUCTURE]. 4. ACIR, GOVERNMENT STRUCTURE 12-14. 5. See Walker, Fiscal Aspects of Metropolitan Regional Develop- ment, 105 U. PA. L. REV. 489, 491. 6. R. WooD, 1400 GOVERNMENTS 73-79, 112-113 (1961). 1968] METROPOLITAN COUNCIL problems of fragmented government in metropolitan areas. The first is an attempt to revamp and reorganize local governments.7 The second is recent federal legislation which has imposed as a condition to receiving federal funds for various projects, the es- tablishment of a metropolitan wide regional coordinating agen- 8 cy. In response to multijurisdictional metropolitan problems and the incentive of federal funding, Minnesota has created a unique experiment in metropolitan area government, the Metro- politan Council. It is the purpose of this Note to examine the problems of fragmented government in metropolitan areas and to analyze and evaluate three of the significant schemes de- vised to remedy these problems. Particular emphasis will be devoted to the Metropolitan Council as a governmental device which provides a framework to meet area-wide problems. II. FRAGMENTATION: PROBLEMS AND PARADOXES A. THE SPILLOVER EFFECT An economic premise known as the "spillover effect"O is inherent in metropolitan areas governed by fragmented and over- lapping governmental units. This concept is often used to de- scribe the benefits and detriments which accrue to one com- munity in the metropolitan area as a result of another unit's action or inaction. To illustrate, numerous activities of the cen- tral city benefit the suburbs, such as mass transit and traffic control which benefit the suburban commuter. Similarly, effi- cient sewage treatment in one suburban jurisdiction along a river will benefit another downstream. Finally, the benefits derived from functions such as public health measures or the operation of a first-rate school system in one jurisdiction clearly inure to the entire metropolitan area.10 However, the frequent lack of identity between the popula- tion which receives substantial immediate or indirect benefits 7. ACIR, ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO GOVERNMENTAL REORGANI- ZATION IN METROPOLITAN AREAs (1962) [hereinafter cited as ACIR, AL- ERNATIVE APPROACHES]; COMMITTEE FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, MOD- ERNIZING LOCAL GOVERNMENT (1966). 8. E.g., Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act of 1966, 42 U.S.C. §§ 3301-3374 (Supp. H, 1967). 9. J. BOLLENS & H. SCHMANDT, THE METROPOLIS 367, (1965); B. FRIEDEN, METROPOLITAN AMERICA: CHALLENGE TO FEDERALISM, SUBMITTED TO THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS, 89th Cong., 2d Sess. 6 (Comm. Print 1966). 10. J. BOLLENS, supranote 9, at 367. MINNESOTA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 53:122 and the jurisdiction which finances the project makes it im- possible to relate services and benefits to taxes. Thus, the city dweller may be taxed for roads and transportation facilities used primarily by commuters, and the suburbanite who lives upstream may be taxed to clean up an already polluted river which flows into other jurisdictions." In addition, local government units may be reluctant to undertake building certain public facilities if the decision makers are aware that the facilities will benefit an area beyond the taxing jurisdiction.12 Alternatively, if it does construct public facilities, there may be attempts, subject to constitutional questions, to exclude outsiders and preserve the facility for those who paid for it.' 3 There is also the difficulty encountered in financing solutions to present local needs since the central city-often the "breeder" of area economic activity- can not tax or control significant portions of the wealth it gen- erates' 4 and much of this wealth flows to the jurisdictionally independent suburbs. This pattern of development produces serious financial in- equities in the metropolitan area. People of similar socio- economic status living in similar housing, yet residing in differ- ent jurisdictions may pay vastly different prices for the cost of local government services received.' 5 Thus, the exodus from the central city of the relatively higher income groups and the cor- responding migration to the city of relatively lower income 11. B. FRIEDEN, supra note 9, at 6. 12. F. Schoettle, Jr., The City and The Metropolitan Area: Legal Structure and Values 9, October 20, 1967 (unpublished paper prepared for the Experimental City Seminar on file at University of Minnesota Law School). 13. See, e.g., Schreiber v. City of Rye, 53 Misc. 2d 259, 278 N.Y.S.2d 527 (Westchester County Ct. 1967). Plaintiff, a resident of another city, applied for and was refused a permit to use a municipal golf course and swimming pool acquired and maintained by public funds from the City of Rye. Plaintiff claimed that the restriction of the use of public facil- ities to residents of the city was an unlawful discrimination in violation of the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment. The court rejected this argument and held that the city had wide discretion in the classification of persons who may benefit from public facilities, and that the discrimination was not invidious. 14. Harris, The Economic Aspects of the Metropolitan Region, 105 U. PA. L. Rxv. 464, 468 (1957). 15. Sherwood, Some Major Problems of Metropolitan Areas, in METROPOLITAN CALIFORNIA, GoVERNoR's COnMISSlON ON METROPOLITAN AREA PROBLEMS 18 (E. Engelbert, ed. 1961). The author states: "[T] hough the City of Los Angeles may have 10,000 times the population of the City of Vernon, it has only 20 times the assessed valuation. The property tax base in Vernon amounts to $1,000,000 per person, ap- proximately; in Los Angeles it is $1,600." See also R. WooD, THE METROPOLIS AGAINST ITSELF 23-39 (1959). 19681 METROPOLITAN COUNCIL groups results in increased costs to the city in terms of housing and welfare accompanied by a diminished revenue potential.'6 Similarly the wealth of suburbs varies. The problem from the point of view of many suburbs which have absorbed the major share of the total growth in the nation is how to accommo- date the increasing demand for public services. Suburbs must provide many new services, such as roads, schools, and sewage facilities requiring large capital expenditures. One result of this disparity, not only between the central city