urbanMSP

Hypothetically, if Republicans take the governorship and maintain their hold on both houses, how likely is it they would abolish the Met Council?

I think it's unlikely but that they would push through a change to have elected officials (mayors, county commissioners) make up the council. I don't think there's anything the DFL could do to stop it.

What percentage of the seats on the council are political appointees? The GOP may appreciate controlling Met Council to keep a thumb on Hennepin and Ramsey counties over taking a baseball bat to the whole thing and setting Hennepin and Ramsey free.

100%. They're all appointed by the Governor. Hence why the Met Council will never go away, IMO. The GOP hates it when they don't have the Governor's office, but is just fine with it when it's their guys. Like most governmental units, really.

I'll also note that the Met Council even functioned reasonably well under Pawlenty, who put in a few contrarians but mostly kept it running along, doing its job.

I saw this a week or two ago but haven't seen it on the forum. TAB selections from the 2016 Regional Solicitation.
https://metrocouncil.org/Transportation ... jects.aspx
Regional A.F.

Matt, any idea what the 46th Street Pedestrian Improvements project refers to?

Is there a version of this TAB list split out by year? This solicitation covers years 2017-2021 or something, right?

http://www.startribune.com/for-fledglin ... 412753213/
"The SAC is the bane of the small independent restaurateurs who have opened new places over the last decade"

What a mess. But, Regional AF.

A bill to change the make-up of the Metropolitan Council.
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/pages/doctyp ... n=0&y=2017
http://senatedfl.mn/2017/03/23/met-coun ... -proposal/

https://www.startribune.com/chairman-ad ... 431119133/

Adam Duinick to resign, to pursue a new "professional opportunity" (leading a union). Alene Tchourumoff appointed as replacement.

SF 2809 has been making its way through the MN Senate to modify it from being appointed to elected. Thoughts?

Dayton will veto it if it gets to him.

Dayton will veto it if it gets to him.

So I read in here that the Met Council is not technically in compliance with federal requirements. is that true?

So I read in here that the Met Council is not technically in compliance with federal requirements. is that true?

Wikipedia doesn’t think so, since it reports most MPOs across the country are appointed, excepting Portland.

I know that the Transportation Advisory Board (TAB) is a separate thing because of federal requirements.

So I read in here that the Met Council is not technically in compliance with federal requirements. is that true?

Wikipedia doesn’t think so, since it reports most MPOs across the country are appointed, excepting Portland.

I know that the Transportation Advisory Board (TAB) is a separate thing because of federal requirements.

So the GOP is just trying to skew the perception of it to try and get people to hate the Council.

Rep Lewis is pushing this at the federal level and has attached an anti-Met Council provision to the FAA budget, because of course he has.

http://www.startribune.com/u-s-house-ap ... 480995681/

I've been thinking about the voting for Met Council members thing.

Is it more important to suburban Republicans to be able to ruin metro projects, or to no longer have to answer to the Met Council?

Because if they manage to pass this, I think maybe it's time to redraw the Council boundaries to carve out the areas that would be detrimental to the overall goal of a better metro area. The double-edged sword of this for the Republicans is the Met Council would be immune to a Republican governor coming in and appointing another Annette Meeks.

Are the current districts equally divided by population? How often do they get redrawn?

Maybe some enterprising cartographers could experiment gerrymandering boundaries for these hypothetical elected districts?

I'm not even talking districts, I'm saying straight up cut off the service areas to just Eastern Hennepin, Ramsey, and the urban fringes of the other counties.

If you only want to be a part of something to wreck it, you shouldn't be a part of it at all.

Experience and cynicism suggests to me that the first proposal out of the GOP camp will be to assign one elected rep per county, or per municipality. The toxic idea that political power is vested in land areas and not in humans will never die in this country.

Idealistically I do kind of like the idea of having an elected body that covers only the parts of the state that actually want to participate in the Metro area. An alternative, but perhaps pie-in-the-sky, idea I had to achieve that would be municipal mergers to incorporate first-ring/streetcar suburbs into Minneapolis or St. Paul, but I can't imagine ever having a unified Minneapolis-St. Paul municipality.