Apparently, we can expect two every month . . . looks like the Scott Walker approach to government.
Radical? Or just plain kooky and uninformed and lacking in details. Looks like he wants to merge CARPC, RTA and MPO into one large powerhouse committee with tons of work to do. Seems unrealistic. And I don’t understand how this will create jobs. And, I think there are some state statutes and federal requirements that put some of these committees together . . . I don’t think this is realistic. I can’t wait to interview him and try to get some details . . . .
Brandon Campaign: Zach Brandon unveils first in series of radical ideas
12/20/2010Contact: Zach Brandon, 608-729-5950
“Job creation is drowning in an alphabet soup of uncoordinated committees”
MADISON – As part of his commitment to a new way of doing business in Dane County, Zach Brandon is pledging to unveil at least two radical ideas each month of the campaign, noting, “Dane County’s voters deserve to hear specifics from candidates for our county’s top post. I’m excited to share my vision for how we can change the way Dane County does business.”
At the launch of his campaign for Dane County Executive on Dec. 7, Brandon stated, “Now is not the time for timid, cautious tweaks to the way we do business at the county level. This is the time for a bold, innovative and energetic approach.”
Radical Idea #1:
Streamline regional planning so that land-use and development decisions are made in a comprehensive, coordinated way that emphasizes and ensures job creation. Dane County currently has at least three non-elected bodies – the Capital Area Regional Planning Commission (CARPC), the Madison Area Transportation Planning Board (MPO) and the Dane County Regional Transit Authority (RTA) – which are all working independently on highly related issues, and are not linked in a meaningful way. All three bodies also have additional citizen advisory committees.Brandon stated, “We have one organization deciding where to build roads, another that decides if we will have commuter rail, and yet another deciding how to protect our vital water resources and where new housing and businesses should be built. None of these organizations are communicating with one another in any meaningful way and none of their decisions are linked to job creation.”
“Job creation is drowning in an alphabet soup of uncoordinated committees,” Brandon continued. “This is ineffective, costly to taxpayers, and makes it unnecessarily challenging for the public and key stakeholders to weigh in on these important issues, since they must navigate countless meetings and different appointed members.”
Brandon is an original member of CARPC. On the three years he has been on CARPC, the commission has been briefed by the MPO just once. The RTA and CARPC have never met together or briefed each other. Two members of CARPC recently resigned to join the RTA.
Jeff Miller, DeForest Village president, expressed support for Brandon’s idea, saying, “I’ve been working on regional planning issues in Dane County since 2002. The disconnect between how we decide where the cars go and where people live and work is a huge barrier to our county’s progress. I appreciate this bold idea. It’s exactly what we need and one of many reasons why I’m supporting Zach Brandon.”
Brandon concluded, “Politics-as-usual says that the way to address an issue is to create another commission or committee. Politics-as-usual also says we should continue to have this large, unwieldy, bureaucracy and hand out appointments to each commission as political prizes. I believe we can and must do better. We can and should have a coordinated, streamlined approach to make these vitally important decisions about land use, water quality, transportation, and workforce housing, all key components of job creation in our county.”
“Where the cars go,” “Where roads should be built,” and “Where new housing and businesses should be built,” are all statements that show these individuals do not understand that these bodies also should be deciding that maybe driving should not the first choice or the requirement in a new development; there are places that new housing and businesses should NOT be built, to protect our vital resources, and transportation planning is about more than roads.
Merging one or more of these bodies is an idea that has been discussed by people from all across the political spectrum, so it is not completely off the wall, but we must be careful that “job creation” is not just a code word for “uncontrolled sprawl and car-centered transportation.” If these bodies truly looked to the future, including the cost of a car-based transportation system and environmental impacts of our current way of development, I don’t think that merging them would be bad. However, I don’t think that’s what Zach has in mind.
CAPRC has in three years approved all but two of 27 municipal applications to enlarge urban areas. Seven square miles of our rural heritage have been converted to urban use, with much of that high quality agricultural land. All this despite a lack of market demand that has resulted in thousands of approved but unbuilt residential and commercial parcels. At current permit rates, these parcels will take hundreds of years to “build out” when much of it was supposed to be built out already. Just because land is approved for development doesn’t mean that jobs will follow, even in the construction sector! Greenfield/sprawl developers and speculators, and those they are able to influence, such as CARPC appointees Jeff Miller and Zach Brandon, live in an alternate reality, where these market forces don’t exist. Unfortunately their success to date with raises the cost of living for all of us, while also being a factor in dropping property values.
1. Committee consolidation
2. ????
3. Jobs
While Mr. Brandon did pack a lot of buzzwords into his press release, I don’t see a direct line where having an uber committee will create jobs.
It’s the standard Underpants Gnome Theory of (Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!) Politics these days.
1. Talking points and platitudes OR Warmed over right-wing ideas
2. ?????
3. Jobs
Also, “jobs” isn’t our end goal here; higher living standards are. Good jobs, with high wages and social insurance benefits (even if privatized), and preferably with union representation.
Hmmm… an idea with some merit? Probably. Radical? Hardly. From 1968 until 2006, the Dane County Regional Planning Commission provided exactly such a coordinated approach, combining water quality, land use and transportation planning functions, along with census demographic analysis, into a single entity. You can see an old description of the DCRPC online here: http://danedocs.countyofdane.com/webdocs/PDF/coboard/landuse/rpcrole.pdf
So, what happened? Well, in 2004, under pressure from the Dane County Towns Association, Governor Scott McCallum (remember him) signed a law to dissolve the DCRPC. Madison grabbed the Metropolitan Planning Organization before census changes showed that the city had less than 50% of the Metropolitan Area population. After two years of intensive negotiations, the cities, villages, towns, Dane County and Governor Doyle announced the new CARPC. You can still find the exuberant 2006 press release here: http://www.countyofdane.com/press/details.aspx?id=667
The other thing to keep in mind is that the County Executive does not have the power to unilaterally create, abolish or redefine such an entity. Effectively recreating the old Dane County Regional Planning Commission would require a coordinated effort between city, village, town, county and state government, assuming that all of those entities could even agree on the overall goal.
Just as a minor correction, Doyle became Gov in January of 2003. McCallum dissolved the DCRPC by Executive Order in August of 2002 – see
http://legis.wisconsin.gov/lrb/pubs/special/SubjIndexExec.pdf
I spent all of two minutes looking, but I can’t find the text of executive orders 52 and 57 that did the dissolving, but apparently they set an effective date of Oct 1 2004:
http://www.countyofdane.com/press/details.aspx?id=305