Dane County wrestles over the future of regional planning

Madison -- To Gerald Derr, it's a question of fairness. Why should the City of Madison determine how his town develops when he has no say in the city's policies?

To Kathleen Falk, it's a matter of representation. Since Dane County has half the population and half the property value of a proposed multi-county regional planning commission, shouldn't the county control a proportional share of the commission's seats?

These are just two of the issues that planners and public officials are grappling with as the future of regional planning in Dane County and south central Wisconsin hangs in the balance.

In June, the Dane County Towns Association launched a drive to dissolve the Dane County Regional Planning Commission. After 35 of the county's 62 municipalities petitioned the governor in favor of dissolution, state Administration Secretary Mark Bugher proposed that an interim RPC be established until 2002.

In the meantime, the County Boards of Dane, Columbia, Dodge, Jefferson, Rock and Sauk counties would decide whether to form a multi-county commission. If they rejected the idea, the functions of the Dane County RPC would be distributed among existing agencies or within new ones in Dane County. Single-county RPCs such as the current Dane commission would be outlawed.

With the fate of regional planning embedded in the clauses of the state budget bill, planners across the state are casting wary eyes toward the state Capitol.

"Once the legislative machine gets up and running, the potential is there for mischief and the potential is there for harm" to the cause of regional planning, said Phil Evenson, executive director of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission.

Controversy has dogged the RPC since it was formed in 1968. For years, townships have felt under-represented on the commission's 11-member board, leading to the perception, at least, that the City of Madison's interests dominate the commission's decision-making.

The RPC, the towns contend, imposed arbitrary limits on sewer service area expansions, allowing the City of Madison to extend its lines while denying towns the same privilege. The towns also felt that Madison determined which areas of the county would urbanize, often at odds with the towns' interests.

"As one lobbyist put it, the towns that want to urbanize feel the RPC is a barrier to urbanization, and the ones that don't want to urbanize feel it's too invasive in regulating their plans," said Richard Lehmann, a Madison attorney representing the Dane County RPC.

The town's final straw was pulled during the process of adopting Vision 2020, a combined transportation and land use plan for the entire county. Gerald Derr, president of the towns association, contends that the RPC said it "didn't think the towns were part of the community," a statement that commission members say was never expressed.

"The (commission) seemed to go out of their way to irritate the towns," Derr said, "in addition to the problems we were having with their plan review and the way they handled petitions to change zoning."

Enough is enough, the association said and launched the effort to dissolve the commission. "We felt it was time to make a change," Derr said.

"Just as a homeowner has the right to get another plumber if the current one can't unclog a drain, the towns have every right to seek a different planning system when the current one doesn't work for us. And it doesn't," Derr wrote in the Wisconsin State Journal last year.

The towns' biggest reason for dissolving the RPC, however, lies deeper than disputes over zoning, Derr said. True regional planning, he said, requires a true regional agency, not the single-county commission Dane County has had for 30 years. That's why the association is behind the proposal for a six-county RPC and will lobby county boards for its adoption, Derr said.

"We need to address regional problems at a regional level," he said.

Not surprisingly, the commission has a different take on the association's charges. A website maintained by commissioner David Gochberg (www.execpc.com/~gochberg) contains several documents refuting the towns' claims.

One document responds to "misstatements" the Dane County Towns Association made in a memo last year. In particular, the commission said it never said the towns were not communities. Rather, during a 1997 Dane County Board meeting, a former RPC director "noted the Vision 2020 Plan document does not define 'communities,' but its most common usage in the plan document is referring to 'balanced communities' as urban service areas with a mix of residential, commercial, employment, institutional and open space land uses.

"Neither the RPC, the staff, nor the Plan document have stated the towns are not communities."

In another, the commission said the association's complaints about sewer service extensions, urban service areas and septic systems are "unclear or misleading." The RPC's process of reviewing sewer extensions, for instance, is designed to determine whether the extensions are consistent with other plans and to do so without delays.

"The RPC has reviewed sewer extensions for plan conformity for 20 years with virtually no complaint," the commission said.

Administration Secretary Bugher became involved after the municipalities submitted their petitions to the governor's office. His initial proposal, unveiled in January, was designed, he said at the time, "to move this issue off dead center."

Bugher said Governor Thompson feels "forced" to honor the request of the townships to liquidate the Dane County RPC. He said Thompson wants to see more balance between urban and rural representation in a new regional planning commission, if there is to be one.

"One of the problems we have is the heavy predominance of Madison, and the incredible political power the city has exerted," Bugher said. "The local units of government feel they have almost no political power to make decisions, and with the heavy influence of Madison, the thought is, whatever Madison wants, Madison gets."

Under Bugher's latest proposal, the RPC would be abolished and replaced by an interim commission appointed by the governor. Commissioners would include two town members, two members from small cities and villages, two members from the City of Madison, five county supervisors and other appointees of the governor.

A permanent, multi-county commission including Dane and surrounding counties would be established by Jan. 1, 2002, using a membership structure patterned after the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission. The multi-county commission would be made up of representatives of each county, appointed by the county boards and the governor.

Response to Bugher's initial proposal was skeptical. Madison Mayor Sue Bauman expressed concern that the structure of a wider commission would reduce the influence the city has on surrounding areas and would require a separate planning agency to receive federal money. Derr, for his part, supported the idea, but questioned the amount of time needed to implement it.

Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, meanwhile, told reporters she would urge legislators to reject the plan but agreed to work with Bugher on a better one.

According to her chief of staff, Topf Wells, Falk supports the concept of a multi-county regional planning commission, if designed carefully. "Her point has been that you don't need to get to a multi-county RPC by destroying an RPC," Wells said.

Representation is a key issue with the county executive. Because Dane County accounts for about half the population and half the property value of the six counties, Falk "would find any proposal that has the citizens and property owners of Dane County under-represented as problematic and extremely questionable," Wells said.

In effect, Dane County's voice would be diluted by limiting the county to three members on an 18-commissioner panel, if the SEWRPC model holds. That is what makes it attractive to the townships.

Water quality planning is another issue. Unlike the counties that surround it, Dane County municipalities are held to higher water quality standards, leading to legal and administrative steps that other counties don't have to take. "It doesn't make sense .... to have other communities vote on Dane County's future when their communities don't face the same requirements we do," Wells said. "It would be an extraordinary loss of autonomy."

A third issue is money. Initially, Bugher proposed that Dane County assume the RPC's liabilities, including accrued employee sick leave, vacation time and unemployment insurance, estimated at more than $500,000. Bugher dropped the provision in his latest proposal, but the parties still must determine who will pay the bill.

Thompson asked the RPC to submit a plan to resolve its indebtedness by April 1, according to Robert McDonald, interim executive director of the Dane County RPC. McDonald said the commission is considering several alternatives, including levying the debt, dividing it among the member units and filing for bankruptcy.

Whatever happens, Wells said Falk doesn't think it is appropriate to expect Dane County taxpayers to pay the bill. "I don't think there's any way of making us assume the liability," he said.

Meanwhile, the RPC's staff of 18 continues to do their jobs, unsure of where, or even if, they will be working in the months ahead. "The mood of the staff is pretty good, considering the circumstances," McDonald said. "I think there's a belief by staff that things are going to get resolved in a positive way."

The effort to dissolve the RPC shelved, at least for now, a plan to merge the regional planning staff with the county's planning agency. The county continues to consider how the RPC functions may be accomplished if and when the regional agency is disbanded, Wells said.

Bugher included the proposal in the state budget, in part to get legislators' attention on an important issue. He expects the proposal to remain in the budget bill, unless local legislators opt to take it out. "It's our way of creating public policy through the budget," he said.

Right now, a multi-county regional planning commission appears to be a tough sell, for the same reasons the Dane County townships didn't like the single-county RPC. Nevertheless, Derr of the Dane County Towns Association vows to lobby county officials on its behalf.

Observers are nervous about the future of regional planning in the area if Bugher's proposal fails.

"If we end up dissolving the RPC and if the budget provisions don't pass, we could have serious troubles in planning," Bugher said. "In the end, Dane County may have to acknowledge a multi-county plan. You can't plan region-wide issues on a county-wide basis and be effective. The decisions affect the surrounding communities, so it's myopic to think Dane County could have success by itself over the long haul."