Michigan counties, towns spend $30B a year. Could collaboration get more done?

Michigan has more than 1,800 local governments who collectively spend more than $30 billion a year
Experts say local governments work well together, but there’s still a lot of duplication of services
Local governments say they know best how and when to work together

This spring, Berrien County leaders established a new nonprofit that works to keep housing affordable.

The project sprung from the Southwest Michigan Regional Housing Partnership, one of 15 groups created by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration to bring together local governments and others to address the state’s housing shortage. Governments in the southwest Michigan group have also worked together to streamline zoning and permitting and to seek federal grants, said Emily Petz, community development project manager at the WE Upjohn Institute for Employment Research who acts as the group’s lead.

The nonprofit “is just one example of how providing … connections can really help inspire, motivate and connect our region in ways that prepare us for success,” Petz said.

It’s an example of cooperation that policymakers wish happened more often among the state’s 1,856 counties, cities, townships and villages. Collectively, those local governments spend more than $30 billion a year, according to US Census data, including $1.7 billion in state revenue sharing.

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To some, that’s simply too much government not to work together.

“The biggest impediment to business growth right now is lack of stability, lack of predictability, and decisions just not being made timely,” said Jim Holcomb, president and CEO of the Michigan Chamber. “So if we get jurisdictions to work cooperatively together, it really helps enhance business development and the strength of the business community and their success in our communities, which is what we all want.”

Others aren’t sold that a problem even exists.

While there’s no statewide accounting of every police or firefighting contract, shared IT service, or informal collaboration, US Census data lists 436 special district governments across Michigan — which encompasses authorities for everything from airports to police or fire to water-sewer to transit.

Anthony Minghine, deputy executive director of external strategies at the Michigan Municipal League, questioned any push for more consolidation.

“Is cheapest the best? Is that the goal?” he said. “We could patrol the whole state with one cop, right? Wouldn’t be very good, but it’d be cheap.

“We’re the masters of doing things efficiently.”

Eric Lupher, president of Citizens Research Council of Michigan, has studied government cooperation. While there’s a “high level of collaboration, Lupher said there’s still plenty of duplication from police and fire services to technology to elections.

Numerous governors have pushed for more. Long before Whitmer asked governments to work together on housing, George Romney created regional planning and development regions in the late 1960s. Jennifer Granholm had her Centers for Regional Excellence. Rick Snyder had his Regional Prosperity Initiative.

The efforts sometimes get cool receptions.

When lawmakers in 2022 offered grants to schools willing to study consolidation, they had no takers until the following year, when 16 of Michigan’s more than 500 school districts studied the issue. No school districts consolidated.

Things have improved, said Bob Filka, CEO of the Homebuilders Association of Michigan, who sits on Whitmer’s housing task force.

Still, sometimes, governments within one set of borders don’t talk to each other — a county road commission may not know what a town council in the county is doing, he said. That slows projects.

“That’s kind of the fundamental thing that I think some of these regional planning groups I think need to start looking at,” Filka said. “How do we get people talking to each other so that we’re not waiting months and months and months for something that should take three or four weeks?”

Whitmer’s office did not return multiple messages seeking comment for this story.

Collaboration takes investment, said Petz, of the Southwest Michigan Regional Housing Partnership. Local governments each have their own day-to-day responsibilities to worry about and it takes someone wholly focused on the big picture to convene leaders and keep them on task.

“It’s a lot of work to connect and to facilitate collaboration,” Petz said. “And if I wasn’t here doing this role, it wouldn’t happen.”

Collaboration doesn’t always equal cost-savings — or harmony. Kent County’s Sand Lake recently canceled firefighting contracts with neighboring townships over the expense, handed its firefighting operations over to a township, and was nearly disincorporated over the controversy.

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy studied school consolidation and found school districts of about 2,900 students spend less per student than both smaller and larger schools.

Essentially, the group found it’s possible to consolidate too much.

“At least when we look at the empirical data on average spending in Michigan school districts, there are diseconomies of scale, as well as economies of scale,” said James Hohman, director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center.

But collaboration doesn’t have to mean combining services. It can mean pooling resources and regional planning to accomplish shared goals.

Justin Robinson, president and CEO of economic development firm the Detroit Regional Partnership, pointed to the Detroit Regional Defense Coalition, which has Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties and Detroit all working together to entice more defense industry investment in southeast Michigan.

“What we’re interested in is convening these people more frequently to learn from each other,” Robinson said. “We call it kind of the coalition of the willing that’s interested in growth.”

But even regional planning can be tough because one community can be so different from the one next to it. Some townships are urban, for example, with layers of zoning rules, while a neighboring township might be rural with no zoning at all, said Michael Selden, director of member information services at the Michigan Townships Association.

“And who knows better what the locals want than the locals themselves?” he said. “What works in one township or in one city or one village may not work in the one next door.”

This story is part of Southwest Michigan Journalism Collaborative’s coverage of equitable community development. SWMJC is a group of 12 regional organizations dedicated to strengthening local journalism. Visit swmichjournalism.com to learn more.

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