Cap Times Against Reducing Board Size

The Dane County Board of Supervisors currently has 37 members. Supervisor Dave de Felice wants to reduce it to 19. Today the Madison Capital Times came out against reducing the size of the Board, citing three major reasons: (1) larger districts require more money to win competive elections and thus make elected officials more responsive to special interests than to the grassroots; (2) a smaller Board empowers the executive branch of government; (3) downsizing would make the board less diverse.

Reason #2 on increasing the power of the executive is an interesting one that I had never really thought that much about. Perhaps there is something to it. The 38 member Winnebago County Board has often been accused of rubber-stamping Executive budgets, yet in 2005 the Board found $1.3 million in cuts, enough to avoid implementing County Executive Mark Harris' favored sales tax solution.

Contrast that with the 7 members Oshkosh Common Council, which left City Manager Dick Wollangk's proposed budget essentially untounched. They even gave him floating docks at the same time the rest of us will be paying a new garbage fee.

I think one of the reasons why the Board size debate is so difficult to have is because most people, quite naturally I think based on the way mainstream media reports on government activities, think that "big government" is the same thing as "big legislature." They are not the same thing, and in fact history shows that government gets bigger and more oppressive as the number of elected officials gets smaller.

The most extreme example of course is a dictatorship. There you have no legislature, or perhaps a rubber stamp legislature. Government is therefore very small, highly centralized, and very efficient (Mussolini made the trains run on time), but the people have no meaningful freedoms.

The United States House of Representatives (the branch of the federal government that is supposed to be most responsive to the people) has been stuck at 435 members since 1911. And what have we seen since then? A dramatic increase in the power of the executive branch of government as well as the courts. Today the average House member represents anywhere from 450,000 to 700,000 citizens, which in my opinion makes a mockery of the idea of representative government. Not to mention the fact that most incumbents are there for life if they want the job, and many face no opposition or token opposition each election cycle.

Contrast that with the United Kingdom, which has a population of just under 59 million yet 646 members of the House of Commons. Germany has a population of around 80 million with a 603 member Bundestag (parliament). The United States has a population of about 282 million with a 435 member House of Representatives. Do US citizens get better representation from their relatively small legislature than the British and Germans get from their large parliaments? I don't think anyone can say "yes" to that with a straight face.

I realize that the large Winnebago County Board has too many incumbents who do not face challengers. But it always strikes me as odd that a solution to that problem would be to eliminate the office! A much better solution is for community organizations, schools, political parties, the press and other institutions to take much more responsibility for creating a "civic culture." Someday I'll expand on that--enough rambling for now!