Petition drive to change Linn County government plods along

CEDAR RAPIDS – A three-man effort to gather 10,000 petition signatures required to try to change the form of Linn County government is plodding along, not rocketing toward its goal.

At the first of June, Richard Bice, an 81-year-old retired Marion businessman, Michael Engelken, 60, a retired financial controller at Rockwell Collins, and Linn County Auditor Joel Miller said they had begun to collect petition signatures with the hope they might finish the task by the end of July.

Bice on Friday reported that his wife died in May and that he had a heart attack after that, a combination of events that has slowed down the petition drive. But the drive continues and will reach its goal, hopefully now by Nov. 1, he said.

He estimated that the effort has obtained between 1,000 and 1,500 signatures.

“We're in no panic,” Bice said. “We will get more than 10,000 names, I'm convinced of it.”

He said any petition drive takes time and comes in three phases: an early spurt from emotional supporters; a series of talks to community groups; and legwork at sporting and community events. Bice said he's in phase two of three.

At the same time, he noted that there is no time requirement by which the petition drive needs to acquire the necessary number of signatures, which Miller, who also serves as the county's commissioner of elections, confirmed on Friday.

State law requires the convening of a county Charter Commission upon the petition drive's success in acquiring a minimum of 10,000 signatures. The commission then has a year to study county government and decide if he wants to ask voters to approve changes.

Bice and Engelken, whose son is married to Miller's daughter, announced in April that they would embark on a petition drive after the five-member Linn County Board of Supervisors announced that they would move to full-time status and raise their pay by about 25 percent.

The board moved from three to five supervisors in 2009 after a citizen referendum, but some who voted for the change did so with the expectation that a supervisor on a five-member board would earn less than a supervisor on a three-member board. The supervisors in 2009 cut their pay and called themselves 80-percent-time employees, but this year they made themselves full-time employees with full-time pay.

That upset Bice and Engelken as did the supervisors' move this year to snatch the county's facilities maintenance operation and its 30 employee from Auditor Miller's oversight and put the employees under the supervisors' purview. The supervisors subsequently moved another three of six employees with Geographic Information Systems or GIS skills from Miller's office to theirs.

Bice on Friday said he is just as concerned about the supervisors' “arrogance” as he was back in April when he helped to first float the idea of convening a county Charter Commission to look at changing county government.

He, Engelken and Miller all have spoken in favor of returning the supervisors to part-time status and hiring a professional county manager to run the day-to-day operations of the county.

The city of Cedar Rapids made just such a change in 2006 after voters overwhelming agreed to move from a five-member, full-time council to a government with a nine-member, part-time council with modest pay and a full-time professional city manager.

Bice and Miller, who accepts signatures on petitions at his county office, also want a county Charter Commission to consider consolidating county offices, and Miller suggested a merger of two county elective offices, his and the recorder's office, might be a place to start.

He said the supervisors now have his reduced his employees from 50 to about 15 and the recorder now has about 12.

“You're paying two people $95,000 a year plus benefits to manage 27 people,” Miller said.

The Cedar Rapids Charter Commission, which was convened after a citizen petition drive, presented voters with an option to keep or change the city's form of government. A county Charter Commission can decide that the status quo is fine and not call for a public vote, Miller and Bice noted.

Even so, they said it's time for the county to have a Charter Commission sit down and study the county government to see if it is as efficient and smart as it could be.

Miller and Bice noted that new property-tax reform approved by the Iowa Legislature and governor this year is expected to cut revenue to local governments from property taxes as taxes are reduced on commercial and industrial property owners.

Looking at an expected reduction in property-tax revenue makes it the perfect time to look at reordering county government, Miller and Bice said.

None of Iowa's 99 counties has a county-manager form of government, though Scott County, Iowa's third largest county after Polk and Linn, has a full-time professional administrator and part-time supervisors. Polk County has full-time supervisors and had a county manager's office about a decade ago, but closed it. They now have a professional administrator. The full-time Linn County supervisors employ a director of policy and administration.