You live in a township or a charter township, or a village (which sometimes means you're also a township resident), or a city, and you elect the people who run them.

You live in a county, and you elect a county commissioner to represent you along with a prosecutor, sheriff, clerk, treasurer and register of deeds, and maybe a drain commissioner. (If you live in a charter county, you also elect a county executive.)
You elect a local school board, a state Board of Education, and board members for your community college and for the state's three research universities.

Certainly that creates lots of room for discussion at a time when the state has more government than it can afford.
In any event, Michigan's 83 counties are surely not going to disappear. But even the least populous counties might benefit from streamlining: electing an executive, a prosecutor and a clerk, for example, and making the other functions administrative under the executive.

Government in Michigan has been dysfunctional at the state level for nearly a decade.

Locally, it is needlessly redundant, burdening state taxpayers with hundreds of school districts, townships, cities and villages. Michigan is the second-most governed state; only Pennsylvania has more governmental units.

Voters on Nov. 2 have an opportunity to change that. We encourage people to vote yes on state Proposal 1, to establish a constitutional convention.

Doing so will start the process that could change Michigan’s rulebook. Voters next year would choose 148 delegates who would suggest changes to the state constitution. Whatever they recommend would then go to the voters, with the end result being the first revised constitution since 1963.

Note that a yes vote next month merely starts a long journey, but one that could end with profound changes. Convention delegates could recommend a part-time Legislature, a change in term limits, the creation of countywide school districts, or any number of innovations. They would serve for little money and with no re-election influencing their actions.

They would truly serve the public interest, limited only by what they thought was best and what the public would support. The last constitutional convention fostered a new generation of leaders in this state, including future governor George Romney.

the United Way, the Community Foundation, the City of Ann Arbor, the County government, and the consortium of 11 other local governments are talking about coordinating their $5 million in funding for human services nonprofits. They have proposed a two-year pilot project to coordinate their funding around six priority issues—housing/homelessness, aging, school-aged youth, children from birth to six, health, and food.

Each of the priority areas will have a planning group that will make recommendations about needed services, for example the Blueprint for Aging consortium would identify the needs of senior citizens and the Washtenaw Housing Alliance would identify the needs of housing and homelessness issues; other planning groups would be the Food Gatherers, the Washtenaw Alliance for Children and Youth, and Washtenaw Success by 6.

The article isn't clear about how the funding decisions will be made after receiving the service analysis needs from the planning groups, but it appears that the Ann Arbor Office of Community Development will be playing the lead coordinating role as it currently does for the public sector funders. The director of OCD hinted that nonprofits might not be the only mechanisms used by the consortium to deliver services. "They are not the be all and end all," she said, indicating that some services might be delivered by "partnerships."

The Washtenaw funding consortium has more reviews to undergo before it becomes operational in July 2011.

With federal charges of bribery and mail fraud finally filed against him, Cuyahoga County Auditor Frank Russo has submitted his resignation to county commissioners.

The U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio has filed a 21-count information against Mr. Russo that charges him with numerous bribery schemes beginning in March 1998 and continuing through May 2009, all during his time as auditor.

The government alleges that Mr. Russo solicited and accepted bribes in the form of cash, home improvements and travel to Las Vegas in exchange for county contracts, jobs, raises and reductions in property tax valuations.

While an information is only a charge and not evidence of guilt, the filing of an information, rather than an indictment, implies that the defendant has agreed to plead guilty to the charges. However, Michael Tobin, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office, would not comment on whether Mr. Russo will be pleading guilty.

Cuyahoga County commissioner Jimmy Dimora pleaded not guilty today to 26 counts of bribery, mail fraud and conspiracy to obstruct a federal investigation before federal Magistrate Judge Nancy Veccharielli in U.S. District Court in Cleveland.

After the arraignment, as he was leaving the courtroom, Mr. Dimora announced to the gallery, “I'm not guilty.”

Judge Veccharielli ordered that Mr. Dimora be released after posting a $50,000 unsecured bond.

Later, Mr. Dimora said he would not resign from his commissioner's position but would be taking a leave of absence, meaning he will miss tomorrow's regular commission meeting.

As he was taking an elevator packed with reporters down from the courtroom to the pre-trial services office to post bond, he reiterated his innocence and railed against the wiretapping that was revealed in the 139-page indictment against him and five co-defendants.

“They're wiretapping the phones of American citizens, which you should all be appalled about,” he said. “It's a scary thing, wiretapping phones.”

But, he added, “I have done nothing wrong. I don't care if (my friends) were wearing wires, I have done nothing wrong.”

Mr. Dimora also emphasized that as only one of three commissioners he could not steer contracts to favored vendors.

“My one vote can't buy a paper clip, it can't buy a light bulb,” he said. “You need a second commissioner to do any kind of contractual award, any kind of business.”

Neither commissioner Tim Hagan nor Peter Lawson Jones have been implicated in the county corruption scandal.

Named as Mr. Dimora's co-defendants in the indictment were Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Bridget McCafferty, businessman William Neiheiser, former president and CEO of Reliance Mechanical Group, Plumber's Union Local 55 business manager Robert Rybak and county auditor employees Michael Gabor and Jerry Skuhrovec.

Separate indictments charged Common Pleas Court Judge Steven Terry and chief deputy auditor Samir Mohammad. Mr. Gabor was also charged in a separate indictment.

All were scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon.

An Oakland County commissioner pushing a new countywide ethics ordinance faces resistance from Republicans who say the county's 20-year-old policy is sufficient.

Commissioner Tim Greimel, D-Auburn Hills, will meet with his colleagues again on Sept. 13 to debate his proposed ethics ordinance, based on a model crafted by the Attorney General's Office.

The proposal would establish an independent Board of Ethics with the authority to investigate and rule on ethics complaints against county officials from top to bottom, Greimel said. Because it would be an ordinance and not just a human resources policy, it would make violations judicially sanctionable as civil infractions.

About half of Livingston County residents surveyed said they support the idea of public transit in the county, but few said they'd be willing to pay for it.

The telephone survey, conducted in March, asked residents if they would support a hypothetical, half-mill tax levy for Livingston Essential Transportation Service public transit, which primarily transports senior citizens and those with disabilities.

A total of 36 percent of those surveyed said they would be more likely to vote for the tax levy if some of the revenue went toward the Washtenaw and Livingston commuter line, or WALLY. The WALLY line would run between Howell and Ann Arbor.

The survey of 550 registered voters sought county residents' attitudes about funding public transportation.