Metro to Go?

The first U.S. experiment in metropolitan-area government was test-launched in Florida's Dade County 16 months ago, when voters okayed a single "Metro" charter for Miami (pop. 290,000) and 25 satellite municipalities (see map). Urban experts and harassed civic leaders in other states looked up from desperate struggles with their common problem--how to develop unified plans and services throughout a central city and its independent suburbs--to pray for Metro's success. Foreign specialists came to study Metro as they once studied TVA. But, with no politicians to defend it, the new idea became an easy target for its natural political foes. Next week Metro's citizens will vote on a charter amendment designed to cripple Metro for good.* Outlook for Metro: bad.

Division of Power. The original Metro charter converted Dade County's governmental machinery into a major municipal authority. It aimed at developing such city-type services as water supply, sewage disposal, zoning, housing codes, traffic planning--which demand area-wide coordination. It left to each of the 26 municipalities such functions as beat-walking police and garbage collection. Experience alone would show how some jobs, such as police detection work, could be best divided.

Hired as Metro manager to bring the new super-city government's power to bear on such decisions: San Diego City Manager O. W. Campbell, 52, public-administration specialist. Picked by the five-man Metro commission--i.e., the old county commission with its administrative authority delegated to the manager--"Hump" Campbell went on the payroll at $35,000 a year, highest paid public official in the state. A determined man, he efficiently attacked the county's "wasteful, sprawling monstrosity incapable of rendering efficient and economical service." He streamlined the 35 old departments down to 17, economized to give the county its first tax reduction, from 17 to 15.9 mills. His countywide auto-inspection system made little profit but cut off easy revenue of hamlets retailing inspection stickers without spending money to inspect anything.

Bleak Future. But Campbell, administering to a population of 860,000 and thus above the size generally suited for city-manager systems, soon ran into political troubles. Foolishly, he demoted Sheriff Thomas J. Kelly to a mere process server, only to have that popular vote-getter generate such heat that Campbell had to appoint him head of the big new Public Safety Department. Administrator Campbell's rigidity worried the political commissioners, who subtly retaliated by passing arbitrary ordinances for him to enforce, e.g., an apartment-only zoning rule for an area which Miami Beach had zoned for hotels.

Moreover, his every success threatened job security for many of the 7,600 employees of the cities, upset such office-holding politicians as municipal tax assessors and surveyors, whose jobs were to be abolished in a couple of years. Anti-Metro forces lined up inside the "Dade League of Municipalities," which could count upon an army of ardent doorbell ringers from city police and fire departments. In a massive effort they got on the ballot the amendment declaring that the autonomy of the municipalities shall not be "infringed upon, disturbed or interfered with." The broad language covers just about any function that any city official would want to take from Metro. Miami Beach enclosed anti-Metro circulars in this month's water bills. Surfside stamped "Vote Yes" on its bills. Miami's sign shop mass-produced big VOTE YES signs to mount on garbage trucks and other city vehicles. Then newspapers discovered a scandal in contracts let at Miami's International Airport, which is run by Metro commission members.

It seemed that metropolitan-area government would end its experiment before it was fairly begun.

* After newspapers noted that the election happened to fall on Sakkuth, a harvest festival day when devout Jews could not engage in such secular activities as voting, some Metro fans proposed to charter buses to rush voters from the synagogue to the polls right after sundown.

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