Rightsizing a Legislative Body for a New Metro Government

The Memphis and Shelby County Metropolitan Government Charter Commission has a formidable task in determining the right size of the legislative body of the proposed metropolitan government. They must balance the lure of small districts that will enable grassroots, neighborhood representation with the accompanying risk of an oversized, unwieldy body that could potentially rival the size of some state legislatures.  At the same time, they must ensure that Memphis, the suburban municipalities and the unincorporated areas (the future “general service districts”) have proportional representation while acknowledging the fact that municipal boundaries may need to be respected with the drawing of the new Council districts.

While the Commission engages itself in the unenviable task of coming up with an ideal number for the Metropolitan Council, I thought it would be interesting to investigate the size of the municipal legislatures in the principal cities of the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas.  My first post in this series focused on the size of these cities’ councils and my second post focused on their county commissions.  Since some cities have no counties and still others have merged with their counties, this post attempts to compare the 50 major cities on a level playing field.

The table below essentially combines the tables from my last two posts.  I have added the number of city council members for each city to the number of that city’s proportional share of its county commission to come up with a grand total number of local legislators.  For instance, Memphis’ 13 City Council members are added to the city’s 9 Shelby County Commissioners who represent Memphis to come up with a grant total of 22 local legislators.  This results in one local legislator for every 29,815 Memphis citizens.  This is slightly greater than half of the average for these cities, which have one local legislator for every 54,000 citizens.

Using the average for the 50 major cities, the Memphis and Shelby County Metropolitan Council would be composed of 17 members, or one member for every 54,000 citizens of Shelby County.  This may be an unfair comparison since many of the larger cities in the country have disproportionately fewer legislators per citizen.  For instance, New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, San Diego and San Antonio all have more than 100,000 residents per legislator, which skews the average.  Using only those cities in metropolitan size similar to Memphis (Cities 31-50 in the table above, in which Memphis lies in the middle), the new Memphis and Shelby County Metropolitan Council would be composed of 29 members, since the average for those cities is one local legislator for every 32,000 citizens.  Interestingly, this is not far from the 26 local legislators who presently sit on the Memphis City Council and Shelby County Board of Commissioners.

In the end, whatever the Charter Commission determines is the right size of the proposed Metropolitan Council, it will be both the voters of Memphis and the voters of Shelby County outside of Memphis who determine on November 2 whether the size and the very idea of metropolitan government are right for this community.