As the Dukes County Commissioners evaluate their best path forward for regional governance, they said in a recent meeting that they’re considering abolishing themselves and restructuring into a new entity.
As a part of an overdue charter study, commissioners voted 5-0 during a Feb. 4 meeting to create a committee to explore possible new governance structures and gather information from relevant parties, like the Vineyard towns. Doug Ruskin, commissioner from West Tisbury, was voted in as chair of the committee. Peter Wharton, commissioner from Oak Bluffs, and Juli Vanderhoop, commissioner from Aquinnah, were not present to vote.
Christine Todd, commission chair from Oak Bluffs, said the last charter study was issued in 2009 with an edict that a new one be done every eight years, so the process is already significantly delayed. The newly established committee would help update the regional government to improve inefficiencies and accountability, modernize outdated structures, maintain local control, and address the changing community and services it needs.
“I just think we need to be more responsive and effective in our governmental roles and have the voters and towns buy into this,” Todd said.
While commissioners agreed that a charter study should happen with input from the community and towns, they worried that it could become a lengthy process.
Additionally, commissioners expressed an openness to abolishing the county commissioners to usher in an alternative governing structure, like a “council of governments,” which is similar to a regional planning body but has more direct involvement in municipal issues and needs. Only two such entities, the Franklin Regional Council of Governments and the Northern Middlesex Council of Governments, exist in Massachusetts.
A new structure could help streamline the governance process between the county and the towns and free the commissioners from some of the constraints they feel in the current charter. Ruskin highlighted that the county currently needs to “sell” its ideas and policies to municipalities to enact new programs. But he added that it could be beneficial if the dynamic was changed so that Vineyard towns and Gosnold could charge the county with tasks in a “more cohesive, consensus-driven way.”
Ruskin said he has no desire to “go through a two-year process where we have to elect, according to law, 15 at-large members” to form a charter commission, which would review and recommend changes to the governing document of the commission, and then vote again on a decision. However, Ruskin said a charter commission would be necessary to abolish the commission.
“If we want to create a charter that is completely different than what is allowed by law, then that would be the only approach,” he said.
If the Dukes County Commissioners are abolished, only five of 14 counties in the state would have active county commissions. Half of the county commissions in Massachusetts were abolished by the state in the late 1990s under former Gov. Bill Weld because they were seen as obsolete and self-serving. The first to go was Middlesex County in 1997.
Islanders first voted in the charter for a seven-member Dukes County Commission in 1994, which expanded the commission from three members and made the positions unpaid seats.
Dukes County officials underscored needing a holistic approach to amending its governance, and that would require the involvement of towns and various community members.
“Without the towns, we don’t have a region, so they need to be a significant part of that from the beginning,” Ruskin said.
While a governance style or deadlines haven’t been set yet, commissioners expressed a desire to follow a strict timeframe that hasn’t been determined yet.