By Gretchen Millich, WKAR News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkar/local-wkar-940297.mp3
East Lansing, MI – If you have one of Mark Grebner's bumper stickers, which say "No worse than the rest" or "He may be a fool, but he's our fool", you might want to hang on to it. It could become a collector's item. The outspoken Grebner has announced that after 30 years, this coming term on the Ingham County Board of Commissioners will be his last. But before he goes, Grebner will chair the board in 2011.
WKAR's Gretchen Millich asked Grebner about his plans for the coming year, when the county will again face lower revenues and budget cuts.
Mark Grebner: We have a lot more problems next year and we will have to do a lot more things.
Gretchen Millich: Such as?
Grebner: This is one that has not been approved by the county board, but is my own personal project. I would like to hire a consultant, a big out-of-town consultant, who won't know anybody, who will come in and go through all the offices, now that we have cut about 200 employees over the last three years, and recommend dramatic reductions in space used by the county offices. Figure out where to put in new walls, take out doorways, move files to dead storage, stop providing some functions that we continue to do just because we've done them for 100 years. And really rethink the county's footprint so that we get out of a lot of the space that we're in now. We currently occupy slightly over one million square feet. And a million square feet, to heat it and cool it and maintain it and so forth is $8 million or $10 million.
Millich: Next year will be your last term on the board. Why did you make that decision?
Grebner: I was caught off guard by the Lansing State Journal, which called me. They asked about the rumor, so I confirmed the rumor, and then I explained why, and they simply refused to print the reason. So, here's the real reason that I'm not running again. I'm not a very greedy person. I'm not driven by money. But you've got to pay me something. And the way our compensation system works, beginning in 2013, I'll be making about $3 thousand dollars a year for being a member of the county board. That's roughly minimum wage. I'm just not willing to work for minimum wage. I'd be willing to work if I could get $20 an hour like I am now. But I'm not willing to work for $7 an hour and listen to the kinds of arguments I have to listen to and to think about the kinds of things I have to think about.
Millich: One of the things you mentioned was a lack of continuity on the board. What do you mean by that?
Grebner: Elective office used to be attractive to politicians. Well, because of this fanatical anti-government strain of American life, we've cut the effective pay for politicians over time. It attracts people who have a plan to run for higher office, it attracts people who don't really have much to offer and it attracts young, idealistic people. But each of these people, after a few years, is likely to discover that they've reached the end of whatever they were looking for. They've run for higher office, they find a more lucrative way to spend their time, and they leave the county board. So the board has turnover roughly every six to eight years. The whole board turns over, with just a handful of people staying on more than six or eight years. It's the same joy that we see with the state legislature, where they have official term limits, where you have no institutional memory, you have no ability to preserve and extend policies over time in a coherent way, and you really have very little interest in the integrity of the institution. If you ruin the county's credit rating, so what? You're going to be gone in three years. Somebody could squander all of our resources, all of our assets and it really wouldn't have an impact for 10 years. Well, I've spent 30 years building those resources, paying off those debts, improving our credit rating. Who cares about our credit rating, really? I mean it's kind of like a boutonniere. You can wear it for a second if you're a current county commissioner, but you don't plan to be around in 5 or 10 years, the next time we need to borrow.
Millich: How would you characterize your time on the board?
Grebner: The way I would characterize it, I think of myself as sort of a performance artist. I'm trying things. I play a role. I see how it works, I adjust it. I try another performance. I don't really believe that there are fixed principles which one discovers. I think you kind of make up your principles as you go, the way an actor does. I've just basically done the best I could within the constraints of my art for the last 30 years.
Ingham County Commissioner Mark Grebner. He spoke with WKAR's Gretchen Millich. Grebner will serve as chairman of the Ingham County Board of Commissioners in 2011.