History of the Citizens League
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- History
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Key Themes in Citizens League History
The League was created in 1952, part of the post-war revival and reform of public life that occurred around Hubert Humphrey's time as mayor of Minneapolis. As the area and its public affairs challenges developed, so did the League's focus and emphasis, with the changes coming roughly by decades.
The 1950s: Good City Government in Minneapolis
In its earliest days, the League focused almost exclusively on Minneapolis city government and charter reform. It primarily reacted to proposals, including a number to increase city property taxes for express city purposes. Its early positions also included acquisition of park land and locating a new central library. The League rated candidates and produced election guides for voters. But by the end of the decade, the League was involved in county-wide issues.
The 1960s: Metropolitan Systems and Governance
During the 1960s, the League recognized the emergence of the Twin Cities as a metropolitan area. It expanded both its membership and programs of study to the regional level. Later in that decade, the League played a major role in the creation of the Metropolitan Council and proposed many of the ideas that make governance of this area unique: tax-base sharing, financing sanitary sewers, acquiring regional park land and establishing Metro State University.
The 1970s: New Approaches to Public Service Delivery
By the early 1970s, the League began to emphasize the importance the importance of redesigning the delivery of public services, from health care to garbage collection to education. During this period the League was particularly interested in shifting functions to the private sector. The League also opposed initiative and referendum, proposed new approaches to local government and analyzed how hospital building projects increase health care costs.
The 1980s: Using Market Forces to Improve Public Services
In 1980, the League laid out an intellectual framework for the coming decade in its "Issues of the 80s" report. The report concluded that major government goals could not be achieved purely by spending available money and expanding the large public agency bureaucracies. Rather, the League said, the state should focus on using incentives, choice, competition and decentralization to improve public services. League studies led to Minnesota's school choice programs and covered a wide range of topics--health care, the University of Minnesota, airports, state and local tax systems, transit, the Metropolitan Council. Whenever appropriate recommendations incorporated the incentives-choice-competition themes.
The 1990s: Communities as Resources
The League continues to focus on improving public services and public finance systems. The League's recent report on the state budget problem provides a blueprint for reforming Minnesota's major spending systems. At the same time the League is examining how to revitalize a sense of community. An emerging program area, the "new urban agenda," focuses on issues that help redefine a regional vision and rally disparate voices around a shared regional agenda.
Part One: The Pre-Citizens League Years
The roots of the Citizens League go back a full decade before the League's incorporation in 1952. In the early 1940s a group of young Minneapolis business leaders, concerned about the overpowering impact of government on individual citizens, decided to work together to influence elected officials and government procedures and actions.
In November 1942, eight individuals (Felton Colwell, Leslie Park, Bradshaw Mintener, James Slocum, Roger Gurley, Austin Caswell, Lloyd Hale and Stuart Leck) decided to set up a permanent political action group which would meet every other Wednesday in a member's home. Each of the eight brought a new member to the next meeting where the name Good Government Group was adopted along with the slogan, "Instead of Beefing, Let's Act."
According to the group's statement of purpose, "The American citizen is being convinced...that democracy is failing because government is controlled by the politicians, and the individual citizen is left bewildered." A citizen "cannot...shape a policy except by...counsel with (an) elected representative."
The statement concluded as if written fifty years later: "Our city, county and state needs a strong group devoted solely to good government, effectively organized to compete with the many pressure groups already long entrenched and now aggressively functioning in behalf of self interests. Our organization will make effective and magnify the influence of its individual members -- for good government."
Similar Good Government Groups were organized in Rochester and St. Paul. By 1949 active membership totaled 127 in Minneapolis, 22 in St. Paul and 12 in Rochester.
During its nine-year life the Good Government Group's most significant achievements included:
- Enactment into law of the "Interim Legislative Research Council."
- Successfully petitioned the 1944 Democratic and Republican Party Conventions to adopt a plank in the party platform calling for the United States to take the leadership in establishing a world wide United Nations Organization. The so-called "Minnesota Plank" attracted national attention.
- Accomplished various reforms to the Minneapolis City Charter, including reduction of the council from 26 to 13 members.
- Influenced the City Council to employ three deputy chiefs to strengthen law enforcement.
- Researched forms of regional civic organizations and launched the Citizens League.
In January 1951 the executive committee of the Good Government Group discussed expanding into a broadly based membership of 2,000 to 3,000 people representing all of Minneapolis and Hennepin County. Securing adequate financial resources to support a full-time executive director and research director was also considered.
Preliminary research indicated that six other cities around the country had "outstanding political action and research organizations." Under the leadership of Stanley Platt, members of the executive committee studied and visited each of those organizations and reported the findings. After intensive study and follow-up the group decided to use the Seattle-King County Citizens League as a model.
In November 1951 a temporary office for the new organization was established at 901 Foshay Tower with Florence Lehmann as acting Executive Secretary. A statement of purpose for a Minneapolis Municipal League was signed in December 1951.
Part Two: Building the Organization
The formal organizational meeting of the Citizens League was held on February 14, 1952, in the auditorium of the North American Life and Casualty building. Leonard Ramberg, chair of the Good Government Group steering committee, presided. Over 250 people attended the meeting and 142 joined the new organization. By-laws and articles of incorporation were adopted and the first Board of Directors elected.
On February 18 the Board held its first meeting and elected Stuart Leck as president. Today, six of the 31 original board members are still members of the League including Leck, vice-presidents Bruce Dayton and Maynard Hasselquist, and secretary Donald Fraser. The others are: Charles Howard and Ray Black (who later became the first executive director).
Financial support from Minneapolis' largest businesses and support and leadership from a broad cross section of people not previously members of the Good Government Group were critical to the launching of the reconstituted civic organization.
From the beginning the new Citizens League worked to make sure its board and membership represented Republicans, Democrats, labor, management and diverse racial and religious groups.
During the early months of 1952 "fireside meetings" were held in dozens of homes throughout the Minneapolis area. Membership Committee members recruited people to host meetings and then assigned others to phone neighbors of the host. A Speakers Committee furnished a speaker who was trained to explain the Citizens League, answer questions and sign up new members at the membership rate of $5.
The Membership and Speakers committees also arranged to have speakers at local service club meetings and at church groups. The Publicity Committee produced newspaper stories and guest editorials for the morning and the evening papers. But it was the fireside meetings, over 100 of which were held in the League's first 18 months, that proved to be the best means for recruiting new members and building a strong base of financial support.
The League hired its first professional staff in the spring of 1952, and on April 14, 1952, Ray Black was hired as the first executive director. Albert Richter was hired as research director a couple of months later.
By the end of May 1952 membership had grown to 900, study committees had been organized and the first issue of the News Bulletin circulated. Approximately 150 people attended the first annual membership meeting, held on June 11, 1952, by which time membership had grown to 1,017. The meeting included a panel discussion of city and county problems and featured two aldermen and two members of the County Board.
It was apparent from the start that $5 memberships would not support a full program of research and action. Consequently, the League recruited 330 additional contributors, mostly businesses but also including labor unions, a church, foundations and individuals.
By the end of 1953 the League had nearly 2,200 members (about 25% of whom were from Hennepin County outside of Minneapolis, about the same percentage as the population at the time). It had held four general membership meetings, 107 fireside meetings, booked 211 speakers on the League, participated in 14 radio and nine television shows, and received over 1,000 inches of newspaper publicity, plus mention in 21 editorials.
Frank Lloyd Wright, who was born in the same Wisconsin town as director Ray Black, spoke to over 1,000 people at the League's annual meeting in 1957. That meeting is still the largest gathering in League history. By the mid-1950s the League was firmly established and ready to make an impact on public policy.
Part Three: The Impact of the Citizens League on Public Policy in the 1950s
In its first few years the League tried to influence policy by playing an active role in the election of local government officials. It published a candidate rating guide and endorsed candidates. This proved to be too controversial and was abandoned, but the League did cooperate with the Minneapolis League of Women Voters to produce several "voting guides" which did get candidates to commit to positions on certain issues.
The growth of the Citizens League in the early 1950s depended mostly on maximum individual participation by interested citizens. The entire membership was invited to participate in League decisions regarding new projects and position on issues. New members were invited to serve on the Projects Committee, which reviewed the League's program to make sure it was in line with the interests and priorities of the members.
The original study committee process involved standing committees, e.g., transportation or taxation, to which public issues were referred.
Before the Board of Directors took final action on issues, members were given facts and arguments and asked for their view on what stand the League should take. Once a League position was taken an action program, usually a pamphlet urging a particular vote on a referendum, was developed.
One early study, in 1954, recommended a metropolitan parks system. A subsequent effort urging a yes vote on a park referendum ultimately resulted in the establishment of the Hennepin County Park District. Ray Black considered this the greatest accomplishment of the League during his tenure as Executive Director.
After charges of mismanagement and fire hazards, the League, at the request of Minneapolis Mayor Eric Hoyer, studied the General Hospital needs of Minneapolis and Hennepin County. The study concluded that the proposed new, expensive facility was not needed. The study resulted in the purchase of new equipment, reduced the cost of improved fire protection, greatly improved employee morale and restored public faith in Minneapolis General Hospital.
Although some studies were less successful, the League often brought issues to the forefront or helped frame the debate. For instance, while the League failed to achieve the full scope of its proposals for the reform of the Minneapolis city charter as a strong-mayor system, charter reform became a serious issue and generated much public debate for years. In fact, discussion of Minneapolis charter reform continues today.
In these early years the League was essentially reacting to proposals initiated by local government officials. A key change occurred in 1962. In a review of a school board proposal for the first major building program since the 1920s, the League was critical of the program which recommended just rehabilitating old buildings.
But the League did more. It laid out an alternative program involving closing and demolishing of entire schools, selling sites, and constructing new schools at new sites. The community rejected the school board proposal. A new proposal based on the League's suggestion was prepared and, with the League's support, passed.
The experience taught the organization an important lesson, not only about finding the key points of timing and leverage, but also about its ability to generate its own proposals.
Part Four: Taking a Metropolitan Approach: The Citizens League in the 1960s
Verne Johnson was hired to replace Ray Black as Executive Director in 1958. Johnson was an ex-state legislator who had worked for Congressman Walter Judd. Despite being active with the Young Republicans, he was not considered partisan and had earned the respect of DFLer Don Fraser, who recommended him to the League.
During Johnson's tenure several important changes occurred: from being watch dogs attending every City Council meeting, the League began to see itself as an agent of change; from reacting to other's ideas, to proposing its own; from standing issues committees, to project-specific ad hoc committees; and most importantly, from Minneapolis-focused to Twin Cities-focused.
Johnson also initiated several League programs that are still done today, including public policy breakfast meetings, now called the Mind-Opener breakfasts, the property tax survey, and the Public Affairs Directory.
By the late 50s and early 60s the League began to look beyond just Minneapolis matters and concentrated increasingly on Hennepin County government. A significant number of successful reports were produced during this period: Minneapolis school construction, Hennepin County Hospital, Hennepin County courts and county redistricting.
But by the mid-60s the League recognized the emerging interdependence of municipalities in the Twin Cities metropolitan area and urged a regional approach for solving problems that were more metropolitan in nature.
In 1966 the League looked at the question of the future of the St. Paul zoo and ended up recommending a metropolitan-financed zoo east of St. Paul in Maplewood. The project was a major factor in the League becoming a metropolitan organization. In 1967 a League committee co-chaired by Republican John Mooty and DFLer Dave Graven helped break a legislative deadlock by proposing a sales tax as relief for the property tax and as a new source of revenue to finance schools and local government.
The 1967 Legislature adopted the League's recommendation to create the Metropolitan Council, perhaps the most significant outcome of the League's direction toward area-wide solutions.
The emerging regionalism created an evolution in the League's name. It began as the Minneapolis Citizens League in 1952. It later became the Citizens League of Greater Minneapolis and then the Citizens League of Minneapolis and Hennepin County. By the mid-60s, recognizing its emerging regional focus, it became simply the Citizens League. At the same time, the League made a major push to expand its individual and corporate membership base into St. Paul and the eastern suburbs. St. Paul insurance executive Tom Swain, former aide to Governor Elmer Andersen, was instrumental in the League's eastern expansion.
In 1967, Verne Johnson decided to accept a job at General Mills. Ted Kolderie, an editorial writer with the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, who had been writing for years about issues of interest to the Citizens League, was recruited as Executive Director. Kolderie's contact with the League went all the way back to 1954 when he had served as an intern on the new organization's staff.
The League continued to be active in metropolitan affairs and tax and finance issues during the first several years of Kolderie's administration. Associate Director Paul Gilje played a key role in the understanding and action on tax and finance issues. A flurry of activity occurred in 1971.
League recommendations were approved on:
- tax-base sharing, or fiscal disparities, a nationally recognized and sometimes controversial law that has endured largely unchanged for twenty years
- the reform of the system of state aids to schools and cities that had been the subject of a heated League debate between gubernatorial candidates Wendell Anderson and Doug Head
- the establishment of a college without walls, Metro State University.
- The package of tax reforms passed that year was called by the American Council on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR) "the miracle in Minnesota." Time Magazine, in a 1973 feature on Minnesota, singled out the Citizens League as the most "notable" civic force in the state.
Part Five: "Why Not Buy Service?"
In the 1970s the League began to stress the importance of having a clear understanding of the nature of problems, not just solutions, and to consider not just the structure of policy institutions but also the problems in the operation of government.
In a seminal report entitled "Why Not Buy Service," the League concentrate on the question of productivity in the public sector challenged conventional wisdom that raising taxes or cutting services was the only recourse for a financial crisis. Instead, the League urged a redesign of public services.
The report was actually the result of the Policy Planning Task Force appointed by the League Board of Directors in June 1971. The charge to the Task Force was to seek an understanding of what government was doing and what it should be doing, what the private sector was doing and what it should be doing and what the League should cover in the next five years. Charles Clay chaired the committee and its report was approved by the Board of Directors on September 20, 1972.
The report asserted that the concept of public responsibility was extending broadly across areas traditionally regarded as private. The Task Force recommended that government and businesses in the Twin Cities undertake an examination of the concept of purchase-of-service.
The Task Force report, "Why Not Buy Service," found that the public sector encompassed more than just government and that public problems should not necessarily lead exclusively to governmental provision or operation of solutions. In effect, the League said government should buy results.
At a time when most of the political discussion still revolved around "new programs," the League's report advocated "new arrangements" for delivering and producing government services.
Ted Kolderie felt this report was the most significant organizational achievement in his term as Executive Director. "Why Not Buy Service" established a new direction for the League, a direction it maintained throughout the 70s and 80s and into the 90s.
Midway through the decade the League also reorganized its internal operations. It restructured its standing committees and established the Program Committee, chaired by Wayne Popham, and the Operations Committee under Peter Heegaard's leadership. The Community Information Committee continued monitoring legislative issues and coordinating the League's legislative agenda.
In 1975, the League launched the "Information Services Project," which included Public Service Options. This project improved the League's efforts to monitor and evaluate information and trends on major issues for the Twin Cities area. Public Life, a new Citizens League newsletter, shared the information with League members and other community leaders. The project was funded by a two-year grant from the Minneapolis Foundation.
The League also worked during the 1970s to expand its membership base to reflect its metropolitan focus and to ensure adequate resources to support its expanded program focus areas. Scores of League volunteers helped recruit new business and individual members. Aided by a four-year challenge grant from the St. Paul Foundation, business memberships in the League reached an all-time high of 550 contributors.
Part Six: Issues of the 80s
A 1978 task force, chaired by Allen Saeks, conducted a somewhat routine five- year review of League operations. The result was anything but routine. The report confirmed the basic job of the League and concluded that the study process established in the early 1960s was working fine. But the task force also recommended a special committee - the first in League history - to try to see a decade ahead into "the issues of the 80s."
Chaired by David Graven, the Committee on the Issues of the 80s, made up largely of League veterans, set out to determine what policy issues were likely to force their way to the top of the public policy agenda during the coming decade.
The report argued that the political system was in between idea-systems. It proposed not so much action but a new way of thinking about problems and solutions. It provided an intellectual framework for thinking about emerging issues that focused on incentives, choice, competition and decentralization as means for improving systems for delivery of public services.
The report included such ideas as:
- The essential function of government is deciding. Government might, but need not, do what it has decided must be done.
- Decentralized systems are probably inherently safer from over- bureaucratization, and usually work better.
- It's time to slow the trend toward professionals doing things for other people and time to re-emphasize the ability of people doing things for themselves - individually and in groups.
- Elected officials should be freed from the notion that there should be one organization for providing services. There should be an anti-monopoly concept to give elected officials leverage over the bureaucracy.
- Service systems should be responsive to their users and more results oriented.
- Reform and reorganization of public agencies should be accomplished through creating incentives to initiate change.
The Issues of the 80s report was approved by the League Board in August 1980. Ironically, it was summarized for the membership in the same issue of the CL News in which Ted Kolderie said farewell to the membership after previously announcing his resignation in May.
Looking back a dozen years later, the report is visionary and prophetic. But at the time it seemed a natural outgrowth of League work in the 70s, beginning with the 1972 report, "Why Not Buy Service," through a 1979 report on desegregation, chaired by Gordon Stephenson, that emphasized consumer choice as the fundamental indicator of quality education.
The Issues of the 80s report had an extraordinary impact on the League and on public policy in Minnesota.
Under the leadership of its new executive director, Curt Johnson, the Citizens League carried out its commitment to the organizing framework of the Issues of the 80s report.
More than half of League studies during the decade reviewed the delivery of public services. And nearly all reports in the period focused on incentives, choice, decentralization and competition.
In addition, most of the League leadership during the decade - board members, committee chairs and presidents - had been members of the 80s committee.
League recommendations were successfully implemented in many service areas, including health care, solid waste, and most notably, education. Although less evident, many other League reports also framed issues differently and often changed the terms of the debate.
The most significant report of the 1980s recommended that parents and their children be given the right to choose which K-12 school they attend. Recommendations from the landmark 1982 "school choice" report, chaired by Carol Trusz, were approved incrementally.
In 1985 Governor Rudy Perpich used a Citizens League breakfast meeting to announce his support for the choice programs. By the end of the decade Minnesota's choice programs, including the concept of charter schools developed by a committee led by John Rollwagen, had become a national model for education reform. Many League observers point to the League's education reform efforts as its most significant achievement.
Part Seven: Curt Johnson and the Information Age
After establishing a programmatic focus with the Issues of the 80s Committee and selecting Curt Johnson as executive director, the League next turned the microscope on itself.
A Long Range Planning Committee, under the leadership of Kris Johnson, concluded that the League is essentially in the information business. The committee advocated building more capacity by reaching out to as many as are attracted to the League's mission, doing the things which changing communications technology made possible, and assuming a higher level of visibility in affecting the issues agenda for the community.
The League attracted significant financial support from several foundations, notably the Bush Foundation and the McKnight Foundation, to underwrite demonstration projects including video programs and evening seminars. The financial support also enabled the League to purchase data and word processing systems to improve membership services and support of the research program.
One important outcome of the long range plan was the change in the League's primary communications vehicle, the CL News. Redesigning the CL News emerged as a high priority in the Operations Committee and in a subsequent sub-committee retreat which considered a higher quality communications program.
The Operations Committee recommended that the CL News be replaced with two publications: a journal of public affairs and a newsletter about activities and people of the League. The committee further recommended acquiring the Minnesota Journal from its founder, Steve Alnes, and retaining Alnes as editor.
The Minnesota Journal enabled the League to widen the network of people interested in public affairs through a membership marketing campaign promoting the Journal as the featured benefit of membership. Over 1,000 new members joined the League in successive years as a result of the direct marketing campaign, and the League reached a record high of 3,400 members in the fall of 1990.
Part Eight: A New Direction for the 90s
The Citizens League has worked on public policy issues since the early 1950s. It has framed important issues, involved citizens in policy study committees, developed innovative public policy ideas and worked to carry out these ideas.
But as the League struggled with several difficult challenges - a leadership change, expiration of special funding for the Minnesota Journal, an uncertain corporate contributions climate, a changing and more crowded public policy environment - it became clear that the League needed an intensive self- evaluation of its niche in the public affairs arena.
Under the leadership of new Executive Director Lyle Wray and President Becky Malkerson, a revised mission statement and a new strategic direction for the 1990's were adopted by the League's Board of Directors in the summer of 1992. The League's revised mission statement:
The Citizens League promotes the public interest in Minnesota by involving citizens in identifying and framing critical public policy choices, forging recommendations and advocating their adoption.
The new strategic direction of the League continued the focus on citizen involvement in innovative public policy. But it recognized that new realities require new strategies. It initiated a journey of finding new, flexible and more effective ways of carrying out the League's mission.
A healthy democratic society depends on vigorous citizen activity and participation. The League's new direction envisioned increased use of face- to-face meetings of citizens and a greater use of electronic technology with efforts to produce institutional change.
A $125,000 grant from the McKnight Foundation enabled the League to push forward with the new direction. The grant, part of which matched individual contributions, also helped improve the League's increasingly vulnerable financial condition.
Aided by the strategic planning process, by the beginning of 1993 the League had identified five main areas of program focus : The Minnesota Agenda study committees, which remain the League's centerpiece for developing innovative ideas. The Mind-Opener breakfasts, which examine current issues and stimulate debate and participation. The Minnesota Journal, which explores issues beyond the headlines and provides news about Citizens League activities. And two new programs. Speak Ups!, which engage citizens in the work of the study committees in a convenient and informal manner, and Citizens League On-Line, which capitalizes on emerging technologies to carry public affairs discussions to people in their homes, libraries and schools.
The League integrated all five of the program areas in conjunction with its committee examining Minnesota's budget problem. Membership and corporate Speak Ups! were held; the League co-sponsored Speak Ups! with organizations such as the Urban Coalition. Citizens League On-Line, a public affairs bulletin board service, enabled people with personal computers to comment on the issue.
Part Nine: Shaping Minnesota's Agenda
In 1952 the Citizens League began as a group of people, who had a shared vision, and were confident that ideas can make a difference. It started as a strong citizen-based, staff supported organization.
The League began in unselfishness, persistent and patient, not out to win plaudits, but to see results no matter who gets the credit. It began with a concern for productivity in the public sector, for effectiveness in governance. Remarkably little has changed the League is still all these things and more.
The League has always been a place for people who are serious about public issues. In fact, many community leaders, in government, politics and business, got their start in public affairs through the Citizens League. Over these past four decades the League has produced over 400 citizen-based research reports. These reports are a testament to the unselfish and optimistic nature of League members. Literally thousands and thousands of people have been involved with the League and have spent countless hours in their commitment to the League's mission.
For more than 40 years the Citizens League has helped shape Minnesota's public policy. It will continue to do so.