The trust Michigan's local leaders have that the residents they serve can responsibly participate in the policymaking process has eroded to alarmingly low levels.
Further, the officials' assessments of the tone of civil discourse among residents has also deteriorated.
The steep declines in trust are found in the latest installment of the Michigan Public Policy Survey conducted by the University of Michigan's Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy. The views are consistent among local officials of all partisan stripes in all types of communities-from small to large and rural to urban.
Drilling down, the survey finds:
- Only 40% of local leaders say they trust their residents nearly always or most of the time, compared with 53% in 2012 and 65% at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
- More than one in five (21%) say they seldom or almost never trust residents to participate responsibly-the highest level since the survey started tracking these sentiments.
- The feeling among officials that discussions with residents on local policy are constructive likewise has dropped, from 70% in 2012 to 59% now.
"Part of the reason for this deterioration in trust may have to do with the corrosive influence of national partisan politics," said Stephanie Leiser, executive director of CLOSUP and one of the report's co-authors. "Local officials, especially in urban places, have reported state and national partisan politics have created problems for resident engagement in general.
"If people use local meetings to express partisan views on national issues, it can discourage others from speaking up or participating."
Still, survey officials note signs of improvements in assessing the health of democracy on the local level, though the change is modest and by no means uniform across the state.
The percentage of officials who say they have highly functioning local democracy ticked upward from 79% to 82% during the past two years, while the percentage who report poor functioning dropped from 7% to 2% during the same period. These gains are found mostly among Democrats, independents, and respondents who did not provide a partisan affiliation, while Republican local leaders' responses held steady.
A similar divide among respondents was found between large and small communities, with the former expressing improvement and the latter holding steady. Survey researchers say that may be evidence of a return to pre-COVID confidence in the more urban places, while rural areas might still be feeling uncertain.
"Despite the declines we saw this year in trust and concerns about the tone of civic discourse, the improvements in local leaders' overall outlook offer a hopeful sign about the resiliency of democracy in Michigan's local communities," said Debra Horner, the survey's program manager.
The survey was conducted April 7-June 12. Respondents include county, city, township and village officials from 1,328 jurisdictions across the state, resulting in a 72% response rate by unit.
