The proportion of Michigan's local officials who trust residents to participate in government responsibly has dropped, but those officials still say they have a well-functioning local democracy, according to the most recent Michigan Public Policy Survey by the University of Michigan’s Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy.
Less than 40% of local officials in the survey said they trust their residents nearly always or most of the time. More than 20% of local officials said they sometimes or almost never trust residents to participate responsibly.
The percentage of local leaders who said they trust their residents most of the time or nearly always was down 15 percentage points since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the rate of trust was at its highest recorded level.
Survey respondents include elected officials as well as other local officials, like city clerks or city managers, said Stephanie Leiser, who co-authored the study.
Local officials said they can still fulfill their duties despite low levels of trust in the government, Leiser said. “They can run the water systems, they can pave the roads, they can do all of these things,” she said.
There was not a significant difference between political parties, although Independent officials report the lowest levels of trust in their residents. There was a significant difference between rural and urban communities though. This gap isn’t new, Leiser said.
“We see when we're looking at resident engagement and the different types of engagement that are happening, there's a trend, kind of across several indicators, that rural communities are falling further behind compared to urban communities,” Leiser said.
She attributed the deteriorating trust to how these rural areas “don't have a lot of capacity for doing lots of resident engagement and dealing with very controversial things,” Leiser said.
Survey results also showed that public discourse between local officials and state residents has deteriorated. About 59% of local government officials in Michigan said their discussions with residents are somewhat or very constructive. That’s down from 70% in 2012.
Regardless, many of the survey respondents said they are trying to engage with residents through new initiatives, like posting on social media, streaming meetings, and providing more information in town hall-like settings, Leiser said.
“Despite the fact that their residents aren't necessarily taking them up on these offers, they're doing a lot more, especially in digital space,” Leiser said. “But like I said, there's a little bit of a disconnect with residents picking them up on those offers.”
The Michigan Public Policy survey, which has measured these variables since 2012, typically receives about a 70% response rate from local officials in the state’s 1,856 cities, villages, townships, and counties.
