My Take: Thoughts about Ottawa becoming a charter county

As Ottawa County’s litigation lawyer for over 40 years and corporation counsel in the 1980s and from 2017 to 2023, I have strong feelings against Ottawa County becoming a charter county. First, this idea was floated in the late 1980s when Ottawa County first developed professional management.

At the time, some elected officials wanted a charter because it would automatically provide an elected county executive. The problem with the county’s top administrator becoming an elected county official, is that it makes the top administrator “political” and hired because of popularity, instead of being “professional,” hired because of training and skill.

County government over the past 40 years, even in the areas it traditionally provides services, has become increasingly complicated. To eliminate “merit” and “qualifications” as the characteristics defining the role and making it political would clearly be a step in the wrong direction if good government is the objective. For this reason, the charter concept was soundly rejected by Ottawa County residents in that time period and the concept did not get enough signatures for the ballot.

Now, as I understand it, some in Ottawa County are touting the charter for a different reason; namely, they want the people to confer authority in Ottawa County government to operate in fields that are traditionally left to the private sector, such as electricity generation. A charter could also authorize the county to enter the waste pick-up and disposal and hospital industries. I find this suggestion truly baffling and absolutely frightening.

Fair or unfair, the criticism in 2022 that led to the change in board of commissioners was that Ottawa County government had become too political and was interfering too much in the private sector and private lives. Strangely, the idea that we would make Ottawa County more political with an elected executive and that it would take over more of the private sector should do something nothing has done over the past two years; namely, unify all of Ottawa County residents.

That observation aside, creating a charter so Ottawa County could buy and operate the Campbell coal plant is without question the worst idea I have heard of in 40 years as Ottawa County’s counsel. First, Ottawa County has no experience and no capability of operating a complicated utility such as a coal plant.

In the late 1970s, when Waste Management shut down the SW Landfill in Park Township, Ottawa County panicked and purchased it without any experience or management capability. The six years that it operated the landfill were a disaster and it had to close the facility in 1986. Waste Management and Republic, are national and international companies with significant experience and expertise in running modern landfills as we have seen in the Holland and Coopersville areas.

Ottawa County did not pay only for six years of losses with the landfill, but rather it has been paying hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for the past 35 years and faces such sums indefinitely into the future because of hazardous material control in the aquifer below the dump. That liability, however, would pale compared to the millions of dollars in liability that the county would assume for the fly ash landfill that is necessary to operate the Campbell plant.

There are millions of tons of fly ash on the site that are laden with heavy hazardous metals such as cadmium, mercury and lead. Consumers Energy can spread that clean-up cost against its entire customer base in future rates. Ottawa County would be able to spread those millions of dollars only against its tax base and its residents. Worse, Ottawa County cannot go bankrupt, but rather environmental liability would be spread over its tax base, meaning county property taxes could grow exponentially.

Moreover, Ottawa County could not condemn the property because the Michigan Public Service Commission has already determined that the plant is no longer necessary for electrical production in West Michigan. Whether people agree with the MPSC or not, the county cannot go to the state courts and argue that the plant is necessary for Ottawa County when the state has already found that it is not.

The bottom line is this: No counties in the United States are currently building hospitals, landfills or coal-fired power plants for good reason — these activities are just too complicated and risky to be a fit for the modern public sector. It would be the height of arrogance for Ottawa County to think it is smarter than everyone else; especially, with a community already divided.

— Doug Van Essen resides in Chester Township.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: My Take: Thoughts about Ottawa becoming a charter county