The Regional Service Consolidation Vote
A public agency with 1,200 staff operates six regional service centers. The board has directed the executive team to consolidate to four centers within 18 months to close a projected $9.4M structural deficit. Two of the six centers are in districts whose elected officials sit on the oversight committee and have publicly opposed closure. The agency's enabling legislation requires that any service-level reduction affecting more than 15% of a district's residents receive a 60-day public consultation and a board supermajority vote. Internal analysis shows the two contested centers serve 11% and 19% of their districts respectively, and one of them has the agency's only walk-in disability accommodation service. The executive director wants a decision at next month's board meeting. Staff surveys show morale already low after two years of hiring freezes.
1. What governance process should the executive director follow before bringing a consolidation decision to the board, and why?
Read the worked answer
The director should not treat this as a single binary vote. Three governance obligations interact here.
First, legal threshold analysis. The enabling legislation triggers a 60-day consultation only above 15% of a district's residents. The 19% center clearly triggers it; the 11% center does not on its face, but the director should verify how the statute defines the affected population (residents vs. service users) before relying on the 11% figure. Getting this wrong invalidates the decision later.
Second, conflict-of-interest and legitimacy management. Two oversight committee members have declared opposition. The director should separate the technical recommendation from the political decision, document the criteria used (cost per service, accessibility, equity), and ensure recusal rules are applied if any member has a formal conflict.
Third, sequencing. The 60-day consultation must precede the supermajority vote, not run parallel to it. The director should present a phased recommendation: consultation plan first, decision second. Rushing to next month's meeting trades speed for litigation and reversal risk.
The accessibility service is a distinct issue: relocating it is a service redesign, not a closure, and may need its own accessibility impact assessment regardless of the vote threshold.
2. The board chair privately suggests the director 'find the numbers' to keep the 11% center open and close a different one instead. How should the director respond?
Read the worked answer
This is a test of integrity and of the director's duty to the board as a body rather than to individual members.
The director should decline to reverse-engineer analysis. The response should be respectful but explicit: the criteria were set before the numbers were run, and changing the target after seeing results would undermine the credibility of the entire consolidation and expose the agency to challenge.
A constructive counter-offer is better than a flat refusal. The director can say: if the board wants to weight equity or accessibility more heavily, that is a legitimate policy choice - but it should be made openly, applied to all six centers, and documented. Re-running the model with revised weights and publishing both results is defensible; quietly steering the result is not.
The director should also put the conversation in writing (a memo to the full board chair, not a private note) so the record shows the criteria were stable. This protects both the director and the chair.
Finally, the director should flag that any change to which center closes reopens the 15% threshold analysis, because a different district's population is now affected.