Putting Them All Together

Rust Belt GOP Governors (an a few Blue Dog Dems) are hot on the idea that it's time to merge hamlets and villages in order to shed local government jobs and consolidate services to save the states money in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana.

State Representative Thomas R. Caltagirone, a Democrat from Reading, introduced a bill last year that would require consolidation among the commonwealth’s 2,652 boroughs --30 percent of which have 1,000 or fewer residents, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Economic Development. Residents and elected officials are loath to surrender control, he said.

“A lot of them know in their hearts it’s the right thing to do, but politically they’re afraid to touch it,” Caltagirone said in a telephone interview.

In Ohio, Governor John Kasich has suggested a bipartisan panel similar to the federal Base Closure and Realignment Commission to analyze consolidations and document the benefits.

“If you can’t show that there’s something to be gained, you’re not going to get it done,” Kasich said in a telephone interview.

One state to the west, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has proposed eliminating the state’s 1,008 township governments, calling them “venerable but obsolete” in his State of the State address this year. Cutting their three-member elected boards alone would save about $2 million a year, Chris Ruhl, director of the Indiana Office of Management and Budget, said in a telephone interview.

“I’ve never seen such a consistent push across so many different states and across so many different municipalities to say, ‘We have to look at this,’” Charles Zettek Jr., vice president of the Center for Governmental Research in Rochester, New York, said in a telephone interview. The nonprofit center has advised governments about consolidation in New York, New Jersey and Ohio.

Justifying duplication is difficult with revenue still rebounding from recession, said Scott Pattison, executive director of the Washington-based National Association of State Budget Officers.

“People are saying, ‘Come on, we know why you would want to keep it this way, but we just can’t continue to afford it,’” Pattison said in a telephone interview. 

It's funny how state lawmakers are convinced that having less local control in small towns is a good thing, not to mention ironic.  They yell that federal control is unconstitutional, but that local government is too costly and must be consolidated.  Imagine that:  state lawmakers want as much power as possible at the state level, not the federal or local.

That would be amusing if it wasn't disturbing at the same time.