More thoughts on municipal consolidation

Bruce Katz, writing on the Brookings Institution's Up Front blog, explores how state and local governments can better serve constituents. The whole post speaks to many of the issues YorkCounts raises for York County's system of government, but this part in particular makes the economic advantages clear:

"Metropolitan fragmentation exerts a negative impact on competitiveness and weakens long-term regional performance. Municipalities routinely expend scarce resources on tax incentives to lure firms from nearby jurisdictions, adding not one job or tax dollar to the overall economy in the process. Fragmented regions often fail to recognize their distinctive clusters of strength in the global marketplace and take the actions, large and small, to leverage their competitive advantages. They compete for growth and jobs at a deficit."

(Emphasis mine)

Katz says the responsibilities for correcting the fragmentation falls to the states, who allowed this to happen in the first place. He says states should do three things:

"First, they need to move to consolidate units of local governments, starting with school districts and economic development authorities.


Second, states should move to delegate traditional state functions to entities that govern at the metropolitan scale. California, for example, allocates 75 percent of its federal transportation funding directly to metropolitan planning organizations, enabling these organizations (usually governed by city and suburban elected leaders) to make transportation investments in the service of metro housing, land use and economic development priorities.

Finally, states should promote a new generation of inter-jurisdictional collaboration to gain efficiencies, such as tax base sharing and shared services arrangements like consolidation of 911 call centers."

Some folks in York County who would read the first suggestion here and probably stop reading. "Big government nonsense," they might think. "Socialism!" "I like my little (fill in name of local government entity here)." "Things work just fine the way they are."

So if you're an elected official in York County, how do you respond to the points Katz raises?

- Dan Fink