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03/27/2007: "Government Consolidation: A Concept Whose Time Has Come"

The consolidation movement in New York is about two decades old and has little to show for itself. Despite a rash of studies, reports and committees in the 1980s, little happened as parochial interests prevailed. Today, however, a more pragmatic attitude exists and the drive towards consolidation is not coming from academics and people at the top of the ladder. Rather, it’s percolating up from the bottom.

In recent village elections surprisingly the word consolidation or dissolution was on the lips of more than one candidate. Whether we’ll see positive results this time around remains to be seen. However, we should understand why this is taking place and suggest some guidelines for success.

The structure of local government in New York hasn’t changed much in the past 300 years. The existence of villages, towns, cities and counties represents a time long before mass transportation and the Internet. As a result, the boundaries of many of these jurisdictions no longer meet any rational criteria. Some ought to dissolve; others ought to be consolidated into larger districts.

Government boundaries should exist for reasons other than history. Jurisdictions should exist where public policy can impact on issues affecting those who reside without their boundaries and where residents can select representatives of their interests on policymaking bodies. When the boundaries are artificial, needs cannot be adequately addressed and that often leads to the politics of personality.

To give concrete examples of how New Yorkers suffer today because of political entities that no longer serve a rational purpose, here are a few:

∑ Local posts are often filled by people whose loyalty is to those who appointed them rather than professional principles of fairness, equity and honesty. That’s why we see so much local corruption, cronyism, nepotism and waste.
∑ Conflict between local jurisdictions is rampant and lacks solutions. We’ve seen this with local development agencies competing with each other to bring business to their political communities when in fact they represent the same economic community. Talk of merging IDAs should be supported.
∑ Waste. When you have too many small government agencies, waste becomes a way of life. Every police department needs dispatchers – even when the agency is too small to keep that person busy; every school bus department needs scheduling – even if they can’t afford the latest technology to schedule routes efficiently; every department needs its own computers, copiers and offices even if these are only used sporadically.

High taxes, politically-motivated and unskilled people doing jobs where skilled people are needed, cronyism, nepotism, theft of services, lack of oversight: those are the prices New Yorkers pay daily for its current structure of local government.

Is consolidation the answer? Only if it’s done properly; only if it results in more efficient delivery of services by professional employees (i.e., people who are trained, have proper tools and are properly supervised).

State government can impact whether the current whisper of consolidation becomes a force for change. Financial incentives should be awarded to communities that consolidate jurisdictions or agencies within jurisdictions.

The state should also provide the assistance of professional managers to localities wishing to consolidate local villages, towns and even counties. Cities, such as Schenectady, which are struggling financially, should be offered incentives to merge into their county governments. Al Jurczynski’s suggestion when he became mayor of Schenectady that he should preside over its dissolution was 100% correct.

Consolidation has been opposed as a loss of democracy. That should be considered a code word for ‘don’t take away my little fiefdom.’ Representative government organized around rational boundaries is more democratic than government organized around historic and no longer logical boundaries. When you have legislative bodies that represent logical boundaries at least there is a chance to address real needs. Today we have legislative bodies that often can only obstruct needed progress. It’s time.