City–County Consolidation: Promises Made, Promises Kept?

1 A Research Design for Evaluating Consolidation Performance

1 ! 1 " A Research Design for Evaluating Consolidation Performance Suzanne M. Leland and Kurt Thurmaier Efficiency and effectiveness are at the forefront of discussions about local government management across the United States. Local government’s role in providing who gets what from government has increased greatly in the devolution era as we begin a new century. Governments face cutbacks in state and federal assistance on the one hand, and taxpayer revolts on the other. Public administrators are under pressure to find new ways to improve service delivery more efficiently and effectively. Although city–county consolidation is a frequently discussed local government reform, structurally merging a major municipality and county to form a unified government is often unsuccessful; about 80 percent of merger referenda fail (Leland and Thurmaier 2006). Rosenbaum and Kammerer (1974) note that consolidation proponents work against long odds to win the referendum vote. One cause for the low success rate may be that there is little evidence to convince voters that consolidated governments are more efficient than separate cities and counties. Many promises have been made in successful consolidation campaigns, but have they been kept? In this book, we present a careful study of the promises made in successful referenda campaigns, and we analyze the extent to which the promises have been kept. This chapter first reviews what previous studies have demonstrated, and it then presents a research design to empirically explore whether consolidated governments are more efficient, lead to improved economic development, and keep other promises made to voters. 2 A Research Design for Evaluating Consolidation Performance City–County Consolidation Consolidated city–county governments only make up slightly more than 1 percent of the 3,043 county governments in the United States and about 1.5 percent of the 19,371 city governments (Durning 2003; Leland and Thurmaier 2006). City–county consolidation occurs when a county and one or more of the cities within a county merge to form a single government entity. The boundary lines of the jurisdictions become coterminous. In most cases, smaller towns, school districts, and city- or county-owned utilities are excluded from consolidations (Leland and Thurmaier 2004), although water and sewer services are usually included in the new government. Political considerations typically dictate exempting smaller suburban towns from initial consolidation, giving them the option of joining the unified government at a later time (Glendening and Atkins 1980). Consolidation is distinctive from other forms of metropolitan cooperation because it involves the most visible and comprehensive change local governments can undertake (Carr and Sneed 2004). Currently there are forty consolidated governments in the United States (table 1.1), including Greeley County and the city of Tribune, Kansas, which voted to consolidate in 2007. The first consolidated government was adopted in 1805, with New Orleans and Orleans Parish, Louisiana. Some noteworthy city–county consolidations include Jacksonville/Duval County, Florida, which was adopted in 1967; Indianapolis/Marion County, Indiana (UNIGOV), adopted in 1969; and the recently consolidated government of Louisville/ Jefferson, Kentucky, adopted in 2001. Consolidated governments are located in every region of the country except the Northeast. They range from very small rural communities, such as Butte/Silver Bow County, Montana, to medium-sized urban areas such as Nashville/Davidson County, Tennessee. Every year several communities consider the issue, and in the words of Dan Durning, consolidation is “an evergreen issue.” At the time we are writing this, reformers in several major cities are contemplating consolidation , including in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Orlando. Despite this persistent interest in city–county consolidation, reformers are simply unable to point to successful implementation elsewhere that have overwhelming evidence of cost savings. In Walker’s (1969) classic study of the diffusion of innovation of state policies, he notes that opposition to a particular policy can be overcome if the proponent of change can point to successful implementation elsewhere . We believe this situation is also applicable to the diffusion of innovation among local governments and provides one explanation for why few consolidations are adopted. Local government reformers often advocate City–County Consolidation 3 consolidation on the basis of cost savings, yet they are unable to point to a particular case that would convince elected officials and voters to adopt such a radical reform (Leland and Thurmaier 2004). The Structural Effectiveness of a Unified Voice versus the Technical Efficiency Argument In most cases, if proconsolidation reformers are lucky enough to get consolidation on the ballot, a successful campaign is...