Tight budgets, desire for streamlining spur nation's city-county merger talks

Dec. 17, 2004

Sarah Kessinger

Harris News Service

Voters in the small Georgia county of Candler went to the polls in 1994 and soundly defeated a plan to merge their county government with the city of Metter.

"The voters were not ready to move to that point," said Metter Mayor Billy Trapnell, who backed the proposal.

Leaders said the plan meant no savings in the short term, but could produce long-term efficiencies. They assured the public that no one would lose a job. But that didn't appease worries among staff.

County residents wondered if they'd be saddled with paying down the city's debt. City voters had similar worries, which Trapnell said were unfounded.

"This is a major decision," Trapnell said, "and with something new like this, there is concern that things may not be as presented."

Other parts of the country have had similar experiences.

 

A four-letter word

"It's an amazing political feat if you can pull off a consolidation," said Jacqueline Byers, research director for the National Association of Counties in Washington, D.C. "Consolidation looks like it's got a lot of letters, but it's really like a four-letter word in some places. It's very touchy."

A lot of defeats come from talk of losing jobs, she said, which isn't always accurate.

In nearly all consolidations, local governments have used attrition to gradually shrink the ranks of city-county employees, said Byers, whose organization takes no official position on the issue.

Despite arguments for streamlining, Bernalillo County and Albuquerque, N.M., failed to convince voters in 2003 and this year to allow unification.

Voters in Des Moines and Polk County, Iowa, rejected such a proposal a decade ago and then again this year.

However, as today's cities and counties wrestle with rising costs and ebbing revenues, interest in consolidation appears to be growing, said Harry Hayes, a researcher at the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia.

Historically, mergers were most common in Southern states.

Unlike the West, counties in states such as Tennessee, Georgia and Kentucky are small in land size and often have just one main city to consider for consolidation rather than several smaller cities.

"We're seeing more attempts in the Western U.S. and the mid-central region," Byers said. "But the vast majority is in the South."

 

More predicted

Often viewed as turf battles and political power struggles, merger proposals still most often fail by wide margins. Since 1950, only 26 city-county unifications have met voter approval out of nearly 125 attempts, the counties association records show.

But that doesn't hinder some local leaders from trying again and some observers predict the pace of approvals will pick up as rural areas lose more population and growing cities sprawl into their counties' formerly unincorporated areas.

Residents of Athens and Clark County in Georgia, for example, defeated unification plans three times over several decades before approving it in 1990.

And in Tennessee, the Metropolitan Government of Nashville Davidson County was formed in 1963.

"It's worked very well here," said spokesman Molly Sudderth.

Counties north and south of Nashville now are considering consolidation.

 

Streamlined services

Governments often take the first step toward consolidation when they agree to provide select services together. Known as "functional consolidation," such agreements might include a merger of recreation agencies, computer maintenance departments, law enforcement or other services.

"Frequently, those are what local governments explore before they become serious about full governmental cooperation," Hayes said. "Both functional and full consolidations are an evergreen governmental issue."

In some cases, government leaders initiate the process, hoping to hold down taxes amid tightening budget constraints, rising costs and a growing demand for local services.

In other places, Hayes said, residents might tire of city-county squabbling and want them to work together.

"What we've seen typically is that some kind of crisis, either in the budget or with leadership or a combination of those, rises to a level that makes people want change," he said. "By and large people are not as concerned with their government's structure as they are with the quality and level of service."

 

Mixed results

Successful consolidation cases often involve large- or mid-sized population centers. New York City is the largest, where five counties consolidated into one metropolitan government in 1874.

A few are small, such as the Alaskan community of Haines City and Haines Borough, population 2,000, where voters agreed to unify in 2002.

"Because local governments are primarily concerned with service delivery, I think we'll see more consolidation and a variety of ways to deliver those services 25 years down the road," Hayes said.

Despite the 1994 voter rejection of unification, Candler County, Ga., now handles all elections, fire protection and accounting for both the city of Metter and the county, Mayor Trapnell said.

"One day, when everybody's comfortable enough, unification may be a natural recourse," he said.

Even multi-county service delivery could become more common across the country, Hayes said, which might lead counties to talk of combining.

There is no definitive answer on whether unification changes tax rates and spending. Research shows mixed results, Hayes said.

"I'd say there is every opportunity through a consolidation for a savings," he said. "But there's no guarantee that just changing structure will be a savings. It depends on who is in office and what spending they're doing."