Regional Government? Careful What You Wish For

May 22, 2008

To fans of regional government, Connecticut’s municipal structure is just so … messy.

This assessment, from Craig Stevenson of the “Connecticut Rural Development Council,” is typical: “Connecticut is one of only a handful of states that provide the bulk of their services through local, municipal government. Most states have strong county forms of government. … That means, one large regional school district, one large county police force, one large public works department and all the way down the line. The savings via these economies of scale are tremendous.”

The “CenterEdge Coalition,” a group of far-left (and often taxpayer-subsidized) organizations, claims the “cumulative impacts of uncoordinated decision-making from 169 individual actors are increasingly detrimental to the long-term health of Connecticut.”

Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez whines that due to citizens’ longstanding commitment to home rule, the state is “behind the times at staying competitive on public-policy issues.”

The local-budget battles Connecticut experiences every spring give fresh ammunition to the regional-government lobby. Think how much time and money would be saved if we didn’t have to endure all this fiscal friction! Wouldn’t enlightened county commissioners be better qualified to decide whether the park and rec department needs two more employees than uninformed -- and frequently cranky -- taxpayers?

Well, no.

First, the regional-government crowd doesn’t realize that cooperative efforts by municipalities are widespread in Connecticut. Regional SWAT teams, animal-control facilities, and health districts are just a few of the projects documented in a 2000 report by the Office of Policy and Management’s Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, which concluded: “There are some 37 types of regional or inter-municipal organizations authorized by Connecticut General Statutes and federal legislation, including three inter-district education programs. There are also a wide variety of locally-generated, voluntary inter-municipal arrangements in Connecticut which address a wide range of issues.”

Second, it is far from clear that consolidated government means more efficient government.

As Stephen Goldsmith, the former mayor of Indianapolis, observes, “there’s a fair amount of public policy literature that reflects that there are diseconomies of scale in the delivery of public services. The larger they get, if they’re bureaucratic, the worse they get, not the better.”

There’s no better example of the failure of regionalization than the nation’s government-school districts. The Texas Public Policy Foundation notes that “between 1930 and 1980, the number of school districts in the United States declined from almost 120,000 to 15,000 … . During approximately the same period, the number of schools fell in the U.S. from over 225,000 to less than 100,000.” In those 50 years, the number of school administrators ballooned, costs soared, and student achievement plummeted.

A recent comprehensive review of the academic literature on municipal-service consolidation, commissioned by the Indiana General Assembly, found “the results of these analyses were spotty and often based on case-by-case analysis,” and that “significant gains in efficiency are unlikely” from regionalization.

In the Nutmeg State, regional government’s record is rocky. The Metropolitan District Commission (MDC), which provides water, sewage, and waste services to towns in the Hartford region, is no poster child for consolidation. Corruption, cronyism, mismanagement, lawsuits, and environmental fines are rampant at the MDC.

The state’s regional school districts are also problem-prone. Last year, Region 18 voters crushed an attempt to build a new, $54 million high school, just three decades after paying for what they were told was a state-of-the-art facility. (The solar panels erected in 1978 are no longer in use -- not too “efficient,” that.) A petition is now circulating to dissolve Region 18. Region 14 is currently fighting a legal battle over parents’ unwillingness to accept its reconfiguration plan. Region 12 is battling Bridgewater, one of its member towns, in court as part of a larger struggle over the district’s plan to consolidate three elementary schools. Region 11’s woes are nearly too numerous to list. It has been hiring more educrats despite dropping enrollment, two member towns have reclaimed financial controls from the central office, and the town of Scotland recently attempted to escape the district altogether. Last year, Region 11 tried to entice Brooklyn into joining it to help build a new, $65 million high school. Brooklyn voters rejected the proposal by a 2-to-1 margin.

Because regional-government proponents fail to understand the essential nature of the public sector -- i.e., it puts the interests of elected officials and bureaucrats ahead of the taxpayers it claims to “serve” -- they fail to see the pitfalls inherent when additional levels of government are created. It’s a good thing many Connecticut taxpayers aren’t so naïve.

D. Dowd Muska is a writer, commentator and public-policy researcher. He can be reached at muskacolumn@cox.net.

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