Government consolidation is a straight result of this ever increasing state and mandated-county spending on these programs. We have to wring every dollar from every other fiscal group in order to carry on feeding the hew beast. In the procedure, control of our financial resources is being centralized away from local and county government to the state government, furthermore directly or through mandates. Upstate municipalities and taxpayers are at the compassion of three men from downstate (the governor, senate leader and meeting leader) to give us back the fruits of our labors in the form of belongings tax rebates, Medicaid intercepts, and school funding. All three leaders appear to hold up this trend toward explosive hew spending and state control. Government consolidation is looking to reduce waste so that government operations require fewer tax dollars. Our goal should be to make government work smarter, and in turn, save tax dollars. If we set out simply to cut spending without looking at the way services are provided, we will end up without the services we expect from our government and that will only cost us more in the long run. While I was a Syracuse common councilor, I facilitated negotiations between the county and the city to combine the resources of the city of Syracuse police department, Onondaga county sheriff’s office, Onondaga county department of health, and the medical examiner’s office in a compound crime lab, giving taxpayers the advantage of better services at a lower cost. The post-standard called the crime lab “an idea that just makes sense” in an editorial printed on July 1, 1997. Years later, the crime lab is seen as an instance of the benefits that can come from winning collaboration. But again, building trust between the many parties involved was a critical step in making this collaborative effort a success. Similar collaborations should be explored going forward, but before I am prepared to move in front with other consolidation efforts, I would make sure that it makes sense to do so, and that taxpayers will not only save tax dollars, but also receive the services they expect and deserve.
Government consolidation is more winning in keeping jobs concerted near downtowns. Suzanne Schulz, planning manager for Grand Rapids, credits the region’s strong agricultural base along and smart zoning in the city with stemming the area’s job sprawl. “The query we have to ask is how do you keep expansion in the right place, where it already exists, and make it better using existing resources rather than demanding all these things elsewhere for new development?” Schulz said. The number of township governments in the state, along with requirements that each township offer zoning for almost every kind of land use, results in luxurious, inefficient and redundant infrastructure investments that hurt older areas.