I'm not even entirely sure where to put this, but I don't want to start a new thread for it both because we have a surfeit of politics threads already and because I *know* there has to be a thread *somewhere* where this fits, and the regionalism/local government reform aspects of this are the ones that I really wanted to highlight for the group.

 

Mitch Daniels, the Republican Governor of Indiana, gave his <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/01/13/doing_the_peoples_business_while_living_within_the_peoples_means_108528.html">State of the State address</a> today.  In it, he made a call that I would guess that few governors would even think of (since local government institutional reform is a boring topic for mass consumption, even if the potential efficiency savings there are large), and extremely few Republican governors.

 

He called for nothing less than the complete elimination of township governments in Indiana.

 

Two years ago, the bipartisan commission led by two of Indiana's most admired leaders presented to us a blueprint to bring Indiana local government out of the pioneer days in which it was created and into the modern age. Of their 27 proposals, seven have been enacted in some form. That leaves a lot of work to do. Indiana is waiting ....

 

Township government, which does not exist in most states, made some sense on the Indiana frontier. Many township lines were laid out to accommodate the round-trip distance a horse could travel in a day. We've come a little ways since then.

 

Today, over 4,000 politicians, few of them known to the voters they represent, run over a thousand different township governments. They are sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in reserves. Some have eight years of spending needs stashed in the bank, yet they keep collecting taxes. Some townships are awash in money, while the township next door does not have enough to provide poor relief to its needy citizens. Adjacent townships each buy expensive new fire trucks when one would suffice to cover them both.

 

Those serving in township government are good people, and well motivated. We thank them for their service. Our problem lies not with those holding all these offices, but with the antique system that keeps them there. I support the clear and simple recommendation of the Kernan-Shepard Commission that we remove this venerable but obsolete layer of government, and assign what little remains of its duty to elected city and county officials.

 

Likewise, our strange arrangement of a three-headed county executive should change. No business has three CEOs; no football team has three head coaches; no military unit would think of having three coequal commanding officers. We should join the rest of America in moving to a single, elected county commissioner, working with a strengthened legislative branch, the County Council, to make decision making accountable and implementation swift and efficient.

 

Daniels just jumped a spot or two on my list of preferred Republican hopefuls for 2012.

 

Thought exercise: Odds that any elected Republican officeholder above the rank of coroner in Ohio would call for the complete elimination of all township governments in Ohio and their consolidation into their respective counties?

I like the cut of his jib.

That is an excellent idea.

Actually kasich is pretty high on dismantling local governments and school systems...

School systems, I might believe.  Townships?

"Thought exercise: Odds that any elected Republican officeholder above the rank of coroner in Ohio would call for the complete elimination of all township governments in Ohio and their consolidation into their respective counties?"

 

They *could*... I doubt they'd stay in office long. I'd be afraid of the sentiments left on their voicemails too. (I say this as someone born and raised in a township and knowing all too well how well a proposal like that would go over).

Thought exercise: Odds that any elected Republican officeholder above the rank of coroner in Ohio would call for the complete elimination of all township governments in Ohio and their consolidation into their respective counties?

It depends, if it could be shown that taxes wouldn't increase, services wouldn't decrease, and the newspapers/TV stations buy into it, then there would be a few conservatives that would come out for it, but most would still be opposed.

 

They'd have to sell it as eliminating government waste.

I don't know that you have to "sell it" as such... it's pretty much what it is.

That doesn't mean that it doesn't need to be sold.

 

One of the top mistakes new businesses make, especially with first-time entrepreneurs: Assuming that the product is good enough to market itself.

I don't know that you have to "sell it" as such... it's pretty much what it is.

If the headline becomes "Blah Blah Township residents to lose control over ____ to the big bad incompetently run county" then it's dead in the water.

 

On the other hand if the headline is "Blah Blah Township wastes millions paying it's leaders to do the same work the county could do for less money" then it's got a chance.

 

Nothing is simply "what it is" if someone in a position of power opposes it.

Nothing is simply "what it is" if someone in a position of power opposes it.

 

FTFY.

Nothing is simply "what it is" if someone in a position of power opposes it.

 

FTFY.

Too true.

i understand all that, my point is... its not spinning it as reducing redundancies and eliminating government waste... that's what it is.

You'd still need to "spin" it as that.  "Spinning" is also known as marketing, promoting, and many other less pejorative verbs.  "Spinning" is just the political hack's word for the other side's public relations.

you say tomato, I say they just need to educate people on what this actually is.  :-)

A great idea. I've never understood until I took a forestry course at UK why some states had townships and others did not. If we are here to reduce waste and inefficiencies, Kasich, step up to the plate :)

I would think the more populous townships near the cities would then push for their own city status.    I like the idea tho, kill em!

It ain't gonna happen. And if Kasich tries to eliminate them, he'll face incredible opposition from almost every Republican because their stronghold is the exurbs and rural areas -- the townships. Many of the Republicans in the legislature started in township government. And the Ohio Township Association is a strong lobby.

 

Ohio tried to eliminate townships in the 1920s, before townships were anywhere near as strong politically as they are now. In fact, the failed effort to eliminate townships made them, and their association, stronger.

 

I agree with Daniels's intentions in Indiana and would like to see something like it in Ohio. But it won't happen here -- at least not in the foreseeable future -- and may not get anywhere in Indiana.

 

Mitch Daniels is probably the best candidate for president in 2012. He's an actual thinker with a lot of experience and isn't afraid to raise taxes, restructure and streamline government, all while extending more services to citizens.

 

Moderates of every stripe would love him and his focus on debt/tax issues instead of divisive social ones would be a welcome change for the GOP.

Mitch Daniels is probably the best candidate for president in 2012. He's an actual thinker with a lot of experience and isn't afraid to raise taxes, restructure and streamline government, all while extending more services to citizens.

 

Moderates of every stripe would love him and his focus on debt/tax issues instead of divisive social ones would be a welcome change for the GOP.

All of which is why he'd never have a chance in a primary.

Mitch Daniels is probably the best candidate for president in 2012. He's an actual thinker with a lot of experience and isn't afraid to raise taxes, restructure and streamline government, all while extending more services to citizens.

 

Moderates of every stripe would love him and his focus on debt/tax issues instead of divisive social ones would be a welcome change for the GOP.

All of which is why he'd never have a chance in a primary.

 

Yea but he's number 2 to Romney as the insiders' pick and he has some cred with Tea Party types because he's all about the debt.

^Which makes him a poor candidate, but a good running mate.

 

Back to townships...

The Speaker of the House would block any attempt of it. Since he's from West Chester twp.

Townships are a problem in some sense, especially the highly developed suburban townships that really should just incorporate.  On the other hand, while there certainly is waste and redundancy in having township and county governance overlapping, in much the same way we see with metropolitan fragmentation (many small incorporated municipalities), that's not always necessarily a bad thing. 

 

To consolidate multiple municipalities like Indianapolis' Unigov, or to dismantle townships in favor of county governance can certainly reduce or eliminate redundancy to save costs, but redundancy is also resiliency.  Smaller units of government, even if not the most efficient in aggregate, are more able to respond to their own needs in a timely and more situation-appropriate manner.  Those extra fire trucks may seem like a waste until that fertilizer plant explodes, and many smaller school districts might not be able to provide all the whiz-bang sports and special classes, but they also don't have to bus kids 30 miles to school every day either. 

 

It also makes those smaller government units more responsible for being self-sufficient.  The example given of one township awash in money while the one next door is bankrupt is a perfect example.  The poor township obviously has some issues they need to overcome, but if they were all consolidated then a bunch of wealth transferring happens that averages everything out to just blah.  The successes and failures are both buried in the bureaucracy, so problem areas become harder to identify and solutions remain elusive when they're all melted together in the same pot. 

 

The size difference between township and counties may not be enough to rationalize keeping them separate, especially since our counties here in Ohio, as in Indiana, are pretty small.  It's important to consider though, and the problems I outlined are present in nearly every scale of government.

I don't think the plan is to move every school and fire station into the county seat.  Only true redundancies would be elminated, like the pointless excess capacity in wealthy areas.  It's wasteful and destructive for cities to go without police protection while townships have a cop running speed traps on every street.

 

Excess capacity in wealthy areas is a function of wealth, not the form of government.

There should probably be a mix of responses - I'd advocate a couple rule changes - if more than 50% the land in a township is taken up by a municipality, the remainder of the township should be subject to easy annexation rules. That rule would help the urban counties (there are a plenty of these in Franklin and Hamilton Cty and perhaps elsewhere). The scattered non-contiguous townships that add complexity to the local gov't situation should be the first to disappear (Columbia in Hamilton and Mifflin and Sharon among others in Franklin Cty). I would place a max population density for a township to continue to use the township form of gov't - those that cross the line should incorporate. Pure county gov't might be a bit much, but encouraging school district/township lines to be the same would be a good way to start. It might also be valuable to allow hamlets, villages, towns to have easier incorporation rules to act as the gov't for areas that were formerly townships.

 

Well, the original idea was for townships to serve as the farmer's government, and any towns would incorporate. Today, suburban sprawl and growth of metropolitan areas has exceeded what the original law writers had ever dreamed of.

 

Bit by bit, townships are acquiring the rights of cities. The big suburban townships have their own zoning boards, the ability to write certain laws, township administrators, economic development specialists, etc. Even the ability to enact income taxes, once the monopoly of cities, is being acted on by entering into partnerships with adjacent municipalities in Joint Economic Development Districts (JEDDs,) which in my humble opinion is an abuse of power.

 

There really isn't that much different between municipalities and townships anymore, so I'm not sure if changing the laws is going to have that much of a difference.

 

In general, cities in Ohio are controlled by Democrats, and suburban townships are controlled by Republicans, at least in southwest Ohio. That's really what the difference is.

 

Excess capacity in wealthy areas is a function of wealth, not the form of government.

 

Unless the form of government delivers services over a broad area without regard to wealth.  Under the current system, wealth means everything, measured in 6 mile increments.  But that's not the only possible system.

In regards to JEDDs, Green twp and Cheviot have been doing this alot lately with construction projects on Harrison Ave.

 

Some other examples of JEDDs in Ohio.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Economic_Development_District

 

A Joint Economic Development District (JEDD) is an arrangement in Ohio where one or more municipalities and a township agree to work together to develop township land for commercial or industrial purposes. The benefit to the municipality is that they get a portion of the taxes levied in the JEDD without having to annex it.