[llamaorama]

I don't know how I feel about city-county mergers or municipal consolidations. It really depends. I think a lot of forumers on SSP who think its a good idea must have formed their perspective looking at cities like St. Louis or Chicago or the Northeast where there is a genuine problem with lots of very small, balkanized local government entities that are struggling.

But then in other regions of the country things are different I think.

What kind of municipalities would you be dissolving away? Would the new metro government have the same power as an incorporated city or would it be knocked down the status of a county that lacks the power to enact ordinances?

In Houston a lot of our suburban sprawl is unincorporated Harris County. Rather than efficient government, we just have weak government that doesn't do a whole lot. In its place there are a lot of not-municipal special districts that tax to support things like water, emergency services, etc. Seems counter-productive.

County government in Texas is not traditionally geared towards being comprehensive. Counties were supposed to have a Sheriff, a jail, pave the roads, keep public records, etc. We have 254 of them, a small handful of which are just ridiculously populous and run airports and pro sports arenas while many others have more cows than people.

I fear that if you went too far and created local government entities with millions of people covering enormous geographic territories, you'd get something that isn't responsive to citizens or local needs. And harder to administer. If you merged cities and counties around Dallas for example, you'd end up a city as large as New York overnight and that would be such a huge paradigm shift I'm not sure our institutions and leaders can handle it.

Consolidated city counties also have a tendency to prioritize suburban interests over less affluent areas and tend to be more conservative. This happened to Indianapolis with unigov and it happened to Fort Worth when it annexed too much land right before the recession and the tea party became a thing in the outer burbs. Areas that are working just fine on their own with their own set of rules are going to be gimped by people from other areas.

I think as the level of complexity of government increases exponentially and the mayor and council lose that direct relationship with one or more city managers, they'd turn into partisan Democrats/Republicans too. Instead of a city budget being a hands-on process, it would become a mysterious black box and the council would basically revert to "Cut Taxes!" or "We must support communities of color!" and just slap at each other instead of getting anything done. It would be a real travesty.