Case Studies of City-County Consolidation: Reshaping the Local Government LandscapeSuzanne M. Leland, Kurt Thurmaier Facing cutbacks in federal and state assistance and a new wave of taxpayer revolts, local governments have renewed interest in local government consolidation as a way of achieving efficiencies of scale in response to citizen demands for services. Yet the vast majority of consolidation efforts fail, either during the process of drafting a charter or once they reach the ballot - only five have passed since 1990; only thirty-two have been successfully implemented since the first, when the city of New Orleans merged with Orleans Parish in 1805. What accounts for the high failure rate and what factors led to successful consolidations? This volume presents thirteen comparable case studies of consolidation campaigns and distills the findings. |
Contents
| 3 | |
JacksonvilleDuval County Florida Alternative Explanations for the Adoption of CityCounty Consolidation in JacksonvilleDuval Florida | 28 |
ColumbusMuscogee County Georgia Goodbye Columbus | 46 |
TallahasseeLeon County Florida TallahasseeLeon Consolidation Referenda | 60 |
SacramentoSacramento County California Consolidation WestCoast Style Sacramento County California | 79 |
AthensClarke County Georgia The Better Way The Unification of Athens and Clarke Georgia | 103 |
LafayetteLafayette Parish Louisiana CityParish Consolidated Government Lafayette Parish and the City of Lafayette Louisiana | 129 |
BranchNorth Branch Minnesota CitizenLed Politics and CityCity Consolidation The Case of North Branch Minnesota | 155 |
AugustaRichmond County Georgia Financial Crisis Racial Accommodation and the Consolidation of Augusta and Richmond Georgia | 193 |
WilmingtonNew Hanover County North Carolina CityCounty Consolidation for Wilmington and New Hanover North Carolina | 223 |
KnoxvilleKnox County Tennessee A Predictable Failure The KnoxvilleKnox Experience 1996 | 238 |
Kansas CityWyandotte County Kansas Reforming Politics Through Reorganization Consolidation in WyandotteKansas City Kansas | 261 |
LouisvilleJefferson County Kentucky Merger in LouisvilleJefferson | 272 |
Conclusions | 291 |
About the Editors and Contributors | 324 |
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Common terms and phrases
accelerator event African-American agenda annexation appointed approved Athens Athens/Clarke Augusta Chronicle Augusta/Richmond County ballot Board C3 model Chamber of Commerce charter commission charter provisions citizens city and county city council city of Lafayette city-county consolidation city's civic elites Clarke County Columbus consolidated government consolidation attempts consolidation charter consolidation effort consolidation proposal consolidation referendum county commission County Consolidation county government created crisis climate dation defeat economic development elected officials Feiock Georgia Georgia General Assembly governmental Hanover County included issue Kansas Knox County Lafayette Parish leaders legislative Leon County Louisiana Louisville majority mayor ment merger metropolitan minority Moines municipal Muscogee County North Branch opponents percent political Polk County poll population power deflation problems proconsolidation proposed charter reform Richmond County Rosenbaum and Kammerer Sacramento sheriff solidation structure successful consolidation Tallahassee Democrat Thurmaier tion U.S. Department Unification unified government unincorporated area urban voters Wilmington Wyandotte County
Popular passages
Page 6 - Lijphart defines the comparative method as "the method of testing hypothesized empirical relationships among variables on the basis of the same logic that guides the statistical method, but in which the cases are selected in such a way as to maximize the variance of the independent variables and to minimize the variance of the control variables