| Our soon-to-be Governor Cuomo has made reducing the number of governments in New York State one of his signature issues. I agree that 10,521 governments is probably too many for 19.5 million people - that's a government for about every 1850 of us, actually more like a government for every 1060 of us outside of the already way-consolidated New York City.
Unfortunately, the most visible side of Cuomo's program for resolving this is largely (though not entirely) bogus. "Let's dissolve villages! Sure, there will be a study and a referendum, but these layers of government should vanish." Doubtless there are some spendthrift villages out there, and perhaps there are a few that no longer feel like villages. However...
Most of those 10,521 governments aren't what we think of as "government". They aren't counties (62), towns (932), cities (62), villages (556), or school districts (643 + 37 BOCES). That leaves 8,229 "governments"!
Those "governments" are special districts. For example, Tompkins County has 1 county, 1 city, 9 town, 6 village, and 7 school districts in it. Out of 95 governments, 71 are districts of some kind or another, 66 of which are administered by that core of 17 municipal governments. The Town of Dryden has water, sewer, and lighting districts, and a corner in a separate fire district. Five different school districts serve Dryden residents. (If you want to know how all these pieces work, Wikipedia has a great answer.)
The problem isn't that we have too many villages. The problem is that we have lots of overlapping responsibilities that lack clear direction. While my Town Board has great people on it, none of them actually live in any of the sewer, water, or lighting districts that they oversee. The Dryden school district and the Town of Dryden have substantial overlap, but the Dryden schools area is centered further east than the Town. We do have complications created by Town-Village interactions on infrastructure, but in large part those problems are the result of property owners wanting the infrastructure advantages of a village without actually being in one.
So how do we fix this? How do we bring our number of governments down to something more reasonable, improve oversight, and reduce cost?
My answer is consolidation, but a different kind of consolidation. Instead of just getting rid of governments, focus on creating clear lines of responsibility to voters. Re-establishing those connections will have the nice side effect of consolidating many of these "governments" into something more rational. |
Consolidate special districts into villages, but make it as absolutely easy as possible for those villages to outsource their workforce to towns, counties, and the state. Areas that are just a lighting or water district might not be good candidates to become villages, but places that have water, sewer, and more districts really should be forced to become coherent villages and consolidated with the other special districts around them. Strongly encourage existing villages to annex the special districts around them.
This isn't easy - I look at school district boundaries and weep. Those cross municipal boundaries at will, even county boundaries, and seem stopped only by the state. I'd propose using town boundaries as an initial guide, as village residents are still part of the town. The towns are probably the right level of government to facilitate these conversations, as they maintain most of this infrastructure.
Upstate, a number of hamlets and suburbs would turn into villages, but I suspect this would have a much more drastic effect on heavily developed Long Island. Nassau County has three towns, 64 villages, and 140 special districts. (The Town of Hempstead alone has 755,000 people in it!) Suffolk County has ten towns, 32 villages, and 201 special districts. That's a lot of opportunity for consolidation.
This approach might also reduce the ever-growing number of new special districts. Want a district? Think about a village instead. I don't see this approach as likely to increase the sprawl that increases the number of districts.
There are other pieces to the puzzle. New York State's population has climbed a lot since 1942, but no new cities have been incorporated since Rye was incorporated that year. The Village of Hempstead alone has 56,554 people in it, much larger than a lot of New York's cities. Using population as a rough guide might rationalize some of New York's strange municipal mathematics, which seem to revolve around competition for state aid.
Another key piece I'd suggest is more radical, since New York's fairly insane school consolidation process means that school district lines have no relationship to municipal boundaries. Maybe it's time to force those boundaries to align? It doesn't have to be every town/village/city its own school district, but giving municipalities control over schools would also make the lines of responsibility for a given area a lot clearer.
Finally, the one subject I really haven't mentioned is counties. New York's counties (outside of NYC) are becoming more and more the agents of New York State. Watching the Tompkins County budget presentation this year was an eye-opener, because it made very clear that the parts of county government most people think of as county government are optional additions to the services the state requires. It's time - way past time - to make those lines of responsibility clear. This time the lines to consider aren't border lines, but rather budget lines. I don't know if the answer is requiring the state to pay the counties for providing services, or having the state take over providing those services, but it's definitely a conversation worth having. Remember, clear lines of responsibility to voters.
Consolidation? Certainly. Dissolution? Probably rarely. |
