A galaxy of municipalities in the PA, NJ region surrounding Philadelphia. Map from Temple's MPIP map making utility.

One New Year’s story that has been lost amid news about the economy, politics, and war is that Pennsylvania has one fewer municipality in 2009.  Just south of Pittsburgh,  tiny Alexander Borough in Washington County has merged with Donegal Township.  WHYY’s Dave Heller spoke with Mark Muro, Fellow and Policy director at the Brookings Institution about the benefits of municipal mergers in Pennsylvania.

Here’s the transcript Dave’s interview of Muro.

Transcript:

WHYY’s Dave Heller: I understand this is a pretty rare occurrence in Pennsylvania.

Mark Muro: Yeah, at this rate you’ll get to a sane number of governments at probably the year 5000, but this is very symptomatic of the local government laws and really history of the state, which makes it very difficult for communities to alter the way they are governed and the jurisdictions that divide them.

DH: So this isn’t idiosyncratic to the Pittsburgh region, we’re afflicted here as well in the Delaware Valley?

MM: The existence of municipalities across the state is very much conditioned by state law, which makes it in some states easier to alter boundaries or to reorganize or in some places more difficult. You know, in general, we believe that the public and the people in a region ought to be able fairly easily to determine how they want to organize themselves as time changes. It is very difficult in Pennsylvania which locks in the extraordinary number of municipalities you have in Pennsylvania and near regions.

DH: How does Pennsylvania rank compare to other states?

MM: The regions sweeping from Maine down through Massachusetts across New England through Pennsylvania and out through the northern Mid-West is what we call the “Little Box Belt.” These are places - often relatively old states with relatively large numbers of small municipalities with often stagnant or dwindling populations - that essentially are supporting a huge overhead, many more units of government than other regions.”

DH: What are some of the main advantages of consolidation?

MM: The ability to make decisions decisively, to be nimble as a region rather than just a bunch of little boxes, and the ability to change overtime or to save money in service provisions. Those are the advantages. Consolidation is one solution, merger is a solution, otherwise we are finding ways to share functions across boundaries and collaborate.  All those are important for both fiscal efficiency but also this nimble method of response to problems.

DH: One doesn’t typically hear the word nimble and bureaucracy in the same paragraph let alone sentence, what are some success stories across the country, who’s doing it better?

MM: I think of some of the go-go Southern and Southwestern states, which have very simple and often strong counties and relatively few numbers of municipalities. You are able to get together the people who matter to make a decision on going after a new solar manufacturing plant in a morning.  You can get everybody together, make the call, put the money together and do the decision.  But there are places that have found ways to create overlays, networks as it were, among municipalities and here I think of Denver, which has fewer municipalities than Pennsylvania, but they are real places with their own turf. They found a way to agree to collaborate across boundaries in certain areas and that allowed them to build, for instance, the nation’s most exciting, new light rail system in record time.  There are other places, though, that have similarly complex governance maps that have found way to either share at the regional level some services while retaining municipalities and here I think of what Louisville is doing.  Or there are places that actually have consolidated say, a county and a center city like Athens, Georgia that has been very successful at this and they carefully studied the results of their merger and while it was not the silver bullet fiscally, over time it saved something like 10 percent in overall cost of government. There were very real benefits and no single way to solve this problem, but it can be done.

DH: To what extent is the Rendell administration on board with some of your recommendations?

MM: We have been gratified by the administration’s acknowledgment of the centrality of governance challenges to the states. At the same time it is a heavy lift for any state and in terms of a full blown attempt to revisit some of these issues.  They have preferred to support efforts where they are occurring to find collaborative solutions, but not to take on some of the fundamental statutory barriers.

DH: At the onset you said that at this rate it’ll take till the year 5000 before Pennsylvania has an appropriate number of municipalities I suppose from your point of view then kudos go out to little Alexander Borough for paving the way.

MM: Hence the fiscal pressure on municipalities is what is going to be the first thing that forces many places to consider this.

DH: Thanks for joining us today.

MM: Great, thank you.

DH: Mark Muro, fellow and policy director at the Brookings Institution.

You comments wanted!

As the map above shows, the 4 suburban Pennsylvania counties around Philadelphia are replete with townships and boroughs from tiny Millbourne and Lansdowne in Delaware County to the expansive rural and exurban townships of Chester and Bucks County.  Each has their own government, police force and other municipal services.  What are your thoughts on consolidating from the 238 cities, townships and boroughs that now make the map of the 5-county region so crowded into fewer, larger governments?  What about consolidating SOME services across borough and township lines?  New Jersey residents, feel free to chime in on this one.