Question from an Ohio State Legislator
How do you approach the reduction of the number of local governments?
Do you have something on how to reduce local governments? We have 16 townships and 88 counties, is all of that necessary, just thinking about it. I know some legislators here have already begun to talk about it.
There are several reasons why this is a good idea among them are:
1. A significant cost savings results from the elimination of duplicated services.
2. Services to the elderly can be provided more economically and effectively.
3. Combining nearby counties and or cities increases the the appearance of a larger population attracting business and industry to the area.
Recommendations for Consolidating Counties
I recommend that my consolidation model be followed. Start by examining how the State Department of Transportation is organized into Districts. These Districts are organized to provide the best service for the State's roads. Then consider that the same Districts more or less can provide health services. This gives you are starting example for the number of required Districts. These new Districts will replace the current counties reducing their number from the 88 counties in Ohio to around 30 or 35 Districts.
Because most Counties will be reluctant to give up their County Seat and their Court House I recommend the the districts be called Health Care Districts and Department of Transportation Districts for the time being. Each District should contain at least three Counties with the District offices residing in the most prominent town with a hospital. Each District should have a walk-in clinic for public health service and can be either public or private. I would ignore the combining of local county and city governments until the Health and DOT District concept is accepted by the public. This may take a couple of years.
Details of the Consolidation Model
I recommend that pilot Demonstration be made of the Consolidation Model of the first District. This will allow lessons learned to be developed in the consolidation of the first district. It also allows for the development of software applications that can be duplicated in the remaining Districts.
Step 1. Determine which of the Counties will be the new District seat. This is done by a District wide vote
Step 2. Implement Enterprise Lean in each of the pilot Counties
Step 3. Have Budget Analysts collect the Lean Team data for each County in a separate Spread Sheet.
Step 4. After all the Functional data have been collected in each of the pilot counties. The duplicated functions will be compared to determine the most efficient Lean method for doing the function and added to the new District database. This will also become the Bottoms-up functional Budget for the District.
Step 5. The bureaucratic organization will be changed to a Team Management organization and layoffs for the District's redundant personnel will follow.
Step 6. The data developed in the pilot will be replicated for all of the remaining Districts. It is not necessary to implement Enterprise Lean in all of the remaining Districts because the Lean Data has already been determined in the pilot however I still recommend that it be implemented for the benefits to employees and the need for continuous improvement to the district's functions.
I also recommend that County Road service be provided as a part of the State DOT District.
Consolidation in Metro Cities
Where County lines bisect metropolitan cities I recommend that Metropolitan District be created from the Counties. Some of the metro District's services will be the responsibility of the district but other services such as schools, fire and police should be the responsibility of the local city government.
Four Year State Reform Plan
After the state has implemented my General Reform Model and the other Reform Models the County Consolidation Reforms should follow as apart of a Four Year State Reform Plan. This approach becomes more obvious when the Central Cloud State IT Model has been implemented. This will provide Cloud IT services for all of the State's county and city obsolete IT computers.
Example of consolidation of Missouri Counties:
Current Missouri Counties
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