01/13/2009

Researcher: Local Government Commission Should Focus on Broad Reform

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A new statewide commission examining local government needs to focus on broad reform to have the impact state leaders are looking for, according to Ohio State University's Swank Professor of Rural-Urban Policy.

Mark Partridge, professor in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics, said he was glad to see the formation of the Commission on Local Government Reform and Collaboration, which held its first meeting this month. When the commission issues its report in mid-2010, he said he hopes it recommends fundamental changes to governmental structures and tax policies that simply don't make sense today.

"In the 1950s and before, people tended to live and work in the same community -- there wasn't a lot of spillover," said Partridge, who also holds appointments with Ohio State University Extension and the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. "Now people live one place, work in another, shop in another. They depend on the economic viability of the whole region, not just their own community." But Ohio offers no elected authority responsible for looking out for an entire region's interests, he said.

Ohio's governmental entities were set up in an era where a "small box" mentality made sense, and now neighboring communities compete with one another for economic activity, Partridge said. It's time to set up new structures that recognize the interconnectedness of communities and encourage community leaders to focus on regional success.

For example, communities collect income tax on the earnings of residents. "The system gives individual communities an incentive to poach from each other," Partridge said. "If taxes were collected on a regional level and dispersed on a per-capita basis, leaders would focus on making the pie bigger for everyone instead of competing with each other."

Also, today's system of overlapping governmental authorities often makes it difficult for citizens to know who's in charge of different programs and services. "Who picks up your trash? Who's in charge of the local library? Who oversees water and utilities? The fact that people often aren't sure means that government isn't accountable," Partridge said.

Partridge fears that the commission will focus on ways existing governmental units can work together better -- for example, making bulk purchases or sharing responsibility for government services. That type of reform is important, he said, but it ignores the systemic problems that he believes are at the root of Ohio's economic woes.

Partridge's perspective is not new. In 2007, he, Jill Clark, program manager of the university's Exurban Change Project, and graduate student Ayesha Enver addressed just this issue in a Growth and Change report, "Employment Growth, Future Prospects, and Change at the Ohio Rural-Urban Interface." That analysis and related reports are online at aede.osu.edu/programs/Swank/, under "Swank Extension/Policy Briefs."

Writer:

Martha Fiilipic
filipic.3@cfaes.osu.edu
(614) 292-9833

Source:

Mark Partridge, Agricultural, Environmental, Development Economics
partridge.27@osu.edu
(614) 688-4907