The potential consolidation of Evansville and Vanderburgh County governments can be debated on at least three levels, probably more. The first, and most obvious, is structural -- why have two similar departments when one would do just fine? Successful businesses do not tolerate unnecessary duplication, so why should taxpayer-supported government?
The second is emotional and political. Should we keep duplicated departments and agencies just because they allow political parties and leaders to hold power or because a department is headed by a particularly popular politician?
The third is leadership, and it may be the most subtle, but likely the most important. It is leadership and duplication, presented in the context of economic development, that is discussed at length in today's Courier & Press in the first of five in-depth Sunday reports on local government consolidation.
This top play is for a good reason, in that local government's role in economic development is most directly tied to creating much-needed private sector jobs.
In today's competitive world, local government's participation in creating incentives is vital in recruiting new businesses with new jobs and in encouraging existing businesses to expand. But that is difficult to do when overlapping governments are tripping all over themselves to entice employers to Evansville or Vanderburgh County.
This should be simple: One government, countywide, operating with one executive and one council and one economic development agency is the right formula for rolling out the red carpet for job recruitment.
As the series opener points out, we live in the third-largest Indiana city, population wise, but are crammed into the eighth-smallest county land wise. Why do we need two competing governments overlapping each other in so small a land area?
Today's installment tells the story of direct competition between city government and county government to land an engineering business looking to expand. The Vanderburgh County Council had offered Bowen Engineering Corp. a five-year property tax phase-in to build in the Daylight Industrial Park and create 22 jobs.
But Bowen was looking for more, so it went to the city, where eventually it accepted a 10-year phase-in of property taxes in exchange for purchasing and renovating an existing building in Downtown Evansville.
We had the city of Evansville and the county of Vanderburgh in direct competition for a business expansion, and what was one important thing these two had in common? Local taxpayers were supporting these competing efforts; in the case of city residents, they are paying for both efforts in that they also pay county taxes.
Aside from the inefficiency of duplication, what this community needs is a single voice of leadership, one that doesn't compete with itself, one that doesn't have the left hand trying to outbid the right hand.
We can say that the present two-government system might work on those occasions when the city and the county agree to work together. But what happens when political rivalries override the common sense of single-point leadership?
It is the same for public-policy matters. One strong voice presents the community a clarity of leadership not possible when multiple governments compete for the podium.
As yet, the Evansville-Vanderburgh Reorganization Committee does not have a proposal for merging city and county government, but that could come soon. Subcommittees of the 12-member committee are expected to meet in August and September and hammer out details of the coming proposal.