By Thomas B. Langhorne, Evansville Courier & Press
Tempering the euphoria supporters felt a month ago with the launch of a petition drive to get Evansville-Vanderburgh County government consolidation on the 2010 ballot is one inescapable fact.
There may not be enough time.
State law governing referendums says election board certification of a local public question must occur no later than noon Aug. 1 - Aug. 2 next year because Aug. 1 is a Sunday - if the question is to appear on that year's general election ballot.
That means local governing bodies must complete by late July a complex series of steps laid out in legislation giving local government units a framework to merge.
One of those steps allows 12 months to develop a detailed consolidation plan. Another envisions a possible rewrite of the plan if it is rejected and the necessity to complete another, and larger, petition drive to force a ballot question if the rewrite were rejected.
"I think there has to be a lot of political will and a lot of organization (to get consolidation on the ballot)," said Dale Simmons, an Indiana Election Division attorney who advised the League of Women Voters of Southwestern Indiana before it launched its petition drive last month.
Staggering task
Even if a detailed consolidation plan isn't rejected, Simmons said the amount of work necessary simply to create such a plan can be staggering. He pointed to last year's merger of the town of Zionsville with Eagle and Union townships in Boone County, on which he advised local government officials.
"One of the things that struck me in looking at some of the documents put together by them was the level of detail in the resolutions adopted by in this case the township and the town of Zionsville," Simmons said. "They were really detailed. They were thick documents.
"In planning the consolidation, it seems a lot more complicated at that level: How are we going to go forward, how many districts are we going to have, how are services going to be, what's the property transfer if we own property - there's a lot to take into account."
John Dunn, president of the City-County Unification Study Committee that failed to achieve consolidation in 2006, said he is "cautiously optimistic" the work can be done in time.
But Dunn acknowledged that if some local elected officials decide to drag the work out or fight the process, they could cause the consolidation drive to miss its deadline to get on the ballot.
"That's exactly what happened to us the last time," he said. "We had commitments out of people, and they reneged on their commitments, and that just shot it down entirely."
But Dunn cautioned elected officials that they delay consolidation at their own peril.
"I think now if that happens again, there will be some repercussions at the polls," he said. "The people are more ready for it than are the elected officials, and particularly those who will, over time, probably not be an elected official unless they run for a countywide office rather than a city or a county office."
Without a specific consolidation plan to discuss this time, leading members of the City Council and the County Commissioners have said little other than that they are open to considering the idea.
"I am available any time the League of Women Voters would like to talk about real change and talk about how some of the effects of a consolidated government would affect both positively and negatively," County Commissioners President Troy Tornatta said last month.
The other half of the commissioners' two-man Democratic majority, Steve Melcher, said he needs more information.
"I'd like to see a timeline before I approve anything," Melcher said. "I'd like to see some kind of savings."
League President Roberta Heiman acknowledged the complex steps laid out in the enabling legislation make completing the work before Aug. 2 a daunting task.
"We know that it's a tight deadline, and that we were pushing it to even try to reach it," Heiman said. "I don't know if it's possible or not, but it's worth a try.
"It's going to take some leadership, but that would be the case whether there's a deadline or not."
Compromise crucial
Simmons said the success or failure of the new consolidation referendum push ultimately will be determined by the capacity for compromise exhibited by those individuals who sit on Evansville and Vanderburgh County's executive governing bodies.
"I think there even has to be folks who overcome their reluctance to compromise," he said. "I'm sure there's going to have to be a lot of compromises because when you do this, there will be losers, right? It seems like to me losers are inevitable because you're trying to consolidate government and make it more efficient.
"The losers can have a lot of interest in trying to prevent (consolidation) from going forward."