By ROBERTA HEIMAN
Evansville Courier & Press staff writer
Rick Newmann has never been to Evansville. But the Des Moines, Iowa, resident can relate to what's happening in this city.
Newmann spent the past two years as chairman of a 45-member citizens commission that proposed merging the Des Moines and Polk County governments.
Voters rejected the merger Tuesday by a margin of 65 percent to 35 percent.
The vote came after the commission spent more than $300,000 in the last several months on an extensive campaign to gain support, with a series of public hearings, neighborhood meetings, television appearances, Web sites and advertisements.
Another $100,000 had been spent earlier.
It was an exercise that might provide some insight for Evansville and Vanderburgh County, and the "about 40" other communities currently considering a city-county merger, Newmann said in a telephone interview from his Des Moines law office.
The Evansville-Vanderburgh Unification Study Committee is in its second year of work and has received about $15,000 in contributions so far. It intentionally waited until after last week's election to seek the involvement of political leaders.
Newmann said the Des Moines commission learned quickly that it needed strong political leadership and would have to conduct an extensive campaign to inform the public on the issues. It still failed, but Newmann said that doesn't mean it would fail in Evansville and Vanderburgh County, because the situation here is different.
Des Moines, population 200,000, is the capital city of Iowa, but is only one of 17 incorporated municipalities in Polk County, population 375,000.
Evansville has a population of about 120,000; the county's population is 171,000. And the only other incorporated town in the county is Darmstadt.
That means it should be easier to accomplish a merger here, because there aren't a lot of competing municipalities, Newmann said. One thing the communities have in common is that both have rejected earlier merger efforts. Voters in Des Moines and Polk County voted down a merger in 1994. Voters here rejected the VandiGov merger 30 years ago. Nationally, 80 percent of proposed city-county consolidations fail on their first attempts; many take more than two tries.
Newmann said the Des Moines proposal was patterned on the successful consolidated governments in Kansas City, Kan., Lexington, Ky., Louisville, Ky., and Indianapolis. The seven-member Des Moines city council and five-member Polk County board of supervisors would have been replaced by a new 15-member metro council, providing increase representation for residents.
The plan called for one county-wide chief executive, or mayor, instead of the five supervisors who now take turns as chairmen.
It left alone the county sheriff, auditor, assessor and other offices and did not merge any city and county departments or services, but "provided a mechanism" for the newly elected office holders to restructure the departments and services.
It also created three "service areas," in which taxation would be based on the services received. That way, rural residents would not be taxed for city services they didn't receive.
Newmann said there was organized opposition by elected officeholders who were going to be replaced by the merger and by labor unions fearing job cuts for city and county workers. Support came from major corporations in the community and private residents of both parties, led by popular former Iowa Gov. Bob Ray.
"It was about power, not party politics," Newmann said. "What sunk it? Fear and confusion," he said. "The tactic used to defeat it was (allegations) that 'They're going to increase your taxes' and 'The suburbs are going to take over the city.'"
"There is a theory among academics that a merger is difficult in the absence of crisis - a financial or management crisis in local government, or corruption - because people don't like change. We thought we had plenty of fiscal problems to qualify for change."
Efforts there now will probably focus on ways of consolidating city and county services "short of government restructuring," he said. But he doesn't think such changes will help the 17 municipalities in Polk County become more competitive for economic development. Evansville and Vanderburgh County already have combined at least seven city and county departments - all since the failed merger discussions in 1974, and in 1990 when there was no vote.
© 2004 The E.W. Scripps Co.