Case Studies of City-County Consolidation

Download or read book Case Studies of City-County Consolidation written by Suzanne M. Leland and published by M.E. Sharpe. This book was released on 2004-07-19 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Facing cutbacks in federal and state assistance and a new wave of taxpayer revolts, local governments have renewed interest in local government consolidation as a way of achieving efficiencies of scale in response to citizen demands for services. Yet the vast majority of consolidation efforts fail, either during the process of drafting a charter or once they reach the ballot - only five have passed since 1990; only thirty-two have been successfully implemented since the first, when the city of New Orleans merged with Orleans Parish in 1805. What accounts for the high failure rate and what factors led to successful consolidations? This volume presents thirteen comparable case studies of consolidation campaigns and distills the findings.