Reform 2.0: Consolidate the Counties

Minnesota has 87 counties mapping 87,000 square miles.  California, nearly twice as large and with several times the population has only 58.

Our counties range in size from 156 (Ramsey) to 6,225 (St. Louis) square miles.  Hennepin has over 1.1 million residents while 20 other counties have less than one percent of that.  The medians are about 21,800 population and 670 square miles.

Having downloaded this information, I soon found myself playing "Sim County" to come up with 24 consolidated counties.  Only Hennepin and St. Louis remained as is, renamed Humphrey and Duluth since everyone else gets a new name.  The other 22 new counties comprise 2 to 6 existing counties.  Ramsey and Washington became Capitol County.  Dakota, Goodhue and Wabasha became Mendota County.  Dodge, Fillmore, Houston, Mower, Olmsted and Winona I made into my new Rochester County.

The new medians would now be about 110,000 population and 3,500 square miles, very manageable given modern communications and transportation. The least populous at about 16,000 would be my new Superior County (Lake and Cook combined).  The smallest would be my new Capitol County above, 547 square miles but with over 700,000 population.

The immediate goal and gain is the elimination of 63 units of government, clearly not at all needed.  The new governments will be somewhat larger in terms of elected positions and administration than today but they'll oversee much larger operations.  They'll continue to employ most of the "rank and file" staff that deliver the actual county services, but we should get some economies of scale.

Still, this won't by itself save Minnesota all that much money.  So why do it?  Don't forget, there will be costs to change over, new stationery if nothing else.  I have other reasons, which I'll explain starting with my next post in this series.  But back to conversion, how would we do that?

First, it's been done before.  Minnesota originally only had nine counties.  But given all I am doing is consolidating existing, well-defined parcels, we really only need a new charter.  In the enabling statute we would "deem" any reference to the old county names as applying to the new county.  Nancy Pelosi would be so proud.

It wouldn't have to be done all at once.  The Legislature could offer bonus money to early adopters, making the counties come together to present their new charters in St. Paul for consideration.  But there would also be a deadline, with no bonus money if you wait.

Of critical importance to me is that we not settle for a reduction to say, 65 counties.  The payback is too small and still leaves too many too-small counties that won't be able to effectively take on some new 21st century roles.

Comments

[Hiram]

I will be interested to see if Republicans propose legislation to reduce the number of counties in the next legislative session.

[J. Ewing]

Well, it sounds good, but I have the same problem when somebody suggests we reduce the size of the legislature. I believe government closest to the people works best, or should. As it is now, if I don't like what my county commish is doing, I call him on the phone. The same is true of my House Rep. They listen because, in the small world of the county or House District, one person can make a pretty big ripple with a couple of rocks. I think that is more valuable than the "economies of scale" you're talking about.