One of the primary goals of this blog is to identify critical problems that keep our region stifled from its true potential. It is no mystery that New York State has been consistently rated among the worst and most inefficient governments in the Nation. There are so may areas for improvement that I could write an article a day for the rest of my life and not run out of topics. We need to look for the big ones, use that paretto principle - the 80/20 rule - and pick our battles.
Former Mayor Bill Johnson was a lot of things, and nearly all of them left me wanting more from Rochester’s leadership. One of his more controversial proposals was to begin merging parts of county and city governments. On the surface this sounds innocuous enough, but it is really an excellent way to streamline government. There are nearly 30 towns and villages in Monroe County alone. Nearly every one of those has zoning boards, fire departments, police forces, and countless other layers of government. Here are some interesting statistics on New York from a recent D&C article about this topic:
· 932 towns
· 554 villages
· 62 cities
· 57 counties
· 700 school districts
· 867 fire districts
· More than 1,000 special-purpose local
How is it possible that we need 1500 different town and village governing bodies in one state? Consider that the town of Penfield’s web site lists 20 departments. If each of these governing bodies had 20 departments with only one employee in each that’s a minimum of 30,000 state employees… who do largely redundant tasks. If New York was a company it would be long overdue for some major restructuring. Until our citizenry actually gets disgusted enough with our government to turn up at the polls, we will just have to keep on being the highest taxed people in the country.
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