A Saner Approach to Consolidating Iowa Counties

It seems that in recent years much of the discussion of local government inefficiency in Iowa has centered around the assertion that Iowa has too many counties. There are only eight States that have more counties than Iowa so certainly we could get by with less.  But of the 1,400 local governments in Iowa (if one includes school districts but excludes ther special use districts) only 99 are counties. So cutting the number in half eliminates about 50 local governments out of 1,400 total. Certainly county consolidation is not the complete answer.

It should also be noted that while Iowa ranks ninth in the total number of counties there are another eight states that have more than eighty but less than Iowa's 99. So  they are not significantly different.

Two extremely small states no longer have functioning counties, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Alaska, the largest state geographically has only twelve while Texas has 254 counties. Hawaii and Delaware have three each. To a great extent the number of  counties has much less to do with the size of the state than with when the state was formed, its heritage and functions that counties perform.

Midwestern and Southern states generally have more counties than do eastern or western states. New England ,states have historically had strong township governments that performed many of the functions that counties in other parts of the country traditionally perform. Western states were formed primarily as ranching states with much lower population density than states to the East. Economies of scale therefore necessitated larger counties in the region.

While in Iowa we have discussed consolidation for years, very little change has been made in the number of counties per state since each state's admission into the union. In fact, in the second half of the twentieth century there was only a net decrease of 35 counties out of nationwide total of over 3,000 counties, or a reduction of about one per cent of the total. This of course does not mean that there is not merit in the concept of consolidation. It does show that perhaps it is either not as pressing an issue in other states or is more difficult to persuade people to give up there attachment to a county than we might think.

Much of what has been discussed in Iowa is consolidating every couple of counties into one getting the number from 99 down to around 50. This type of consolidation plan seems rather simplistic and ignores the reason for government consolidation, that is that there is no longer minimum efficient scale (MES). In otherwords, he county has gotten so small that it isn't possible to run it efficiently anymore.

In county government's case there may be two ways to solve the problem of MES, you can consolidate or you can give them more duties. If you have read my recent article on city classification in Iowa and the one on school consolidation you might see where I am going with this. The counties could take over most of the services now being provided by cities of less than 500 population, it would also be possible under my proposal for school consolidation, for the counties to actually govern the school district.

I have not researched the idea of the school district being under the county board of supervisors but my gut tells me that perhaps the school district should still be independent.  The idea of the county maintaining roads and utilities in small towns would make certain county departments busier but would not change the work load of the county recorder, attorney or assessor for instance.
There is no assurance that counties will ever take over small community services and even if they do a case can still be made for consolidation so here is my plan for county consolidation. Just realize that other developments could mitigate the need for consolidation of some of the counties. There are eighteen counties with less tar 10,000 inhabitants. Half of them are located in the southern two tiers of counties. The two
smallest counties Adam, and Ringgold, have less than 10,000 people combined. It should be noted that Iowa is not alone here. There are 671 counties nationwide with less than 10,000 residents.

Consolidation may be accomplished without the loss of county identity if two, counties decide to combine operations and tax base but maintain their separate boundaries for cultural identity only. I am sure that keeping county boundaries in the three Eastern states that eliminated some or all of there that had as much to do with local identity as it did with statistical analysis. These states are Massachusettes, Conecticut and Rhode Island.

So if we do not just merge every other county with its neighbor, how do we consolidate those counties that make the most economic and social sense. I believe that there is probably a certain population threshold that makes it difficult to operate county government with any sort of efficiency or effectiveness. I'm not sure what that threshold is but I have designed a merger plan where no county would have less than 15,000 people and where possible counties of similar population are merged so that neither has too much influence in the merged government. In one case a county of more than 15,000 population, Harrison County which has just over 15,000 population was merged with Monona County. This is because it was the only real solution to merging another county with Monona without attaching it to a much larger county. O'Brien County was also above 15,000 population but cednsus estimates are that it is well below that level in 2008.

An argument can be made that 15,000 population is too small and some larger minimum should be used. I certainly wouldn't argue with this. Some Western states have counties much larger than those in my proposal but the area of some counties would get quite large and service may suffer. A cautionary note - The most rural counties in the state also tend to be the poorest. Many living in these counties do not have access to the internet so cannot do business on line. Also these counties have the highest proportion of elderly and persons with limited access to reliable transportation. Combining four or five counties to get to 25,000 population could be a hardship on these residents.

The counties could be merged in different combinations than proposed here, but generally speaking the smallest fifty counties should be consolidated with one other adjacent county. There is one case where three counties need to be merged to get to a reasonable population threshold. Finally, there is at least one case in the state where I believe counties should be merged because of the growth cities from one county into others. This is the merger of Polk, Dallas and possibly Warren counties.

During the discussion of the merger of Polk County with Des Moines and possibly other Polk County communities, one of the complications in my mind was how to deal with Urbandale, Clive and West Des Moines that have 1,000s of residents in both Polk and Dallas County. Also a true metropolitan governmet would incude the Dallas county suburb of Waukee and Warren County community of Norwalk. Finally, Des Moines proposes to annex land in Warren County. Perhaps the first step in any discussion of metroplitan governmment should begin with the merger of the counties that should naturally be a part of this government.

My consolidation proposal would reduce the number of Iowa counties from 99 to 71 counties. This may not be enough for some people but makes a great deal of sense economically and for accessibility concerns. Following are a list of the seventy-one counties after proposed consolidation from Northwest to Southeast:

1. Lyon-Osceola, 2. Dickinson, 3. Emmet-Palo Alto, 4. Kossuth, 5. Winnebago-Hancock, 6. Worth-Mitchell, 7. Howard-Chickasaw, 8. Winneshiek-Allamakee, 9. Sioux, 10. O'Brien-Cherokee, 11. Clay, 12. Cerro Gordo, 13. Floyd, 14. Fayette, 15. Clayton, 16. Plymouth, 17. Buena Vista, 18. Pocahotas-Humboldt 19. Wright-Franklin, 20. Butler-Grundy, 21. Bremer, 22. Woodbury, 23. Ida-Sac, 24. Calhoun-Green, 25. Webster, 26. Hamilton, 27. Hardin, 28. Black Hawk, 29. Buchanan, 30. Delaware, 31. Dubuque, 32. Monona-Harrison, 33. Crawford,  34. Carroll, 35. Boone, 36. Story, 37. Marshall, 38. Tama, 39. Benton, 40. Linn, 41. Jones, 42. Jackson, 43. Shelby-Audubon, 44. Guthrie-Adair, 45. Dallas-Polk-Warren, 46. Jasper, 47. Poweshiek, 48. Iowa, 49. Johnson, 50. Cedar, 51. Clinton, 52. Scott, 53. Muscatine, 54. Pottawattamie, 55. Cass-Montgomery, 56. Madison-Clarke, 57. Marion, 58. Mahaska-Keokuk, 59. Washington-Louisa, 60. Mills-Fremont, 61. Adams-Union, 62. Lucas-Wayne, 63. Monroe-Appanoose, 64. Wapello, 65. Jefferson, 66. Henry, 67. Des Moines, 68. Page, 69. Taylor-Ringgold-Decatur, 70. Davis-Van Buren, 71. Lee.