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Foreword
We in Indiana recently committed ourselves to bringing local government out of the nineteenth century and into the twenty-first. In a system awash in too many offices, too many taxing units, too many politicians, and too many everything, this is no easy undertaking. Fortunately, we have the expertise of Ball State University's Dagney Faulk and Michael Hicks at our disposal.
In Local Government Consolidation in the United States, Dr. Faulk and Dr. Hicks have confirmed in scholarly data what common sense suggests: Today, when cost saving has never been more important, we have every reason to replace the waste and duplication of today's local government with a system that is streamlined for efficiency and accountability.
In Indiana, local responsibilities such as fire protection and relief for the poor are still handled as they were before the Civil War. Townships overtax their citizens to the tune of $260 million per year, and some 2,700 local units of government are authorized to levy property taxes. Governing these units are more than 10,700 elected officials.