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academic literature on the impact of consolidation. While searching for and reading the articles on the topic, Faulk was struck by the relatively low number of rigorous studies that have focused explicitly on the issue. Much of the literature on consolidation to date has focused on the process of consolidating two local governments. Less research has focused on the impact of doing so.
In December 2007, the Indiana Commission on Local Government Reform, cochaired by former governor Joseph Kernan and Chief Justice Randall Shepherd, issued the report Streamlining Local Government: We've Got to Stop Governing Like This (The Kernan-Shepherd report). Like many states in the United States, Indiana's local government structure was developed in the mid-1800s and has not significantly changed since. One of the components of the reform recommendations was making consolidation easier for local governments in Indiana. This report was one of several studies that had argued for local government reform in Indiana, including the “COMPETE” studies that were issued by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce in 1999 and 2004. One result of these efforts is that today, many local governments in Indiana, including that of Muncie, are considering consolidation.
Michael Hicks first became involved in local government consolidation efforts while he was working at Marshall University in West Virginia. In keeping with a statewide emphasis on economic development, several legislators called for county unification. Hicks, along with his colleagues Mark Burton and Calvin Kent, testified before the joint Senate and House Committee on Government Operations on the existing research and the considerations surrounding government consolidation. Years later, in response to the Kernan-Shepherd report, Hicks authored a preliminary study on the potential effects of local government consolidation.
In 2008 we began working together on local government consolidation issues in Indiana. The first result of this collaboration was a report, Local Government Reform in Indiana, issued in January 2009. This book is an extension of the work that was begun in 2008, but it has its genesis in the personal interest in government reform that each of us