| Chapter 2: | Government Consolidation |
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consolidate (i.e., voters approve the consolidation referendum) have higher levels of spending, as measured by local government employment, payroll, and expenditures, than the average local government in the state. These ratios of per capita local government employment, payrolls, and expenditures in counties holding consolidation referenda to per capita local government employment, payrolls, and expenditures in the state are of particular interest in this analysis. The expected relationship between the employment ratio, expenditure ratio, payroll ratio, and the referendum outcome is indeterminate. If these indicators are higher (positive and significant) than those of the average local government in the state, this suggests that the consolidation effort was driven by government spending; citizens perceived the spending to be “out of line,” and consolidation was one way to address this. If, however, governments that consolidated had lower spending or spending that was not statistically different from that of the average local government in the state, we interpret this to mean that the consolidation efforts were driven by the quality of government; citizens viewed consolidation as one way of improving that quality.
Tanguay and Wihry (2008) found that support for the demerger of municipalities in Quebec was related to expected differences in expenditures and taxes in the local governments to be included in the merger autonomous local governments. Data on expected differences in expenditures and taxes before and after merger are not available for our samples, so we compared various spending measures in what would be the merged local government unit with those of the average local government in the state.
A variety of factors may generate a crisis climate. In the model that was initially developed by Rosenbaum and Kammerer (1974), a crisis climate is