Preface
This book is the result of a two-year collaboration between Dagney Faulk and Michael Hicks at Ball State University during a fertile period of public debate regarding local government consolidation. However, the genesis of our individual interests in local government reform dates back more than a decade.
Dagney Faulk first became aware of local government consolidation while she was living across the river from Louisville, Kentucky, for most of the first decade of the 2000s. The city of Louisville and Jefferson County consolidated into Louisville Metro in January 2003 after a long consolidation campaign and referendum. One of the selling points for the consolidation was that it would catapult Louisville onto the list of the 25 largest cities in the country—bringing with it all of the benefits that were associated with such a ranking. A few years later, Faulk had the opportunity to work with Eric Schansberg, Samuel Staley, and Suzanne Leland on a research project—organized through the Indiana Policy Foundation and spearheaded by the Indiana legislature's Marion County Consolidation Commission—reviewing the