ABSTRACT
As the previous chapters in this volume have illustrated, city-county con solidation is one of many approaches to reshaping the local government land scape. Municipal expansion through the annexation of unincorporated territory, the formation of new municipal and/or special district governments, the selected consolidation of functions with substantial external effects and/ or scale economies, and the use of contracting among area governments to rationalize service delivery are other means for achieving many of the objec tives attributed to city-county consolidation. However, city-county consoli dation is distinctive in that it involves the most comprehensive and visible change to the local government landscape (Carr 2000). The other approaches noted above have far more modest impacts on the community by several factors of magnitude. As Linda Johnson observed in chapter 8, city-county consolidation involves the rewriting of two or more local government con stitutions, giving it the potential to completely upset existing patterns of lo cal government and governance. City-county consolidation has the potential to radically change “who gets what, when, and how.” Not surprisingly, ef forts to consolidate city and county governments are often hotly contested, rancorous debates about how local government responsibility and authority should be organized in the community.
