Creeping Regionalism or Just Economy of Scale?

[SyZyGy]

Among the topics in the Manager's Report of 3/16/2007:

"Shared Services:

• The Department Heads and Town Managers of Rocky Hill, Berlin, Wethersfield and Newington met on Tuesday for their quarterly meeting to review what progress had been made in areas of shared services.
• I am pleased to report that the Mid-State Narcotics Force has made great progress in having successful arrests (see attached reports) which leads to drug seizure money for the four Towns in the future. This has been a very successful project. Because of the success of this cooperative venture, Wethersfield (which houses Mid-State) will now have an Adult Probation Officer come to our Police Station once per week, which will give us additional assistance with this program. Cromwell may join us in the near future. This spring, the four Towns will be conducting joint traffic stops which will save on overtime. The four Chiefs are looking at applying for a joint Juvenile Training Grant which would help us stem the rise of vandalism and violence in our communities and allow us to apply for future grants as a regional entity. They are also working on the possibility of having police vehicles overlap each other on town roads to allow for more visibility of police presence in all four towns.
• In the area of Social and Youth Services, the Town Directors are working on dental service for income eligible seniors, developing a food bank program from Food Share for income eligible residents to receive fresh fruit and vegetables in each Town and joint grants.

[standish]

You know I'll rise to this bait: Why does the legislature incentivize regionalism and why do we measure progress by efforts to dissolve town borders and sacrifice town functions to supra-town social programs? I can understand a legitimate desire to cooperate across town lines for law enforcement. However, cooperation does not mean absorption and loss of local control. Nor are there real economies of scale with most efforts to regionalize, except to scale up the ecomony in the public sector and put it under unaccountable, appointed boards comprised of insiders. The ultimate end is an end to towns as we know them. Who benefits? The very insiders and hired hands who promote regionalism.