County and township government: COGs and sprockets

October 18, 10:07 AMAllentown Fiscal Responsibility ExaminerKenneth Petrini

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As we all know, Mr. Spacely had his sprockets and the townships, thankfully, have their COGS. (For those under 40, I am talking about the Jetsons. Always had a crush on Judy.)

No, COGs are not gears but they help things run just as smoothly. Here in Lehigh County, we have used them as well, if not better than, anywhere else in the state. COGs are the ultimate in intergovernmental cooperation. It is the soft-merger model where municipal government remains independent but cooperates. For those of us who think municipal governments should be combined, this is a baby step but a useful one.

I have written this past week about increasing the scope of county government in order to improve efficiency, reduce costs (hopefully) and most importantly, align the taxation authority of the local government with the people who use the services of the government. Frankly, we are as likely to use the roads and police and other services in a neighboring township as we are our own. I spend more time in Upper Macungie Township on its roads than I do in Lower Macungie (my home).

COGs are Congresses of Government. County Executive Don Cunningham is a big fan of intergovernmental cooperation. The county commissioners are as well. The county started a COG for all 27 (or whatever the number is) local governments. Yes, one county has all or part of 11 school districts and 27 governments.

They meet quarterly, usually with 20-25 townships represented, and they exchange ideas and at times agree on joint action, typically political. They are a passive COG in the sense that they don’t actually pool assets and build roads.

Our townships and school districts, however, do have very active pooling arrangements. The school districts do it through the intermediate unit. When Gov. Rendell calls upon the legislature to reduce 500 school districts to 100 saying they can get better economies of scale, our districts say they are already doing it. What is more, and what is unique to Northwestern Lehigh County is how well the townships do it.

Now, to be sure, there are many examples of intergovernmental cooperation. The regional police forces are one. That s where townships join together to form a joint police force. We have Upper Macungie as part of the Berks-Lehigh Regional Police. Four smaller Berks County municipalities also belong. That one combines townships across county lines because when you travel western Lehigh County you never really know when you have gone into Berks.

We saw cooperation earlier this year. The county was running out of water. Dirty cars and dirty dogs were the hallmark of the summer of 2009 as we had water restrictions. The city of Allentown had excess water. So, they agreed to sell water to LCA. Made much more sense than Allentown having excess and LCA drilling even more new wells. In a sort of 360 degree planning, we return the water to Allentown since LCA also uses their sewer plant!

But sewer plants are $50 million items. Water systems are huge as well. Police forces are expensive to start and a borough like Topton could ill afford its own. Together, it makes sense.
COGs can get at smaller things as well. In addition to the state purchasing co-op, townships join together to bid fuel oil and road salt. That is good. But they actually can join together to form virtual multi-municipal road crews.

There is a 6 township co-op that includes Lynn, Lowhill, Heidelberg and Weisenberg (aka the Northwestern Lehigh School District), as well as Washington and North Whitehall Townships. It is a communication forum and a place to share ideas as well as men and materials.

The 4 Northwestern Lehigh townships have their own separate sub-COG (maybe a sprocket). That one functions almost like a Northwestern Lehigh roads department. They share equipment and share manpower to get jobs done. The COG even has its own equipment that they jointly maintain (as they do in the 6 township COG). At any given time, that person who is boom mowing or oiling and chipping or paving in Lynn might actually be a Lowhill employee and vice versa.

It all makes sense. Road equipment is expensive and specialized. It is also very much used during peaks and then sits idly. If you can stagger your peaks, several townships can use the equipment rather than buying duplicates. It makes sense. If a certain job is better done with 10 employees and you have 5 on your road crew, combining two crews to do the job in both places makes sense.
The townships will meet later this week to talk about fire rescue equipment another place where combining resources makes sense.

The truth is that COGs can do a lot and until we are ready to actually consider a true merger of municipalities or a consolidation of authority, they are the best things we have. They also bear mute testimony to my argument of this past week—that the township form of government as we have it in Pennsylvania was good for a bygone era but it is too minute for today’s mobile society.

Sadly, progress will be slow. It took years to get county-level earned income tax collection. Some still resist the idea. Next (other than the fact that school districts collect taxes in August) ask why you have separate tax collection for real estate tax for county, school district and township. They all use the same tax base and apply their own millage factor to it.

Why do we have three levels of collection? Well, school districts do collect at a different time of the year. Oh, and, municipal tax collectors get a nice commission on their collections. Want to reduce the cost of government in one fell swoop---centralize the real estate tax collection

as well. So far, their lobby has been much more powerful than the income tax collectors.
But what would it take to centralize that? Not much. They all use the same data base. Still, it would take money from those elected tax collectors and those tax collectors are a powerful lobby.
If we really want more efficient government in Pennsylvania, we need to re-engineer from ground zero. It means giving up township identity and local micro-management. How bad is local government micro-management? I once sat in a meeting where the township manager to make a point of his lack of authority and the need to ask the board for everything asked for permission to buy two new toilet bowl brushes. The next month he reported they had arrived!

Still, we will hang on to our outdated systems and our township identity. I have even heard people suggest that their township should withdraw from a multi-municipal land use plan because it gives up municipal autonomy.

Government is expense. Duplication of effort is expense. There are savings that can be had by consolidation tasks even if we don’t consolidate government. The COGs prove this. Next step is to consolidate all tax collection at the county or state level and then to seek even more duplicate functions that can better be done by one rather than the many (just as we did with 9-1-1).
 

NOTE: To read my prior articles in this series, click here for yesterday.  It has the links to the first three.