I had meant to post this editorial about local government consolidation under Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's new crusade prior to the last election.

I thought it would be interesting for voters to have the foundational structure and financing of their governments at the top of their mind when candidates were circulating through their neighborhoods.

For some reason or another, the editorial never ran online. It took low priority to getting The Grapevine established — an online community network which you'll be learning more about in the next few months.

Here is is, slightly edited. Sorry for the wait.

— Mark Gillespie, Editor

Republicans and Democrats alike like to call themselves “fiscal conservatives,” promising to control costs and lower taxes. Once in office, there is direct public pressure to fulfill this promise. In our struggling economy, voters resist capital projects that add to their property tax bills.

To make matters worse, Governor David Paterson is planning $1.3 billion in mid-year cuts to address the state’s $3 billion budget deficit. These cuts will pass along hard decisions to local municipalities and school boards. Will they have to cut deep into their already strained operating budgets, or will they have to raise taxes — or both?

When local Democrats and Republicans went door-to-door asking for your vote, they had their biographies and resumés to distinguish themselves from their competition. However, they mostly fell short on being able to express opinions on the great national wedge issues. What does it matter what a town board member or a local judge feels about the war in Afghanistan, reproductive rights, or gays in the military? They’ll never be asked to rule on such issues, and they’re wise to keep their opinions to themselves lest they alienate voters who would otherwise support them.

It’s common for boards members to form alliances that cross party lines. Voters at the local level tend to split on development and preservation issues — not partisan labels. But there is a great, unspoken wedge issue — one that has been little talked about in board meetings, but one which will have far-reaching effects on local government in this state over the next four year.

Attorney General and possible future governor Andrew Cuomo has led the charge to make it easier for local governments to undergo restructuring. Indeed, it now takes a simple petition and a series of public meetings to dissolve, recharter or merge a local municipality. Schools are exempt from this new law, for now — but the law could easily be expanded at some point to include them.

Cuomo’s “Government Reorganization and Citizen Empowerment Act” expands New York’s “home rule” philosophy which honors the right of local residents to form the government of their choice. Instead of having an unbroken patchwork of town governments from Long Island to Lake Erie, we could end up with any combination of counties with no towns in them, villages-turned-cities, consolidated city/county governments and areas of status quo.

There are a couple of municipalities that would seem ripe for reorganization. The Village of Dansville and Town of North Dansville (and Steuben County’s Town of Dansville for that matter) could emerge as a new city — separate from county services.

Because of their larger rural populations, it would be harder — but still possible — to see cities form in Geneseo, Avon, Caledonia, Lima, Mount Morris and Nunda. Towns without villages could conceivably turn over water, sewer, snow removal law enforcement and other services to the county before ceasing to exist.

Reorganization doesn’t fit every situation, but we should be talking about it more. If a petition starts in your town or village to change the structure of your government, how would a candidate react to it? Do they support such a change or not? What form of government would they prefer?

These are all questions you should be asking before local representatives take office. If they have no opinion about it, that’s telling too — because they should.

The best way to make sure we’re not headed the wrong direction — either by rushing to consolidate or doing nothing — is to do our research and make sure our politicians are doing the same.