The newly launched website, TownStats.org, is providing residents of New Jersey with a new tool for comparing budget items of different towns, side by side, line by line. On the surface, this might appear to be a beauty contest between budget numbers, but in practice it should lead to innovation and efficiency in government.
New Jersey has 566 municipalities but no analysis that seeks to measure and compare how money is being spent in each. Rather than simply being a mechanism to identify potential areas of waste in a municipal budget, TownStats.org opens the door for citizens and officials to examine new innovations that are already implemented in other towns; behind this comparison of budget numbers there exist new questions, new answers and new ways of doing business for government.
The number of towns in New Jersey is often targeted as problematic as services are reproduced 566 times through each municipality. As one of the smallest states in the nation, and the one with the highest population density, the number of municipalities is at odds with having a fiscally efficient government. Townstats.org has the potential to move NJ to a financially sustainable form of governance by providing data that can identify areas for shared services, and just as importantly shared ideas. One of the biggest weak points of NJ can be turned into a strength with a synergy of innovation.
Just as TownStats.org seeks to compare budget items between municipalities, comparing NJ to other states helps identify how out of the norm NJ is with 566 municipalities. Utah which is 9x the size of New Jersey has approximately 243 municipalities; Colorado which is 11x the size of NJ has 271 municipalities. Closer to home, New York and Pennsylvania have twice the number of municipalities, but they are 5x the size of New Jersey. Pennsylvania itself is feeling the crush of too many municipalities , and yet if they were to follow NJ’s model they would have over 3000 municipalities.
The fiscal sustainability of local government is a global concern, and forced municipal mergers have been enacted in Canada, Australia, Germany, Finland and many other countries; Pennsylvania has introduced legislative bills that would provide for the recommendations of forced mergers.
The ideal of homerule is for people to have a smaller government that is responsive to their needs, that preserves the character of their individual community, and provides greater access to elected representatives. The data behind TownStats.org allows the ideal of homerule to be realized through an informed populace being engaged in their government.
TownStats.org brings analysis of NJ’s municipal spending into the 20th century, but citizens and municipal officials must lead their town into the 21st century.
Approximately 60 municipal budgets have been included, and all 566 municipal budgets are expected to be online by June. Click here for an example of 3 towns whose budgets are already available.
Additional Reading on Mergers
http://www.northjersey.com/news/politics/96953549_Kean_touts_municipal_mergers.html
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/dailycourier/s_672744.html
http://whyy.org/blogs/itsourcity/2009/01/23/too-many-boroughs-a-closer-look-at-municipal-mergers/
http://civicjournalist.blogspot.com/2010/07/sadsbury-stands-against-forced.html
http://michiganmessenger.com/45370/two-west-michigan-newspapers-push-local-government-mergers
http://www.kuntatieto.fi/k_perussivu.asp?path=1;161;279;280;105989;37567