by

Fred Swift

Hamilton County Reporter

(NOTE: This is a commentary written by Fred Swift of the Hamilton County Reporter. The views expressed are those of Fred Swift and do not necessarily reflect the views of LarryInFishers.com.  This opinion piece is posted here as part of a partnership between the Reporter and LarryInFishers.com) 

A newspaper reporter who apparently needs more to do has come up with a list of what he calls crazy ideas, which he implies make too much sense to become reality. Tim Swarens, a writer for the Indianapolis Star, has suggested as one of his ideas that Hamilton County and Marion County should merge to become one county.

Indianapolis political leaders would probably like the idea. Fortunately for Hamilton County, such a merger would take state legislative action. It is highly doubtful our local state legislators would take kindly to the idea.

The reason the idea might find favor at Indy’s City-County Building is the fact that the city is short on money to fix streets, fix sewers, fight crime and probably everything else they’d like to spend money on.

But, Swarens puts a more pleasing face on his idea. He claims a merged county would make it easier to compete for economic development, as if we need Indy to compete for development, and also he suggests to “equalize the vast differences between incomes and opportunities.” That probably would involve taking our money to assist Marion County. It’s hard to imagine what Hamilton County would get out of a merger.

It sounds more like a one-way street headed south.

Swarens suggests that Indiana’s 92 counties are too numerous for efficient operation in today’s world. He says California has only 58. With all their problems that might be a poor example, but it probably is true that 92 counties are more than needed in the 21st century.

But, since there are 88 Indiana counties with smaller populations than Hamilton, might it be reasonable to merge some of these smaller ones rather than the largest and the fourth largest if one is truly concerned about efficiency?

Yes, it is not only crazy, it’s a really bad idea for Hamilton County.