Metropolitan sprawl spawned a crazy quilt of overlapping county, town, and municipal governments, not to mention school districts, all taxing local property owners and households to cover considerable overhead for basic services, including police, fire, teachers, and garbage collection. Competing jurisdictions in turn rob each other for precious tax base (typically shopping centers and retailers), destabilizing neighborhoods and commercial districts when businesses move out for better deals. This chock-a-block local governance structure not only perpetuates highly inefficient bureaucracy, but also works against effective regional planning for delivering infrastructure and related services.You shared your confusion of this "crazy quilt" in our public opinion survey, trying to locate your own home within a zip code served by a post office in one city, with a school district of another, and within the actual boundaries of a different city. That's not to mention that your fire department coverage might still exist within the governance of a disappearing township.
For more on this topic, check out Greater Ohio's Restoring Prosperity initiative.
