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How they see it in Indianapolis ...
"Recommendation #2: Establish a single, unified legislative body for county government. Expand legislative membership to ensure sufficient representation for included rural, suburban and urban populations."
"Currently, Indiana is the only state that divides fiscal and other legislative policymaking between separate elected bodies. In a recent presentation, Ed Ferguson of the National Association of Counties confirmed that the current bifurcated structure adds another layer of confusion to Indiana government relative to other county government structures across the country.
We recommend the establishment of a single legislative body that will be better understood by citizens and businesses that interact with county government, as well as more nimble in responding to today’s policy challenges. The mix of rural, suburban and urban populations and communities in each county is unique. Varied circumstances and needs exist across the state. To ensure the representation of these varied interests, we urge an expanded membership for the county legislative body. We recommend that counties be given the option to establish a 7-, 9- or 11-member council with three at-large seats and the remaining members selected by district. No change in membership is recommended for the city-county council that serves Marion County.
This recommendation also can be accomplished through statutory change alone. In 89 counties, this change involves expanding the current legislative responsibilities of the county council. As with the county executive, the transition to the new legislative structure should take effect no later than the elections of 2010, with the newly elected executives and legislative bodies taking office in January 2011. Lake and St. Joseph counties already have adopted this change."
The rest of the story ...
The most notable omission from this recommendation is that counties can now elect to make the seven-member county council the county’s legislative body. The difference? Now counties can make that choice at the local level, as have Lake and St. Joseph counties. Under the proposal, counties can no longer make that choice. The choice of governmental structure is made for the counties by state government. The citizens of Indiana’s 92 counties, each with their own "unique" mixes of population, etc., will no longer be able to determine what will best suit their needs.
The report also does not mention that our national and state governments, like Indiana’s county governments, also divide "fiscal and other legislative policymaking between separate elected bodies." Those bodies are generally referred to as the House and the Senate. Article 1 section 7 of the United States Constitution and Article 4 section 17 of the Indiana Constitution provide that all bills for raising revenues must originate in the House. However, both houses, whether in Congress or in the General Assembly, can originate other bills. The county government structure is actually more clearly defined than are the state and national structures. At the county level, the county council is the fiscal body, and the county commissioners are the legislative body.
A key theme here - and throughout the report - is that people have difficulty understanding the structure of their government. This paternalistic view assumes that people in the 21st century are incapable of understanding a structure of government created and understood by the citizens of Indiana in the 19th century.
Perhaps the answer to any perceived confusion is not to remove checks and balances under the guise of "streamlining." Perhaps that answer is instead to educate the citizenry as to both the structure of government and what it is doing within that structure. For that we must depend on our schools and the free press and demand they educate and inform our citizens.
As Thomas Jefferson said in 1820: "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education."