Nebraska may abolish most counties

When a "free market" think tank opens its cavernous gizzard, you might as well just say, "There goes the country." That's because every idea that sluices from their pages seems to be lapped up by public officials and foisted upon all of us.

The Platte Institute for Economic Research is such an organization. Its board of directors is headed by the much-ridiculed Pete Ricketts, the 2006 Republican candidate for Senate in Nebraska. Ricketts's think tank claims to back limited government, despite his support of social engineering to chisel away at individual rights.

This think tank now suggests Nebraska abolish most of its counties. The 85 counties outside the Omaha and Lincoln metropolitan areas would be reduced to just 20 counties.

Well, so much for local control.

If you want limits on government, one of the last things you want to do is consolidate counties. I'd make exceptions if a county is barely functional, and if residents would still be able to have decent access to county services after the merger. But that's not the case in Nebraska, where some counties already cover a shockingly large land area. (One county is already 3 times the size of Delaware, forcing residents to drive 150 miles to the courthouse just to renew their driver's licenses.)

Excessive consolidation only expands government by making it more inaccessible. It doesn't abolish a layer of government; it just means more people will be governed from further away - often by self-anointed empire builders.

Consolidation might reduce the number of county employees, but at the expense of services the public needs. For every politician like Kentucky's Ernie Fletcher who boasts about downsizing government, there's countless Americans who lose vital services. This has already drawn many communities to a standstill as they've lost these amenities. And county employees have lost their jobs in the process.

All so politicians can brag about shrinking government while adding more controls on personal behavior.

(Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-12-01-nebraska-county-consolidation_N.htm)