Even simple mergers can be a tough sell in 'home rule' NJ

Piscataway officials have decided to scrap the township's own health department and tap into Middlesex County's services to meet most of the community's public health needs. The township will maintain an animal-control officer and a registrar of vital statistics, but services such as flu and health clinics, cancer screenings and educational courses for first responders will be provided by the county.

Mayor Brian Wahler explained the move as a logical one in that many of Piscataway's services were redundant to what the county can offer, and the township will now save money as a result. The decision was prompted in part by the retirement of the township's health department director, and Wahler said "during these challenging economic times, it will save the township money."

What's remarkable here isn't that Piscataway took this common-sense step, but that it took so long and that it required a retirement and a crumbling economy to make it happen. After all, 20 of Middlesex County's other 25 communities had already similarly melded their own health departments with the county's.

Also remarkable is that Wahler felt such a need to defend the move, considering that it would seem to any rational observer to be an obvious way to save some taxpayer money — even when the economy is strong.

And yet we also can't blame Wahler, because the circumstances of this decision — a wise one by Piscataway — nonetheless underscores the difficulties involved in convincing New Jersey's officials and residents to give up some local control to cut costs.

"Home rule" is the oft-used phrase meant to convey New Jerseyans' attachment to keeping control over their varied government and school operations as close to home as possible. Officials sometimes overstate the power of that sentiment to excuse unnecessary spending. But at other times their wariness of public reaction to consolidation of departments seems justified; residents in many communities have been known to erupt at the mere hint of merging police or fire or public works departments, for instance.

The Courier News' ongoing series this week, "Fighting New Jersey's Tax Crush," makes the case that the state's whopping tax burden is due in large part by the high costs of local government, and the sheer volume of individual municipalities and school districts each generating their own unnecessary administrative expenses.

Consolidation is among the keys to reducing those local government costs, and lowering our taxes. But as we see again from the bit of angst surrounding one township's exceedingly logical move to do away with something as modest as a health department, mergers are going to require more courage and understanding than we typically see from officials, and residents.