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March 11, 2010

Our View: County charter panel prepping its own path

The changes it offers could be far-reaching, significant and effective.

Portland's Charter Commission, created to consider changes in the city's founding document, has been getting a lot of headlines and comments over its deliberations, including proposals to have an elected mayor and allow non-citizens to vote.

But there's another charter panel doing its work far more quietly, hidden away in the confines of the Cumberland County Courthouse.

The Cumberland County Charter Commission was established in 2008 by county commissioners, even though county voters had narrowly defeated a proposal establishing a panel to review the county charter in 2003.

Despite that rejection, commissioners believed that the current structure of county government is far too restricted in both form and functions to react effectively to current financial pressures and the challenges of social change.

They could well be right. The current panel, composed of nine members, three appointed by the commissioners and six picked by voters in the November 2008 election, is working on ways to accomplish those goals, which will be presented to voters this coming November.

There are a number of reasons to hope they succeed in their effort, not the least of which is the incredible inefficiency and redundancy of effort that is represented by local governments providing duplicative services within a very limited geographic area.

Dozens of emergency services departments, assessing offices, school systems, dispatching services, tax collection agencies and many other local departments could benefit from consolidation that was not hindered by municipal boundaries created hundreds of years ago when the demands on governments were far less complex and detailed.

In addition, the structure of county government is shackled by antiquated office structures that duplicate services under the guidance of less-than-professional levels of oversight.

The county charter panel has so far been more focused on process than specific structural proposals for change, but it soon will be reaching out to the public with its ideas.

Those public hearings deserve attention and participation, because there is considerable room for improvement in the way counties function, here and elsewhere across the state.

 

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