Revisiting Lake County Consolidation in The 21st Century
While we grapple in what will likely be recorded as one of the most tumultuous years in modern American history, why would now be a good time to talk about consolidating all of Lake County, Indiana's nineteen municipalities and unincorporated areas into one governing body?
One new reason could be the upcoming results of the United States 2020 Census.
Enumerators across the country are feverishly canvassing door to door during a global pandemic to count households before month’s end. As the federal government applies pressure to the Census Bureau to compress their timeline by one month and complete their decennial enumeration, statisticians and oversight organizations have expressed concern about severe undercounts, particularly in minority communities and rural areas that lack broadband internet service. An undercount, coupled with lost tax revenue collected due to COVID-19, could deal municipalities a financial blow that would cost our local governments and school districts millions of dollars.
We also cannot ignore the fact that our principal legacy cities of Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago have experienced a trend of population decline for over 50 years. A potential undercount will only exacerbate a widening gap in federal and state funding if the projected decline in our legacy cities continues through 2020.
Our legacy cities are not the only municipalities suffering from population decline. Annual Census Estimates released in 2019 projected the possibility that all but two of Lake County’s nineteen municipalities could experience population loss, with the county as a whole at risk of losing over 10,000 residents.
Metrolake
The thought of consolidation is no stranger to Lake County. The history of ‘Metrolake’ - the original name for a proposed consolidation project - is meticulously chronicled in Robert Catlin's Racial Politics and Urban Planning: Gary, Indiana 1980-1989. Catlin's text outlines the roots of racial inequity, political power struggles, and biased media portrayals of local leadership in Lake County between the 1960’s and 1980’s pertaining to regionalism and municipal consolidation. Today, three decades into the 21st Century, it’s time to have a healthy dialogue about revisiting the topic of consolidation and how we can attain a more efficient and equitable government that strives for a much more substantial vision and purpose for itself on both regional and national stages.
Making the Case
If you own an investment fund, you’ll understand that your financial advisor will determine what risk your portfolio should endure. In your portfolio, if one stock experiences significant losses, your portfolio is designed to still sustain itself thanks to a diverse range of equities, and a few outperforming stocks will net your portfolio modest dividends overtime.
Consider Lake County in the same context.
Over the past 50 years, Lake County has experienced uneven economic growth, as residents moved from older, urban North Lake County neighborhoods to newer suburban neighborhoods and communities both near and south of U.S. 30 Lincoln Highway. And, from its peak population of 546,000 in 1970 to its most recent population in 2010 of 496,000, Lake County has lost approximately 10% of its residents. In the same timeframe, Gary, East Chicago, and Hammond lost 54%, 37%, and 25% of their populations, respectively.
Yet, the cost to maintain the infrastructure in those municipalities overburdens the residents that remain, creating additional barriers for economic development and investment. In hindsight, had Lake County consolidated in a way similar to Indianapolis in 1970, it’s possible that the consolidated city/county entity could have fared better by stabilizing the losses sustained by the older urban Lake County communities with the rapid growth and suburbanization of Southern Lake County.
Indianapolis’s Unigov campaign effectively harnessed the growth of its burgeoning suburbs to stabilize the tax base of Indianapolis’s former city boundaries within Center Township in Marion County. New tax revenue from suburban population growth outside of Center Township was used to infuse investment back into Indianapolis’s central business district and the urban core to emerge as a national sports event hub. Census data reveals that, had Indianapolis not consolidated with Marion County, the municipality could have experienced economic decline and disinvestment much worse in comparison to what was experienced in Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago, both individually and combined.
The table below provides a view of how Indianapolis may have avoided the demographic and economic decline experienced by most major midwestern American cities in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
(Post-consolidation: in addition to Center Township Population in 1960)
One could argue that, in a consolidated Lake County scenario, if any unbalanced future growth were to be experienced in the northern Lake County urban core, it could stabilize the level of government services and amenities provided to southern Lake County communities in the event of a demographic and socioeconomic shift. Consolidation of Lake County could provide a more resilient 'portfolio', helping to prevent any current municipality from experiencing unbearable strains on basic services such as education and public safety in a period of economic decline.
Lessons Learned
In the past, cities like Indianapolis, Nashville, Jacksonville, and Louisville experienced an economic decline in their urban centers, prompting them all to opt for city/county consolidation. Each of those cities provides learning opportunities for Lake County on the social successes and equity failures each of their consolidations brought about.
Akin to Lake County, St. Louis city and St. Louis County, Missouri share a similar history of polarized demographic and socioeconomic challenges between 1950 and today. Better Together, a 501(c)3 organization, was organized in 2013 to lead a campaign for the consolidation of 88 municipalities in its proposed St. Louis Metropolitan Government.
Better Together conducted community-based studies focused on six pillars:
Public Finance
Economic Development
Public Health
Safety
Parks & Recreation
Infrastructure
Upon evaluating how 88 individual municipalities operated within the six pillars of the proposed metropolitan government, Better Together studied municipal best practices from across the nation to learn how efficiently a consolidated metropolitan government would benefit greater St. Louis. The referendum was poised to be on the ballot this year but was shelved by the organization primarily due to three reasons:
Failed outreach for support from the Black community.
A federal investigation of the proposed metropolitan government’s first appointed mayor.
An amendment to the Missouri Constitution requiring the entire state to vote on St. Louis’s consolidation rather a local referendum of citizens affected.
If we could learn any lessons from past campaigns to consolidate, they should be how important it is for members of all affected communities and socioeconomic classes to have the opportunity to actively participate in the formation of a new entity, and that we deserve ethical leadership that has reverence for the responsibility required to serve their constituents fairly.
Challenging The Norm: Envisioning Possibilities of a Consolidated Lake County
We should challenge ourselves and ask the following regarding Lake County’s immediate and distant future:
How can we create a governing body that encourages grassroots civic engagement, continuous improvement, and unified government accountability to steer Lake County’s future?
How can we leverage collective purchasing to provide more service for less both during and post-COVID-19?
How can we provide the best education to our children and not deny that opportunity to others living in adjacent zip codes?
Is the opportunity to receive poor relief equally accessible across our local townships?
How can we ensure that we maintain the level of service in currently prosperous communities and provide basic services that are nearly non-existent adjacent struggling communities?
How can a consolidated Lake County fund a regional transportation system that can access and provide continuous transportation throughout all our current municipalities?
Are we open to limiting sprawling developments to conserve our greenfields & farmlands?
Will our comprehensive plans and economic development strategy continue to heavily rely on our proximity to Chicago and not from the unique opportunities, assets, and identity we offer from within?
How can we unify our building codes to allow for streamlined contractor licensing and building inspections?
How would we grapple with the economic ramifications of a large industrial entity suddenly shuttering in one of our northern Lake County communities?
How can a consolidated Lake County mitigate potential future scenarios outlined in the Northern Indiana Regional Planning Commission’s 2050 Stronger Together Plan and encourage the development of Livable Centers in our communities?
If consolidation is not the answer for us now, what points made in the Indiana Commission on Local Government Reform, Kernan-Shepard Report can we adopt that we have not completed to make our municipal governments leaner and more resilient in this historic municipal crisis amid a global pandemic?
Our Region was forged from those seeking a better life escaping injustice from Jim Crow and Chicano persecution, those escaping the hostilities of the Great World Wars, or those that migrated from both near and far to Lake County simply in their pursuit of happiness. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors’ industrious collective effort. Understanding our past, we owe our posterity of Lake County to recalibrate our current path and aim higher.
Christopher Harris is a 2020-2021 MDLF Fellow, active United States Green Building Council LEED Green Associate, project manager, community advocate, and a 4th generation Garyite.