Jon Corzine has recently introduced a plan in New Jersey to force many
of that state's 566 municipalities to merge together. New Jersey has
almost no county government and most local governmental functions are
performed at the municipal level. However, over the half of the
municipalities in New Jersey have a population of less than 10,000 and
the resulting map looks like that of Germany in the Middle Ages, a
landscape speckled throughout by innumerable miniature jurisdictions,
each of which have their own police force, fire department and school
system. The result is a massive wastage of taxpayer money as services
are duplicated and triplicated within miles of each other.