[181] CITY-COUNTY CONSOLIDATION An Overview of Voter Response

Central to the process of urbanization and its accompanying problems in America today are the structure and impact of local government. In this regard, many &dquo;related&dquo; urban problems have frequently been cited and attributed to local governmental structure. Several among this number range from the unequal distribution of financial resources in urban areas and the absence of areawide governmental authority to deal effectively with areawide conditions, to the weakening of democratic control of public officials by the difficulty inherent in pinpointing responsibility among the many units of local government (Grant, 1970: 60). Whether the structure of local government actually causes or is merely one symptom of societal urban problems has not yet been determined; neverthe-less, there is a relationship, and one of crucial importance, between local governmental structure and what has come to be called the &dquo;urban crisis&dquo; (Banfield, 1970). To remedy the present &dquo;chaos&dquo; of local governmental structure with its so-called &dquo;crazy quilt&dquo; pattern of jurisdic-tional controls, numerous civic and community groups have pressed for local governmental reorganization; and many ap-proaches to reorganization have been employed (Advisor