I've been thinking about the most serious errs which lead to chaos and obvious mismanagement of the United States and the fact remains that there are too many layers of government officials in each state. The wisest state in the United States would start and complete the following transition:
1. The existing state legislature compares the local ordinances of the biggest city, the capital, the smallest city and the most fiscally sound municipality.
2. Once the most fiscally sound municipality has been determined, have a state-wide referendum to make the city with the best local ordinance expand statewide in order to ELIMINATE county boards and city legislators. All laws would become statewide territorial laws.
3. Once there is a uniform statewide law system, law enforcement should be a state position unless a city wants to retain their own department. A STATE sheriff would then be elected and he would have a chain of command similar to any police department, but county foolishness would be eliminated and it is at county level that the most corruption exists.
4. State police would no longer have to answer the stupid question 'What jurisdiction did the crime occur in?' and money currently being dumped into politicians pockets would be better used by state police departments in areas where a city is unable or unwilling to have an appointed chief and a non-political police force. The elected statewide law enforcement leader would have to operate as a counter-balance to appointed chiefs, with wither the statewide sheriff or the local chief having the power to bring charges against one another. Currently, there is very little that is done when a sheriff or a police chief is party to a crime by lack of sufficient investigation or lack of proper complaints being taken.
5. The state takes over all existing park systems after step 2 has determined what the citizens of the state prefer for uniform statewide laws. As a result more people are then in the same pension pool, which reduces the chance of failure.
6. Let schools systems remain in local hands OR let the municipality vote themselves into a central state education system. School systems are not as big of a problem as the excess of local politicians adding to and taking away from laws just to pretend as though they deserve their salary.
7. After the referendum, there would only be uniform state laws which simplifies the entire state legal system and eliminates the current confusion which currently exists with crimes where the crimes have occurred in different counties but IN EACH AND EVERY STATE that obviously needs a better system of law enforcement.
8. Once it is proven that the above system works, all 50 states should eventually have uniform laws rather than continuing the current system of that lacks judicial continuity and that realistically shoulde be described as the Divided States of America.
9. State governments would still be needed for infrastructure systems including roadways, snow removal, state park workers, state law enforcement and state colleges but all the stupid local government corruption would be eliminated or reduced substantially. Either a municipality chooses by a referendum to continue to exist or it annexes itself into state territory to eliminate a layer of county government. Areas could also vote themselves out of state annexation and start a municipality or expand an existing municipality such as Mosinee expanding into Knowlton to add city oversight and double (city and state) their non-federal government coverage rather than having only federal and single state coverage. Federal,State, city and county government layers would not longer exist, only double coverage or triple coverage. Non-federal isn't the same as anti-federal, by the way.
10. If a city wants to retain a mayor and allows him a budget to hire a 'cabinet', no problem. However, if there is no longer any local laws to vote on except by the state legislator, the only thing the mayor might do is try to guide the police departments, fire departments, school systems and any other system that the individual cities want to actively support independently of the state option.
11. County lines could be eliminated, and existing county deputies would have to make a transition to 'state police officer' under ONE leader who ideally is competent enough to manage a difficult but not an impossible task. The state sheriff's salary should be at least the same as the governor's salary.
12. Small states such as Rhode Island or Vermont should easily see the benefit of eliminating the county level of government and only being under state laws with public municipality services provided by city taxes or a state tax that could be higher in areas that city taxes are not collected. This would add healthy competition between state government efficiency vs. municipality efficiency when it comes to basic services such as fire, police, schools and infrastructure improvements.
Such changes could take ten or twenty years for a smooth transition , but I believe my suggestions would reduce taxation and improve the United States.
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