The past several weekends my wife and her siblings have been cleaning-out their mom’s house. (She passed, at age 95, this spring.) The in-laws and outlaws help too, so, I mildly amused myself collecting the twelve pair of identical scissors and a like number of tape dispensers and thence distributing them to the five kids and some of the grandkids.
Anyway, a recent rainy morning saved me from yardwork. I decided to straighten-up the desk where we keep our blank checks and other necessary papers.
I discovered 13 blank check registers. The calendars on some aged out a decade ago. They did not bring me joy. An even ten went into the recycling bin.
That same day I read through a bunch of reports on Missouri state operations. Grim reading. The state earned its place at the bottom of many, many lists.
Yes, the need for modern computer systems, better trained – and paid – state workers, reworking programs to actually help families and such are old news where the current majority party frankly doesn’t give a damn.
How about this: make the state more efficient by reducing the number of operating units.
Per the last U. S. Census, 27 Missouri counties have fewer than 10,000 residents. Worth County leads that list with 1,973 people. Another six house less than 5,000 residents.
How about the state adopts a definition of a county as a continuous area with a minimum population of 10,000 people? Lewis County with 10,032 makes the cut but those 27 smaller counties could easily be combined or merged to reduce the count by at least a dozen. Instead of 114 counties and the City of St. Louis, let’s go to 100 or 102.
To our east, Illinois with twice the population gets by with 102 counties and Indiana (6.8 million residents to Missouri’s 6.15 million) only has 92 counties.
Yes, that means fewer elected sheriffs and county commissioners, public administrators and all that. That saves local tax money, as would having fewer places printing tax bills.
Money can be hard to find in rural Missouri. The gap in median household income among counties is scary. The range starts with $90,567 per household in St. Charles County and $68,964 in St. Louis County down to $41,847 in Worth County and $35,865 in Pemiscot County. In other words, some counties have family incomes less than half of others.
Why should urbanites concern themselves with sparsely populated rural counties?
Despite proclamations at the state fair about the great rural tradition of Mizzou-rah, the majority of the state population lives in just seven counties! And, decades of trend data points to St. Charles, Greene and Jefferson counties continuing to grow while the population of most rural counties will keep declining. The primary purpose of Jefferson City is to move money from the urbanized areas outstate. The pressure to move more money to rural areas will increase as the gaps widen, as they will.
The world is not a perfect place, all too obvious in Missouri. Maybe straightening-up counties will help taxpayers a bit.
By the way, with my mother-in-law’s scissors we now have seven pair in the house…
Glenn Koenen
Top Missouri Counties by Population 2020
St. Louis County 1,004,125
Jackson Co. 717,204
St. Charles Co. 402,262
St. Louis City 301,578
Greene Co. 298,915
Clay Co. 253,335
Jefferson Co. 226,739
3,207,158
Rest of State 2,974,755
Image Source: U.S. Census Bureau