Editorial

Platte Institute county study is a good starting point

Friday, November 27, 2009

It would be easy for someone from McCook to get behind a study that suggests Nebraska's 93 counties is too many, and they should be consolidated into 20 more centrally located county units -- because McCook would be one of those locations.

Authored by Dr. Paul Burger and Dr. H. Jason Combs of the University of Nebraska-Kearney, the report was released by the fiscally conservative Platte Institute, whose directors include Pete Ricketts, whose family just purchased the Chicago Cubs and who spent more than $11 million of his own money trying to unseat Sen. Ben Nelson, and Jay Vavricek, former Grand Island mayor, congressional candidate and owner of a radio group that includes McCook holdings.

The study makes a good point. Nebraska's counties were laid out when we all traveled by horseback or buggy, close enough to make it possible to get to the courthouse, conduct our business and get home before dark.

Since then, we've spent billions of dollars on highways and vehicles, farms have gone from one family per quarter-section to one farmer for thousands of acres, and business can be conducted hundreds of miles away in one day -- or instantly online.

Using GIS -- a computerized mapping system -- technology, the study would make McCook a consolidated county center, serving Dundy, Hitchcock and

as well as Red Willow County.

Still, it's going to be hard to tell a teenager in northern Hayes County he has to travel to McCook to take his drivers test, or a Haigler rancher he has to drive an hour and a half to pay his property taxes. Indianola feathers are still ruffled from the county seat being moved to McCook when the railroad decided to locate its roundhouse here.

But the study is a good starting point for discussion, debate and, yes, even legislative proposals.

Check it out at the Platte Institute's Web site, http://www.platteinstitute.org/docLib/20091118_County_Consolidation_FINAL.pdf

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