Shared Services Grants

The Press-Republican has this editorial today about shared services, but also breaks some news (to me at least) about how this year's proposed state budget treats the Share Municipal Services Incentive (SMSI) grant program that debuted last year:

State Sen. Betty Little has made great headway in her effort to get local governments to share services and save money for their taxpayers. A fund set aside to help municipalities do so has been increased in this year's budget from $2.75 million to $25 million.

Sharing services makes more and more sense every year. It has long been a goal of responsible government to try to either share services or merge outright in the interest of saving money. Why pay twice for the same service, or why pay more people than are needed to perform what could be done more efficiently, with fewer workers?
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Last year's state program, which provides grants for municipalities to find ways to consolidate services, saw 260 applications.

The legislature approved increasing the availability of funds this year almost tenfold. Gov. Pataki had included that amount in his budget, so the program is sure of appropriation.

Of the $25 million, a minimum of $5.5 million will be devoted to expanding existing Shared Municipal Services program grants; $4 million for local highway-service grants; $4.5 million for local employee-health-insurance-incentive grants; $1 million for countywide shared-service plans; and $10 million for municipal-consolidation-incentive funding.

Another $700,000 will be allocated for the creation of a statewide databank of inter-municipal agreements to provide legal and technical assistance on all levels of agreement

UPDATE: Here's some clarification on the machinations of budget-making in Albany from a reader who's familiar with the process: the SMSI program was vetoed by Governor Pataki (along with many other line-items) for constitutional reasons, but since he had included it in his Executive Budget in a slightly different form, the program likely will be restored after further negotiation with the Legislature.