How many jurisdictions does it take to run a region?

ST. CLOUD - About 30 years ago, twinkle-eyed state Rep. James Pehler drafted a bill that, had he introduced it, would have caused a stir in his district. It would have planted a compass point on a map of downtown St. Cloud, drawn a circle with a 30-mile radius and made it the boundary of a new jurisdiction, to be aptly named "Round County." Existing county boundaries inside the circle were to be erased.

He was only half-joking, the retired legislator and educator recalls. He'd had it with the jurisdictional squabbles that were slowing the construction of the Hwy. 15-Interstate 94 junction and complicating a lot more of government's work. Pehler was prepared to make a sincere effort to put St. Cloud and its suburbs in one county if other area legislators would join him.

His contemporaries, shrewd politicians all, declined.

This year, ideas akin to Pehler's are floating in earnest in halls of government throughout Minnesota. The meanest economy most living Minnesotans have ever known has elected officials looking at this state's plethora of local government jurisdictions with newly critical eyes. Can costs be cut and services preserved if towns, cities, counties, schools and the state get serious about streamlining?

That may be a new question in some parts of a state blessed since statehood with a multiplicity of government. But it's old stuff in St. Cloud, the only Minnesota borough that spills into three counties. Within Pehler's "Round County," 47 local governmental bodies coexist, not always in harmony. (Thanks to state Sen. Tarryl Clark for that count.) St. Cloud Area School District 742 takes in nine communities in four counties, which puts a daunting number of government meetings on Supt. Steve Jordahl's calendar.

The St. Cloud area's successes and failures to operate government efficiently may be instructive for the rest of the state.

At least since Pehler's elected days, Stearns, Benton and Sherburne counties and the city of 70,000 they share have been looking to save money through cooperation. They're engaged in numerous joint ventures, so many the list fills three printed pages. They jointly oversee solid waste management. With four other counties, they finance library operations (but not facilities). With five area cities, they coordinate parks operations through the Central Minnesota Regional Parks Board. They jointly investigate major crimes.

But law enforcement also provides an oft-cited illustration of the excesses that persist, even among friendly and frugal local governments.

St. Cloud and Stearns County jointly operate a jail, and offenders arrested within city limits become familiar with its interior. But if an offender is arrested by city cops on the east side of the Mississippi River, he or she won't have his or her day(s) in court in the lovely old courthouse adjacent to the jail. Instead, he/she will get a taxpayer-financed, sheriff-escorted trip either to Foley, the seat of Benton County, or to Elk River, the seat of Sherburne County. The officers that must testify at court hearings and trials also take frequent tours of area courthouses, at taxpayer expense.

"We haven't gotten there," said Stearns County Commissioner Mark Sakry of the goal of optimal efficiency. "We have a lot of joint powers agreements, a lot of collaborations. But as far as eliminating the overlap, we have a ways to go."

Talk about merging jails, courts, sheriff's departments, police forces and more has amounted to just that -- talk. But of that, there is suddenly a marked increase.

Dave Kleis, St. Cloud's irrepressible mayor, is among those speaking out. The former Republican state senator notes that each of five smaller cities that adjoin St. Cloud has its own police department. He'd like to change that.

"I have been a strong advocate of creating one metro police department," Kleis said. Even with mutual-aid agreements and a combined dispatching service, the area's multiple police forces are inefficient and expensive, he said.

"With six cities, you have six police chiefs, six human-resource departments, multiple purchasing agents, two canine units -- it's a lot of administration in a very small area," the mayor said. "Put that together, and the taxpayer would not only get a financial benefit, but would get better response time and service."

Fire departments might not be as easily combined, Kleis said, because of the area's mix of full-time and on-call forces. But he wants to try. It galls him to watch firetrucks from Sauk Rapids, northeast of St. Cloud, drive through his city to get to Fair Haven Township south of town -- the result of the township contracting with Sauk Rapids for its fire service.

To date, ideas like these have not been warmly received by St. Cloud's neighbors. Sharing a police dispatcher or a gang strike force evidently is one thing. But eliminating top administrative or elective jobs is something else, something threatening.

In 2005, when then-state Rep. Joe Opatz had the courage to introduce a serious version of Pehler's county consolidation idea, he ran into bill-killing opposition.

"It wasn't from the public. The public gets this," recalled Opatz, who is now president of Normandale Community College. "The county commissioners were the problem."

Resistance lives, even in the face of the painful money squeeze that's coming. Witness this comment from Benton County Board Chair Jim McMahon: "I don't know if one county would work any better than the three we have now. I think people would be worse off. You like to be represented by people you know. Each county is a little bit different. We have a unique set of concerns in each county."

Creative thinkers in both local and state government say there may be ways to streamline, short of collapsing cities or counties, that would still save plenty of money.

"If we force this from the top down, there will be inexhaustible turf wars," said state Rep. Larry Haws, DFL-St. Cloud. "But if you integrate functions, at the staff level, you can do a lot more."

Haws is a former city park-and-rec director and Stearns County commissioner who coined a phrase that's catching on: "borderless government." The gist: Encourage local governments to come together regionally to pool staff and resources, from jails to snowplows to land itself.

For the encouragement, Haws and like-minded government thinkers look to the Legislature. Stearns County Board Chair DeWayne Mareck asks: What if the next biennium's local government aid went not to individual municipalities, but to regions? What if county funds went to clusters of counties?

Gov. Tim Pawlenty has proposed collapsing county human services offices into 15 regional centers. That's one of those top-down ideas that might not make sense everywhere. But why not give local officials the flexibility to improve on the idea, and save still more than Pawlenty's plan would?

"We need to think more as local government, not as town government, city government and county government," said Mareck. He's been elected to offices at all three levels and is convinced that there's money to be saved through consolidation.

How much, and how quickly? The tsunami of red ink headed toward every government budget is calling those questions.

Lori Sturdevant is a Star Tribune editorial writer and columnist. She is at lsturdevant@startribune.com.