[Hoot Gibson]

Kentucky has too many counties for a state its size but I am not convinced that money would be saved by consolidation. My guess is that politicians elected to office would vote themselves bigger salaries and justify the expense on the basis of more responsibility and managing larger budgets. I also don't believe that any analysis of the cost of new court houses and other infrastructure changes necessary to support larger country populations has been done.

But the main reason that I oppose consolidation of small counties into larger ones is that the motive for doing so is probably political. Whichever party has control of state government at the time of the mergers would undoubtedly draw the new county lines to provide as much control and as many jobs for their own party as possible.

As for consolidating school districts, this country is full of corrupt, incompetently governed large school districts. Large school districts create larger problems than smaller school districts.