Study merger and other LI ideas

The sheer size of Long Island's problems seems to call for a big remedy: Maybe becoming a 51st state, an idea that has come up, isn't bold enough. Perhaps membership in the United Nations would do it. Or we could be a new planet.

Now comes a less drastic, but no less difficult notion: Merging Long Island's two big, vastly dysfunctional counties into one humongous one.

The merger idea comes from Kevin Law, chief executive of the Long Island Association, the region's largest business group. But whether the approach is merger, consolidation, elevation to statehood or nationhood, the problems will remain tough to resolve: high taxes, too many government units, inability to build anything significant here.

We can't fix them with nips and tucks at the edges. So the instinct to think big is essentially correct. But a merger, which would require so many to vote against their self-interest, is a nearly impossible lift. Even if it could happen, would it really save enough money, and would a county that big, even with extra clout, be governable?

Those are questions that Law wants to study, with private money that the LIA would raise. If the LIA board approves, the organization would be wise to focus that study not just on a quixotic merger of Nassau and Suffolk, but on smaller-scale, but still big ideas: townwide school districts, for example.

There's no question that our Island really needs shaking up. If there are feasible ways of doing the shaking, then let's roll. hN