Provocative, to be sure. And I appreciated the table from that task force I staffed on federal forest payments. That table was developed in response to the question, How much does it cost to be a county? But the flip side of that question involves the tax base and the tax system (mostly property taxes) that can support a bare minimum of county services. With small tax bases outside of their federal forest lands and low tax rates frozen by Measure 50, many of the rural counties you mention cannot afford to be counties without subsidies from elsewhere in the the state, namely the larger and more affluent counties. Even growth, in the form of more in-migration and residential development, will not pay for itself at those tax rates -- instead, those dynamics create more demand for services on top of a tax-constrained system. So, yeah, there's a case to be made. But probably not a politically winnable one. The populations of those counties you've held up as possible candidates for mergers will fiercely defend their tax rates as well as their independence. In every case, a lower tax county will be joining a higher tax county, even if they are both have relatively low tax rates. Also, every one of their elected officials, county commissioners and DAs most particularly, will defend not only their jobs but the power they have in one-county-one-vote organizations, like the Association of Oregon Counties and the DAs association, in influencing statewide policy.
When much or Oregon splits off from Uber liberal kooks in Portland metro then your theory does not matter.
Provocative, to be sure. And I appreciated the table from that task force I staffed on federal forest payments. That table was developed in response to the question, How much does it cost to be a county? But the flip side of that question involves the tax base and the tax system (mostly property taxes) that can support a bare minimum of county services. With small tax bases outside of their federal forest lands and low tax rates frozen by Measure 50, many of the rural counties you mention cannot afford to be counties without subsidies from elsewhere in the the state, namely the larger and more affluent counties. Even growth, in the form of more in-migration and residential development, will not pay for itself at those tax rates -- instead, those dynamics create more demand for services on top of a tax-constrained system. So, yeah, there's a case to be made. But probably not a politically winnable one. The populations of those counties you've held up as possible candidates for mergers will fiercely defend their tax rates as well as their independence. In every case, a lower tax county will be joining a higher tax county, even if they are both have relatively low tax rates. Also, every one of their elected officials, county commissioners and DAs most particularly, will defend not only their jobs but the power they have in one-county-one-vote organizations, like the Association of Oregon Counties and the DAs association, in influencing statewide policy.