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Old 04-17-2012, 01:03 PM
 
Location: The canyon (with my pistols and knife)
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This according to Gallup. Only 11.8% of all workers in Pennsylvania are work for the government, whether it be federal, state or local. That's the lowest percentage of any state. At the opposite end is Hawaii, with 29.7% of all workers there employed by the government.
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Old 04-17-2012, 01:24 PM
 
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It's not necessarily a good thing to be last in government workers. What's interesting is that Pennsylvania has the most local governments in the United States (municipalities, special districts, school districts, etc.)... yet PA ranks last in govt workers. The great number of governments leads to municipal hyper-fragmentation... where a bunch of tiny local governments occupy a given spatial domain (like the 130 municipalities in Allegheny County... plus schools, authorities, districts, etc.). These fragmented governments are often under-financed and lack the ability to develop a staff of professional public administrators or maintain adequate public works, etc. If we reduced municipal governments by say 75%... we would have local governments that now had the resources to actually get things done.
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Old 04-17-2012, 01:47 PM
 
Location: Foot of the Rockies
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Evergrey View Post
It's not necessarily a good thing to be last in government workers. What's interesting is that Pennsylvania has the most local governments in the United States (municipalities, special districts, school districts, etc.)... yet PA ranks last in govt workers. The great number of governments leads to municipal hyper-fragmentation... where a bunch of tiny local governments occupy a given spatial domain (like the 130 municipalities in Allegheny County... plus schools, authorities, districts, etc.). These fragmented governments are often under-financed and lack the ability to develop a staff of professional public administrators or maintain adequate public works, etc. If we reduced municipal governments by say 75%... we would have local governments that now had the resources to actually get things done.
This is untrue. Illinois has the most local governments.

Tax districts - Illinois Issues - A Publication of the University of Illinois at Springfield - UIS

By a wide margin, Illinois tops the nation in the number of local governments within its borders. . . . . With 6,994 local taxing bodies under its umbrella, Illinois outpaces Pennsylvania, which ranks second among the states for the most local governing entities, by more than 2,100 local governments, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
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Old 04-17-2012, 05:32 PM
 
Location: Philly
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youre making way too many assumptions evergrey. id guess size has little to do with the competence of administrators. ..it may even be an inverse relationship. it would be interesting to see state ranks by each category excluding higher education employees
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Old 04-18-2012, 11:07 AM
 
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If you added the number of municipal authorities and the number of fire companies in PA to the number of local governments you would have a fairer comparison with Illinois and then PA would dwarf IL again.
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Old 04-18-2012, 06:09 PM
 
Location: Montco PA
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Don't forget to include the "commissions" in Pennsylvania as well.
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Old 04-18-2012, 11:01 PM
 
Location: The canyon (with my pistols and knife)
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So if Pennsylvania has such a large number of municipal governments, and such a small percentage of government workers, then maybe each government worker is also a municipal government by extension.
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Old 04-19-2012, 01:13 AM
 
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I know in my area Volunteer fire Departments and ambulances are very prevalent, that must play a factor in the local percentages.


If you look at the second page it gives you breakdown, while all three;federal, state and local are lower than national average it's the federal category that has the widest margin below the national average. It's also the reason states like Hawaii and Alaska are so high because they have such a wide margin above national average.
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Old 04-19-2012, 01:27 AM
 
Location: The canyon (with my pistols and knife)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by thecoalman View Post
I know in my area Volunteer fire Departments and ambulances are very prevalent, that must play a factor in the local percentages.


If you look at the second page it gives you breakdown, while all three;federal, state and local are lower than national average it's the federal category that has the widest margin below the national average. It's also the reason states like Hawaii and Alaska are so high because they have such a wide margin above national average.
Pennsylvania is tied with Maine for 42nd in federal job percentage, ranks 49th in state government percentage, and is tied with Arkansas for 36th in local government percentage.
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Old 04-19-2012, 08:42 AM
 
Location: Philly
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Originally Posted by Gnutella View Post
Pennsylvania is tied with Maine for 42nd in federal job percentage, ranks 49th in state government percentage, and is tied with Arkansas for 36th in local government percentage.
thanks, I was wondering how it ranked.
there are x factors indeed: state universities could add huge numbers of employees to the roles rather than the state sponsored system we're dismantling here. state hospitals, etc. still, it does seem to undermine the argument that too many municipalities is causing the state to have too much government. I'd be interested to see the correlation between the higher percentages of federal jobs and job growth over the past ten years. for all the talk about business friendly, those southern states are awfuly dependent on the government.
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