erged from discusses among leaders of government, business, and labor to see how government could be fashioned to meet growing needs in times of fiscal restraint. In the Capital Region, both public and private sectors expressed interest in seeking regional approaches to improve public service and costs. At the time when Cuomo wrote this article, business, government, and community leaders had already managed to initiate a number of regional programs in the areas of solid waste, transportation, the arts and tourism, public safety, and human service. Cuomo was suggesting the award of a $1.65 million contract to the America Works company to prepare a regional program to place welfare recipients in private sector jobs.
Richard P. Nathan writes that one of the primary reasons for the regionalization effort is to do away with inefficient overlapping services that waste money. Legislators from the Capital Region are therefore preparing a state law to establish a Regionalization Commission in the region. The role of this Commission would be to come up with a plan to consolidate services in the Capital Region, including the restructuring of local government. the primary purposes of proposed changes would be to save money, improve services, and produce jobs. Nathan sees the effort as similar to restructuring and downsizing efforts by business in recent years. Nathan states that there are to
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