If Iowa is going to make it through what is predicted to be a gloomy future, local governments don’t have a lot of time left to get thingsright. State lawmakers have been clear on that by enacting laws that make it possible for governments to consolidate (though it would be nice if they actually had the moral fortitude to force consolidation or, at least, give some fiscal incentives to those communities coming together in the agreement that better government is less government).

If it makes sense for rural communities to combine their city and county governments so even the smallest of burgs can receive basic services such as police protection and better sewage treatment systems, it makes even more sense for the state’s largest cities to lead by example with more efficient governments.

Consolidation especially makes sense in Greater Des Moines. More than that, consolidation can be viewed as a moral imperative. Leaving the core city fallow in exchange for an explosion of one-story office buildings and other new-more-better-different stuff is as immoral as abandoning an aging parent. And, like an aging parent, Des Moines is starved for resources and has catastrophic needs. With 40 percent of its real estate exempt from taxes, Des Moines is like a Social Security recipient. Ours is a society that doesn’t turn its back on senior citizens – at least, we profess not to.

There are as many common-sense as financial reasons to merge the Polk County and Des Moines city governments. In the proposed charter is a mechanism to strip away the layers of bureaucracy and redundancy that have bloated government spending. Beyond enhancing the grassroots organizing power of the two major political parties, what possible purpose is served by electing, for example, an auditor, a treasurer and a sheriff? What’s Democratic or Republican about keeping books, watching cash or enforcing the law? Des Moines voters don’t elect their financial officers or police chief, and democracy seems to be no worse off because a political popularity contest isn’t used to select those and other appointed officials. (And if they’re inept albeit politically unpopular, it’s easier to fire them than wait for them to be voted out of office.)

The 21st-century government envisioned in the proposed charter could choose the best professionals from both the county and city, and steer those workers for whom there are no jobs away from the government trough and into the private sector, where they’ll no doubt make more money. No one is owed a job. It doesn’t work that way in business, and it shouldn’t work that way in government. Government should be benevolent, but it can’t be if it collapses under its own weight.

The only flaw in the charter proposal is that it isn’t bold enough. Mindful of the failure of a metrowide charter proposal a decade ago, the drafters of the current plan took a more cautious approach. Still, it’s fun to imagine Greater Des Moines as an enlightened enough place to embrace the one city-one government approach, about the only way to end the suburban fiefdoms that fuel individual growth plans that, collectively, don’t make sense.

Here’s the potential problem: Des Moines has a nifty downtown redevelopment plan to bring both people and commerce to the most architecturally interesting part of the city. It builds on a long-range plan that is constructing a large arena, library, science center, higher education center in the downtown area and complements the reawakening of the East Village, the Principal Riverwalk and other bold development plans. Highway improvements are going to make it easier to get downtown. Most local experts agree the downtown area is experiencing a renaissance period as never before.

It’s impossible not to wonder, though, if unchecked growth in the western suburbs will further ghettoize the central city before all this great stuff gets done.