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One of the ploys I have heard rumors of in Missouri is that some rural countys do not have the financial resources to operate county government. (Salaries are mandated by the state for county officials). So if the county cannot afford to operate the courthouse, we will build a new "regional" court house so as to pool the resources and still be able to provide "services".
And along with that a regional jail etc.

Centralization of government is a dangerous trend. As your post points out, regional planning alliances are good ideas in the eyes of county officials who are strapped for cash.

Another trend. Rural schools are consolidated because tax levys are too high to keep small rural schools in operation. Of course, teachers salarys are mandated by the state also. So small districts have to pay city scale in many cases to compete for teachers. So much for budgets.

So look at the problem from this angle. The state mandates county officials salarys and teachers salarys. When districts or countys cannot perform to state imposed standards, the state takes over one segment at a time. Local government and local school boards lose control.
The people lose control over cirriculum. They lose local law enforcement and they lose judges. Road maintainance falls behind. People have to travel further to pay taxes or attend public hearings. Elected officials are no longer in your neighborhood, or your community. Some officials are appointed by political affiliation.

Regional government is dangerous. Keep in mind most of the financial problems in countys are imposed unfunded mandates by the state. Mandates are usually slipped into a large appropriations bill after a makeshift hearing is held. Strange thing is that when makeshift hearings are conducted, the people who are in favor of the mandate always seem to get a few representitives to the hearing, but for some reason the press never made it known the hearing was to take place.

It is especially good to watch certain state committees, especially appropriations, education, and social services.
It is not hard to find the committee hearing schedules.
It is not hard to find drafts of proposed legislation either. But the fine print will make your eyes blur.
That is it's intended purpose. Usually the kicker is the one sentence or a phrase that makes all the difference.

One of the ploys I have heard rumors of in Missouri is that some rural county's do not have the financial resources to operate county government. (Salaries are mandated by the state for county officials). So if the county cannot afford to operate the courthouse, we will build a new "regional" court house so as to pool the resources and still be able to provide "services".

This is one of the primary reasons Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger created the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, which created a council to oversee the economic use of natural resources on private property among other things. Now many of the 20 counties in the conservancy are owned up to 90% by state and federal governments. Those counties are guaranteed to be bankrupt by unelected councils regulating the few remaining acres of private property.

You are exactly right that regional governments intend to bust county governments so they can be easily incorporated into the "regional framework".

Thanks for your real world example of the dangers of regionalism, and I hope others see this and learn.

Regional government is dangerous.

You're right about that. Here in central PA, we have a regional Council of Governments. The way it operates is that it has myriad workgroups and committees. Each member municipality has to designate an elected official as a member. Since there are so many and they are so time consuming, the elected officials choose those that they at least of some interest or knowledge in. That means that one radical environmentalist per township can work a lot of mischief - they all choose to be on the watershed council, for example, and come up with draconian ordinances. They take those ordinances back to their own township supervisors and say "the watershed council has agreed that this is really important, and we really need to adopt it as an ordinance (which makes it law)". Too often, their fellow township supervisors defer to them as the expert, and pass the proposal. In effect you get the most radical elected officials possible getting together and making radical land-use ordinances. What do the conservative elected officials serve on? The Finance committee, the administrative oversight committee, the fire and police oversight committee, etc - groups that actual monitor how they governments run and work together, rather than on those that make future laws.

They periodically raise the idea of consolidating into one actual government, but it's strongly opposed by people like us, and every time it's been on the ballot it's been voted down by large numbers.