Polk County voters have an opportunity Tuesday toward streamling local government through a measure to combine the Des Moines and Polk County governments. Or they can give into apathy or fear and leave intact the same old system, inefficiencies, duplications of service and all.

The plan isn’t perfect. We would like it better if it brought all local governments together and didn’t exclude the suburbs, but the measure before voters Tuesday reflects political reality. In 1993, a proposal to consolidate all metro governments received little support among voters, a fact the commission drafting the charter proposal did not take lightly. Streamlining government has to start somewhere, and if citizens were building a structure for governance from scratch, they wouldn’t build in duplications of service, confusing leadership structures and inefficiencies.

To some degree, supporting the merger requires a leap of faith. Though it’s impossible to pinpoint the precise fiscal impact of combining city and county departments, policies and union contracts, it is possible to foresee savings and efficiencies with some degree of predictability just by looking at other cities, such as Louisville, Indianapolis and Kansas City, Kan., that have adopted unified government.

Fear about the merger is just that. Arguments against it are as easy to deflate as a balloon. One of the most- repeated arguments is that the proposal turns over control of Des Moines to its suburban neighbors. However, that’s already happening under the current system of governance. The Polk County Board of Supervisors has an inordinate amount of control over what kind of development occurs around Ankeny, Mitchellville and Bondurant, for example, but those communities have little pull when it comes to drafting Polk County development policies. Yet no one is raising the “dual citizenship” argument that is so prevalent in the anti-merger campaign.

It’s true that merging governments isn’t the only way to achieve savings, and some intergovernmental agreements have already been crafted. More are needed, but turf battles too often get in the way of cooperation. Streamlining government is an imperative sounded from the governor’s office and echoing throughout the legislative chambers. The message is clear: The days of the blank check are over, and governments must change with the times.

Des Moines and Polk County, as the largest local governments in the state, should take the lead.