I would contradict you by saying that in my opinion, the performance (execution) of plans is in fact reasonably good, and I think is a lot better than in many o

I would contradict you by saying that in my opinion, the performance (execution) of plans is in fact reasonably good, and I think is a lot better than in many other countries. But: even if municipalities are allowed to dismiss workforce, they won't. It appears that no public servant wants to have his/role and power diminished. In fact, it seems that the larger a municipality is absolutely, the higher proportion of its workforce will be in public administration. The highest cost of public administration and municipal services per head is in Utsjoki (a remote and poor area in the North with extremely disadvantageous geography), and Helsinki (the largest municipality with lots of well-to-do people and very high income). The lowest cost of public administration and most efficient organisation of services is in municipalities whose size is somewhere in between; record lows are in small communities where each and every inhabitant is committed to what they see is a common good. Another factor for people not wanting to have their municipality merged into a larger one is the track record of previous mergers, where local services of the old, smaller municipalities where wiped out simply out of pure spite (I'm looking at you, Hämeenlinna, and how you managed Lammi and others.).